A full list of articles T A B L E_T A L K Romance on the road: Ever had an affair while traveling? Swap stories in Wanderlust R E C E N T L Y Retro burger By Gary Kamiya Our Olympics correspondent muses on women's hockey, Japanese English, the quest for tosto and other cross-cultural oddities (02/12/98) Stoned on ice By Gary Kamiya Curling heats up Nagano (02/11/98) Après moi, de luge By Gary Kamiya Getting a half-second high from the sport that gives a whole new meaning to the expression "balls out" (02/10/98) Higher! Faster! Wetter! By Gary Kamiya Our half-Japanese man in Japan reports on the thrill of victory -- and the agony of Nagano (02/09/98) Mondo Weirdo By Sarah Schmelling Why I loved being lonely and sick and far from home (02/06/98) Browse the Feature archives		passionate and penniless in paris LUST AND ROMANCE BLOSSOM WHEN A YOUNG COUPLE CAMPS OUT IN THE CITY OF LIGHT. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "WE KEPT VERY STILL OF COURSE,AND WERE SATISFIED WITH THE IDEA OF PARIS." -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning BY MAXINE ROSE SCHUR | I sure know what Elizabeth meant. We've been to Paris five times, but the very idea of Paris still seduces. I hunger for Paris and lust over memories. Yet at night, when I lie in my husband's arms, it isn't the recent, sybaritic images I conjure to lure him into that intimate realm of memory. No. At night, fancy restaurants, scenic boat rides, chateaux and boutiques evaporate. In their place float up memories, strange and strong. Up floats an idea of Paris from my first visit a quarter century ago, when I was 22 and newly wed. Of course, even then I had an idea of Paris. That's why, driving into the city in our VW van, I dressed in what I fancied were "Parisian clothes." Never mind they were Parisian clothes of some other century. In my long black skirt, black boots, hoop earrings, flea market scarf of pink silk, I felt like Paris personified. The moment I arrived in the City of Light, I was lit. "We must stay at least a month," I told Stephen, my husband. "Let's enjoy Paris!" Paris was expensive and we had little money, but I made a fuss so at last he said, "All right, we'll stay -- but we'll have to camp." "Camp! " I cried. "In Paris?" Nobody camps in Paris!" We did. That night we rolled our van, outfitted with no more than a mattress, down the ramp to the Quai de la Tournelle, where vehicles are forbidden. We parked at the edge of the river, just past the Pont de la Tournelle. When we looked left, we could see the stone bridge with its little statue of St. Genevieve, and beyond, the floodlit Cathedral of Notre Dame. Looking right, we saw our quay merge with the next, then vanish in murky shadows. In front of us, across the narrow arm of the river, rose the elegant apartments of the Ile St. Louis. We climbed in the back of our van, lay face up on the mattress and looked out the windows. Magic. The effect was as if we were both inside the van and out of it too. At once cozy in an enclosed, secret place, and also right out in the city. In its very heart. Above us, apartments loomed into the stars, their lacy iron balconies bathed in light, and at our feet, the Seine flowed discreetly southward. "Let's enjoy Paris," Stephen murmured. Now, a lot of practical things can get in the way of romance -- such as the need for a bathroom. But we had the courage of youth and didn't let it. The next afternoon we sat on the riverbank planning just which cafes we would discreetly visit at what times of day when a van, big and white as an ambulance, pulled up next to ours. A young man stepped out. He wore no shirt and balanced a hammer vertically on his nose. "Gidday," he said. This was Basil Didier, a Mormon New Zealander who'd come to Paris to research his genealogy. His trick turned the wheel of camaraderie. We had a few laughs together, then seeing our interest in his Citroen delivery van, he asked, "Would you like a perv?" which is New Zealand-ese for "Would you like to take a look?" We were awed by the ingenious cabinetry: the seat that evolved into a bed, the stove built into the counter, the table hung on the wall like a picture, and the sink with its clever foot pump, small as a piano pedal. "I'm a carpenter," Basil said with Down Under modesty. But when I opened the narrow door and discovered a flush toilet, I knew he was more than a carpenter. He was our friend. There must have been something in the air that August 1971. The next day two more vans arrived. One was inhabited by a young New York couple who'd just returned from North Africa. The other, a rusted black Fiat, contained a bearded artist from Hawaii named Hayden and his black dog, Mahler. Of an evening, the couple would regale us with their adventures in Morocco and Hayden would recount the curious theatrics performed by a tribe of gypsies he'd lived with in Toulouse. For the next month, the six of us shared food, opinions, toilets and, at sunset, vin rouge. Surely there was alchemy at work, for though it was totally défendu to camp there, directly across, as we learned, from the island home of Prime Minister Pompidou, the gendarmes never told us to leave. Au contraire! Each night a gendarme would stop by our van to check passports and to see that we were all right. "Ça va, jeunes Americans?" "Ça va." One warm evening, as Hayden was inside his van painting on its walls by candlelight what he called his "private vision of Paris" and the New Yorkers were playing gin rummy and Mahler was barking at every kerosene barge that chugged up the river, Basil, Stephen and I sat on the quay, dangling our feet over the water. Stephen and I were drinking wine and trying in vain to get Basil to taste the marked-down cheese we'd bought from the Monoprix. But Basil was too busy preaching how French cheeses were decadent. "Food should be just matter to fill up space," he said. Then he went on about sex. Mormonism forbids sex before marriage and in his opinion that was "too right," for any fool could see sex is merely a fad. A style! A kind of fashion! "Sex," Basil explained, "is just Gucci Hootchie-Kootchie." Bored with his ideas, we told him one of ours: to drive from France to India. "And what we need," Stephen said, "is a camper, fixed up like yours." Basil was happy to take the bait. He said he was "right tired of dead Didiers," and would be pleased to help us make our van into a camper. Our joy turned to dejection, however, when we realized the impossibility of such a project that required power tools, for we had no electricity nor any access to it. "Too bad, too," I said, "when there's electricity all around us ..." N E X T+P A G E+| The scientific expedition