In Media

As I walked up the hill toward my dormitory in Lacoste, France, I found myself searching for a pile of dog shit to photograph. For the past three days, I’d been meaning to send a picture of one to my friend Cindy back in the States. Always excited about one thing or another, Cindy was known for exclaiming, “Poop!” with a wide smile and a short hop. It was her response to a funny joke, an unfunny joke, good or bad news, and damn near everything else.

About a year before, a bunch of us decided it would be hilarious to take pictures of “Poop!” we came across and send them to Cindy. So there I was, scouring the crooked cobblestones of Lacoste in search of shit. During my time in Lacoste, I observed that the French didn’t clean up whatever mess their dogs left behind. It reminded me of Cindy, and since we hadn’t spoken for a while, I thought I’d send my regards.

As I scanned the ground, I imagined catching a Frenchman in the act of walking away from his dog’s morning dump. He’d probably smile and say, “Bonjour!” as if he hadn’t left a fecal fury waiting to be flattened by my foot. What an ass, I thought about the imaginary Frenchman. I hope he slips on another piece of shit and rolls all the way down this rocky hill.

I didn’t understand how everyone could be so casual about it. Back in the States, I had learned the hard way to pick up after my dog. When I was younger and more careless, I’d often forgotten to bring a doggy bag on my and my canine companion’s many walks. I’ve stood at the edge of a stranger’s yard as my dog, his back arched like a crotchety old man’s, did his business, only for said stranger to emerge from their home and burn a look of contempt through my eyes and into my soul. But it wasn’t until I’d set myself up for failure and stepped in my own dog’s day-old mess that I’d finally learned my lesson: neglecting to pick up after my dog was, no pun intended, a pretty shitty thing to do. Still, I’d learned my lesson nonetheless, and so I couldn’t wrap my mind around how nonchalant these folks felt about dog shit.

Before traveling to France with eighty other students, I had never been to Europe. I didn’t know what to expect. I had always wondered if the French smoked as frequently as their caricatures in popular media. What was the average cost of cigarettes? Did the French loathe Americans as much as I’d been led to believe? If so, why? Did we have cheaper cigarettes?

The only frame of reference I had was that of my home country, the “United Kickass States of Fucking America.” After only five weeks abroad, my perceptions of the outside world—and of America itself—would spill over each other to create one confusing, hot mess.

A black woman, plump and dressed in a formal blue uniform not unlike that of a mall cop, sat behind a small desk. She guarded the restrooms in the Gare d’ Avignon. Her eyes were heavy, her expression blank. She was the Toilet Cop. I approached the men’s room and she waved to stop with a tired hand.

“Arrêter,” she said. Hesitantly, I approached.

After a failed verbal exchange, she pointed at a sign on the wall. It read, “Le Toilette 50 C.” Using the train station’s restrooms apparently cost money. Fifty small moneys. I still don’t know what the word for “cent” is in relation to the Euro. Micuro? Like “micro” combined with “Euro”? Am I supposed to call it a fucking doubloon?

The money-tight college student within me wanted to object. He wanted to drop his bags and stride past the Toilet Cop and into the stall, unzip his pants, and express his discontent in the single most powerful way that human beings can.

Instead, I nodded and fingered my pockets. Three doubloons. Not enough. I smiled stupidly, sent the inadequate pocket change back whence it came, and opted for my wallet instead. The smallest bill I had was a ten Euro. I offered it to her and she looked from it to her change drawer.

She said something in French that I still didn’t understand. By that point, I had resorted to the nod-and-smile technique. Perhaps it was the urgent, swelling pressure building in my bladder. Another long second past and she took my money with a roll of her eyes. Bless that Toilet Cop and her merciful heart.

In the United States, paying to use the restroom wasn’t standard. Sure, some convenience stores had a “Paying Customer Only” policy, but simply claiming ignorance—or urgency—usually defeated that. Some clerks kept the restroom keys behind the front desk, attached inconveniently to a clipboard. Where do I put this now that I’m in the stall? But normally, it’s easy enough to just ask. It reminded me of Urine Town, a musical by Greg Kotis in which a dystopian population is charged a fee to pee.

How could you charge someone for the right to do so natural a thing? Especially in a place like the train station where people were likely awaiting their ride for at least forty-five minutes? On top of that, the Gare d’ Avignon hosted a restaurant and bar. Not only did they have a Toilet Cop to leech the change from our pockets, but also a bar with enough drinks to herd us to her like a pack of drunken cattle! Great way to make a couple extra hundred doubloons, I guess.

After my run-in with the Toilet Cop, I joined the rest of my classmates and proceeded to the boarding terminal. In France, trains stop at their gates for approximately three minutes. After that, they would leave whether every new passenger had boarded or not. In a mere one hundred eighty seconds, all us students needed to board our car. And before doing so we had to allow departing passengers off through the same tight doorway that led inside.

