Femmes: Elysia

(At Hotel Fernando III)

The ways things work out man, I swear. It's like a goddamn--fuck, I don't know the word.  No well, I do.  I've probably got it somewhere, but I just can't think in this Spanish heat. I remember it was 41 degrees Celsius when we stopped in Cordoba for dinner and a look around.  That was yesterday.  I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but let me tell you, it's fucking hot.  Even by the pool now, it's fucking hot.  I'm sweating in this umbrella shade.  There's no wind, the air is still.  I can't imagine if everything had gone according to plan though, and not meeting Elysia out here.  Can you imagine?  Alone in Sevilla?  In this heat in some shitty AirBnb private room with some stranger next door and in the living room and the kitchen every day?  No thank you.

I was so worried about money.  Now look at me.  At a 4-star hotel in the old town, laid out in the umbrella shade by the roof-top pool, old tile roofs and bell-towers all around me, and some beautiful British slag at my side.  Sure, there's nothing in the way of sex between us, despite all efforts, but still, she's fucking good company, it's incredible.  I haven't felt down a day since we'd met up in Barcelona, and then too, the drive to Sevilla.

And to think: I'd wanted to kill myself in Andalusia a few weeks back.  It's the randomness in life that leads the way for me, not the safety of routine.  It's what keeps me alive, and always stunning beauties in proximity.  Like this other London girl in the pool with her pretty friend.  They're not too posh, not like Elysia, I wonder what side of town they're from.

And of course the Spanish girls.  God, if someone told me being alone kept you young, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.  Adventurers always aged well.  Writers too. Or they died young.


[stop]


Strange, I've barely moved today, absolutely no plans and it seems the words are just sweating out of me, about whatever.  Maybe nothing obviously, but it's a good feeling, like all my worries have melted away, and I'm young again, head in a cloudless sky.

(I'm writing to fill pages again--)

Femmes: Irene

She says to me,
"You know you're crazy right."

I say to her,
"Tell me about it, lady."

I've known this for years.
I'm also--

And the sailorly bartender
Barkeep from El Vaso del Oro
with Irene.

That look she gave me
for what might be the last
time I ever see her,
who knows,
but the look;

I'll not be able to stop
thinking about her anytime soon.
The rush will make me
remember things,
I'm sure.

Like the French girls
on the metro at San Marti,
and the way Irene flips her hair,

Femmes: Biscuits

I'm a wreck.  What am I doing.  How did I get here.  Let's say it's serendipity.  No, I use that word too often.  As the greats would say, this is fate.  I'm simply destined to be tortured by beautiful women.

Now even here in Barcelona, I find myself somehow in bed with a bombshell that wants nothing to do with me.  I should've known.  Six months ago she wanted to marry me for a green card.  Now she's here, sharing a shitty AirBnb in outer Barcelona with me.  We're close to nothing so we rent a scooter.  The scooter's actually the best thing to happen thus far on the trip.  Her idea, and not that bad of one. In fact, it's been an excellent idea.  I haven't been on a scooter since Bali.

She's weird and English. She doesn't drink coffee or tea, only coke, and she calls cookies biscuits.

Femmes: Defender

Emmanuelle drove me to the train station early in her old Land Rover Defender.  I had a ticket on the first train through Lamballe at 7:40 which would take me to Rennes and then onto Paris where I had to change stations to catch my train to Barcelona.  I knew I had a long day ahead of me, but frankly I was too drowsy to care or pay it much heed in the moment.

The last ten days had been that special kind of dream in the daytime; a weed-smoked bliss of beaches and bike rides through the countryside and the old villages and cider and moule frites and intriguing women and cavalier gentlemen of the best sorts (photographers, writers, designers, creatives, entrepreneurs, band managers, models, bakers, real estate ragers, the works, all ragers really), and a proper French family garden party, and spliffs, spliffs, spliffs, and hash and the best cocaine and the best molly, absinthe, excellent wine, home-cooked cake and galette, and oh yes, the cheese of course, and the red poppies and all the damned magic.

Emmanuelle's Defender sounds a little like my Dad's Ford Courier from when he used to drive me to school early in the morning before going into the office.   This drive is remarkably different though.  We're rushing through Brittany, the early morning sun poking through the clouds by the sea, the tide filled in all the way and into the wetlands.  It's quite a different picture than on the way in with Sacha and Tom and Matthew and the other girls, Arielle and Magda and T-Pain in the trail car, when the tide was out and everything was mud and boats dry on their side on the flats.

It was just me and Emmanuelle.  I had grown up with her daughters, Arielle and Sacha. I'd known them since high school, I used to go to parties at her house up in the hills in Los Feliz.  Her daughter had taken me to prom, and so of course I knew they had horses growing up.  She still had horses in fact, at her ranch in Ojai.  Driving, I saw a black horse alone in a wet green field, and I asked Emmanuelle if she ever had one, a black horse.

She tells me she had in fact, her most beloved, and she tells me of the day it died, "...and she looked at me with her old eyes that day, and I knew, I knew she was saying goodbye to me and when I came close she nuzzled me softly with her nose, and it felt like something went for her to me that day, something transferred.  I felt it.  And she was gone in the morning.  She looked so peaceful."

