It’s hard to quantify experiences, but to coin someone else's
original phrase, ‘you know it when you feel it.’
Now that I’m living in Paris, at my Grandmère’s 76-room ‘hôtel particulier,’ I find myself on the itchy edge of wealth, influence and power and while I don’t consider myself necessarily of that class, I’m certainly exposed to attempts to drag me into it.
Many afternoons, as I come home wearied by classes and braced for hours of study, there are these silver trays with little white, gold embossed envelopes (invitations), casually placed where they’re unavoidable, and it’s not unusual to find that one of the CMs has laid out a dress for me and a suit for Peter - though we seldom attend these events.
I find myself vociferously defending my schedule (for the thousandth time) - and I’ve only been in school three weeks:
“Grandmère, I’m in med-school, I have homework.”
Let’s wax freeversely of the upper-class (as if I belonged)..
In elegant but confined houses
where lives unfold in drawing rooms
and the inhabitants are sharp and snobbish.
They struggle against social and ****** constraints -
frustrations essential to the drama and pathos of wealth.
Let the rabble be messily heterogeneous
and agenda-set “inclusivity.” It’s nothing to us.
It hardly foregrounds harmony or authenticity.
Civilized people are more reticent and buttoned-up.
It’s sexier and more romantic, to drive toward marriage,
where lovers work to deserve each other,
and individuals integrate into couples.
Failing this urbane integration, love degenerates
into solipsist libertinism and eventually, these
sad outcasts catch their deaths - apart and alone.
.
.
Songs for this:
Am I the Same Girl? by Swing Out Sister
It Hasn't Happened Yet by William Shatner
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 09/27/25:
Vociferous = expressing feelings or opinions loudly and insistently.
hôtel particulier = a grand urban townhouse (mansion) in Paris or other city.
76-rooms - 37 of those are bathrooms - do those count as rooms?
CM = chambermaid (I think Grandmère employs 12 domestic servants).
