Sunday, April 1, 2012

Another Day In Saint-Tropez


22/8/11

Another day in Saint-Tropez, and it seems the sun feels compelled to burn this fucker down.

Think there’s merit in its motivation?

Like an activist hellbent on bringing down the circus tent? No. I always found most radical rhetoric retarded. I mean... I could try to get it, but I’m too caught up in the spectacle. Besides, Hartford never put a stop to the circuit. And it wouldn’t have, even if Noah himself had tossed a molotov beneath that Big Top...

On top of that, I’m an avid advocate of hedonism, who the fuck am I to say when enough’s enough?

How about when the exploits become as oppressive as they are excessive? Some would find the detachment here unpalatable.

I’m sure they’re not all blood diamonds... And, if the sum of those ‘Some’ have constructively attempted to turn attention towards the tragedy, then I commend them. But, if they’ve just decided to bitch about it behind email chains, plumes of smoke and fumes of smug at corner cafes from hemispheres away, then they can shut the fuck up and consider themselves the real tragedy. You know what I find excessive? Masturbatory morality. Or better yet, attempting to coerce compassion from others when your own is as fickle as the flame that lights that American Spirit. The American Spirit that’s propping its ‘butthole’ for Joe Camel’s sandy shaft when it’s not making a Manhattan Transfer with the one on your face. The Joe Camel with the billion dollar bank account you feed. I think I saw him at the Plage des Graniers getting blown by Christian Audigier. Heard that fancy designer’s got a taste for the shittier side of the american spirit...

Yeah, I heard Audigier spent a million euro in one night here... Jesus though, wow, how jaded have you become?

The struggle to save the world was abandoned long ago in the struggle to save myself.

Boo-fucking-hoo. How recycled is that rhetoric?

Either way, back to the Big Top. The people love the entertainment. Here, they are the entertainment. I’m coming to love the entertainment. But, I can’t afford to be the entertainment...

You don’t have to shine to be a star.

True. I can’t think of a better place to find myself done up in the dirt. A better place to make a king-sized bed of a humble floor. A more satiating scene in which to go hungry.

A more hilarious place to be homeless?

Ha!

Fucking Saint-Tropez.

This city is stacked with beds a mortgage couldn’t afford. Serves spreads that could render sultans insolvent. And built on dirt that sells like diamond dust. An irony pipe to the jaw; the Sisters of Fate really stroked the funny boner on this one... What the fuck?

Astrono-me through anomaly.

Yeah, what the hell am I doing here? I must have been a golden ticket holder.

Well, Chuck U. Pharley...

But at this extravaganza, the nose-bleed section is for the VIPs. The altitude is chemically induced via white-line transit, and it seems the majority are granted access. A mass cast of Very Important Performers. My golden ticket only grants me ground level access, from where I mostly watch The Show like Galileo.

A celestial circus. But these lions are truculent tricks, and their tamers are pricks with wallets for whips. At least the ones I’ve heard throw threats and thousands. I’ll reserve my judgement for the rest...

Even so, the display has me hooked like a gaff. Ensnared, on a barb that tickles and tortures. Sometimes I can’t help but wince. I’d be amazed if MTV hasn’t already made an attempt to capture this social carnage for another gut-fucking ‘reality’ series.

Yeah, but here there are no cameras. No directors. No scripts. This is a reality. You know it because you’re a part of it. That’s the real gut-fucker...

I see a deity in Dior step from a boutique and onto the curb as I stroll down the street with my liver in an ocean and my head in the clouds. She’s gorgeous. Her body is Aphrodisian. A high-heeled Helen of Troy with her hands on her hips and her face like one to launch a thousand pricks on million dollar yachts. I know this because I see them clamor like clowns at an auction in her atmosphere. But this one was stolen and sold long ago. I know this because I see her Paris parade his high-priced sense of entitlement around in said atmosphere like he just made it on television for all the right reasons. She turns, asserts her gaze, bares her teeth and barks at him in the most vicious tone I’ve ever imagined could be spit from velvet lips. Her voice is vitriol and her message is murderous. That atmosphere has gone ominous.

“I sed zee fecking black one Tony! I’m fecking tired and I vant go back to ze hotel you fecking idiot! Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!” She swings her purse forward at him like a tethered tomahawk. “Pezzo di merda!” Her scream rips through the air like a chainsaw.

