Our Monthly Long Read Newsletter
MACK
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Ira Sachs, director of Passages, on his encounter with Mary Poppins Memory is a story you tell yourself. I was visiting Paris in the early 90s, and I found myself alone as the sun was going down, wondering what the night would hold. Days and nights in Paris (and other cities) were often spent looking for sex, looking for love, for companionship and distraction. I knew there was a bar somewhere between Odéon and Café de Flore on the left bank, and in memory, there was also a back room, or an upstairs with dark corners. I had been there a few years before – I had lived in Paris as a student during the autumn of 1986 – so it was a dim recollection, but a vivid one. I was unsure if I could find the street, or the door on the street that would open to the bar – I remembered it as being vaguely hidden. I might have had a Damron Guide, so there was a good chance I stood on the corner for a while, by a large outdoor market, leafing through the pages. Why do some bars always seem harder to find? This was one of those. It was called Le Loup (The Wolf), I think. Even then I could never remember the name. But I did find it and I went in and it was nearly empty. There was a bartender, maybe with his shirt off, but likely not, behind the bar to the left, where there were rows of liquor bottles on glass shelves illuminated from below. It was a dark bar, yes, but not a dreary one. It was late in the afternoon and if I got a drink it was a Diet Coke with Lemon, and I stood around, hoping to be talked to, hoping to feel comfortable. There was a TV above the bar, but it was turned off and the only sound was muffled French and a few glasses clinking. Not long after, I took a winding set of stairs – a spiral staircase, to be exact – up to the second floor, where there were a series of hallways and dark rooms. I don’t remember who I met, if anyone, or if I had sex, or didn’t, but what I do remember – and this is really the part of the story I want to tell – is coming down the stairs an hour or so later and how the bar was now starting to fill up. It was after work, and a crowd was coming in, and men were greeting each other with kisses on both sides of the cheeks, and smiles, and stories of their days. And on the TV was playing Mary Poppins. I think it was the rooftop scene, so Dick Van Dyke was at his most charming, and he and a bunch of chimney sweeps were singing ‘Step in Time’. Not many people were watching – they had their days to catch up on, lives to share – but since I didn’t know anyone, and didn’t speak much French, it felt like the movie was a gift just for me. I sat down on a bar stool and watched the rest of the movie. I didn’t know anyone in the bar, but what I knew in that space, on that night, watching that movie, is that inside the gay bar I was among people who shared a history, and shared a present. We were a group of gay men gathering on a weekday night – to talk, to meet, to have sex, to watch Mary Poppins.
Header image: Cover image for Boyd McDonald's book 'Cruising the Movies' (1985). Photograph by Joseph Modica.      MACK |
