Richard Dennen: I’m no saint but I know a man who is
I was bored on Saturday afternoon. The Bogliones were having a huge, pre-credit crunch-style circus-themed bash at Petersham House later that night. Everyone I knew was going. Rumour on Notting Hill Gate was that they'd flown in a big top from Budapest. There would be singing, dancing, merriment and probably Mick Jagger. While the rest of the kingdom hurtled towards the economic double-dip, this would be Richmond's answer to a Versailles-like last-hurrah. Except I wasn't invited.
I sat on my balcony looking over Westbourne Grove and phoned my flatmate Willa. It turned out she was in Paris, at a party being thrown by some skateboarders. "Come!" she shouted as the phone went dead. Obviously I couldn't hop on the train to Paris. But then I heard a shout coming from the street below. It was our neighbour, Gala, who had a star painted on her face and was hailing a cab to Richmond. "Have fun tonight, loser!" And a few hours later I was at Gare du Nord.
Ah, Paris. I'd moved there the summer I'd turned 18 and on my first night my mother had taken me to a vernissage at the Louvre where I'd met a French man in front of a still-life of hydrangeas by Helleu. He promptly took me to a club on the Champs-Elysées called Le Queen, where, dancing on a podium, we were spotted by the designer, Thierry Mugler. It was the night I lost my virginity. It was sort of romantic. The guy was 30. I'd just got bad A-levels. And we'd wandered from Mugler's apartment — which had been packed full of red-lipped actresses and teen male models — to Père Lachaise, where we promptly lay down on a gravestone. It was cold. And while I'd like to think it was somewhere near where Jim Morrison is buried, it probably wasn't.
He turned out to be a vicomte who lived in a hôtel particulière — filled with furniture that had the severe lines and excellent proportions of 1780 — on the rue du Bac which I promptly moved in to. Though after a few weeks, much to my chagrin, I realised I wasn't the only 18-year-old with a set of keys.
Willa's phone was still dead as I wandered down the rue Saint-Honoré, so I nipped into the Église Saint-Roch and lit a candle in front of St Expedite. He'd heard me 10 years ago, so fingers crossed he will again now. It's time.