Paris quickly cowers like a cunt before he can eventually muster resolve. He then slowly marches back into the shop to fix his seven thousand dollar mistake. An effort to keep her claws from binging on his blood. They briefly retract.

An exchange that’s beyond enthralling. Sometimes, I can’t help but join The Sisters in their chorus of cachinnation.

I take another pull from the quickly warming bottle in my hand, and glance rearwards to see Old Man X five meters behind me. I stop beneath an awning for a moment to observe the phenomenon. I seem to see him almost every day. He’s got seventy-plus years behind him, and seven billion-plus dollars beneath him. Or, so I imagine. Bills endlessly fly from his crooked fingers in flocks. And my attention is never taken by the presence of Old Man X himself, but the god-crafted creations that circumnavigate his existence like desperate planets. Subservient seraphs from outer space that never abandon their obsequious orbit. And their gravity is ocular. There are six of them. And they may have been engineered in Eden. Three blonds and three brunettes. They wear costly strips of pearl and cream colored dresses, that cling to their figures like the fabric itself is fixated with the flesh. A delicacy of divinity.

One could understand... Like harmoniums in the Sirens Of Titan...

And every strip of dress on those Sirens, as well as the Sirens themselves are bought and paid for by Mr. X himself. I heard his millions unto eventual billions began accruing back in Russia before “Mr. Gorbacahev” tore down that wall. Obviously, a curious enterprise given the circumstances. Though the look on his face would lead you to believe that the majority of his efforts were unwillingly exhausted under Gulag direction. He dons a chronic rictus of repugnance like every day of his life has begun with somebody spraying hot diarrhea onto his cold Cheerios. He devoured the meal in spite anyway. He’s got the paunch to prove it. And he snaps like a doberman at servers and bartenders to keep that belly bloated in a manner that suits him. They all accommodate like sycophants and feed the monster behind that belly, hoping he’ll spare some change.

What a dick...

Yeah, but who’s the bigger beast? The beast himself, or the sum of those who engorge his growing appetite with their unconditional servitude? And who the fuck am I to judge the guy? Maybe he’s seen some shit.

Relinquishing humanity to personal history? Talk about trite...

Yeah... He shuffles and huffs down the street. Scowling, like an indignant walking dead. Escorted past Peter and The Pearlies with angels on his arms.

Seems a bit hot for Heaven, doesn’t it?

Per reminder from Mr. Craig Finn in my headphones, I’m trying to “stay positive”...

Old man X is panting like that doberman beneath the cooking sun, and soaking that expensive white suit in sweat. It seems to peel away, towards the ground in it’s soured weight. His skin seems to follow suit. Heavy and saturated with decades of UV's, cigar smoke, and vodka. Designer shades shield red eyes. Sixty sexy fingers caress the decay like it were Adonis instead. And I’m forced to do more morbid math as I question if this drooping Ruskie has had anything more than just a stiff drink in the last five years, sans the early onset of rigor mortis.

He’s had to, his big white lines are probably laced with that little blue pill.

Regardless, six? Even if with twelve inches of zombie dong between those arthritic knees, that would still only be two inches between them. ... And I’ve never felt so opposed to holding a stale baguette...

First of all, gross... Stop before you throw up all that good wine. Second of all, you should know good and well by now that this place epitomizes the ‘notion’ that the size of your dick is measured in dollars.

Yeah, well, if that’s the case, my colt cock on this stallions’s race track is another testament to the anomaly that is my extended presence here...

I catch my dim-lit reflection in the store front window just earlier at my back, beneath the awning. I’m starting to sweat through the third shirt I own. A black, cotton one with a large Hurley ‘H’ on the front--a treasure I came across in the days when my over-employed efforts for a broadcasting company back in San Diego were compensated with left over swag and a stiff, gold-choked middle finger from the big boss upstairs.

Wouldn’t be surprised if he was here now, with said finger choking the throttle on one of his palatial yachts...

Yeah, fuck that guy... Either way, if black weren’t the only choice, it would have been a bad one...

