Ten Boobs, Eight Nipples - A Retrospective

Part 1

Finally.


Part 2

He steps, giant steps like he's walking through grass. Waves swirl and water snakes up toward his junk. You do have to wonder why the fuck the water is this cold in mid-summer. I'll assume that it's the two mountain-born rivers that flow into this estuary, assume that they didn't have time to warm up before they ended. So they're still cold; and so he walks outward, seaward, more or less homeward bound in thick astronaut steps, urinating all the while so that the salty searching fingers have to work against the warmth of the urine. Ease into it. It's a basic strategy. He walks outward, narrating it to himself.

Forcing casualness in school cafeterias, walking amongst the rows paying too much attention to his gait praying it comes across as unconcerned about what others think. Or he pretends that he's acting for the camera sometimes and watches while his actions become inexplicably wooden and forced for the benefit of a camera that isn't there. This is kind of like that. Narrating to himself as he walks, because... When people walk outwards into cold oceans, moving homeward but never reaching home, it's a big moment. Aware of himself in a way that probably obviates the big moment - and indeed, nothing much comes. This is no big deal.

I don't walk self-consciously through school cafeterias today. Well, maybe I do, but I don't care about myself. In a good way. I don't care any more than anyone else ever did. There's a guy from Iraq who eats breakfast at the next table over. His English is excellent for having studied three years. When he's teaching, he says "why" as a statement and not as a question.

"What you're eating is not good for you. Why. Because it makes you... the bad gas. But it's also full of vitamins."

He's probably right, I tell him. About it not being good for me.

Part 3

I should've written about it a few months ago. The reunion. The 3M reunion as we're calling it in honor of Matt, Mitch and Mara. Two or so weeks that snaked in somewhere between the months of March and April. A really beautiful time. I didn't write about it then, and now a lot of the viscera has faded, leaving the lasting memories: The walk out to the beach at midnight or thereabouts with beers. We discussed girlfriend stuff and personal insecurities and how we need to fucking do this again. Seriously.

And we do.

...The showing up in Bordeaux with lodging not worked-out. Crashing on the floor of Mitch's former roommate and getting a hotel the next day. The resolution not to sleep on our last night, then the realization that you can't get beer anywhere at this time of night and if we can't not-sleep and stagger around drunk then we might as well go sleep. Three on a bed, laying sideways instead of longways - heads on the bed, feet dangling. Four hours, one REM cycle. Ersatz, the only right way to do anything. The Ferris wheel, and the fair. Rain, and how I don't give a fuck about it as a matter of both personal pride and yes-to-life-ism.

Speaking of which, I forgot about the only thing that I wrote during the whole week - scribbled in my journal in a despondent moment alone in my room. Amidst the dull ache and numbness that comes from rushing around all over Southwestern France to see people and have a fun and lighthearted-but-poignant time... What I wrote. In a moment.

Part 4

I invited my brother and his wife to Seattle. I didn't invite Isaac, but I meant to. Then I thought about all the times I stepped away from my computer and came back to see he had messaged me and since logged off. Wall posts that he and other people wrote to me telling me that they missed me and how I said "I need to write them back" and never did. Fuck man. I'm a shitty friend, but it's not because I don't care. It's because I'm waiting for the right words.


It's also because, and this is a bit weird... I feel kind of despondent. Why. Because I don't want people to miss me, because I don't want those times to be over. I feel somehow paralyzed again, so that everything requires deliberation. Movement comes slowly, like walking eastward into the Atlantic against the incoming tide or doing karate forms in molasses. There's a heaviness in the limbs again, and a numbness in the extremities. There's a conspicuous lack of the impulse to say "yes" to life. I don't want to say "no" to life, but there's a strong desire to say "Hang ON! Jesus I can't hear you when you all talk at once! I just got home, can't I chill for a second!?" to life. This is why I don't answer. And this also explains...

Part 3

...what I wrote in my journal back in March/April, which was this:

"This is a moment I want to grab, smother, suffocate, live in. I can't listen to songs brimful with excitement about the future, songs that say 'Yes' to life or 'Bring it on; I'm ready!' There's a smell of decay like the soft smell of leaves after a rain, and it makes me miss this moment before it's gone. We need to do this every year."

So, I guess what I'm saying while I'm feeling brave enough to write it is that I fucking miss everyone. People from last year, this year. Everyone from my time in France. Other people too, but in the ocean right now, as I turn back having not had my big moment and walk back toward the beach where Lee and Laura and I came last year, I miss people that I met in France and haven't seen in a while. Remembering that first time, and how we saw five women with no tops on, and how one of them was tanned, all over, to the exact color of her nipples so that they were perfectly camouflaged against her body.

