THE ONLY YEH YEH GIRL

The teenagers of the 1950s worshipped Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Buddy Holly as gods albeit dead gods instead of risen god like Him of the Old Religion. The new generation of baby boomers preferred the living and the stars of the 1960s were transported by TV and radio to my family house under the Blue Hills south of Boston. Bob Dylan’s BLOWING IN THE WIND toppled Elvis off his throne and the Beatles stole girls from Bobby Rydell with I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND. Young boys worshipped movie actresses as wingless angels, whose beauty blazed eternal on the silver screens.

In 1965 Julie Christie won our hearts in DARLING and my older brother chose fur-bikinied Raquel Welch as his muse after her debut in 1,000,000 BC. The seductive virtues of various starlets were debated by the boys in my high school outside 128 in Boston. I held my sand ie said nothing, because I was searching for a goddess to call my own.

One cold January night I lay in bed in a split-level ranch house on the South Shore Snow clotted against the window. My older brother slept soundly under the covers. I was wide awake. My fingers turned the dial on the transistor radio. A wire running to a tiny ear plug transporting me across the Eastern Seaboard and beyond. Static, then the antenna caught a signal from Quebec transmitting a wavering female singing ‘La maison ou j’ai grandi’.

I cursed myself for not having paid more attention in my grammar school French classes and looked over to my brother’s bed. Dead asleep. I turned up the volume and rode the magic radio waves to the last fading notes of the guitar. The Montreal DJ announced with breathless admiration, “C’etait une autre tube par Francoise Hardy.” I hadn’t understand a word, but realized that Francoise Hardy couldn’t be anything other than an angel. My angel. I remained glued to the station on the St. Lawrence River and the DJ rewarded my devotion with other tubes like LE PREMIER BONHEUR DU JOUR, QUI PEUT DIRE, and L’AMITIE, after which he said, “Bonne anniversaire, Francoise.”

Somehow my brain translated those words into ‘happy birthday, Francoise’.

I was a fifteen year-old high school student living on the South Shore. The DJ announced that Francoise Hardy had just turned twenty-three and lived in Paris. Three thousand miles due east across the Atlantic. The chances of our meeting were nil and she was a woman and I was only a boy.

“Turn off that Frog crap.” my older brother mumbled from his pillows.

“Okay.”

I shut the radio and went to sleep confused by conflicting images of Francoise Hardy. I envisioned her as a blonde. I fantasized about her as a redhead. I woke early to a dream of her as a brunette. Dawn was barely up. Snow buried our suburban neighborhood. I dressed for the cold and descended to the kitchen.

“You’re awfully quiet,” my father said at the stove, as he cooked pancakes for my younger sisters and brothers.

“I’m thinking about changing my language from German to French.” In my freshman year the brothers had offered four languages; French, Spanish, German, and Latin. Students only take one. Most either Spanish or French. I chose German and Latin. I had never been able to explain why to anyone. Not even myself.

“I thought you liked German.” My father had studied French at college.

“I do.” I spoke it with a Boston accent much to the chagrin of Bruder Karl. My best grade had been a D+ and I had no feeling for Marlene Dietrich.

“Any reason for the change?”

“Maybe I’ll have more use for French.”

“Like for when you’re ordering French Fries from Simco’s at the bridge.” My older brother joked, as he sat at the table. My younger brothers and sisters laughed along with my father. Simco’s on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan had the greasy fries in Boston.

“Tres droll.”

I didn’t mention my restless night to my car pool friends, as we drove to high school on 128. My daydreams of Francoise Hardy consumed the morning math and biology classes. I barely listened to Bruder Karl. He was a good old Bavarian. After leaving his class, I had a study hall and went the library to search through the record collection. Brother Jerome, the librarian, was in his office. A freshman sat on his lap. One of his favorites.

I wandered over to the record trays and flipped through the LPs without finding a single French record. A few music stores in downtown Boston sold foreign music and I planned on heading to Washington Street after school.

“I’m not going home today?” I told my car pool.

“Where you going?” My best friend, Chuckie Manzi, wanted to join me.

“To see the dentist.” It was a good deterrent. No teenager liked the sound of the drill.

“You’re on your own.”

