Au Revoir, 11 Rue de la Roquette

Memories from a Glorious Parisian Apartment

Invitation

You are cordially invited to the last house party at 11 Rue de La Roquette. Door Code 5555, 1st stairwell in the corridor, top floor to the left.

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The passage of time has always been a slow one for me. Many people are convinced that time moves too fast, but I’m inclined to believe the opposite: time moves at an alarmingly acceptably slow pace.

For reasons that escape me, I’ve never felt that life speeds by at a fever pitch. I don’t feel like time is ever slipping through my fingers, which is why proverbial phrases like it feels like just yesterday don’t make sense to me, because even yesterday feels like long ago.

Suffice it to say, it feels like multiple lifetimes since most of my life has happened, which is why only a stream-of-consciousness style written while sitting in this now-empty apartment can hope to preserve the most memorable, fleeting, and disparate memories of Rue de la Roquette.

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I met the owner of this apartment, a generous and jovial Irishman named Damien, through a mutual friend on a Parisian terrace in 2013. Damien and I laughed a lot on that fateful night, which is why, after the dinner, I invited him to a Parisian apartment party across the river.

The party was at Henry’s, a filmmaker whom I haven’t seen in years. He lived in a shabby building next to Saint Michel on the sixth floor, a chambre de bonne, and in the bathroom on the landing, there was a circular porthole looking out onto Notre Dame. I remember peering out at the Parisian night and the glowing twelfth-century cathedral and feeling so damn lucky to be alive in Paris, and just a few hours later, at the party, I met a gorgeous Parisian artist (let’s call her Céleste) who liked the way I played harmonica and asked for my number.

That night, Céleste slow danced coyly with my statuesque Greek friend, Loretta, and although it didn’t take place in Roquette, it remains one of the most sensual memories of my early Parisian life. Céleste would soon become the second Frenchwoman I’ve ever loved, but immediately another Roquette Memory is rushing back to me, and this one is of a far less romantic tone.

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Roquette’s Formerly Red Hue

During my early years in Paris, when I was poor, I often lugged my dirty laundry fifteen minutes from my 13m2 apartment in Place du Marché Saint Chatherine over to Roquette to use Damien’s washing machine (avoiding paying the 2.50 Euros at the laundromat meant I could afford 2.5 more coffees each week). The memory comes from the fall of 2014, when I was waiting for my laundry, sitting on the sofa with Céleste, having just received an email confirming that I was going to become a published author (Slim and The Beast, Inkshares, 2015).

At the time, Céleste was unsure of where her life was leading, and I remember her face when I told her that my dream of being published was going to happen, and that I might even get to go to New York City to do a reading. Céleste broke down in tears, apologizing profusely, insisting that I should go—but you can come with me, I said; no, I can’t afford it—and she knew this would happen, she knew sooner or later she’d just become a burden and would prevent me from achieving my dreams. Consoling her there on the sofa at Roquette, holding back tears instead of popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate the theretofore most important moment in my writing life, what I remember most about that moment is the way the sunlight burned red through the burgundy curtains, spilling a blood orange onto the hardwood floor.

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Aaron and I are Twins.

A happier memory now: during the early Roquette years, when Damien still spent time in Paris, he often had a small group of men over to drink cheap beer and play board games (usually interminable games of Risk, which allowed us to fight over insignificant borders and conquer small worlds). Once we were sauced enough to venture out into the debaucherous streets of Roquette, we ventured into the dive bars of Rue de Lappe and Rue Daval, usually ending our alcohol-infused debates about literature and post-colonialism and language at a bar called Objectif Lune.

Later, in 2019, my twin brother moved to Paris to join our indie rock band, Slim and The Beast, which at the time had enough momentum (and motivation) to begin touring in Europe. The fastest way to summarize that artistic chapter is to say I reached the zenith of my musical career at Paris’ Zenith Arena, where we played a 5,000-person show the day before the world shut down. Without a home to call his own, and after six weeks sleeping in my 18 m2 apartment up in Belleville,

Aaron Lopez Barrantes

moved into 11 Rue de La Roquette, which would be his home for the next year.

