36 Hours in Paris Part Two: The Church of Bruce Springsteen

This doesn't actually start in Paris. This starts with a breakup, which is pretty fitting for a blog about Bruce.

I got dumped. And I wanted to see Bruce Springsteen with this guy in London. How lovely would it be to hear "Fire" or even "Dancing in the Dark" with your special someone's arms wrapped around you? Well, I'll never know.

So I had two choices. Wallow in my Rome apartment, crying when I would read reviews of Bruce shows around Europe. Or, pack my suitcase, buy tickets, and wrap myself in 40,000 voices singing along to great breakup songs like "You're Missing."

That's how I wound up in Milan, screaming and crying in my nose-bleed seats. And that's how I ended up buying tickets to see him again in Paris last weekend. I talked my two friends from India, Andy and Nastasia into coming along for their first Bruce experience.

We all got off at different metros, not knowing how to find each other. I kept saying, "Find the beer tent that is blasting Bruce Springsteen." Well, there are dozens of those. Eventually we met at the gate, celebrated our reunion outside, Andy lost his deodorant in the frisking at the gate, and we made it to our seats.

But I made a pretty bad mistake. I bought great seats. The best I could get at last minute. First tier, north side of the stadium. And I was so happy about the wonderful seats, that I planned on enjoying them.

My two friends and I got beers, then more beers. We danced and jumped and laughed and took a million photos. Enough to the point that the upper middle class old people surrounding us found us to be pretty bothersome.

At one point, Bruce broke into "Pay Me My Money Down", arguably one of his most fun songs to sing and dance around to. So I did. And the guy behind me waved his finger at me like, "no, no, no, young lady..." Now, I don't speak a lot of French, but rather than ignoring him I should have turned around and yelled, "Est-ce que vous me comprenez rock n' roll?"

The night went on. The sun began setting. He played Little Richard's "Lucille" and a bunch of stuff from "Wrecking Ball," not to mention the entire "Born in the USA" album cover to cover. He killed it, and killed me with "Thunder Road."



And then it was over. And we stumbled from the stadium, trying to find a Metro back to Central Paris, the whole time practicing our French. "Nastasia, Nastasia, how do you say, 'the cat is under the table?' How do you say, 'the mice do not like the shower?'"

She told us that we would never have to use those sentences. And low and belhold, the next morning, enjoying our hangover Croque Monsieurs in a side-street café near the cemetery, what did we see? Le chat est sur la table.