Easter Sirens
Abroad in Nantes, Days 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, and 91
After my bout of hives, the rest of last week was, frankly, uneventful. Except for a soirée on Wednesday, where enough time had passed to fondly reminisce about when I confessed to shitting my pants at the Nantes Atlantique Airport to every single person in my brand-new boyfriend’s masters program. And Thursday, when a bunch of professors and staff from my study abroad program came out for drinks and inter-professional/generational mingling at the regular karaoke night. And Friday, when I had to watch The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947, BORING!) and then FaceTime my parents to help them decide which of my books to bring and which to leave behind in my Great Proxy Move from Brooklyn back to Minnesota.
I have officially left New York. Without a proper goodbye. I feel like I have smeared myself from the past three years: a bit of mascara that won’t rub away, pen ink on a desk, some dog shit on the sidewalk. I still exist, yet not at all. I resigned from my job, a restaurant that I have not worked at in three months. My old boss took it on the chin, cheerfully — he knew what was coming. Newly ex-ed coworkers still DM to say hi. My roommate texted to say the apartment felt officially emptier after my parents left. I have willfully, semi-unintentionally disappeared. No need to keep paying rent on a place it turns out you don’t need to return to, right? I still have to cancel my Verizon and National Grid accounts.
I had thought about throwing a hot dish party at Milo’s Yard in Ridgewood, Queens, before I Officially Moved Home. Instead my parents packed up my underwear and CDs into blue IKEA duffle bags with impressive — and suspicious — speed. When my mom called to show the emptied room she panned from my old windows to my old bed, where my dad was splayed out, reclined, in his T-shirt and briefs. Nothing I haven’t seen before.
Tristan found a snail while I was on the phone (we were on a night walk). I had never seen one detached from a surface, up close, unless it was covered in parsley and garlic and butter.
Saturday I wrote a paper on Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse by Varda in the span of an afternoon. Why do I always do that to myself? Then I got drinks with an odd assortment of people from my program, including a guy who seems perpetually petrified of Getting Canceled. He is always caveating and making me feel like a horrible feminist: he has a sister and his girlfriend is bisexual.
Sunday was a lazy morning and afternoon roadtrip to Clisson. I had never been since I had to miss the program-sponsored trip last weekend. It was small and charming and — thank God — had someplace that was open on Easter so I could buy a coffee. I was sleepy all day, maybe because it was overcast, maybe because it was a Sunday.
We also stopped at the Hellfest grounds right outside of town, where you can see some of Lemmy’s ashes.
Monday was a jour férié for Easter Monday, whatever that even is. Spent the morning reading Something to Declare by Julian Barnes, a collection of essays on French culture, a.k.a. a bunch of beautifully written extended anecdotes of anglophone-fueled interactions and systematic kink-shaming of celebrated Classical Français, none of whose work I’ve really interacted with. Georges Brassens, Gustave Flaubert, George Sand. The searing paragraphs on Jean-Luc Godard have been some of my favorites, so far.
In the afternoon we drove to Pornichet to hang out at the beach. A couple of hours in, two of Tristan’s friends got stuck on a rock further out into the sea. They had been swimming and one of them scraped her legs open on the shale, cuts that stung horribly in the salt water. The pair climbed up on the rock to get out of the sea and became two sirens trapped on the crags. Another friend on shore called the fire department, and everyone formed a queue at different points of the beach’s edge to stand watch, in a way. Not that there was much else we could do besides watch.
After what felt like an hour but was probably closer to twenty minutes, three firefighter-paramedics showed up, one of whom was wearing a massive rucksack. Nobody, however, was wearing swimsuits. And then a guy wearing a neon orange wetsuit, complete with a rubber duck-yellow swim cap, holding an extra-large bodyboard leaped down the stairs to the beach. We watched him strut into the water and mount the bodyboard on his belly, paddling a little clumsily on all fours through the water, like if Gumby tried to surf.
The hurt person was saved first, of course, and was met on the beach with plenty of hugs, les pompiers smirking in the background as I looked on — not my group hug to share.
Her partner was still on the rock during that time, alone. I wanted to know what that felt like, but I had no idea how to tactfully ask once the whole ordeal was over. He seemed shaken enough, like her.
I do not trust the ocean.
I figured that after everyone was safe and sound that we would pack up and head home, but it seemed like the group healed almost immediately. I felt like the weakest link of them all. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach and I tried silently repeating manifestations that I would not get sunburned. Eventually the tide started really coming in and we packed up our things and went for a walk down the coast. Passed a couple nudist beaches and a military base. Tristan gave me his portable speaker to strap to my purse and I forced everyone to listen to Donna Summer and The Breeders and Luna. One person in the group’s strap to one of their Crocs broke early on, so we ended up carrying up the rear/taking the easier road. I did not mind; it brought up fond memories of walking the mile in middle school. Sat another beach to watch the sunset.
BURGER KING FOR DINNER!!! I miss to-go drink cups with the plastic lids that have those little buttons on top to show whether the soda is diet or not, buttons I do not think I have ever seen actually used by a fast food establishment. Instead I am given actual reusable dishes or paper cups that offer the same tactile experience as drinking a hospital cafeteria coffee.
Today I was temperamental. Started off well, then shifted to easy irritability in the early afternoon. It’s either my menstrual cycle or I’m getting a little tired of seeing the exact same people almost every day. No wonder so many psychological thrillers are set in cohort-like situations — hell really is other people. It’s actually not all that bad.
Today was 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which I think is like 26 or 27 degrees Celsius, which is not nearly as dramatic, I think. 80 degrees sounds like something approaching dire. 26/7 sounds like we’re only getting started. My behavior in the heat must have something to do with epigenetics, otherwise I’m just a loser and a grump.
Conversation club was sparsely populated and mainly consisted of a French regular of the club talking about how much she loves Kentucky, so much so she got it tattooed on her arm. And she misses Chick-fil-A sauce and lived through Hurricane Melissa and hated fried okra. Once more, I am tired of hearing French people talk about Trump.