My friends dropped me at the Forest Hills T station and I got off at Washington Street. None of the big department stores had any French 45s or LPs. On the way to the Park Street Station I chanced upon a record store on Boylston across from Commons. The bearded owner looked like a beatnik. I was dressed as a mod.

“Can I help you?” Thousands of records according to genres were stacked against the wall.

“Do you have any Francoise Hardy?”

“How do you know about Francoise Hardy?” The older man seemed amused by my request.

“I heard her on a Canadian station.”

“Must have been a strong signal.” He went to the French section and pulled out a sealed LP.

“Francoise Hardy dropped out of the Sorbonne to record OH OH CHERI with Johnny Halliday. He’s the French Elvis. She became one of the biggest stars of Ye-Ye music and her hit TOUS LES GARCONS ET LES FILLES made the charts in the UK. I think it was 1964. This LP came out in 1962.”

He gave me the album. Up to this all I knew about the singer was that she was French. I held the cover in both hands. The name had a face. A cinnamon strands of hair streamed across feline eyes. An ivory hand held an umbrella with a detached interest. Francoise was a woman made for a rainy afternoon.

“Can I hear a little?”

“Sure.” The old man slipped the LP onto a Garrard 401 turntable and cued up LE TEMPS D’AMOUR.

A patter of drums opened the song. A twangy guitar and solid bass joined on the next bar. The singer wasted no time getting to the lyrics. They must have been about love. 2:27 passed in a second.

“What you think?”

“I’ll take it.” Her pose sold youthful innocence. I gave him $5. “Is this the only one you have?”

“Of that LP, yes, but I can get some of her other records, if you’d like.”

I nodded my answer and promised to return on the weekend.

“My name’s Osberg.” He handed me a business card. “Call to find out when to come in.”

“Thanks.” I left his shop and caught the T to Ashmont.

That evening after finishing dinner and my homework, I went down to the basement and put the LP on my father’s record player. My brother had a better one in our bedroom, but I wasn’t sharing Francoise Hardy with someone in love with a woman in a fake fur bikini, even if Frunk was my older brother. He had Raquel Welch to himself 100%. One play of her record and I became her biggest fan south of the frozen USA-Canada border.

Every night I listened to the Quebec stations in secrecy. Her songs soothed my soul lost in the empty suburbs south of Boston and I felt as long as she was out there, there was someplace other than here.

At school I hid my secret. THE only French we knew were the Canucks from Quebec. Good for playing hockey for the Boston Bruins. I didn’t want to risk their attacking Francoise. I bought several LPs from Mr. Osberg and as winter melted from New England, he introduced me to the other Ye-Ye girls; Frances Gall, Sylvie Vartan, and Jacqueline Ta’eb as well as the Sultans from Quebec and Serge Gainsbourg.

None of them were Francoise Hardy. I dreamed about flying to Paris. An airline ticket cost hundreds of dollars. I settled for listening to her music with my eyers closed.

In 1968 Francoise Hardy released COMMENT TE DIRE ADIEU written by Serge Gainsbourg. Mr. Osburg said that he was the wicked man in France and played his hit with Jane Birkin JE T’AIME MOI NON PLUS.

Love dripped off the record. Mr. Osburg was right about this Gainsbourg man. He was as ugly as sin. I had to save Francoise and as soon as I arrived home, I asked my father, if we could vacation in France.

“They’re having riots there.” My father was very conservative. He tolerated the length of my hair, even if he thought I looked like a girl. “Students in the streets. Worse than the hippies. We’re going to the Cape.”

Our family rented three motel rooms in Harwichport. The pool overlooked the small harbor. The beach boasted the warmest water on Cape Cod and the sea registered 65 Fahrenheit by the 4th of July.

Every morning I read the Boston Globe. The newspaper covered the War in Vietnam with little mention of the Paris student unrest. I was certain that Francoise Hardy wasn’t the type of girl to get mixed up in trouble on the Left Bank. Not unless she fell into the hands of the evil Serge Gainsbourg and I plotted a trip to France. A rumor was whispered across Boston about a jet plane leaving Boston every morning for Paris. Its cargo of Maine lobsters was traded for eclairs, creme brulees, and pomme tartes. $100 round trip.

Two weeks before the start of school I emptied my bank account and took the T to Logan Airport early one morning. None of the terminals listed the ‘lobster’ flight and I spent the greater part of Saturday hunting for the mythic plane to Paris.

