A lot of people have been professing their love for Paris lately. Barbara Walters extolled its beauty on The View today. During Barack Obama's sold-out world tour last week, the Democratic nominee engaged in a full-on man-crushing session with French president Nicolas Sarkozy. "I don't know of anyone who doesn't want to spend more time in Paris," Obama gushed to Le Pres on Friday. And both Cynthia Rodriguez and Jessica Roy, when faced with a crisis at home, saw the City of Light as the only escape option.

You know who else escaped to Paris long ago? Someone you've actually forgotten that you'd forgotten about — Mergers and Acquisitions author Dana Vachon! When we heard all this Paris talk, we knew we had to chase him down and see what he was up to. We e-mailed to ask why he'd chosen Gay Paree over gay Manhattan: "I was dating a Spanish girl and we were supposed to meet for a weekend at Le Meurice, but broke up en route," he wrote from his summer-holiday destination of Lamu, off the coast of Kenya. (He's planning on returning to Paris in the fall.) "The city was so lovely that I decided to stay and write."

We pressed further, grateful for the fact that over e-mail, he couldn't see we had turned ever-so-slightly puce. "As the dollar seems likely to get weaker before it gets stronger, its decline paradoxically becomes just another reason to leave," Vachon told us. Uh-huh. Anyway, so what's he doing in Lamu? Is that the new-new Paris? "Am here with my girlfriend, and we are working on novels," he said. "Lamu may not be the next Paris, but our bungalow overlooks Madame Peugeot's garden, and the French throw great dinner parties out on the dhows. So perhaps if you close your eyes?"

Sounds lovely, but he's missing those weekly literary parties at Scratcher! Surely they will eventually lure him back. —Mac Montandon