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What I will remember most about 11 Rue de La Roquette is the life my wife partner Augusta and I built in that glorious duplex apartment.

We moved in on March 29, 2021, thirteen months after we met on Leap Day, 2020. I almost remember the first steak meal we made together, but I’ll certainly remember Augusta’s eyes and the way she smiled at me at our new life in Paris:

I’ll remember the countless parties we threw in the 29m2 apartment, many of which had no business being as big as they were (you didn’t hear it from me, Damien), and I’ll remember our first Christmas Tree, and the late-night glasses of wine to lubricate the impromptu piano recitals, and the many, many beautiful artists who passed through our home between March 2021-April 2025, and the many people who slept on our couch and enjoyed more illicit activities on it, too.

I’ll remember sleeping beneath the slanted, foam-insulated roof of the loft upstairs, particularly those sweaty summer nights when we had to sleep downstairs because it was too hot to make love beneath the ceiling.

I’ll also remember that winter weekend Augusta and I got food poisoning after buying a bounty of fresh vegetables at the market, and how we splayed out on the L-shaped sofa, which we covered with tan, soft linen sheets, and how we recuperated for days playing Hogwarts Legacy and ordering a lava lamp for comfort because Augusta also had one when she was a kid.

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Photo by Augusta Sagnelli

And what of the memories beyond the white windows, looking eastwards towards the Hotel Bastille? I’ll remember the teenage girl with Down syndrome who lived in a small room with her family, and the way she would wave at us in the evenings. I’ll also remember peering out at the screaming streets below at the nexus of what was once the drunken nexus of the universe, Rue de Lappe and Rue de La Roquette, and I’ll remember the soccer hooligan chants and male screeching that on the heaviest nights lasted until four, five, six in the morning. I’ll remember promising myself that one day, I would sit at the window and become a vampire and write down everything I witnessed on Roquette, but alas, I never did.

Below, I’ll also remember the Phoenix d’Or, a quintessential Chinese restaurant run by a hard-working woman with too many children; I’ll remember the nouilles sautés and mediocre egg rolls and slippery wood ear mushrooms and cold Orangina and affordable menus and Thai beef.

One day, when I’m knock-on-wood old-and-grey, I’ll be thankful to read these words, to bask in the nostalgia memory¹ of the security guards at Monoprix who shook my hand every time I entered the grocery store. Funny how the shadow of one memory reveals another’s silhouette: I’ll remember sitting at the kitchen window overlooking the Hotel Bastille, where a group of young men and at least one drug dealer without much ado about nothing often yelled at another group of young men—delivery boys—hanging out at the Monoprix on the other side of the street.

I’ll also remember the percussion-playing hands of the Dominican security guard who always smiled at us whenever we passed the épicerie, and I’ll remember the big red door at 11 Rue de La Roquette, situated next to the kebab shop where I barely ever set foot in, except for very rarely and late at night, when in our drunken stupor we’d have no choice but to imbibe in the mysterious meat, devouring our galette complète, sauce samouraï blanche in the apartment alongside a 1000mg of Doliprane, which to this day remains the best hangover cure in the city.

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There’s probably more. There’s always more. But it’s time to go.

I’ve only been gone a few weeks, and Roquette already feels like a distant memory, though synchronicity has a way of keeping the past in the present.

If you take a left out of the Big Red Door of #11 Rue de La Roquette and walk twenty minutes up the hill, the street eventually dead ends at the main entrance to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Just a few doors down, on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, Augusta and I have found a new home overlooking the largest green space in the city. I’ve already written a few songs there. Life moves on and on.

“How easily a soul can leave a place,” my oldest friend said when I sent him this photo of the empty apartment:

“Man. What an era.”

‘Twas an era indeed. Merci, Rue de la Roquette.

ps: this week’s previously scheduled essay related to MFAs, publishing & gatekeeping will come next week. You can find a lot of fantastic op-eds about gatekeeping over at

The Republic of Letters

, which will also be sharing my essay in the next week(s).

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