“Ha.” A Boston cop laughed upon hearing my query. “Once a week some kid comes up looking for that plane. There ain’t none. Some bullshit story someone invented for who knows why, but the weird thing is that all these kids want to meet the same girl. Francoise Hardy. You ever heard of her?”

“No.” These other boys’ feelings for Francoise Hardy could never rival my love.

“Me too. Must be some kind of film star. Like Brigitte Bardot.”

I fought back an explanation, not needing any more converts to the faith, and returned home in defeat. That summer America was deep mourning after the murder of RFK in LA. MRS. ROBINSON replaced Archie Bell and the Drells’ TIGHTEN UP as # 1, while Simon and Garfinkel sang about an older woman from the movie THE GRADUATE. Francoise Hardy was eight years older than me. I changed the words from Mrs. Robinson to Francoise Hardy. I never sang it in front of my girlfriend. Kyla was the same age as me.

COMMENT TE DIRE ADIEU was not a hit and the radio station in Quebec played less and less of her songs. Kyla and I went steady. I liked to think that Francoise would have approved of my selection, but I was stupid and left Kyla for no good reason in 1969. That year Francoise released Francoise Hardy en Anglais. Like the Catholic Mass in English her songs lost their magic in the translation.

My travels in the late-60s and 70s were confined to hitchhiking across America. None of the drivers played TOUS LES GARCONS ET LES FILLES, but I defended French music to hundreds of hippies, rednecks, and disco fanatics by saying, “You’ve never heard Francoise Hardy.”

In 1973 she appeared in the film SAVE THE TIGER. The American director failed to break the twenty-nine year-old singer to America. She remained a creature of France.

The Atlantic Ocean separated America from the Old World. My opportunity to cross the waters came in 1982, when I was hired to work as a doorman first to work at the Rex for the counter-culture magazine Actuel and then after a stay in Hamburg, the Bains-Douches, a popular Paris nightclub. At first I was unfamiliar with the French pop stars. Over the course of the next year I met Johnny Halliday, Yves Montand, Catherine Denevue, Yves St. Laurent, Coluche, countless Vogue models, arms dealers, and other lightbulbs of the night, but never Francoise Hardy and I asked the owner about her absence.

“She doesn’t go out at night. Her husband, Jacques Dutronc, is very jealous.”

“Of what?” Dutronc was a rock star for the French. Nobody in the USA knew his name, but ET MOI ET MOI ET MOI was a great song. I had it on tape. “Other men?”

My boss warned that her husband was capable of almost anything against any man seeking intimacy with his wife. “He is very much in love with her.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

My boss shrugged with mutual understanding, He was a Francoise Hardy fan too.

The nightlife was a small world in Paris and I didn’t mention Francoise’s name again. People had big mouths. Jacques Dutronc visited the club on several occasions. He was a star. I was no one. A thick cigar hung out of his mouth. I hated the smell. He never came with Francoise. The rumor was that she was terribly shy after having been the Ye-Ye Girl for so many years. I made her husband wait to get in more than once.

Jacques Dutronc complained to my boss, who laughed behind the singer’s back.

My job was to make French stars feel like getting into the Bains-Douches was a privilege. My friends were granted an easy entry, especially Suzi Wyss, the Swiss mistress of a Getty Oil heir. On my days off I smoked opium at her oriental pad in the 13th arrondisement. The Swiss courtesan was superb cook and traveled through many cliques. She called me poor poor Peter, but never turned her back on me. We were lovers. One night she invited me to a dinner, but said, “Don’t tell anyone, but Francoise Hardy will be coming.”

“I thought she didn’t go out.” This was a miracle.

“She doesn’t, but she loves my cooking and I am always discreet. So not a word.”

“Silence will be my vow” I wanted Francoise to myself. “Will her husband be there?”

“Not for dinner, but he might come for dessert. He has a thing for my Swiss chocolate torte.”

Suzi’s piece de resistance was a culinary delight and I prepared like a nameless suitor for this rendezvous with Francoise Hardy.

I bought a chalk white shirt from Agnes B and a gray suit from my tailor in the Sentier. No tie was better than pretending to be a business man and I purchased Cuban heels from the Marches Aux Puches flea market. They dated back to the time of her greatest success. I cut my hair short and didn’t bathe for two days to emulate French men, who avoided bathing in fear of losing their masculinity.

