Upon arriving at the bar where I was playing on the night I landed in Paris I asked what was the preferred local drink. The very popular Demory Brewing of Paris makes an appropriately named “Paris Ale” that is a bit of a hit with the otherwise hard to please Parisians. After the mandatory eye rolls at my unacceptable French, the bartender set me up. That’s when the beer tried its first flirtatious come on lines with me.
It was saucy and beautiful, and I think it knew that I had been on a plane or bus or train for the last 27 hours and used that to its advantage. I’m pretty sure it had just put on some kind of lotion or perfume because there was definitely some clean citrus notes wafting from it. I thoroughly enjoyed our evening together, and it made an excellent companion through all the music we shared.
At one point the sound engineer walked onto the stage to fix a microphone stand and accidentally kicked my Paris Ale, spilling it across the stage and onto the dance floor. A gasp went through the room, and in movements so fast they seemed supernatural he raced to the tap, filled the pint again, and replaced it on the stage, good as new. That was when I knew that the good times we were sharing, that Paris Ale and I, were not meant to last. It was fun for a night, and I loved that Paris Ale, but I had other places to be and I knew that even if we were never together again, we would always have Paris.