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irate: i think most of my experience was a function of being able to speak french.
i even got to the point where i could understand that a joke had been uttered, even if i did not always actually get the joke--and started to be able to have actual emotions in french--which was good, ebcause of r awhile i was a very placid fellow who did not react to things much and smiled vacantly when others were laughing.
the language thing preceded everything else.
as for making myself neutral--not possible---beginning with my height (6'2", or something like that) and running through how i carry myself, my sense of personal space--all of it marked me over and over as american. i was interested in the place, in what was going on around me, but i never tried or wanted to try to become french or pretend i was.
like anywhere, if you are in a place long enough you meet a certain percentage of assholes--at least after a while i knew what they were saying.
as for the question of whether i expect i would have met with the same reception if i had supported the war--well i probably would not have put myself in the same situations. i would not have met the same people. there are many many scenes, political and otherwise, in paris and you can choose where you turn up and how you go about it--it is a big city. i could have had a great time there and not met anyone from the left. i could have spent just as much time in exactly the same clubs i went to and not run into political discussions. it is like anywhere else, that way, any city.
but at no point---not one--even with people i came to see as assholes---did anyone confuse me as a person with the policies of the american government.
i suspect that this response goes differently than you anticipated, but there we are.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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