A Lesbian in Paris...the final episode....

An American Lesbian in Paris: Au Revoir!
by Shannon Connolly








Two nights ago, sipping on my third (fourth? fifth?) glass of champagne at a little bar called Flute just down the street from the Arc de Triomphe, I felt for the first time pangs of regret that my four months in Paris were coming to a close. I was sharing the evening with two new friends – the first lesbian couple I had met during my time in Paris, in fact. And also for the first time since I had arrived in Paris, I felt myself wishing the night would just go on and on.


They were the first women I could talk to in person about Proposition 8 since it passed, they were the first people who wanted to exchange coming out stories (be honest, how often do you actually go four full months without telling yours to someone?), they were the first people I could talk to about But I’m a Cheerleader and Loving Annabelle and Bound – in truth, it was the first time I had really felt like myself since my arrival in Paris. When I climbed into a cab at 3:30am, several hours after the metro had closed for the night, I leaned back in the seat and looked out the window, watching Paris at night pass by, and seeing it in a new light.

I was a “tourist” for four months this year. Sure, I technically “lived” in Paris – but my time there was essentially an extended vacation and was broken up by countless other voyages throughout Europe and the UK. But, when I rode home in the cab after my night at Flute, I felt this familiar warm feeling inside – a sort of swelling up with happiness at having spent time with people who understand me, people who live like me, people who are like me. And I realized how unique and special that connection is that we gays and lesbians and transgender people get to feel when we meet one of our own.

Have you ever been a tourist somewhere? Somewhere really far from home? Ok, imagine you are in a foreign country, a place where you walk around knowing you are inherently unlike almost every person around you. And imagine you’ve been there for quite a while now. You are surrounded by people and yet feeling an acute loneliness. And then, walking down the street, you pass someone wearing a sweatshirt with your high school logo on it. Because of that simple thing you have in common, you make an instant connection with this person, this stranger who is like you in a place where you feel so alone.




That is sort of what it is like for us, isn’t it? Finding others like us, in a world where many of us often feel like outsiders in our own families, in our own hometowns, is like finding an old friend in a foreign place.

My night of champagne and stories and laughs with a couple of women like me was just what I needed before I left Paris. I’ve spent a good part of my life feeling like a tourist in a world where I’d really just like to find a few people like me – so, rather than make me sad to leave Paris, that evening only made me appreciate more the life in LA that I am about to return to.



Paris has its charms and its beauty and its attractions, but when my plane touched down in Philadelphia (where I will spend the holidays with my family) last night, I almost cried just knowing that I am one step closer to feeling those warm-and-fuzzy gay connection feelings every day again when I get back to California.

Au revoir Paris!

A Lesbian In Paris Part 3: Side Trip to Ireland

A Lesbian in Paris 3
Shannon Connolly

Before I continue regaling you with stories of my European adventures, we need to have a quick flashback.

It’s August 9, 1990. I’m in Pennsylvania. It’s raining out, so my third birthday party (yes, I know, insert necessary gasp of horror that I was 3 years old in 1990) has been moved inside the garage of our suburban home. I’m wearing some little dress and have my blonde hair pulled back in a bow. We cut birthday cake, smash a piñata to pieces with a wiffle ball bat, and open presents, all under the watchful eyes of my parents and a tall, skinny 11-year-old girl. The girl is wearing hot pink fluorescent shorts and an Oakley tee-shirt. We laugh, we play, I pull and tug on the 11-year-old girl asking her for another piece of cake, and a drink, and to come play with me. We actually have all of this on home video, by the way.

Flash forward to September 11, 2008 and that same girl, the one who wore the eighties shorts to my third birthday, is picking me up from the airport in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Bernadette, neighbor and babysitter extraordinaire throughout most of my childhood, is now 29 years old and lives in Belfast with her husband, Alan…and I spent this past weekend there with them.

We had a ball. Belfast is a beautiful city to visit, and I was lucky enough to experience a rare warm weekend with no rain.

Also, after living in the hustle and bustle of Paris, it was so lovely to be out in the country, surrounded by farms and trees and open land. We spent a lot of time catching up over Guinness beers and Guinness cake (yes, really, a cake made with Guinness beer as an ingredient), we visited a castle (a requirement for any trip to Ireland), and we toured around the city of Belfast for an afternoon. I have to say, my time there was easily my favorite part of this trip overseas so far.