That evening I showed up on time with a bouquet of roses. Suzi loved flowers. We smoked hash. Opium was for after the dinner. The door bell rang at 9. Francoise arrived at the apartment with a young gay man. Yves knew me from les Bains. We opened a bottle of wine. She wasn’t a drinker, but was amused by my stories of New York nightclubs awash with beautiful women and crooked cops.

“It would make a good movie.”

“Only if you played the lead.” I envisioned us on the podium of the Academy Awards receiving Oscars.

“I’m too old to play that role.”

“You’re never too old to be a star.” I wanted to tell her I had loved her forever. Now was not thee time. Maybe never was the time. She was only thirty-nine. I was thirty. I told her the story of hearing her on the Montreal radio and the plane with the pastries. She laughed at my love from afar. She had had a lot of lovers like that in her life.

“Didn’t I tell he was sweet?” Suzi lit another joint.

“Sweet as your torte.”

I was falling in love again.

In fact I had never stopped loving Francoise. She spoke about her music and picked up a guitar from the corner. The Ye-Ye girl sang two new tunes. I was in paradise and was about to tell her about hearing her music on a little radio twenty years ago.

A knock on the door trashed my moment. The newcomer was Jacques Dutronc. Francoise’s face said that she loved him and no one else. Any man would have been a fool to not love her the same.

“I know you.” He pointed his cigar. “Bains-Douches. Doorman.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“A writer too.” Suzi was on my side.

“Pouoff” Dutronc had witnessed thousands of writers attempt to seduce his wife. “Women only love directors and producers. They prefer chauffeurs before a writer.”

Francoise laughed at her husband’s joke. Suzi thought it funny too. I might have joined them, if the riposte hadn’t struck so deep. After Suzi’s famous Swiss Chocolate cake rejoined to the living room, where Jacques Dutronc picked up the guitar.

“Francoise and I recorded a song in 1978. BROULLIARD DANS LA RUE CORVISART.”

He put down his cigar and sang the song’s opening lines. Francoise accompanied him on the chorus. I applauded their duet as well as their shared love.The odds of my getting anywhere with Francoise were stacked higher than the records in Mr. Osburg’s music store. An hour later the famed couple left with the gay friend. Francoise didn’t even said good-bye. Jacques winked to me. I wouldn’t make him wait at the door any more.

“Poor Boy.” Suzi patted my cheek. “Everyone loves her.”

“Yes, I suppose we do.”

“And I know how to make you forget, if only for a few minutes.” Suzi handed me a pipe. Opium was a good doctor for an unrequited love. Suzzi was even better. A good friend in the slumber of her bed.

The three of us met several more times at Suzi’s apartment. The same routine as always, dinner, wine, and a joint or two. Jacques came late and they departed ensemble. Faithful forever. Suzi and I not faithful. Just lovers.

I imagined myself being him, but I didn’t like cigars and my French was even worse than my German. Francoise loved Jacques and that was good enough for me, because all men at one time in their lives need a goddess to teach them about love.

Even if they were another man’s woman.

To Hear Francoise Hardy's

please go to the following URL

The Comeback of the Rourke - 2008

Working at nightclubs I met a lot of people. The good, the bad, and in-between. Famous, infamous, and nobodies. Sometimes I had no idea who was who. I tried to stop Mick Jagger from entering Hurrah. A beard hid his face. His bodyguard Tony steered me right. I later refused Meryl Strep entry to the Mudd Club on orders from the owner, Steve Maas. It wasn't hard. I didn't like her in THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN.

In Paris at Le Nouvelle Eve an old boxer arguing with the cashier about free admission to the dance club. SomEthing said he had been a champion years ago. I asked him why he and his two lady friends It was a cold night and the two women wore puffy should enter without paying, telling him I'd accept any and all explanations. I liked boxers. He responded by insulting the land of my birth.

"Putain Amerlot."

"You got that right, fucking Americans." I glanced back at the two women. The blonde looked familiar. The nightclub owner was standing by the bar. Serge, my friend. Watching.

"Te oncule."

