San Tropez

memoir part 13

This is part *13 of my memoir.

(*I’m finding it hard to serialize properly, as it’s a work in progress, which means the chapters are not in their final order. Or any order, really. Whether you’re starting here, or have been following along, thank you for reading.)

Part 1:

The Trick is to Drink it Quickly

Next:

Redheaded Waltz

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San Tropez

I woke up in Bavaria one morning to see a 10 inch icicle hanging down, just above my nose, from the top of the van. It was so cold that, as we slept, the condensation from our breath had built up on the metal ceiling above our faces and frozen.

“It's too cold,” I said. I broke off the icicle and threw it out the window. “I'm worried about Wogart.”

“He's fine,” said Jesse, “he’s part Timber wolf, remember?”

It was true. Whenever we went out in the snow, Wogart loved to lie down in it, sometimes for hours.

“Well I don't know,” I said. “I guess I’m too cold. I think we should head south.”

“What do you mean, like Italy?”

“Yeah sure. Wherever. I'm just thinking about stuff like sun and lemons and swimming in the ocean right now.”

“I know what you mean,” said Jesse. He reached up and broke off an icicle. “It's fucking cold.” He shivered under the blankets. I thought about cuddling up to him for a moment; it would warm us both up, but then that might be weird. When had it become weird? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to try it and then feel him grow still, or worse, quiet. It was too painful. Why couldn’t he just make the first move? It wasn’t an issue when he was drunk, but why did he need to be? I climbed down off the loft and squatted over the old metal pot. We'd been using it to cook in until someone had told us it was meant to be a toilet. It worked better that way.

“Basically, I'm kind of thinking right now that this pretty much fucking sucks,” I said, “and we’re going to run out of money soon.”

I finished peeing and carried the pot outside and dumped it under the van. I sloshed some water around in the pot and dumped that too and put the pot back on its shelf.

We had a little money saved up from the south but it wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks and that was with just eating cans of beans and bread, if we could find it cheap. Any extra money would have to be earned, busking, but we'd tried to busk in Florence after it got cold and it was too hard. We had worn fingerless gloves but our fingers still froze, playing there in front of the Duomo, and it wasn't any fun really to get money from people who felt sorry for us. We wanted to perform, to entertain.

“We can't play music, and we can't afford to go inside anywhere, so we should probably just leave,” I said. “We can come back when it warms up.”

Jesse nodded his head in agreement.

“I'm not gonna argue with you,” he said. “You may be on to something.”

He started jumping from one leg to the other, rubbing his arms.

“Fuck it's cold,” he said.

In the end, we went back to San Tropez. We'd made a lot of money there, and it was starting to feel a bit like home. It was a cheering thought.

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Hungry

We found a place to camp just north of the village. A hillside overlooking the ocean. It didn't seem like anybody's property. We hoped it wasn’t. A narrow path led down through a forest of scrub oaks to a little inlet. The water was clear. There were a lot of jellyfish. They were hard to see, and when you did, they were beautiful, you could see right through them. They were there, dead, on the beach too. You had to be careful. We kept our shoes on.

We'd made a lot of money down in St. Tropez. We had beans and bread and cheese and pasta. We had fresh sweet red peppers and dried hot ones and lemons and garlic and olive oil. We found asparagus and pearl onions growing around our camp and added them to our sandwiches. We knew how to find the Parasol mushrooms too so we looked for those. We knew how to bread them and fry them in garlic until they were good. They tasted like chicken.

We spent our days cooking and eating and walking and reading. Jesse wrote in his journal, and learned to whittle. He made cups and cutlery out of driftwood. We made plans. Maybe we would head to Spain next. We chatted and joked and played music in the evenings. We did everything but the one thing.

In the evenings, we sat on the open tailgate of the van, legs hanging off. The air was warm. There was the smell of scrub oaks, rustling in the breeze. It was easier not to talk about things. We looked at the water and watched the sunset and laughed at Wogart as he tossed sticks into the air for himself to catch. If I stood at the top of the hill I could see the coastline, St. Tropez, jutting out into the water. The air seemed to shimmer like it was moving—shot-through with light.

Jesse came over and stood beside me.

“So, I’ve decided,” he said after a moment. “You’re rad and I want to make you an amazing sandwich.”

“Oh shit!” I said. Something else would be better, I thought, but that would mean talking about things, which it was beginning to seem like neither of us would ever do. Besides, I was hungry.

I watched as Jesse cut a couple of big crusts off a loaf. He put them face down in a pan and fried them until they became brown. He loaded the bread with cheese and vegetables and fried them some more. He put the sandwiches, open faced, on two plates. “Here you go, hope you like it,” he said, smiling. As long as I didn’t make any demands, or bring up difficult subjects, he was so open and affectionate. It was confusing. But the sandwich was good.

We were able to camp on the hill for a couple of weeks before the police finally kicked us out. They were nice about it. Most of the time, they explained, we won't see you, when you are camping here. Unless it is tourist season and there are complaints—then we will see you and tell you to leave.

Au revoir, San Tropez. Hasta Mañana, España. Maybe things would be different in Spain. A new landscape, a new country. Maybe we would talk about things there. At any rate, it was nice to be so mobile. The ultimate freedom.

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