The chalky grey shorts that hang on my boney hips are a prize from a party I threw years ago at my overly humble abode in college. Scavenged and forced to fit their oversized adopter, they’ve come to look faded and tired in their service. They’re falling apart. And my travel ravaged skate shoes struggle to stay strung together themselves. They look and smell like they’ve spent six months in a rathole with Hussein. The glue is slowly losing it’s will to hold. But I love them nonetheless. Grime coated and all. They’ve carried me through more countries than any pair I think I’ll ever own--thank you, Mr. Dyrdek.

‘Slovenly suited’ has certainly become your style. Thirteen months on the travel circuit has really taken it out of you. You are officially this party’s pauper...

I’m just going to chalk it up to the juxtaposition...

I spin around slowly as I continue my climb up the sidewalk. An attempt to make visual validation of the aforementioned ‘notion’. I feel like a cheap center piece on a roulette wheel in The Monte Carlo Cas. But this bank’s unbreakable. As is the scenery. Continuous circular streams of “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” come to fruition. The current’s forced by currency and I’m dizzied by it’s flow. Gold and gems glint beneath the sun and flash and twist like this corridor’s a kaleidoscope. Diamonds and pearls swing from limbs like grand chandeliers. Lamborghinis and Ferraris rev idled engines in streets they can barely fit on. Throwing waves of heat into the autoclave that already is this narrow space between towering two story buildings. The unabashed passengers and drivers present themselves like they’re royalty for the whole world to see. It’s a fucking parade. Those on foot click-clack up and down the cobble stone in thousand dollar shoes. Hand bags worth more than I’ve ever had in my life hug hips that sway with each step. Queens collect in droves towards the wealthiest kings. Princes yammer and yelp like half-jacked off dogs contending for the bustiest queens. Designer suits and dresses scream as loud as they can to commandeer attention. It’s a shouting match. Everybody is trying to be heard. Ostentation has become the ordinary. My guts attempt to contend with the volume by way of an unnerving growl. I take a look at the baguette in one hand, and the half-pink bottle of booze in the other--my valued possessions. Fuck, I’m hungry...

Got a feeling that the ‘unnerving’ end of that extends far beyond an empty belly. Jealous? Upset? Pseudo-penis envy?

Thanks, but to be honest, I’ve never had any complaints in that department. And in regards to the former two inquiries, I think I’m just amazed. Seems like the biggest worry these people might have is which color to coat their Maserati. Which ten thousand dollar watch to wear. Which six thousand dollar bottle of champagne to throw down their throats. And how many other citizens see the results of those choices made. Any worry later met with anything less than pluperfect satisfaction, erupts Mt. Temper Tantrum. These laneways are swarming with spoiled brats. The only rotten things in this pristine place.

Yikes... Tous ne sont pas comme ca. And I’m sure there might be more to it than that...

Yeah, Townshend’s fucking “Eminence Front” playing out right in front of my eyes...

Huh. Something told me the cachinnation was equally matched with disconcertion...

I don’t know. I suppose it’s just strange to think four months ago, the streets I strolled through were congested with ‘concerns’ of the probability of an evening meal, affording medicine for an illness, or putting a roof over a one room home with three walls that worked less like a colander.

These size thirteen DC’s took me over sweltering sidewalks in Bali and Bangkok that looked like Northridge circa ’94. Rubbled. Ridden with decay. Shoeless, far-from-spoiled children ran rampant over debris laden roads clogged with chaos and hot exhaust from a seeming two thousand two-stroke engines. Kids cut flawlessly past mo-ped traffic, rabid dogs and vendors like mini Heisman winners. Sailing over busted slabs of concrete where their tired comrades slept on sheets of prime cardboard real estate next to piles of slow-roasting dog shit. Always with smiles and laughter on their faces...

Even the crippled geriatrics they blasted past with more fingers than teeth were smiling...

I once made a double day venture into an Indonesian hospital--on account my traveling companion’s bum luck with a possibly rabid animal--that felt like a trip to a Wes Craven film studio. Disarray coated in crimson. Screaming infants. A woman dying in the cot behind me. A young girl with a seething infection on her foot that looked like it had spent six months growing into a purple mass at the bottom of the Red Sea, wailing, while doctors painted it in antiseptic. Her mother stood by her side clutching her hand with tears welling in her eyes. And while a creeping dizziness began to overtake me, I questioned how the fuck the foot got like that in the first place.

