I hadn’t really expected to become attached to this place. Royan. In the way that France is beautiful, Royan is not. All the buildings are new, all of them built in the 1950’s and 60’s; decades that were to architecture what the 80’s were to music: Pure indulgence in all the wrong impulses. If you think of architecture as a reflection of the times, you’d have to look on the buildings in Royan with the same uncomfortable feeling that you feel when you find your old, melodramatic poetry scribbled onto pages of old notebooks. You guess it’s all right, but you would not write that kind of shit now.
Still, right now I’m riding through the town in a haze of alcohol (partly) and nostalgia (mostly). Sounds reach me through a bubble, a thin curtain of air that’s following me and vibrating with memories from the past two years. I think of the times I’ve ridden with friends through streets that looked like these. That time we almost had a fight and the fucker attacked with a golf club and we retreated. Then riding home, we found a bike and I carried it with me on my bike in a pointless feat of strength to salve the dull throb of a bruised ego.
I arrived at the coast and called dad. He answered after a few rings. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing really stuck with me. I said,
“Well, I’m here looking out to sea in your direction.”
He said,
“Well, I’m looking in your direction. Well, down at the ground. I have to look down at the ground to look in your direction.”
I had forgotten about that. The world still is round.
***
Smash-cut to the present. My flight is delayed by half an hour. This is not a terrible thing: I had just been thinking that...
I worked until the morning of my last full day in Royan… Between packing and finishing work and selling my guitar (I sold my guitar) and going out with people I had not really contemplated the fact that I was leaving behind, indefinitely, the country that I had called home for two years.
David and I met Marcus, and then Salah, in town for a last night on the town sort of thing. We started out at the Phare, a bar I didn't know that well on the Old Harbor. Pints and Mojiti. Apparently there's a craze on in the United States called "icing" someone - in other words presenting him or her with a Smirnoff Ice, which he or she is then required to chug. Marcus iced me, and since I didn't have a Smirnoff Ice to counter his (I don't quite remember the rules) I chugged. We chatted for a while about, as I recall, mostly "guy stuff" and then Marcus took off. Work in the morning. Afterward, David and Salah and I went to another place called the General Humbert's for a pint. We spent most of the rest of the evening making fun of an idiosyncratic hand gesture of the French. Now I wish I had a picture of that. It was a really good evening.
I woke up some time last night and ran into the kitchen and vomited forcefully into the sink. This morning, I woke up with a hangover, which is now technically a tradition; The last time I left La Rochelle I was feeling about the same. If we encounter a lot of turbulence, I will consider myself duly punished, and hopefully chastened, but who can tell?
This morning I got ready to go. Unpacked and repacked my suitcase.
La Rochelle airport is the smallest airport I’ve ever flown out of. It feels better, somehow. I do like the bustle of big airports – specifically I like to find little tranquil pockets to reflect and write – but now I know there’s something more welcoming, or intimate, about small ones. Normal (as the French would say).
My bag was overweight. In the end I threw away my shoes, left two bottles of wine with David, and finally got my baggage down to an acceptable weight. The place was full of English people speaking English to the airport workers. I felt annoyed. I’m not ready to leave France, and I’m not ready to no longer need to speak French. I know that because I feel a need to keep reminding myself that I’m going to see friends soon and get back to my chèrie. Still I know that because of all these other fuckers the workers are going to speak English to me. Well… I’ll keep going in French if they do.
David and I sat around and shot the breeze over cups of coffee. Talked about… nothing special – all the things we usually chat about. Then we left the bar, I joined the line, and David said he thought might bounce. A big hug, and handshake, a check-in, and a security checkpoint later and here I am.
I just checked my camera. The last picture that was taken of me in France was taken by Marcus as I chugged a Smirnoff Ice. Part of me enjoys that, but most of would prefer that I had a different last picture. So here’s me typing this:
To this truly beautiful country, and to the people I’ve met while living here: I miss you already, and I’ll see you again soon.
The plane just arrived. I thought: This is the plane that will kill me. I’m a nervous flyer. It’s weird though: The same part of me that is horrified of looking like a fool in public wants to know whether this is the plane that will kill me. So that I’ll be able to think as I’m falling “Yep. I knew it.” I’d like to be afforded the opportunity to be cynical about it. I’d like to somehow know in advance, so I wouldn’t be finding out and wrong-footed in front of everyone. Of course, I know that in the event of a crash landing my little seat on the plane would be the most perfectly anonymous place in the world, as terror tunneled our vision and we came to care so much more about our imminent death than about what the person in the seat next to is doing. I wondering if everyone is isolated in this way when they die; preoccupied with the fact of their death, a process that it is innate in us to avoid.
Anyway… time to get on the plane!
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