Working the door in France and Germany I had heard 'fuck you' many times in both languages. The boxer's face had been battered by fists. Mine too. Even at fifty he was tougher than me and I respected him, offering him an out in my grammar school French. "All you have do is say you're a friend of Moses or Charlesmagne and I'll let you and your two ladies in for free. I'll even throw in free drinks."

"Putain Amerlot."

I had had enough and told him to leave,

"And take those two old doormats with you."

After the trio's departure Serge approached me.

"Explain to me why you threw out Brigitte Bardot."

"Brigitte Bardot." I loved her in AND GOD CREATED WOMEN. Even more so in CONTEMPT. I dreamed about her as a boy. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I recognized the film goddess from behind. She was older, less blonde, and wearing a frumpy down coat.

"I had no idea who she was."

"Quais, putain Amerlot."

Serge didn't fire me. Like I said we were friends, however a week later Mickey Rourke showed up at the club with ten friends. Mostly young junkies from the Bains-Douches. We never let them in for free. I made an exception this time. Serge came up to me.

"No Brigitte Bardot, but hello Mssr. Rourke." He never let me forget this error in judgment and it remains a joke between us till this day. Serge laughed all the harder, as the American actor slipped down the ranks from his heyday, although we both agreed on his best line.

"Drinks for my friends." Mickey Rourke called out in Barbet Schroeder's BARFLY.

It seemed to be a line he must have said in real life too. Bad movies, a worse choice for a plastic surgeon. He was banned from Hollywood, except under a mask like for SIN CITY, however Mickey Rourke had resurrected his career by starring in the Golden Lion winner of the Venice Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler".

"A guy like me changes hard, I didn't want to change, but I had to change."

Same as the rest of us.

I still loved Brigitte Bardot for CONTEMPT, but less so for her conversion to Fascism. Sad she could have been a saint. And maybe she is for Le National Front. Je sais rien des eux.

CASSE-TOI BRIGITTE by Peter Nolan Smith

New York City showed its teeth the autumn of 1981. The 20th Precinct strong-armed our after-hours nightclub on West 25th Street for weekly payoffs. One of the Continental’s backers was a Odessa gangster. Vadim was going out with my old girlfriend from Buffalo. The tough zek smuggled stolen icons and passed bad paper. Lisa looked good in his furs.

Only problem was that the newest investor in the illegal enterprise looked like the FBI, mostly since they were the FBI investigating the dirty cops from the 20th. When I mentioned the likeness to the Feds to Arthur, the club’s owner, the ex-baseball player. mumbled out of the side of his mouth "Don't worry."

Those two words were never a good sign. Not when you were paying off the cops. Arthur had hired me to work the door, however his partner, a poster boy/model for herpes, didn't like my attitude and

Paul Garcia wasn't alone. In December Arthur apologized, "I got to let you go." "No worries."

The microphone wire on Arthur’s chest confirmed my suspicion about the new investors had been spot on and later that week I accepted the offer from Actuel Magazine to work at the rex Club as a doorman, since my friend Bernard Zekri had written an article about me the previous summer. I sublet my East Village flat to a Swedish photographer. Swedes were very trustworthy. After Actuel bought my plane ticket to France, they asked, if I had a a choice for a DJ. . Vladmar was my choice. He arrived in Brussels a week after me. For both of it was our first time in Continental Europe. Paris loved Vladmar’s spinning of cold wave hits.

I was another story. No one really likes a doorman. Working at a nightclubs I met the famous, infamous, and nobodies. Sometimes I had no idea who was who in the universe of Paris nightlife. One night I stopped a skinny bearded man from entering the club for free. His massive bodyguard steered me right.

"It's Mick Jagger."

"That's him." The Stones were my heroes. They hadn't sold out like the Beatles. The rock star was with a blonde model. She knew who he was, not that I cared. In the 1970s doormen ruled the night and that privilege followed me to Paris in 1982.

"Here you are not a doorman, but a physionomiste. You read people." The club manager was a socialist. Olivier sought an eclectic crowd dedicated to every level of fun.

"No problem, but I don’t know how to speak French." Two years of grammar school French from a nun with a lisp had taught me how to ask, "Ou est le Bibliotechque?"

"Pas de problem," Olivier shrugged with ease and said, "You only have to say two words. 'Ouais' or 'Non.'"