Suppose it’s a bit difficult to get seconds on first-aid in the third world?

And even amidst all of it--as I stepped outside for a breath of less-than-fresh Denpasar air--I came to find women, some more-than-fresh in mourning, with smiles on their faces, offering prayers to all those who crossed their paths. Paragons of a people who have seemed to find so much inner peace amongst so much outer strife. A people still so rich in faith while left destitute in so many other ways. I mean, it’s no Rwanda or Sudan, but Jesus...

Maybe they find it in the beauty that surrounds them...

Yeah? Well, then what the fuck seems to be the problem here? This place is like fucking Atlantis. Crystal-blue water, sunshine, sand. And yeah, I’d be full of it, not to admit, “tous ne sont pas comme ca là-bas...” Every place on the planet has it’s share of malevolent assholes. I saw my share of them in Indonesia as well. People trying to rip you off. People trying to rip off each other. Still, there’s something to be said for the majority of the attitudes I experienced there. A resilience in spirit amongst poverty that’s baffling in contrast to some of the discontent I’ve experienced in this posh paradise.

I hear Lupe in my headphones. “This world is such a fucked up place...”

I know... If I think about it too much, it can start to make me sick... But I can’t help but wonder what makes it all so different. How some can have so much and still be so fucking pissed about it. So unsatisfied...

Hold on, I need a break...

I step into the nearest corner store--they’re getting to know me there--and make the most of the five Euros left in my pocket. Another four Euro bottle of vino. Something to wine down the possibly pending upset. It’s too hot to get distraught now.

Besides, it’s Saint-Tropez, it’s beautiful. Just head to the top of the citadel where nobody is. Sit on the wall, relax, and watch the boats go by. See the world through rose colored bottles.

I exit the shop and begin my ascent. Up the narrow cobbled alleyways where the sun fights to crawl down the walls to the cooler earth. I break free of the town and hit the dirt track up to the citadel. A fortress from the 15th century that sits high on the cliffs, overlooking water on three sides. A sea-side cemetery rests in peace below. It’s been there for centuries. I am a speck on the timeline of this shoreline. I take a deep breath as I begin to hike the skyward trail.

And the student of science in me attempts to understand the former query pragmatically:

Obviously not enough booze in the blood yet...

*Some people just become incredibly used to eating grand meals with a silver spoons everyday. And a slip below anything than what has become standard, seems an offensive change--cheated out of what they feel they’re entitled to. Others just become incredibly used to being hungry. And anything that seems to stave said hunger for any moment of time, seems a blessing.

That was your scientific pragmatism?

Well, I was going to go into something on dogs, Pavlovian Response, and behavioral/cognitive development, but it’s thirty-three degrees, and I’m about a full bottle of Rose down--not enough to let this go, but just enough to make certain concepts hard to grasp--and I’m not sure if the examples would hold any water. Fuck it. It’s basically flaccid theory on conditioning. On how it’s possible that some can take so much for granted. On how some cannot even realize what they have and still want so much more.

Like you’ve never taken anything for granted...

I know. If I think about it too much, it can start to make me sick...

I arrive at the top of the trail, just atop the citadel’s inner rock wall. It’s thick and ancient, but only at my waist in it’s highest sections. I follow it around to the cliff above the cemetery, and find a seat on the wall in the shadow of the citadel’s tower. The air is cooler up here. And the slow rolling breeze off of the sea fills my lungs and lightens my senses. It’s slightly intoxicating.

I’m sure the wine helps too.

The water is glowing cobalt beneath the neon infusing sun, hanging high in the sky. The cobalt turns turquoise as it thins and seeks to steal space from the pale shore--revealing shallow rocks and reef below, in it’s clarity. Bronzed belles lay below like living effigies on the sand at Plage De Graniers. Like sculpted stars, radiating all that is their amatory glory. Red-tiled roof tops pepper lush, green hills that roll off the edge of this Eden. Sea birds float on the air like otherworldly entities. A bewildered smile stretches across my face. I take off my headphones for a moment. It’s quiet. Just the breeze to softly stir the ambiance.

“This world is such a beautiful place...”