As much as I have been enjoying this Parisian adventure of mine, I was definitely hitting a low point last week before my trip. It’s hard to always be “getting to know” the people around you.

By the end of my third week here, I had spent ten days in a hotel with seven students I had never met before, learned my way around a foreign city with those same students, moved into a home with a family of strangers, started classes with professors I didn’t know, and started speaking a language on a daily basis that I’ve really only ever used in a classroom before.

All of it has been at once exciting and exhilarating and fairly overwhelming. After several weeks of everything being foreign, I was craving being around people who already knew me. So, the trip to Belfast to visit my old friend and pseudo “big sister” came just at the right time.

Returning to Paris after my weekend away was nice though. I felt refreshed, ready to re-embrace this new city of mine, ready to appreciate and soak up all it has to offer. And in doing so, I have discovered my new favorite place in Paris. I can’t give myself all the credit for finding it though, I was actually led there by another student in my program. I would love to tell you that what I have found is the best gay bar in all of Europe, or that I have stumbled upon a restaurant where the most beautiful women in Paris are waiting tables, but in fact, my new favorite place in Paris is a bookstore. It is called Shakespeare and Company and it is fantastic.

Located in St. Michel, right across from the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, the shop has the look and feel of a used bookstore, but in fact carries a wide variety of both new and used books – mostly in English.

If you are much of a reader, or a writer, and ever find yourself in Paris, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop is a must-see. It has been a lovely spot for me to visit in the evenings and get away from my schoolwork for a few hours.



Although my classes seem to have taken a backseat to my social and cultural adventures, I must say that school here has been significantly more enjoyable than school in the United States.

My art history class in particular has been a real treat, and all because of the professor. Did you ever watch the show The Nanny? You know, the one with Fran Drescher? Well, imagine if Mr. Scheffield had had a flair for hand gestures and a combination French and British accent and there you would have our art history professor.

On top of his endlessly amusing body language, sitting in his class is bit like playing the game Mad Libs. He projects slides onto the wall in our classroom and points to a painting, usually cocking his wrist a bit more than necessary, and says, “And you see students, what we have here is a…?” And we, the students, are never quite sure what to say. His fill in the blank is always so open-ended that all we know is that it must be a noun. So, from the six of us in the room come various options:

“Um…painting?”

“Watercolor?”

“Impressionist piece?”

And he stands, shaking his head in mock exasperation, until finally a student tries the most obvious answer, “Woman?”

“Yes, yes that’s right, a woman,” our professor will respond, nodding fervently, satisfied that we have successfully completed his sentence.



I kid you not, four out of five sentences are fill in the blanks, and we have caught on by now that the more obvious the response seems, the more likely it is correct.

Over the past few weeks though, we have come to love this professor and his quirky ways. The six of us in the class traipse around Paris behind him, as though he were a sort of pied piper, visiting Musée D’Orsay, letting him lead us on architectural tours of Montmartre and the 16e arrondissement, filling in sentences such as:


“And, dear students, this here is a…?”

“Building?”

“Yes, yes that is right. And look at how the gate is the color…”

“Green?”

“Yes, yes of course, a green gate made to blend in with…?”

“Nature?”

And so it goes. For four hours a week we play Mad Libs with our lovely and endearing nutty professor.







Oh, and before I go, in case you were enticed by the Guinness cake I talked about at the beginning, you can find the recipe on Oprah’s website at:

http://www.oprah.com/recipe/food/recipesdesserts/food_20020916_guinnesscake

An American Lesbian in Paris

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you our newest guest blogger, Shannon Connolly, who is going to write a weekly column about her semester abroad in Paris.

I asked her to share with us her experiences mainly because I'm terribly jealous she gets to live in France for a few months and I want to live vicariously through her adventures.

I first met Shannon - well perhaps when you first met her - in that full page photo spread in The Advocate last month on Cougars.

She was working as an intern at the popular gay news mag when she was recruited for said photo shoot.


Ever since the above shot I call her the lesbian Lolita of LA.

