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  • The Paris Review

    Yellow City

    by Ellena Savage Nov 28, 2018 7 minutes

    Photo: Deensel [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

    February 1, 2017

    Sitting in the back seat of the taxi into Lisbon with Dom, I notice that I am wearing, more or less, the same clothes I wore when I traveled here alone eleven years ago: a worn-out black turtleneck, skintight black jeans. Though now I am one and a half dress sizes larger. Though now my jeans are tailored, and my sweater has a designer label. Though now I don’t wear whimsical fur-collared coats or charming hats from the twenties to imply that I might be interesting.

    The last time I came to this city, I could talk to any person in the world. I had fast learned how to sleep in any number of positions: between the farts and fucks and snores of adolescent adults in hostels; on a row of couch cushions laid out by earnest Belgian students on their Erasmus year; with my head resting on the shoulder of a fleshy Brazilian on an overnight bus. I saw no problem in taking time from others, or accepting their hospitality, because I was paying it out in full. I had everything to give, because I was a general, all-purpose, adaptable person. All my unrealized potential suggested

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