A Paris Journal

BILL NELSON -- PARIS JOURNAL Page 1 of 233 A PARIS JOURNAL By William H. Nelson, Jr. BILL NELSON -- PARIS JOURNAL Page 2 of 233 Editor’s Note: In 1971, President Nixon invaded Laos and ended the embargo against China, the 26th amendment to the Constitution lowered the voting age to 18, and rock star Jim Morrison of The Doors died of cardiac arrest in Paris. The level of US troops in Vietnam stood at 330,000, and American causalities were nearing 45,000. The Stonewall riots in New York City were just two years old, and the nascent lesbian and gay rights movement operated mainly in the shadows – and mainly in New York and California. “AIDS” were assistants to someone in need of help. Bill Nelson’s love for all things French, including its language, lured him to Paris as a young man in 1971, and this daily journal embodies his private thoughts, events and encounters – living on his own, for the first time, in Paris. Bill would in later years return to France many times, often with his students who learned the culture of France through Bill’s tutelage. Friends and students lucky enough to accompany Bill on these trips were impressed by his command of the language, and his seemingly comprehensive knowledge of where to go and what to see made the trips even more memorable. After Bill’s death in 1990, his caretaker and mother started reading Bill’s Paris journal until she came to this sentence on one of the early pages: “I mean there are some things that are going to happen that I shouldn’t like dear Mother to get her hands on, nor Dad either for that matter, so, if either of you are reading now, and if you love me, then gently close the cover and put it away forever.” And so she stopped. She entrusted the journal to Bill’s close friends Mike Anglin and William Waybourn, and, not knowing what Bill had written, her simple request was that it not be shared publically until after her death. The journal was in safe‐keeping until 2014, when Anglin, a frequent traveler to France himself, began the pains‐taking task of transcription, inserting pictures, geographical context and explanatory footnotes where possible. Bill’s handwriting style made the process all the more difficult, but nothing has been left out. It is clear that this journal was written with the intent that it should be read by others in the future; it was not a “private” journal. For example, Bill writes: “I mention the full names of my friends with the pompous notion that someday somebody may find some interest in these lines.” After Stonewall and the end of the Vietnam war, sexual expression flourished as never before. Nothing like AIDS was imaginable, sex was more open, and the phenomenon of the “Sexual Revolution” had fully begun – even for the gay community. These are Bill’s words written in 1971. While the words are his, it should be acknowledged that sentences and paragraphs of an earlier era can sometimes be taken out of context when read decades later, and can suggest new meanings not originally intended by the author. This is a diary, a richly‐detailed account of one young gay man's coming of age amidst his newly liberated life in Paris in 1971. We are fortunate it was not lost. Enjoy it for what it is. BILL NELSON -- PARIS JOURNAL Page 3 of 233 Jan. 31, 1971 ‐ Sunday ‐ Paris Well, today isn’t really the day that I feel like beginning my journal, but I guess that, since I’ve already been in France for over a week, it’s about time I got started. I came to Paris, like many young men before me, I suppose, searching for an escape – but that sounds a little dramatic – actually just looking for a little free time. Going to SMU and working put a real load on me after awhile, and the added load of an undesirable relationship was just about to put things over the brink. I’m referring, of course, to Gerd – that little bit of Germany in good old Big D. It’s funny that I should have to come all the way to France just to get away from Germany! I won’t dwell long on it, but suffice it to say that, where I used to consider Gerd a thing of interest and a true door to the European way of life that I found so fascinating, the relationship soon became such that I saw him as a door alright … but a very tightly closed one … and as a result I was rapidly becoming a very cruel person and an extremely unhappy one. I’m young, 21 for the moment, and I do truly resent anything that stands in the way of my development as a human being – so I came to France, knowing that eight months of absence is enough to make any heart grow fonder (for somebody else) … so the letters will slowly grow less frequent – and less intimate – and soon I hope to get word from my spies in Dallas that things have worked themselves out well, like I hoped they would. But my being here in Paris is still as much a surprise to me as it is to anybody else. One day I just decided that I was going to have to avoid the draft somehow, since I was determined not to wait until the last minute like my best of friends, John Thomas Martin (hereinafter referred to as JT ‐ ‐ I mention the full names of my friends with the pompous notion that someday somebody may find some interest in these lines, also in the possibility that I might cross paths with somebody that the world will later consider famous). Well, anyway, I casually mentioned the possibility of a trip to France to my father, as a possibly profitable way of extending my period of education – being a French major – and much to my surprise, he really supported the idea and, sure enough, here I sit, smack in the middle of the Latin Quarter of Paris, France, 1971!!! As I’ve already said, I’ve been here for a week now. I could fill page after page with the things that I’ve already done and seen. My friend that I met on the beach of the Caravelle Hotel in Guadeloupe three years ago has been absolutely wonderful about driving me around and helping me to get situated. BILL NELSON -- PARIS JOURNAL Page 4 of 233 Finding a place to live in Paris in January of 1971 has been no easy task. All I wanted was a little room near the center of town. That really isn’t asking too much by Dallas standards, but there must be 1,000 or more people in Paris looking for exactly the same type of situation. In those days of continuous searching, I got so fed up with the placement agencies here that I was ready to accept anything!! Just for the sake of recorded history, let me put down how those damn organizations operate! They are based entirely on the fact that there are more people looking for rooms than there are rooms to rent. Therefore, they set themselves up in a room with a telephone and wait for landlords to call them with a room to rent. Then they wait for prospective renters to come to the office looking for a place to live. If they have anything at all like what you’re looking for, you go with them, look the place over. They have to go along, because they absolutely refuse to tell you the address. Why? Well, this part is the clincher: if you decide to accept the room, you have to pay the agency 12% of what the first year’s rent will be!!! Now, for the kind of place that I am looking for, the cost of the agency would run just a little over $100. That’s a little steep for an 8 month stay!! And I haven’t even begun to tell you how they can manage to screw you around. Every once in awhile there is really an interesting and inexpensive room up for grabs, so the agency advertises it in the paper, and that morning the race is on to see who can buy the morning paper, find the room, call the agency to get their address (it isn’t given in the paper), and then be the first one to the office and go see the room and snag it up!! Well, just to recount a personal experience of the third day of searching, Gerald Fortier, my friend, the steward from Air France, had some things to do and had left me to shift for myself for a day to see what I could come up with. Well, I played the newspaper game and picked out the three most interesting rooms, called the agencies and then set out by foot and Métro and map to find what there was to find. Well, as you might well imagine, the agencies don’t put everything in the newspaper, nor do they tell the whole story on the telephone! It was not until I knocked myself out going clear across town that they got around to telling me that the room we were discussing was completely independent except that it was in “sort of” a hotel and I couldn’t have any guests in my room past 10 o’clock in the evening!! Well, I was mad.

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