When I had finished my bartender education I went to Paris and worked in a bar for a couple of months. During the daytime I used to take long walks in the city. One day, in Place de Pompidou, there was a big crowd watching something in the square. The attraction was a fakir , torturing himself in all possible ways.

He had an enormous body, red and sweaty, filled with scars from his practising with broken glass, nails and fire. Suddenly he interrupted his self-torturing and started to walk around, closely watching each one in the circle of audience. The fakir stopped in front of me, pointed his finger in my direction and shouted: "LA ROUGE".

I looked around hoping to find somebody else as red-haired as me. When he dragged me into the circle I realized that he wanted me as an assistant. So there I was standing as a weight on the back of this enormous man while he was pressed against nails and broken glass. I could feel his warm, sweaty skin under my naked feet. I could feel him struggling to breathe. I did not want to hurt him, but what could I do.