And right now, walking into the ocean and not having a big moment is fine with me. I'm feeling nostalgic, but for the first time in my life I don't really want to return to those times. I want new times. I'm happy where I am, and happy about where I'm going. I need to see everyone that I'm missing so much right now, but I don't need the time back. We'll do new shit, and it will be righteous. And I'm looking forward to it.

Part 2

I don't know why I mentioned the ocean. Maybe it's just that walking out into the freezing water reminded me of that time with Lee and Laura, and that memory launched me ping-ponging through dozens of others in minutes. Maybe the memories swirl and pierce in a way exactly like the icy water at the mouth of the Gironde Estuary, and that try as you might to wade through them and move forward, it will be slow going and giant ginger steps. Maybe.  

Part 5

We fucking need to do this again. Seriously.

What I remember about driving in Tunisia

Inauspicious. We were less than five minutes into our adventure on the streets of Sousse when the car ran out of fuel. Our rental agent had given us the car, empty of fuel, and explained that you can't leave cars sitting around with full tanks of gas. He had advised us to get to the nearest gas station before we set out, but before we could get there the car sputtered and died right where the side road spat cars into the anarchy of a Tunisian main street. I stepped out of the car, apologetic, hands out, supplicating. I was nervous to be where I was, in the situation I was in. In your home country, you never hear anything but the horror stories about other countries; the reasons to stay home. I think now I'd rather break down in Sousse than in parts of Jacksonville. Helping hands descended on the car from all directions; one man filled my gas tank with fuel he'd siphoned from his own. He asked for 4 dinars for the trouble and the fuel - more would have been fair. Another man approached me as I wrung my hands on the side of the road, asking me where I was from. I was from America. This news delighted, and I was welcomed heartily to his country.

A few minutes later, we were fully fueled and climbing the pock-marked hill to our rented apartment. As I was in France, I was nervous about driving here. Nervous about having signed over 1000 dinars as a deposit in a city with such a high incidence of scratched and dented vehicles. Our car, however, was pretty shitty in its own right... the shocks were shot - I can only imagine that this is a common problem in Sousse.

 We drove past a half-starved waif of a cat scavenging from a dumpster. Ooh, kitty! Rebecca purred.

Oh... donkey! I replied. An ass-drawn cart was parked in front of our apartment. I'll have to be careful about those.

***

In the cities, the lines on the road are suggestions. The direction of traffic is taken in the same spirit. You drive on the right, as in America, as in France. But you should expect to see the occasional car or moped speeding toward you in your own lane. The rightmost side of the road seems to be reserved for these; salmon traveling upstream. If you're used to driving in a high school parking lot after school, you're ready. The roads in Tunisia are like the markets: It's anarchy, with everyone out for his or herself. Unregulated, unbridled. The only intervention from the police seems to be at the roundabouts or on the highways, when you may be stopped as you pass, presumably to be checked for papers. We were stopped once, as we traveled back from Hammamet.

- Est-ce que vous êtes français? The officer asked.
- Non, Américain. The officer's face brightened. He continued in French.
- I've never met an American before. When I've spoken to Americans on chat rooms and things, none of them seem to know where Tunisia is!
- Well, we are living in France at the moment.
- Oh! Well, I wish you a good day, and a good stay in our country.
- Thank you.

***

- I'm trying to think of how I'd describe this if I were to write about it, like maybe later for my blog.
- Okay.
- I feel like, the lanes are polite suggestions but it's up to you sorta thing.
- Yeah.
- Even the direction of traffic.

Rebecca and I are driving along the coastal highway in Sousse. The Mediterranean sparkles impossibly blue. Yesterday, Monday, we drove south to El Djem, then inland to Kairouan. Today, we are following the coast northwards. In my mind, a half formed quest to capture the olive groves of Northeast Tunisia in their glory. This part of the world is beautiful, with gently rolling hills, and groves of olive trees with their curious silvery-green color.

We drove up the coast to Hammamet, a town gently dismissed by our landlord as "touristique". It was, and beautiful. I helped some fishermen pull their boat to shore, and learned and then forgot the Arabic word for "C'mon!" as it was shouted to galvanize the group to collective effort. We changed into our bathing suits in the shelter of the Hammamet fishing boats and plunged into the Mediterranean.

I lost my wallet on the beach in Hammamet. I would have driven away without it, but the parking monitor approached to demand a dinar for having parked where I did. Annoyed, I fumbled for my wallet. Annoyance turned quickly to panic as I realized I couldn't find my wallet. I ransacked the car, then stumbled blindly onto the beach, retracing our footprints. I searched among the boats, and finally came to where we had gone swimming. Rebecca went back to the restaurant where we'd shared a bottle of rosé. Finally, on the point of tears, I spotted my sand-colored wallet lying in the sand. Back at the car, the parking monitor laughed at my relief and gave me a hug.

Good thing I came, huh? How about a dinar for helping you find the wallet?

I gave him four. It was a good thing he came along.