Cannes

I live in a state of jetlag. I never got over it. All summer and now into fall it has been this. I think that my entire life has been like this. When everyone else is asleep, I am wide awake.  But then it carries over because then when everyone is awake, I have to be awake too, because I am working. Today my wakeful hours are spent trying to fix my broken ‘travel’ guitar’, which I broke while traveling – and staring at a large black and white portrait of Elizabeth taylor and what seems to be an eddie fisher shaped head stationed behind a vintage canon, although, then it wasn’t vintage. It’s vintage to me now, like her thick eyebrows, freckly and happy Cote D’Azur face (probably without sunblock – she wears a scarf instead) and dark winged eyeliner. I can’t believe she’s dead. I am in Cannes, which looks like Miami to me from here. It’s that famous street in front of the beach where you remember all the paparazzi photos of Brigitte bardot, before fascism, when she was just a tiny little impossibly beautiful nymph, her hair not even fully blonde yet, the smoky eye just a suggestion on her young, bright, not yet anti-muslim eyes.  She might have loved animals then, but she didn’t form her political views fully, and so this is my favorite time of her. From then and well into the 1970s. There was never such a beautiful woman as Brigitte Bardot. It’s unfortunate that she’s such a racist now, but we can think of her face and remember her like she was. I prefer to think of her as dead than hating immigrants and gays. To me that is the worst pain. And the biggest crime against beauty. But boy, was she beautiful, and the best style, truly. She looked good. I do my makeup just like her some days. It’s either BB or Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders video, “Brass in Pocket” to match my persona, rock and roll American girl living in London and not getting along so well with the locals. Or getting along too well, which is an equally vexing problem. Thick black eyeliner, long false eyelashes on top of Latisse-abuse homegrown real lashes on top of a blank, bare, judgemental but vulnerably pretty face. It’s a fierce look. My tattoos are flaking in the sun and the dryness of too many transcontinental/transatlantic/transpacific flights. I feel good, considering the lack of sleep, food, care, affection, dogs, home. I need to eat something but nothing is open, I am violently opposed to room service in exotic locales, it’s pitch black outside. The last time I ate, sometime yesterday I think,  I was faced with a terrible nicoise salad, which was criminal because I am fucking so close to Nice, but the wine was phenomenal and cheap (and I learned the important words from the adorable waitress “vin rouge” – that’s all the French I need) and got me going for a few hours into the night, taking pictures of boots I could not even fathom in locked, gated shop windows. The shopping here is where I am going to meet a sure end. The shit is driving me insane with its subtlety and class. It’s fucking expensive but worth every goddamned euro. My friend told me that this is the town of the white pants- and all fashion all the time. He was so right. I see couples zipping past me on 60s motorcycles, holding each other between the thighs of white pants, cuffed at the ankle. Everyone is gorgeous. No one looks lonely, except me. But that is cool. I am going to be in trouble when the stores unlock their doors. I am laying my credit cards out to breathe. They are going to have to have a nice long lie down when all this is done.

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