If you asked me, what good was it all anyway. What good is meeting Johnny Depp if you are not single? What good is a foreign underground club without the allure of a foreign one night stand? What good is a sinister looking Arab if your rape fantasy is constantly interrupted by the grip on your elbow from your overprotective boyfriend.

We’d grown restless in Paris. Everytime the realization hit Jonathan that he was drinking every night, that he really wanted perhaps even needed to drink every night, he grew restless. Somehow being constantly on the move helped. We didn’t like to stay put. Even when we were at home in New York we were in perpetual motion, always going somewhere on the motorcycle. There was always an errand. Something needed to be bought at the flea market. Something needed to be sold. Something needed to be packed. Something needed to be unpacked. And there was always dusting. Lots and lots of dusting. The lower floors of his building were still under construction and all the dust would float up to the top floor where even there I lived out of a suitcase and the two drawers he had so graciously cleared out for me, but didn’t understand why it was not enough. Every day I dusted and every morning there was a new coat of it on everything. The bookshelves that had once made me fall in love had become the bane of my existence.

Ironically, I had run into an old uniform store back in New York down on Orchard street that sold maid’s dresses. I had the blue and white one, a dark blue one with a white collar, a red plaid one and a pink plaid one. Jonathan liked them. Not only were they utilitarian due to the abundance of pockets, which is his definition of fashion, but I suspect he could fantasize I was an exploited underage hotel room maid in some third world country at his disposal that he could grab, toss onto the bed, and screw. I was relieved at first, to not have to worry about what to wear in the mornings. Just throw on a maid’s dress. If I felt particularly nostalgic, I’d accessorize with a pair of Betsey fishnets that I cut the feet out of. I tried to ignore the fact that my life was filled with someone else’s meaningless errands, someone else’s fantasies. That I was dusting my youth away.

I wear a knee length light blue and white striped maids dress today as we wander the Casbah. But the dresses have long lost their magic. I have been wearing them every day for months now and I am fucking sick of them. They are walking by themselves and they are taking my soul with them. But they are the only things I have with sleeves. Jonathan has warned me not to show tattoos and to cover up as much as possible or the natives might try to grab you, thinking you are a white devil whore of Babylon.