Look at this for a minute, it caught my eye in a book review the other day: "Edmund White ambles with the reader along the grand avenues and boulevards, and through the old Paris of winding alleys and courts which lie between. He shows us his favourite small museums, and where you would go to swap your wife. He demonstrates Paris's layerings, from the quartiers of the rich - "
Hold it right there. Never mind Paris's winding alleys and the quartiers of the rich. Edmund White shows us where you would go to swap your wife.
Are you shocked? There is no shame in admitting it if you are. Honesty is surely preferable to a pretence of worldly sophistication. We have advanced greatly in recent years in this State but certain practices must continue to startle and even appall us. Even in Paris, where excess is a way of life, the existence of a place where one can go to swap one's wife will seem outrageous to many educated Irish folk who nevertheless consider themselves inclusive, culturally aware and fairly open to new experience.
The book, by the way, is The Flaneur: a Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (Bloomsbury, £9.99 sterling). It is the first in the publisher's new series on "The Writer and the City".
Anyway, I got a bit of a jolt myself, but not for any "moral" reasons, you understand. It's just that I actually know the wife-swapping place referred to by the reviewer. I have been there. I even met the proprietor.
This needs a bit of explanation. I happened to be in Paris many years ago, just taking a spring-time break on my own, strolling along the boulevards, fancy-free, doing the old flaneur thing - you know, Baudelaire and all that, "the crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird." Anyway I picked up a few knick-knacks one afternoon on the Avenue Montaigne and then sauntered aimlessly down its side-streets.
The next thing I knew I was on a winding alley with the delightful name of the Rue des Treize Chats (alley-cats, no doubt!). It had that wonderful Parisian "seedy chic" style - there was a tattoist alongside a tiny shop specialising in stilettos (daggers, not heels), then a parfumerie, a bespoke overcoat boutique for dwarfs, a mini-deli, a ceramic death-mask specialist, a nail bar, a distressed wallpaper designer, a shoe-bronzing studio, a professional sunlight dappler, a porn store on three floors, an organic flour miller (with a one-legged female at work), a gay Tai Chai basement and a braille art store. It was everything one loved about Paris.
And then I happened on the most amazing establishment, its bright-red sign plain for all to see: yes, it was the Echange des Femmes. I stopped and I am afraid I stared. Could it possibly be what it appeared to be? No clues were apparent through the tiny frosted window-pane.
A moment later a very well-dressed middle-aged man emerged, evidently in high good spirits. "Monsieur Montaillou", he said, shaking hands with another man who now appeared in the doorway, "merci: c'est comme si tous mes Noels sont arrives ensemble." The men kissed on both cheeks three times and bade farewell.
Monsieur Montaillou now turned his attention to me. A plump and jolly man who made me think of Santa Claus, and who turned out to be the proprietor of Echange des Femmes, he asked if he could be of assistance. I rather hastily assured him I was merely window-shopping, at which he laughed inordinately.
He then insisted I step inside. I was too surprised (and perhaps curious) to decline, and found myself in a cave-like room faintly smelling of musk and lilies. It was furnished with two leather armchairs which faced an elegant chaise-longue. On a gilt coffee-table stood an antique cash register. The overall effect was exquisite.
Monsieur Montaillou bade me be seated, and between armchairs and chaise-longue he drew across a semi-transparent gold curtain. Then he sat beside me without speaking.
I now heard stifled female giggles. Soon, a procession of semivisible and semi-dressed women danced tantalisingly beyond the curtain. It seemed to go on forever. I was only 22 and I thought I was going to faint.
Having later explained to Monsieur Montaillou in my rather halting French that I was unmarried and therefore had no femme to echanger, I found him most sympathetic and understanding. He urged me to marry and settle down and return whenever I wished.
Could you see an Echange des Femmes in Dublin, even in Temple Bar, one day? No. Never. Sure we're not living at all here, there is no way we will ever match the Parisians for sheer bloody elan, their way of life is non-pareil and we might as well face it.