We walk the Parisian streets until we reach Kay’s car, parked on a residential corner near the fence we’ll be climbing. We’re Climbing A Fence? I squeal with delight to Judy. I Love Climbing Fences! When I was a child I tried to start a fence-climbing club, I loved it so much I wanted to be organized about it.
At the car we leave behind everything we won’t bring down into the caves. Antoine hands me a navy blue fleece jacket emblazoned with the insignia of the non-profit he works for. I zip it up, saying goodbye to the prospect of sex in the catacombs. Not in a fleece zip-up.
Antoine looks amazing, in a pair of thick coveralls stained with clay from previous descents. He looks like le petit Mad Max. He’s wearing his tall boots and the front of the coveralls gape open toughly. Judy tells me I can keep all my things in her brother’s backpack but I have to carry it because he has scoliosis. Judy’s brother is even more silent than me, and he speaks French. He is very pretty, with curly black hair and a Palestinian scarf wrapped around his mouth. Earlier he gave everyone Kinder chocolates. Judy said he’s gay but asexual and believes that asexuality is a sexual orientation. This is hard for the wildly sexual Judy to comprehend, but she’s trying to be open minded. I too can only imagine he’s damaged from homophobia, but again try not to be such an American about everything. I tune into the quiet brother, trying to get a feel for what asexual vibes feel like. He’s just sort of shy and aloof.
Antoine says the plan is he will hop the fence, we hand him the bags, then we hop over, all of this very quickly because it is the moment where we run the biggest risk of getting busted. We are not to talk until he says it’s safe to. Trespassing is one of my most favorite things; I can’t believe I get to trespass and climb a fence, plus I engaged in a menage a quatre mere hours ago. This is the funnest group of people I have ever encountered. No one in San Francisco is having orgies and breaking into the sewer system. Everyone’s just gossiping and buying jeans. I feel like a fucking superhero hopping the fence, dropping down onto the ground. I snatch up two backpacks and follow Antoine into a giant, plowed lot. It looked like something stood there a long time ago but then was razed, perhaps an entire city block. The ground is loose dirt embossed with the tire tracks of monster trucks. I try to ask people what this place is, what happens here, but no one gets what I’m saying. We stop just outside the mouth of a giant train tunnel.
This is a good place to go to the bathroom, Antoine kindly suggests. Handy Sasha marches over to one end with his pee-gadget, a plastic thingie female-bodied people can place under their junk and let the pee roll out, so you don’t have to squat. Lots of trans guys have them. Killer forgot his, so he crouches around the corner, his back against the tunnel wall, and I do the same. I’d thought of brining toilet paper but then thought maybe that was too prissy so didn’t, but now I wished I had. Especially later, when Antoine trudges off to take a dump in a dark corner, clutching a pink roll I know he nicked from Wendy’s apartment that morning.
Before we start walking into the train tunnel, Antoine hands me a giant, heavy flashlight. At first I’m sort of bummed that I don’t get a head lamp like everyone else, but then I’m psyched to have a powerful beam of light to shoot around the cavernous arch. There is so much to look at. Graffiti everywhere, curving onto the bricks overhead. The ground is chunked with rocks that glows a pale gray color. It’s sort of the color of Paris, of the buildings, The quarries we’re hiking towards were formed in 60 BC, when Romans mined the depths for the stone to build the city. Since then the catacombs have served a multitude of purposes—quarries, religious hideouts, bunkers for the French resistance, beer cellars, subways. Charles X threw parties in them, and in 2004 police discovered a fully-functioning cinema/restaurant in one, with rigged electricity fueling a security system consisting of cameras, phone lines and an audio track of dogs barking. The films were 1950s noir and contemporary horror films; the food included whiskey and couscous.
