once pristine

let me tell you about three dream places: a coastal american city whose approaching highways are thin bridges which are alternately very high, thin treacherous structures or barely above water and often flooded such that when driving one is suddenly submerged, so the act of approaching or navigating the city is perilous and involves sudden falling or drowning : an american city which is a thin slice of earth densely packed with activity and always exists at night and is extremely lighted, the highways are supended and roller-coaster like with dips and loops and it is easy to get lost : a european city with wide roads difficult to cross and large buildings with fenestrated facades and labyrinthine interiors filled with anonymous hotel rooms and intimidating lobbies : i went from one to the other of these when my wife and i were in an affordable american city and were faced with a choice to stay and go to a rock concert invovling the actor from dexter singing or an expensive trip to paris : a guy nearby heard of our choice and dove under my parked car as if to get something out of the engine area and then called his friends to tell them about the concert, which i felt was unfair because our special deal was limited, but we chose to go to paris, not without misgiving : and when we arrived it was a mistake, in our small hotel room i took a shower but had forgotten to pack any clothes, had no new underwear or socks, no money and had forgotten a critical document supposed to accompany my passport, which i was trying to quickly fill out but couldn't understand, then, outside i was in a cab driven by a barber of whom i was inquiring whether he could fix my haircut on the back of my head, he said he could but it would cost around six thousand dollars because of how much time he had to spend cutting the back lengths, he said he could do an okay fix for about nine hundred dollars, i couldn't believe it, i remembered i usually paid only two or three hundred dollars for a haircut, or my wife cut it for free, and the cut he was proposing sounded bad so i decided to stick with my current hair