"Okay" I had learned that trick at CBGBs, Hurrah, and Studio 54. "But I don't know anyone in Paris. Not the famous people. Not the people who go to nightclubs."

"Pas de problem." His partner and he were tired of everyone getting in for free. "Make everyone pay and I don't care if it's Brigitte Bardot."

"But how shall I treat them?"

"Comme le merde."

"Like shit?" I didn't think that I had heard Olivier right.

"Exactement."

“I’ll do my best.”

Treating Parisians like shit was a dream job for an American and I obeyed Jean to a tee and favored my friends with glory. I built a new clientele of rockers, punks, models, gangsters, pop stars, and normal people for the basement club under the famed movie theater on the Grand Boulevard. For the most part the owners liked the mix and rejectees called me 'le ras-de-ped' or 'homo', which was Verlaine or slang for pederast.

My French improved watching subtitled movies and sleeping with French girls. After the closure of the Rex, the owners of Les Bains-Douches hired me to replace Farida. The Algerian Amazon was leaving her post to model with the famed fashion designer Claude Montana. She was that beautiful.

The owners of the club off Rue Sebastopol were a little more deferential about their upscale clientele, but also concurred with treating their regulars 'comme le merde'. I liked to throw them a curve ball and one night a decrepit clouchard approached the entrance.

The bouncers prevented the derelict's climbing the stairs.

"Leave him alone."

"Pour quoi?" My security were off-duty Legionnaires and shouldn't have been questioning my orders, but they hated the bums and blacks and Arabs.

"Because I said so."

They shrugged and resumed smoking Gitanes.

"Why do you want to enter the club?" I asked the grizzled drunk in Boston-accented French.

"Because I'm a good friend of Moses and he told me to meet him here."

"Come on in."

"Are you serious?"

"Mais ouais." I had heard plenty of excuses from people seeking to enter the Bains-Douches. None of them were as good as that offered by this 'friend of Moses'.

"I have no money." The clouchard patted his pockets.

"A friend of Moses doesn't need money. Here;s manna from heaven. Two drink tickets. Have a good time."

His raison d'être granted him entry to the elite boite de nuit. I went inside from time to time to check, if he was having a good time and the snobby clientele of the Bains-Douches opened their hearts to the Friend of Moses. My boss was not amused by Moses' friend and stormed up to the front door.

“Are you fou?” Americans were crazy estrangers to the French.

“What’s wrong?” I didn’t have an idea about what was amiss, but I was sure about the ‘who’.

“That clouchard drank a bottle of wine from Thierry Mugler's table." Fabrice had a sweet spot for the fashion czars of Paris. They brought models and models attracted the rich.

"Really?" I laughed at the audacity of 'le Ami de Moises'.

"You think it’s funny?”

"Just a little, but if you want him to leave, then I’ll show him out.”

"Why did you let him in?"

"Because he's a friend of Moses." The excuse meant nothing to the patron. "I guess you never saw Charlton Heston part the Red Sea in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS."

"I know 'the Parting of the Red Sea'. It was special effects, but the God of the Israelis killed their enemies with unforgettable style. Get Moses' friend out of here."

I signaled the bouncers or 'videurs' to gently escort out my guest and the clouchard cried out, "You can't treat the friend of Moses like this. Just wait until I speak to Moses. He has more plagues up his sleeves than I have fleas."

Nothing as evil as the killing of the first-born ever visited the Bains-Douches.

Several weeks later I spotted the friend of Moses in Les Halles. He cursed everyone with damnation at the very popular Cafe Pere Tranquille. The chic junkies and fashionable drunks laughed at his predictions of doom. I looked to the sky. The madman pointed a finger at me.

"That Amerlot loves God."

And I wished it were true, but I had been a non-believer since 1960, although I loved wandering through Notre Dame. dn prayed to Black Michel, the small angel posised over the gothic cathedral's organ.

I gave him 20 francs.

My girlfriend Candia asked, "Why?"

"Because it's not a bad idea to have the friend of Moses saying good for you to the Grand Seigneur."

"Il est fou."

"Crazy, quais, but the believer's God moves in strange ways, so do the mad." Everyone was amused by this story, except for my boss and I was let go from the Bains-Douches.

I wasn't unemployed for long.