Shannon is currently in her senior year at USC and studying this semester in Paris as part of her coursework. She's pursuing a career as a journalist and writer.

I'm not sure it's part of her studies or homework, but one of her first missions was to find a local lesbian bar.

Now I give you, episode 1 of A LESBIAN AMERICAN IN PARIS.

“A Lesbian in Paris”
Shannon Connolly

So, after ten days that have felt more like an episode of The Amazing Race than a week and a half of my life, I am finally settled in to my semi-permanent home in Paris. I will be living here for the next three months, and seeing as I cannot bear the thought of being totally disconnected from my beloved and oh-so-gay life in West Hollywood, I will be keeping you all updated on my adventures until I return.

I arrived here on August 21st, three bags in hand, fifty euros in my wallet, and the address of my new school in my back pocket. It was seven in the morning. I was starving. I was exhausted. I had no international cell phone, no phone card, no internet connection, and suddenly, in this age of technology and constant communication that I have grown up in, felt eerily alone. I crossed my fingers that a quick cab ride later I would find myself welcomed with open arms by the directors of my program and would have my hand held, more or less, through my first few very intimidating days in a foreign country.

I had conjured images in my mind of the beautiful Parisian building I imagined would be my university here, so thirty minutes later, when my cab driver dropped me and all of my luggage in front of a dark alley (I kid you not, it was just a dark alley) and assured me I was at the right address, I felt the urge to climb back in the cab, return to Charles de Gaulle Airport and fly straight home to LA.

I ventured into the alley though, bags in hand, and found a small building around the back with my program’s name on the front door. I introduced myself to a woman at the front desk and she handed me a second address and a rudimentary map to find my way to my hotel. Sigh. Back out of the alley and into the hustle and bustle of the streets of Paris, I passed exactly four couples (all straight) making out in the three blocks between my school and my hotel. And let me remind you, this was approximately 7:30am. I guess that’s why they call it the city of love. Nonetheless, the pangs of homesickness for West Hollywood began.

I walked into Hotel Belle Epoque, a super-tiny but quaint hotel near La Bastille, and introduced myself, in French of course, to the concierge. Not a particularly smiley fellow, he simply handed me an envelope with my name on it and assured me my instructions were inside. I think you can see at this point in my journey why I began to feel like I was on an episode of The Amazing Race.

Well, despite my initial reservations, I have managed to survive my first ten instruction-filled and yet directionless days here. I have become well-acquainted with the eight other students in my program and am getting used to being the “token lesbian.” It’s a good group though – we have a token frat boy, a token Jew, and a token Asian as well. We’re kind of like a modern Breakfast Club.

The two other girls in my group agreed to accompany me to “Le Marais” – the West Hollywood of Paris – at the end of our first week. I had done my research online and was anxious to find a bar called 3W (the name stands for “women with women”).

We scouted our route on the métro and left our hotel, ready for a night on the town. Just minutes later, I stepped off the métro and into the gayborhood. Ah, it felt like going home. Gay and lesbian bars lined the streets, rainbow flags flew from apartment balconies and rainbow stickers were proudly displayed in storefronts. We walked a few blocks, looking very touristy with our maps in hand, and finally found the street I had been looking for – Rue des Ecouffes. 3W was just steps away.

I walked up to the front door and found myself in front of a sign:

Fermé jusqu’à 2 septembre

The bar was closed for the summer holiday (most Parisians leave the city during July and August to vacation in the south of France), and so my plans were foiled. Merde (shit).

I was just beginning to lose hope when a lesbian motioned to us from across the street (a bit of a lesbian guardian angel, I like to think) and invited us to sit for a while and have a drink at her bar: Les Jacasses. We accepted the offer and proceeded to fait des amies (make friends) with a table of women sitting near the front door, who were all more than happy to chat with us a while. Nous aimons les Américains! (We love Americans!), they told us.

After a bit of conversation, we exchanged numbers and they wrote down on the back of a postcard the names of local bars and local gay websites so I can find my way here in Paris. I now have plans to return to Le Marais later this week and meet up with that same group of women.

Ah, it is so nice to be gay and have “family” everywhere – n’est-ce pas?