when I first set foot in France I lived in Nantes, a town in which, apart from going out to a few local bars, I was bored out of my mind, with no escape in sight, I paced up and down in my dorm room, stepped out occasionally to chat up some fifty–year–olds, for the most part birds who were either divorced, seperated, or widowed, who I'd crash for a week or two with, sometimes even a whole month, to the point that my mates started calling me a thieving gigolo bent on nicking the pensions of old French women, but I couldn't care less about what they said and had no misgivings since ‘France had helped itself to my country's wealth, and it was time for her to pay us back’, and this was my way of being reimbursed, chasing after these neglected women I ran into at the Mambo Club or in Commerce Square where I hung out on the weekends, well turned out, clean–shaven and smelling good, and it was easy to stand out, to be the centre of attention, even in midwinter I could wear bright red, light green, or golden yellow clothes, people checked me out, some burst out laughing, others looked the other way, but I was there, always well turned out, clean–shaven and smelling good, I never failed to bring a cute blonde home with me, someone who at first had mocked my outfit, but then it was with her I'd end up, always dumping her the next day so I could set out to unearth another one, but this wasn't a real life, I needed to move forward, I was aware of that, and my childhood friend Benoît, who lived in Paris, convinced me to move to the capital because for him the provinces were a dead–end, and so it was him who sorted out counterfeits of my documents so that I could get a room in a hostel for young workers, and he said ‘don't worry, that's how it works, you'll be a new man, a young man, and the gates of Paris will open for you’, …