Albert and Serge opened a dance club near the Paris Opera 1984 and hired me to be the doorman. Le Nouvelle Eve's plush décor harkened to the glorious 50s. The young rich loved to dance to the soul and classic French hits stitched together Albert's skill on the turntables. We hired a young black bouncer to handle the voyous or thugs.

Jacques had run with several gangs from the outer suburbs. They invited me into Les Bafalos. It was good to belong to them.

Hard times had not ruined Jacques smile. The young girls from the good neighborhoods found the muscular Martiniquean handsome and flocked in droves to try their luck with the handsome Jacques.

These beauties in turn attracted men who brought them drinks. A glass of champagne cost $20 and Le Nouvelle Eve coined money for their collaboration. My job was to filter out the uncool.

A week after the opening an older man entered with two dowdy women in fluffy down coats. One of the blondes might have been attractive in her youth, but gray streaked her once blonde hair and no make-up masked her age. Her unfashionable clothing dated back to the early 70s and her feet were clad in tennis shoes.

I figured the old man for a boxer in the 60s suit. His nose lay splayed across his upper lip like a wet sox. An argument ensued with the cashier about the cover charge.

"What's the problem?" I asked the cashier. She was very strict with the guest list.

"They don't want to pay."

"We never pay." The fighter scowled at the cashier without acknowledging me. His damaged pride revealed that he had been someone once.

"Excusez-moi, Mssr. Give one reason you don’t have to pay and you can come in for free.” Any excuse would work, even that he was another cousin of Moses.

"We never pay," the ex-middleweight rasped in a punished voice. He had won more fight than he had lost and had not lost many.

"That's not a reason."

"I do not have to give a reason to un putain Amerlot."

"Fucking American? Jacques, chuck this 'vieux' out of the club and have him take the two old pallisons with him." "'Pallisons' was the French word for doormats. My French was improving better every year, but puzzlement muddied Jacques' face and looked over to the blonde woman. The fiftyish blonde glared with dazzling blue sapphire eyes. They had once belonged to a younger woman. One who would have considered me beneath her. Theyleft without any trouble.

"Salud." She had said that to more than one man, but I wasn't not a bastard and countered, "Casse-toi, putes."

The three of them left without further argument and Serge approached to the door.

"Is there a problem?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle."

"Then explain why you threw out Brigitte Bardot," Serge demanded with blasé curiosity.

"Brigitte Bardot?"

"Yes, Brigitte Bardot."

The boxer's companion re-assembled into the legendary sex symbol as would any woman who was Brigitte Bardot. AND GOD CREATE WOMAN and CONTEMPT were two of my favorite films of all time. I had dreamed about the blonde sex goddess as a boy.

"That's wasn't her?" Her face represented Madeline, the heroine of the Revolution.

"Ouais, c'est elle."

"Merde." I ran out to apologize for my faux-pas, except they had reached the boulevard and a taxi stopped for the trio. I returned to nightclub expecting a reprimand, instead Serge suggested that I act with more tact in the future.

"We will be old one day too."

"I know."

Bardot's rejection from the Nouvelle Eve hit the morning papers and I expected the Paris Police to institute deportation proceedings against me for having insulted a national treasure, however the passage of time had rendered the animal lover's beauty passé to today's youth and our business doubled with their appreciation of my indiscretion. A week later Mickey Rourke showed up at the club with ten friends, who were mostly young junkies from the Bains-Douches. We never let them in for free. I made an exception this time and Serge came up to me.

"No Brigitte Bardot, but hello to Mssr. Rourke." Serge never let me forget my error in judgment and it remained a joke between us till this day, even more so now that the American actor slipped down the ranks from his heyday, although we both agreed on his best line.

"Drinks for my friends." Mickey Rourke had called out in the same voice from Barbet Schroeder"s BARFLY.

It seemed to be a line he must have said in real life more than once.

A guy like me changes hard, I didn't want to change, but I had to change.

Same as the rest of us.

We all get old some day.

Et desole Brigitte, because je suis un con, and 'con' is not a nice word in French.

ps for some reason Brigitte Bardot became a fascist. She hated all immigrants, ruining her memory. still I shouldn't have thrown her out of the Nouvelle Eve. Albert, the DJ, is still furious with me. Moi, moins. BRIGITTE NEVER GETS OLD