The Hacksteak

We were a study group loose in Paris for a week—sympathetic nerds, daredevils, a couple of redheads who probably shouldn’t have been trusted with a train ticket. The gay quarter smelled like life fermenting in summer heat, the Jewish district like old money and older stories, the intellectual neighborhoods like someone’s cluttered apartment where you weren’t sure if you were welcome but you went in anyway.

There were bookshops that seemed to have been sealed since 1950, shelves sagging under the weight of themselves. I bought a Japanese edition of Richard Kern’s XxModels, a signed copy of A Million Little Pieces, something in French that was too small to read. Each purchase felt like grave-robbing, like I’d found something that had been hidden and wasn’t asking to be found.

But the actual thing I remember, the thing that sticks with me—what I think about when I think about Paris—is a hamburger. Hacksteak with fries and mayo. Just meat and fried potatoes and mayonnaise, nothing secret, nothing you’d photograph or write about in a travel guide. I ate it against a wall, watching the street, tasting something that was so specifically itself that it felt obscene.

Bloody, greasy, salty in a way that made you want to cry. I was convinced that week that nothing would ever taste as good again, and turns out I was right. Everything since is just fuel. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, which is either pathetic or the most honest thing I’ve ever experienced, probably both.