I need to get out more.
The rush has seemed to run away from life out here.
There's dice on the table from last night. There was some prime cocaine and spliffs and the hash cup and of course good French wine and cider, and I learned how to play dice, but wouldn't you know, I've forgotten how now.
Today is to be a garden party.
Magda has me and Tom running about arranging things around the garden to her content, heavy wood stoves, and old fold-out French benches. Olivia's set in one of the benches elegantly beneath the pear tree writing at a fever pace it seems. There's something on her mind. T-Pain's gliding about with a cigarette in hand. Arielle's gliding as well, in a magnificent canary yellow full length billowing summer dress. Everyone's drinking white wine. And Sacha. Well Sacha is just Sacha, as always. Carefree, buzzed, and a little high from the day's spliffs.
Her mother's family is all here too, two sisters and kids about our age, and husbands. Simply put, they're a beautiful family, very French. A bit of awkwardness ensued over lunch and politeness and toe-stepping and what have you, but whatever. Marion, Sacha's cousin made a quite astonishing birthday white cake garnished in fresh fruit from the garden and kiwis, and Tom and I, freaking out that we didn't get any birthday presents, panicked, and high as we were decided to rush out to the patisserie to buy pastries for everyone for dessert. Only when the cake was served did we realize our affront. You put an stoned Englishman and a blitzed California boy, roll them into a French garden party, what do you expect.
Sacha laughed it off, even if the caught breaths of some of the elders started ringing in my ears. My skin crawled for a while as the awkward was palpable in the air. The French have a unique quality of not caring and demeaning all at once sometimes if there's been an offense. Especially those that grew up French in the old style and had an eye for the way things ought to be. Me, I found comfort in the country cider, and Magda's eccentricity. What a ferocious women she is, and delicate too. It's a beauty to see those to together.
We were riding bicycles on the way back from the old house overlooking the ocean that supposedly used to belong to a German spy and his German Shepherd. It was a fortress of a thing. The old French lady Jeanne that lived there now was renting out the bedrooms individually on AIRBNB, and Price and her boyfriend Tobin were in one of them. Jeanne slept in a loft in the look-out tower. Two kittens ran and tackled about, along with a shaggy black dog that looked like a rug or a pile of clothes whenever he laid down from the heat, and then the kittens would come tumbling through and paw at his wet nose. Jeanne was Jewish and had a very precise and orderly style about the house, with old big viewing books and interesting pieces--like old robot figurines and an antique gun collection--filling the rooms. She was hesitant at us all when she returned from walking the shag rug, saying in French sarcastically (and what sounded like slightly put off) that she wasn't expecting the calvary to show up, and that she thought there would only be two Americans. Arielle rolled her eyes, and Tom was quick to point out that he was in fact British.
Anyways, riding back Arielle and Tom rode ahead, and Magda and I pretended to be on our French countryside honeymoon. We held hands as we rode and I called her darling and such, and as we passed the cornfields Magda stopped her bike and pulled her phone out. "Right here," she said in rapt focus framing the corn. "Hold it right here." And then she dove into the corn and took her clothes off, not facing the camera so that all I saw was the naked figure of a woman walking into a field of corn. It's what she does. So I took a few pictures, as I was told. A little farther down the road she handed me the phone and stripped down to nothing but her hat and rode off down the middle of the lane, me snapping all the while.
She's a girl with fire, Magda. Every morning she would come down the stairs from the girls' dormitory and into mine and Tom's room and open the windows above our heads "because it smells like boy," she said, and then she would go out onto the grass by the pear tree where we usually play boule, and she would do yoga and stretch in her undies. When the relatives were there, all the aunts and Sacha's mom went out and stretched with her and Marion. Tom and I watched from our beds through the hydrangeas feeling fat and lazy. "Should we go get a croissant then?" Tom would say.
I'd smile and nod in agreement, "An excellent plan, Tom. As always." It was Sacha's Fat Camp after all. It used to be Sacha's Summer Camp, but we changed the name.
*****
The sun is coming through the smoke and the trees by the outdoor kitchen. Matthew's manning the fire for this feast.
I never did quite shake that awkward feeling in Brittany; perpetual foot in mouth. My words escaped me. I think what made me nervous was being surrounded by people who so knew who they were. Everyone here had come into their own. Matt had his fab-lab in Panama, Tom had is playground equipment business (very Tom of him), T-Pain was between managing band tours at the moment; she'd come straight from one to Paris and slept a full day straight. Magda was between project being a badass photographer/art director around the world. Scotty was an art director, Jon was in real estate, Price! oh, that's right, she had her pizza restaurant in LA, and Arielle and Sacha were the sisters Pytka, painting and vintage selling and making clothes. I'm just a guy trying to write everything down. How does one come into their own doing that? I feel like Nick Carraway in places like this, with these amazing people; a few steps removed, a little awkward and flirting with the lax golf pro.
I had come to Brittany with a slight feeling of validation from Emma. So slight in Paris, and of course i threw it to the side and ran away. That's all slid away now.
