I was starting to build a life in Paris. My French was slowly improving. The ever-adorable Thierry took me out to dinner, and I knew how to order a three-course meal. There were weekend parties to attend. I could sit in a café and look like a native attempting to read a French newspaper. And I had mastered the Paris Metro system.

Bedis and I took the Metro often, and one day at Châtelet we passed one of the many singers who entertain the rush-hour passengers and collect donations in an empty guitar case. The singer had wild curly hair and a powerful voice that reverberated through the underground tunnels. She was fabulous. Bedis tossed a coin into the guitar case and picked up a flyer. It was an advertisement for the singer’s free concert that weekend at a bar near Pigalle, and we decided to go.

It was a great evening out, and the exotic chanteuse was exceptional, singing in both French and Portuguese. Near midnight Bedis waved down a cab for her nearby apartment, but I had to trek to the opposite side of Paris. A cab would have cost a fortune, so I hopped on a Metro train. I never really minded the long train rides, as I always had a book with me, which I read that night for the first 15 stops. I then changed trains at La Motte-Piquet, a quiet station only a few stops from Félix Faure. The brightly lit train car was nearly empty, with only a few people near the center and an elderly man near the door. I took a seat opposite him and dove back into my book. The train started, and I glanced up to see the gentleman smiling at me. I returned the smile and went back to my book. A minute later I had the sensation that he was still looking at me, so I raised my eyes and, sure enough, the old man was staring directly into my eyes. He had an odd smile and a vacant look about him. And then I noticed his arm moving. I peered over my book, and there it was, the fully exposed penis he was gyrating up and down with his hand.

After that, I was less inclined to take the Metro at night, particularly on the less-traveled lines like the one that led to Félix Faure. While I had made some progress on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I was back down to shelter.

I resumed the daily treks to the American Church after school and eventually found a room for rent on Rue de Palestro, the block next to Rue St. Denis, the famed red-light district of central Paris. Rue de Palestro had its own less distinguished family of ladies in tight skirts who leaned against doorways smoking, but the most distinctive thing about the tiny street was the pungent and pervasive smell of urine. Fortunately, my new room was way up high on the sixth floor, although sans ascenseur—without an elevator. It was part of a larger apartment that I shared with Louise, a pale English girl with bleached Annie Lennox hair, and Ronny, a German photographer with a nervous laugh who owned the place. Ronny had fashioned a separate kitchen, bathroom and entrance for us, and only entered our section of the apartment on rare occasions or when looking for his rent money.

Thierry helped me pack up my belongings and with no advance warning I moved out of the slum-room, abandoning my roommate and making the apartment owner furious. When she told me she would report me to the Sorbonne, I searched my brain for the proper phrase “Ça m’est égal”—It doesn’t matter to me—but all I could remember was “Je m’en fous”—I don’t give a damn. She nearly fainted.

My new room put me right in the center of Paris. In a ten-minute walk I could reach the magnificent Hotel de Ville, then stroll along the Seine. For the first time I really felt like I was living in Paris.

When I showed Dan my new dwelling—a large, clean room with funky furnishings and a balcony overlooking the street—he was astounded.

“Be careful what else is included with the rent,” he commented, nodding to the locked door that blocked off access between my room and Ronny’s.

But after a few weeks of fielding nightly calls for Ronny from Beatrices and Sophias and Isabelles, it was clear that Ronny didn’t need to prey on me. Louise had even seen some of his twilight visitors, each one a buxom, Mediterranean-style woman. Our Anglo-Saxon pallor and figures were the polar opposite of Ronny’s preferred genotype—which likely sealed our qualifications as ideal tenants.