Girl in the Metro ... finally

After more than six years living here, I finally had my first "girl in the metro" experience so I'm going to celebrate by blogging about it. I had just finished shooting Alicia Keys in concert

and on my way home, got onto metro line 4 at Chatelet. There was this very attractive young woman sitting across from me on the metro who was rather obviously checking me out. She was doing it in a more open way than I've experienced in a long time. It wasn't threatening or psycho; I rather enjoyed it.

My stop was coming up so I stood up and moved towards the door. She stood up and also moved right towards the door, intentionally aligning herself squarely in front of me. Our eyes met in the reflection of the window, and I was determined not to turn away, just to see what she would do. She didn't turn away and our stare lasted maybe 10 seconds, broken only by the opening of the metro door at St Michel station.

We both exited and headed towards the escalator, my mind racing around trying to figure out what I should do. She walked slowly in front of me, peeking once over her shoulder to make sure I was behind her. We began going up the escalator; she positioned herself 3 steps in front of me so that her finely-formed derriere was precisely at my eye level. As we approached the top of the escalator, without warning, she spun around and lunged in my direction. My heart skipped. Especially when she starting running DOWN the up escalator, right past me.

Turns out the metro police where doing a spot check at the top of the escalator and she must not have had a ticket, so she ran. I turned my head to watch her as she ran past me and before I knew what was going on, I was in the clutches of the police, who politely asked me for my ticket. With a little more warning, or if I had seen the police and realized that's why she was running, who knows, I might have followed her and given her a ticket or something.

But it was not to be. She disappeared and took with her my most exciting metro experience to date. I'm sure I'll see her again, but probably on YouTube or France's Most Wanted or something like that.

Some photos of the week:

Alicia Keys

Wacked exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo

Everland Hotel (click to learn more)

Round flowers - Square des Poetes