Nobody else hears it. Just me. I’m alone up here. Happy right now, but alone. It’s a Chris McCandless kind of moment as my mind attempts to manifest images from memories. Names and faces I’d love to share this all with. I miss the friends I left behind... I wish they were here. In their absence, I realize how lucky I am to have them and how much they mean to me.

I tilt the bottle in my favor once again. A venture to dilute any unpleasantness evoked in recalling instances when I may have taken the time we shared for granted...

Told you. Hypocrite...

And yes, I realize how lucky I am to have the friends I have here, but circumstance has seemed to sour what we had for the moment for reasons beyond my control. I’d love to share this with them, but I feel they’d rather share the business end of bullets. A bitter sweet situation. And while the sweet far outweighs the bitter in volume, the bitter has a potency that goes down like glass and poison. I swallow it anyway. Along with my pride. After all, they validated my golden ticket. And I still love them. I’m lucky to be here...

I flip my phone open. Keying in phone numbers forever engrained in my brain--it’s strange that way. I erase them. I key them back in. It’s seven in the morning in California. I think of who would be awake. Jesus, Nate would love it here... I shut it. I have nothing to say right now.

I play out future friend scenarios in my head. Thinking, ‘one day’ when I have money, I’ll bring them here. I owe it to them.

Matt Ferrari would soak himself just upon arriving.

I chuckle at the thought. Flipping my last euro for the day through my fingers. I think, “‘one day’, when I don’t have to worry about losing coins like this through holes in shorts like these.”

A helicopter cutting across my view takes my attention with it. It slows as it approaches the bay below to my right, and begins it’s descent. It’s landing on top of a yacht.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

I’m forced to laugh. Baffled. Lest I shout. “How apropos, you punctual dickbag.”

Why? Like I said, jealous?

At the moment? No. Maybe frustrated... It would just be nice not to stress being penniless for a while, like fucking Diddy over there. It’d be nice not to sweat where my next meal is coming from. And I don’t need a fancy yacht, or helicopter to land on it. I don’t even need a fancy car. A bike might be nice, though...

This is a life you chose.

I know. And to be honest, right now, I am just happy to have my headphones and the view.

‘At the moment’? ‘Right now’?

Yeah... I’ll admit, there are times at night that are a bit rough. When I stroll through the party parades in these streets. Le Cirque de Nuit. When the heat’s died down, and cocktails and chemicals call smiles onto faces. Laughs and lights illuminate the laneways. Some people don’t seem to be so angry. The entertainment ‘I’m coming to love’. Everybody seems to be ‘in love’... I wouldn’t mind being a part of it. Even if I know that most of it’s a show...

Or maybe I’m just pissed. My vision’s rather rosy at that point...

Everybody’s pissed. That’s probably why the indignation fades. Designer drugs and designer bubs will do that to you. Who’s going to be upset with that in their system? And you’re well aware that that’s not always love.

I’m well aware. And that’s what scares me. They’ve managed to synthesize it. And accrue it in seemingly endless amounts. They can detach themselves. The can ‘not care’. Their ‘love’ runs on credit. Returns and exchanges are flawless. Their investment is superficial and carries insurance. They are dead... Stone cold celebrities at their own million dollar wakes. And sometimes I am jealous.

You green-eyed bitch... And what the fuck is that? You been hanging out with Adam Duritz a lot lately, Mr. Jones?

I know. I hate it. It turns my insides. Like a cancerous corkscrew. And I can feel it’s malignancy metastasizing through bastions once built with parts of unquestioned integrity. Like it’s slipping through seeping cracks in an organ I busted like a fucking sucker in the back alleys of Bangkok. It’s mixing like blood and tar.

A bridge I sat on, on Khoasan road, trading tears for whiskey. Tired of rivers, as I stared at the one beneath my wrecked shoes. Tired of letting them take me in its will. I want one of my own. Willing to wash it all away...

And for the first time in my life, I sought to build mountains and climb them in efforts to only stand on top of them and piss down below on every tax that took its toll on that organ. An ascent of aversion. To simply stand on top, and wash it all way, in spite. And die up there alone...

I don’t buy it. Nor do I think you have it in you. Your legs wouldn’t even be able to make that first step without the love inside of you. It put you where you are, and fuck you for forgetting that...

tbc...