The Sun Also Rises, Gen Z Edition

        It was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain scrolling Tik Tok. I watched a good-looking girl walk past the table and watched her go up the street and lost sight of her, and watched another, and then saw the first one coming back, with a Strawberry Matcha Strato Frappuccino. She came by once more and I caught her eye, and she came very close to me and held up her phone and started filming herself, holding up her drink and giving it a review. She did this for a very long time. The waiter came up.

            “Are you two ever going to order?”

            “No,” I said, “My DoorDash is already on its way.”

            “You’re killing me,” he said in French. “Why did you even come to Paris?”

            The girl grinned and I saw why she made a point of not laughing. She was still making her influencer reel.

            “Do you feature any desserts?”

            “Monsieur? Before dinner?”

            “Yes,” I said, looking down the avenue up the Rue des Pyramides, through the traffic of the Rue di Rivoli, “I forgot to flex my sweet treat. I’ll have a vegan cake pop with coconut cream icing and agave flakes. What is your Venmo?”

            “I want to end this life of mine,” the waiter said in French, cursing and walking away.

              Somewhere I heard a bell ringing even though it was past the hour. It must have rung fifteen times. It was not a real hour. I announced this to everyone within hearing distance.

            “The bell is broken,” I said. “I am starting a GoFundMe page. A city like Paris, a city that forever slaps, deserves to have cathedrals that service its forward-thinking citizens. But this can never happen without functional cathedral bells. Ancient bells always cook”

            I watched the waiter turn off the lights inside the café and lock the door. I found the girl again. We agreed to go dancing at the bal musette in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. Five nights a week the working people of the Pantheon quarter danced there, though they never twerked. When we arrived, it was quite empty, except for a policeman sitting near the door and a one-eyed dog licking himself and moaning.

            “I wish everything here wasn’t so sus,” said the girl, who introduced herself to me as Mademoiselle Slay, even though I could tell from her highlights she was probably from some suburb of Ohio.

            “Well,” I said, “who knows.”

            “It’s just so cringe,” she said, filming the dog.

            “Six-seven.”

            “Six-seven?”

            “Yes,” I said. “Six-seven.”

            Outside under the window were some carts. A lost goat hopped up on one of the carts. He jerked his head at the other goats below and when I waved at him he bounded down. They were very lost goats to be in the middle of Paris at midnight. Anyway, a farmer could have spilled some Absinthe on the farm and made the goats go wild. When I said this to Mademoiselle Slay she looked away.

            “You are making me feel unsafe.”

            “Me? Or the goats?”

            “You. You talking about goats. It isn’t very nice to talk to someone about goats hopping up on carts and acting drunk if all a mademoiselle wants to do is enjoy her last drink of the night before lowkey heading home.”

The wind was blowing against the shutters.

            “Wait. Are you saying none of this has Threads potential?”

            “Goddamnit. I didn’t say that.”

            “Then what did you say?”

            The girl looked away again. A fat man with a little red hat behind the bar motioned to the policeman by the door. He motioned to the dog, who was still licking himself and moaning. No one had any rizz. I felt like crying. The tears wouldn’t come. I felt like praying. The broken bell made the spiritual aspect hit different. I felt like peeing. Then I remembered the war and what happened and how I had a broken–

            “Johnson?”

            “Yes?”

            Mademoiselle Slay was filming herself with me in the background. The wind blew harder against the shutters.

            “Listen. Maybe you’re right. Do you want to film something with the goats?”

            “Do you ever think,” I said, sending an eggplant emoji to someone I hardly knew, “that we are all a lost generation?”

            “Wait. Are you threatening me again? You are really making me feel unsafe now.”

            “Well,” I said, “big yikes.”