The train lulled to a stop on the platform and we huddled around our car’s entrance. Two French women stood in front of us and chatted between drags of their cigarettes. They wouldn’t move and it was apparent they wouldn’t be moving until those cigarettes were finished. It was like they didn’t even see us. As Cindy might have said, “Poop.”

Eventually, someone nudged passed the pair of French smokestacks, and slowly our group flowed into the car like a stream of fleshy, American lava. Students moseyed through the cabin, fumbling to stack their bags in the designated storage units, as the rest of us waited on the deck with our eyes trained on the door like a crowd of hungry seagulls. What if I missed the train and got stuck at the station? And then, what if I lost my wallet and needed to pee again? Thankfully, we all boarded successfully—and I even got a window seat.

During our stay in Lyon, the food capital of France, we stayed at the Ibes Hotel. What caught my attention was the width of the elevators. Shoulder-to-shoulder tight. So when someone like me, a 143 lbs. twenty-one-year-old in a slightly baggy suit jacket, and someone like my roommate Tim, with the shoulder width and beer belly of a successful linebacker, try to fit into the elevator simultaneously, someone like me ends up folded in the corner with sweat dripping down his face.

My friend Anna tried to hop into the elevator with us and she paused, realizing as the door closed how much room was left. Hint: zero. From the corner, I foolishly held out my arm to save the door. (As there was obviously not enough room for a third person, I can only theorize that I wasn’t thinking clearly because there wasn’t enough oxygen in there for the two of us.) The elevator door refused to yield. As it sealed shut I yanked my arm back and barked a hasty, “Sorry!” as Anna’s confused face disappeared from view.

At another point during our stay, another friend attempted to hold the elevator door for Anna. It slammed into her and bounced backward. Though it didn’t sever her arm, she suffered a purple-black bruise and a healthy dose of surprise.

This lack of preventative safety baffled me. In America, one would expect an incident like that to swiftly lead to a lawsuit—or at least some free mints or something. Perhaps the French were less litigious than Americans. That’s not so bad.

I ventured out of the Ibes Hotel into the city of Lyon and observed the buildings and streets. Much like the smaller towns and villages scattered across the southern countryside, many of its buildings were built from old, cracked stone. Some consisted of gray, mossy limestone, while others were decorated with gothic architecture in the style of many cathedrals. One-lane streets curved through the city like the trail left behind a massive, French-speaking earthworm. Directed by Ron Underwood, starring Kevin Bacon, it’s Les Tremblements! Venant d’un théâtre près de chez vous.

The narrowness of most streets surprised me. Here I was, standing in the third largest city in France, in the midst of a cold, wet winter, and yet the street plans reminded me of my trips to Mexico or the Dominican Republic. Not to say every street in Lyon was so cluttered, but most were noticeably more so than any American street, at least in width. Many buildings were over two hundred years old, older than post-Revolution America. Modern roads and paths must have had to been built around the existing architecture, which explained their winding nature. The thought reminded me of how young the United States really was.

The more I reflected, the more I realized how growing up in America had twisted my views of the surrounding world. Everything was big and fast in America. Always open and going; fast food, fast cars, shit, even fast elevators. I’d never experienced Europe or even met that many Europeans. And while I knew we were all people and intrinsically had so much in common, I guess I’d assumed that life in the States was just a bit better than in non-American places like Not-America. I was young and naïve—just like my country.

At first, my experience in Lacoste confirmed my line of thinking. People took things slow. Lunch breaks usually started around 12pm and lasted for two or three hours. Most places—excluding pubs—closed by 5-6pm. Even when the call for quickness was there, like when boarding the train, people idled around huffing cigarettes like a high school dropout with a can of paint. The quiet, laidback lifestyle of southern France made even a small American town look like a hectic metropolis.

Of course, it was different in the cities like Lyon and Paris. They were as pedestrian-packed and fast paced as Denver or Chicago. Looking back, I was suffering from the mildest case of culture shock to ever befall anyone ever.

Provence wasn’t filled with Wi-Fi and McDonalds. It wasn’t a place where I could satisfy every consumerist want at every whim. But that was really the only difference, and it was a small one. More books and bigger appetites for better food. It’s just a different place with a slightly different culture, and being exposed to it made me feel like a piece of dog shit for being so naïve.

I stepped outside to the small patio beside my dorm. The sun was setting over the vineyards and farm lands below. Not-American sunsets sure were similar to mine back home. I lit a cigarette and in doing so noticed a couple small lumps in the weeds. As I approached, I smiled. I had found some dog shit. I took out my phone and positioned it so that they were center-frame. Click.

I sent the picture to Cindy over Facebook and she responded with, “Such art.” She also “Liked” it. As I read her comment I thought, They even let their dogs shit on the patio. I pondered a moment, and then dismissed the thought.