She tells me how she missed  her and how she cared for her and gave her the best things in life.  She tells me about the day her cat died too, and even in the drowsy morning it's ridiculously apparent that Emmanuelle holds in her heart the most precious kind of respect and beautiful love that I've ever seen in this life.  There's shades of it in her daughters, but to be with her, alone with Emmanuelle in her Defender, it's such a jolt of goodness, like unfiltered coffee.  She's straight French espresso, an absolute delight.  Simply the way she talks and the youthful passion she has for everything dear is enough to make me wide awake for the coming journey ahead.

We roar into the sleepy town of Lamballe with five minute to spare, but get turned around on the skinny winding cobblestone roads and Emmanuelle pulls over to ask a couple of old geezers the way to the station.  They oblige her starry-eyed.  She has that effect on people.  It's a small station, there's only one track and I see the train come to a stop as we pull up.  "We made it! We just made it!" exclaims Emmanuelle.  "Hurry! Hurry! Safe travels dear!"  She's such a darling.

"Thanks for everything Emmanuelle!  Thanks for letting us tear around your house for the week, and for all the berries and adventures and the secret beach and just everything.  I had such a good time! Seriously thank you, thank you.  A million times."  I put my hands together towards her and can't help but smile before I turn and rush off to the platform with my backpack bouncing on my shoulders and my bag in tow.


*****


There is an old man at the train station; two bags, two tired eyes.  He orders a cafe at the cafe, no croissant, no pain au chocolate, just a small espresso.  Renne.  He eyes the schedule board with his tired eyes  and the train from Voie 7 at 9:05.  A small squad of soldiers passes, four of them in military fatigues and freshly shaved faces, fingers just above the triggers of their fully automatic FAMAS rifles.  One of them, the youngest one, looks tired too.

The old man with the espresso in hand goes tense in the neck for a second, stands closer to his bags and looks hard at his coffee as the soldiers pass.  The oldest looking one looks him up and down without stopping.  He's not tired at all.  He's vigilant after the latest attacks.  Everyone's a little on edge after Bastille Day.

The man's train is on time, and the man is already on the platform waiting dutifully.  He gets on at the proper car and takes the seat on his ticket that's been reserved.  He puts one bag in the overhead carriage and keeps the smaller bag in his lap, hugging it just casually enough so as not be awkward as he stares out the window at the other boarding and those making their way  down the platform to the station.  There's a wishful longing in his eyes as he watches them walk away.  They're probably going to have a great day, the man thinks to himself, and he's jealous.  He doesn't cry, not yet.

The man had gotten quite good at disguising his desperation and the emotion in him in the mirror at home.  He had mastered his face, just as they'd told him to do.

A younger man, younger than the man who had mastered his face, sits down next to the old man as the train pulls away.  It's a plop, and it startles the master.

The young man starts at the startle and looks the master up and down, his loose pants and his shirt and his arms clutched tight around his bag, but not with eyes like the soldier's.  "Desolée. Pardon," says the young man in French, but his accent is not French, it's something else, and his French sounds like shit.  "Tu parle anglais?" he asks.  He's American.

The old man did in fact speak English.  Yes, he spoke English and French as well among other things.  "I do..." says the master cautiously.

"You much of a talker? asks the young man.

No, but the old man hesitates.  Despite everything they told him, all the rules, all the outcomes, the master looks at the young man with the American accent and sees something familiar, something he used to possess way back once upon a time.  It's camaraderie.  It's congenial interest in other people and a knob on the master's oven nudges a little and clicks.  He hadn't had a face-to-face conversation in weeks, nothing without some deep gravity behind it in months even.  He'd never been a man of vices and his drug of choice used to be small talk.  He used to talk to everyone.  He used to always make friends on the train.  The master's heart jumps at the prospect, and that surprises him, "You're in luck," he says.  "I've just had my coffee."

"Fancy that.  I've just had mine too," says the young man.

For a second the old man isn't thinking what was in his bag.  He's not thinking about all the reasons he's supposed to hate the young man.  He's not thinking about the hatred that the young man is supposed to have for him, the hatred they told him about, and in that second, there was a flash of light in the old man's heart and something began to grow; curiosity.

Who was this young man? "What is your name?" asked the old man.

The young man holds out his hand. "I'm Brian. What about you?"

"My name is Abel."

"Where you from Abel?"

The old man hesitates.  Is this a trap?  Best not risk it.  "I am from Turkey."

"Turkey," says the young man thoughtfully.  "Istanbul?"

"Yes. Istanbul." The old man had been to Istanbul.  His memory of the city comes rushing back, the streets, the markets, the summer nights looking out across the Bosphorus Strait with the woman that he would marry.  The mother of his child.  They had been so young then, not unlike the young man sitting next to him, with eyes that darted in wonder not in fear.  It was a different time then, the old man told himself.  But then again, it's always a different time isn't it.

"Always wanted to go to Istanbul," says the young man.  "Never got that far east though. Got as far east as Prague.  What's your favorite thing about Istanbul?"

