AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

A friend relates this recent experience: "I had gone to Galliagno's English-language bookstore, which is located near the glass pyramids of the Louvre, because I was tired of steak frites. I had been eating the same meal at countless restaurants, some of course better than others, but all really the same. Unless you're Parisian, a guide-book is called for to alleviate such dilemmas. Gault-Millau was obviously the best for purposes of dining. On my budget, however, selecting the venue for the evening meal in that way would be exaggerating. This economical state of mind led me to choose between Harvard's Let's Go and Berkeley's On the Loose.

"The store owner approached my girlfriend and me to offer some criticial thought. 'Well, the Harvard guide,' he began.

"But before he could dispense his advice, my companion interrupted him. 'Wouldn't want to say stuffy,' she said, half-jokingly, the other half intending to tout my school. 'He's a Harvard man, you know,' she explained.

With the mention of this, a double for the former Larry 'Bud' Melman appeared from behind the section dedicated to the culinary arts. He enquired as to my year in school. I replied that I was to be a first-year in Cambridge this fall.

His stout and entropic body was accented most notably by a pair of taped tortoise-shell glasses and the blood which oozed through a thin t-shirt from his right shoulder. John Norris Tangent '58 proceeded to introuduce me to his world. He knew some things which have, he said, been kept from the rest of the world because his wife, you see, was a spy for the CIA. She was the one who killed Kennedy, for Johnson. (Jack Kennedy, that is. She had no part of Robert's death; that was an FBI job. Mr. Tangen and his wife were divorced in the seventies.)

I felt so completely naive. How was I supposed to know that President Conant transferred Harvard's money to a Boston bank (they're mafia, you know) because he had connections? Isn't it obvious that young Sulzberger and the other Jewish conspirators are seizing control of world media? And I pretty much figured on Clinton's White House liaisons, but I had no clue about Hillary sleeping around with other women!

I ended up purchasing the Berkeley guide, which enlightened me as to the whereabouts of excellent Vietnamese dining. I guess that I could have survived France on brie and baguettes. But if I hadn't encountered John N. Tangent '58 that day in Paris, I would still be walking through the Yard clueless as to the half of my classmates spying on me for the CIA."