A Different Me*

A Different Me

Nice, France

In a coastal resort town anywhere in the world, a life of relative debauchery appeals greatly to me. I see men of a certain age who chose this path, their skin leathery and deeply lined, their hair unkempt, their bodies, whether thin or swollen showing the effects of a life where pleasure trumped industry.

The dead giveaway is their eyes – still sharp even when sedated – on the lookout for the next good thing that just might come their way.

( Ref: Finders are Keepers by Hank Williams, Jr.)

And, one imagines, enough gifts get swept in on the tide to sustain a man such as this for many, many years. Maybe, at some point, a savior turns up, a woman perhaps, who eyes him up and down, and gauges her ability to clean him up, domesticate him, and thereby acquire a live-in gardener, plumber, and boating partner, if not the kind of guy you could ever take home to your family.

Dirty old men.

The phrase litters our literature, and why not? One need only visit the corners where hedonism still breathes, albeit in muted form, to locate the genus. As a man ages, he finds himself increasingly filling their necessary social role, even if he despises it. Rather like all other stereotypes – self-hating Jews, bitter women, happy Filipinos – our world seems to demand, at the end, that we conform to it, not the other way around.

The author and the observer are trying to discern whether this post is about sexual desire, addictions, escape fantasies, or some odd combination of all those, and more. Here, a cliché should suffice: The jury is out.

For starters, there is sexual attraction. In a place such as this one, there are so many half-naked women (or, if you prefer, men) that it would be hard to avoid conjuring the occasional sexual thought, especially if you’d been raised to think that as sinful.

My own upbringing was not overly repressive, and there was no Catholicism, asceticism, Islam or other sexually prohibitive influence in my childhood. Nevertheless, I was a deeply sexually repressed youth, so much so that I entirely missed the normal teenaged rites of passage, totally out of my own inhibitions.

Opportunities abounded, as they only can at a tender age, but I was closed up, to steal a phrase, “as tight as a crab’s buttocks.” (Ref: The Scorpion King.) Nevertheless, I did learn how to make out, finally, and some touching did occur.

But, at that stage of life, women seemed either unattainably perfect or aggressively frightening. The first time I smoked dope, in college, I freaked out, and kept seeing the girl who gave it to me peeking out behind trees as I ever so gradually made my way “home.” I do not remember her name, her face, or any other identifying characteristic about her, but these many years later I believe I owe her an apology and a Thank You for turning me on.

Did you know which American singer first turned on The Beatles or where it happened?

(Read my long-delayed but still upcoming book for the answer; or just do some random Internet research if you cannot wait that long.)

So, there was Kipling, Hemingway, and so many others. Even though I am on the French Riviera at the moment, I will not reference the many famous Americans who littered our literature with their elite fantasies during the last century.

If I were to live here, or anywhere as an ex-pat for that matter, it would be very, very quietly. Learning the language would be the first step; gathering stories would be my main mission. Every town and province has its stories, most of which lie there on the surface, like so much historical detritus.

Even lacking rudimentary French, I can perceive the stories that abound in this place, not to mention the ghosts. It is not the rich or the famous that interest me – if I stayed in these parts I would never visit Monaco or Monte Carlo or Cannes. They hold only an anti-appeal for me.

It is the ghosts who haunt these alleyways that speak to me, in a babble that is part French, for sure, with hints of something else, less accessible. Did you know there is a Southern French accent, much as there is a Southern Accent in the States? Yes, and it includes a finish not unlike the Bostonian dialect Stateside, which of course completely destroys my Southern analogy.

While we’re at it, let’s consider an even more preposterous case – the “Deep North” – Queensland’s coast in Australia.

Where were we?

Ah, qui, regarding the accent of the South of France. It is expressed like this: “Bon Journa.”

* * *

Funny how the mind wanders, especially when suffering from heatstroke. I think I was writing about the way as a man ages he only appreciates female beauty more, and therefore has to take care when staring not to offend the young ladies. After all, who wants a guy who could be her father, or even grandfather, lecherously eyeing her?

No one, of course, and that is the eternal dilemma of the dirty old man.

It seems there is no equivalent for old women; in fact, the evidence suggests that there are men available for every age and stage of a woman’s life.

* * *

On to the writing life.

Non-fiction never seems adequate in these places. What a writer wishes to do here is to create a story that somehow captures the magnitude of the released feelings that tropical heat evokes; originality would be Nice.

Alas, fate determines what we are able to say, when and how. For now, let me admit I never set out to be a responsible family man, and I easily could have turned into something else entirely.

And I may still…

-30-

*"Must be a different you, to be a me with a you." (Nada Surf)