The old man already knew.  "At night, when the city is all lights.  Sitting by the water at night with my wife.  But she wasn't my wife yet. It was the most beautiful thing.  I was so happy then.  We were young, like you.  How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"I was not much older than you when I visited Istanbul.

"I'll be twenty-nine in January."

"That is six months away."

"I'm practically thirty. Time goes so fast nowadays."

"It only gets faster, Brian. This I know."

"Must be nice with someone to share it with.  I wish I had what you have.  My girl just left me, but maybe one day I'll get it right."

The old man gripped his bag a little tighter.  "My wife is dead."



[stop]

Femmes: The Performer

It's hotter than it should be.
I'm probably higher than I should be too.

The flies have moved in.
The trees in the distance seem like a stuttering stream.

No, not stuttering,
No, shimmering.

White noise,
White water in the breeze.

Matthew is playing the piano in the oldest part of the house,
and outside the shade is slowly working it's way over the hydrangeas.

I guess we're going surfing, Matthew and I.
How lovely.  I've never surfed in Europe before.

It's different here.

There once was a man not unlike every other man,
And just like every other man, he was different.

I wonder what he thinks about.
I wonder if I'm just writing for show now.

Femmes: Dominos

I don't know what it is about the sun room in the morning that draws me in when I wake with the donkey brays.  One could say the peace and the quiet, easily, but the silence is so alive in the countryside.  I can't remember the last time I heard doves cooing, or the loud hum-buzz of the flies and the insects out here.  A school of sharp chirps carries on outside like you never heard in the city and I wonder if they ever think of their cousins roughing it in the concrete and stone forest.  In Paris, ah.

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.

Femmes: Chanel Slanted

What this is.  This is what a moth would call the light.  It's an energy here, a brightness that all life turns to face and wonder in awe.  Chez Sacha de Bretagne, an old French oasis by the sea on a cold breeze, a super gravity of strictly intriguing individuals.  I'll have to tell you all about them sometime darling.

For now all you need to know is that Sacha is an icon in the tiny French towns around Plevenon.  Her birthday is always fireworks and celebration for Bastille Day and in the town square children come up shy and nervous inquiring, "Qui est Sacha?"

I jump at their youth and my high, and my thoughts freeze so I don't say anything, I just point.  That's the point.

We're all buzzing from moule and galette and French wine, except Jon who's sober and drinks about twelve espressos a day to counter the cravings.  He's a fucking wild sport that guy, always ready to rage, always ready to dance and get weird in the rave lights, and always stone-cold sober.  I could learn a lot from this man.  I should really swing by his AA commitment in Venice when I'm back in California.  It's a five minute bike ride from my house on Thursdays, and I could use some good wild conversation back home.  Living seems so bland now, looking back, with the trends and hip society and the next big thing.  LA is a city where tradition died with the first street cars, killed by the money that runs it.

No one goes to LA to see the old buildings, to take in the history and the culture.  People go to LA to see famous people, or to be famous people, or to get a line on that money that's running things.

Scott knows.  He knows a lot more than I do, that's for sure.  He's seen it, the foreverness of losing someone.  He's from LA, he's seen it.  We talked stupidly over a font for the cover of a book I wrote.  I somehow landed on Chanel Slanted, a messy-as-all-hell typeface.  He thought I was cool because I  pretended to be a writer.  I thought he was cool because well, he killed it.  He's a graffiti artist, but what he's really is a designer.  He plays on Illustrator for fun and to pass the time sometimes.  I think I read somewhere that the best way to learn is to put yourself in another person's shoes.  That's how I learned I wasn't a designer, not really.  All the people I thought of as designers, designed.  They worked design, their passion was design.  They constantly had projects on the mind, and with nothing else better to do, they designed.  I always tried to write in those moments.

And so it's unfortunate--no it's silly to think that I put myself through an entire design program on a whim that lasted two years, just for the hell of it really.   I wasn't bad, and it was all very interesting, and I made decent work, but perhaps the most important thing I learned was that I wasn't a designer.  I only really did work when I had to.  And then I'd write, just like I'm doing now.  Wasn't that the point?

No, a castle sits out at the end of the point, off in the far distance; a blip on the horizon that nonetheless dominates a difficult focus of everything around at the beach.  I'm at the beach now.  The old man is out there again on the low tide, polishing his boules on the hard sand by the water, petonking, plombaying.  He plays by himself.  The children build moats by the breakers and slides in the reeds by the stream.  We smoked a spliff over there earlier and I thought to myself, sinking in the sand, that I must be dreaming, I must be.  Everything I hear is wind in the reeds and waves crashing, and I'm surrounded by only the most beautiful women, the most interesting and topless and of course delightfully English Tom with his stories of the weimaraners and mushrooms foraged at the old north castle by his home and shelfing the best drugs in London.  Whenever he mentions Derbyshire it reminds of Claire.  I still can't escape her here.  Maybe I really don't need to.  Maybe everyone runs away from the past because they're afraid of pain.  I don't know, I've always been a masochist.  There's something romantic and dizzying in my existence at the moment, it's a Dalian dreamscape.

Life's now a towel soaked in spilled champagne.