So Close, Yet So Far: Let Me Pass Through CDG, S’il Vous Plait
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Photo by Telstar Logistics |
CDG, airport code for Charles de Gaulle, Paris. CDG, acronym for Criminy Dag Gonnit!
I spend the holidays in Paris. It is a 'must' tradition. I haven't missed a New Year's there in many. The highlight is the eve thereof dinner, not limited to our usual: a roast we get at place Maubert fresh from one of the many rotisseries (where we also get our non-gluttonous portions of new potatoes, the ones at the bottom of the device which have been soaking up roast, duck, and chicken juices all day), langoustine, quail eggs, assorted cheeses, fresh bread (this goes without saying) foie gras de canard on toast with a nice Monbazillac Sauterne, and a few bËšche desserts from Maison Kayser across the street on rue Monge. It is only early March, and writing this I am highly anticipating a meal I will have nearly a year from now (I have 'SFI': Serious Food Issues); you may imagine how I was feeling on the morning of New Year's when I landed at CDG.
Ze plane landed at 8, and I knew to not be polite about disembarking first because somehow, at all international destinations where you have to pass through customs and immigration, they manage to land about 600 747s at the same moment, meaning your wait can be anywhere from 5 minutes to 500 hours. Our plane beat all others by about a minute, and as my seat was toward the front, I secured a place within spitting distance of immigration, unlike the suckers behind me and in the other planes. Immediately I sensed a problem. Maybe my first clue was that there was not a single French body in one of the booths.
Were they striking? Were they having their coffee break? Had they pulled Amnesty International data into the equation which somehow forbid them from working before 9, inhumane, or if they worked at 8 would this violate the French 35-hour work week (the shortestóand sanestóworkweek of all industrialized nations)? All of these scenarios, and combinations thereof, were entirely possible. Then the rumors began.
The first and best was a real doozie: all luggage from our flight was lost. As I always prepare for this exact scenario and take carry-on only, I let the others panic, and panic they did. You can imagine, and for many of these people it was their first trip to Paris. They had bought just the right fringues that fit perfectly for their City of Light debut. A $250 pair of jeans or a $700 dress does no one any good sitting on a dusty tarmac in Zimbabwe as cackling hyenas begin emerging from the dense and humid forest and curious lions paw at red American Touristers while vultures circle overhead. It was standing room only, shoulder to shoulder, and it was hot. There was no water fountain, and one restroom you could not even get to because of the crush, and no updates. People were in tears. It was sad, getting ugly, and our predicament was disintegrating by the minute.
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Photo by Harrison Paul |
But the story of lost luggage was just a rumor. And just how did this particularly vicious one get started? Well, the waiting area before immigration was packed, so packed in fact that those seated in the second half of my flight could not even get off the plane, let alone those in any of the other planes. It is human nature. Most people, they need a leader.
It turned out that what the case really was, was that there was an abandoned suitcase at CDG, and the airport was closed for security because of it. This is how the news from the first cell phone call came in since people on the outside world could see it on the news, but when you start to tell a story about Bob's wedding to Yvette in Nebraska, by the time it is passed along from leaderless person to leaderless person in a situation like this, it's a juicy story about a whore in LA named Carol Wentz, whose customer was none other than the president's previously unheard of trannie half-black sister Yolanda. Tr'Annie Get Your Gun!
An hour passed, then two, and all I could think was, "I just spent 20 real-time hours from my front door to here." I wanted this leg of the journey broken, I had to get to JR's ASAP to get my hug, my shower, and my meal-shopping power nap on. My mouth was watering because I could see the juices exiting the roast and dropping slo-mo down into the bottom of the rotisserie, where the new potatoes waited patiently for the delectable drops of beefy goodness like a field of abandoned chicken eggs needing warmth to survive. Like, you travel 7 thousand miles and get within 10 feet of customs and are stuck there for what seems like forever, that just ain't right, you know? I was sure the whole time the abandoned suitcase was full of nothing but some dumb broad's dirty panties.
We stood there for an hour and a half, having to pee and thirsty, wond'ringwhat the faaah was taking so long, why couldn't they blow the fucker up and let us get on with our lives. Then a fight broke out between an American fag and some snooty French bitch. Oh, that was a cat fight if I ever saw one!! She was going on about why they needed to move forward closer to the booths, and the other she was rightly going on about how it wasn't going to do anyone any good when there was nowhere to move and there wasn't even a cold body in any of the booths, and to not crush her any further up the ass of the person ahead. Oh, that was precious. Both of their eyebrows were overdone anyway! One lady passed out and some medical people came out of a secret door and they dragged her off on a stretcher.
Suddenly there was a loud ka-BOOM! The guy in front of me about lost a nut (he was not amused), but everyone else cheered and clapped. They could have cared less if someone from the bomb squad was lying in pieces, they knew they were going to get into Paris goddammit!
The immigration dudes (they are all always hot) came on duty and opened the gates to heaven. As usual, I just flashed my American passport, and he didn't even ask me to open it. They never do.
During that wait I was never worried or stressed, really. I was kindly distracted by the hottest guy with the hottest ass. He was so cute I could barely stop staring holes in him. I start my day with some delectable eye candy, and I finish it with an annual feast.
Those French officials! They never did provide us one single update or announcement. We got the news about the abandoned suitcase through our own cell phones and gossip. They really need to pull it together, les franÃais. You know that tunnel where Princess Diana died, the one where you could fly through at 100 miles per hour and the concrete pillars had no guard rail so if you lost control you would slam into one of them and expire pronto? Nine years later, they have yet to put up guardrails.
Bon Courage!
April 9, 2006
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Posted by James Purpura on April 9th, 2006 in Articles.
