Monsieur Mediocre

John von Sothen is an American columnist living in Paris, where he covers entertainment and society issues for French Vanity Fair. Von Sothen has written for both the American and French GQ, Slate, Technikart, Libération, and The New York Observer; he has written for TV at Canal+ and MTV; and he is now penning a column for the political site Mediapart. Von Sothen often does voice-overs in English for French perfumes and luxury brands, occasionally performs stand-up comedy at The New York Comedy Night in the SoGymnase Comedy Club in Paris (in French and English), and is a routine guest on the French radio station Europe 1 discussing all things US related.

Introduction Like many Parisian families, we occasionally rent our apartment out on Airbnb. It's not an easy process, but it is practical, and as long as you can power through the tedious chore of prepping your house and fielding calls from guests who forgot the code to your building, it does provide some disposable income that's handy for all those school year vacations that pop up in France like measles every six weeks. What many Parisian families DO NOT do is rent out their apartment while they're not on vacation and when their kids are still in school, which is exactly what we did one year by accident, forgetting that the Easter break for families in the south of France hits a week earlier than that in Paris. We realized this fun fact days before our guests arrived, which sent us scrambling to find alternative lodging (on Airbnb of course) in Montmartre, a hop skip and another hop away from our own place in the Tenth Arrondissement. Sure, it felt odd to pack up our clothes, the printer, plus the dog and cat, hair dryers and book bags, just to hoof it three metro stops west for a week. And yes, it was a bit bizarre to pass your own apartment in the morning on your way to school (now a twenty‑minute schlep) and see the window of your bathroom fogged up from a stranger probably fucking in your shower. But in the end, the week turned out not half bad. It forced my family to break up a rut we didn't know we were in, and gave us the chance to see a part of Paris we hadn't had time to visit much. And it was during this impromptu staycation in Montmartre, dining out early with the kids at restaurants or ducking into a café for a beer midday or riding the bus (the bus?) and taking photos from the window of that bus, that I felt, for the first time in fifteen years, like an American in Paris. A tad curious, kind of stupid, and with much too much energy, not unlike the other Americans I saw in Montmartre that week, marching up single file to the Sacré Coeur church, where they'd take in a breathtaking view of Paris while also being pickpocketed. Some were backpackers on Snapchat, others were orthopedic‑shoed retirees carrying on about Sedona. And although each looked winded and footsore, each had an enthusiasm for Paris I hadn't felt in a long time. How could they not? Although it was now a bit Disney‑fied, Montmatre had been the foothold for artists like Picasso and Modigliani and American expat writers like Langston Hughes, and its allure and romance were still potent. The streets were cobblestone and smoothed by time. Chickens turned on those sidewalk rotisseries. People leaned on flipped‑over wine casks smacking back oysters and Muscadet. I myself probably rounded out the cliché, a real‑life Parisian writer in his peacoat and five‑day‑old scruff scribbling in his Moleskine what the world would never understand but which had to be written. Little did these tourists know, I was just as lost as them, and had they'd asked me in their X‑KUSAY MOI MESSSUR French where the Moulin Rouge was, or in which restaurant Picasso traded his paintings for meals, I couldn't have helped. Because as a Parisian, I wouldn't be caught dead at any of them. Yet at the same time it burned me how I'd lost the innocence for this place. I'd strayed so far off the range and gone so deep into the recesses of French life that Montmartre now seemed Vegas to me. Before I knew it, the week was over and I was back in my own Paris, a grafittied, kebab‑standed, trash‑strewn enclave near the Gare du Nord, feeling as if I'd just had an affair with another neighborhood. And like any cheater, I immediately tried to mask my guilt by finding fault with my present home. "Didn't it feel nice to just sit outside and hear that accordion play?" I'd mention to my wife, Anaïs. I'd go on and on, harping about the cakes in the windows and the antique dealers, tellin