the english riviera

*play this while reading*

I was little, maybe age six or seven. I walked over the grey pebbles and waited for my grandpa to buy me an ice cream. And then I saw her sitting on a bench. This little red headed girl sitting with her gran. And on her grandma's arm I saw something that made a great impression on little me. On that flaccid sunburned wrinkled skin, was a tattoo, faded.


I'd never seen one before. I cant' remember what it was of, but it hadn't aged well. The woman who wore it looked so sweet, smiling at her granddaughter. the tattoo seemed incongrous. But I remember thinking it added something, a quality. whatever it was, I liked that. Maybe that's why I got my first tattoo when I was fifteen.

But this is not about tattoos. Twenty six years later and I am back in this place again. And now we, my friend and I, we were chatting and this.. this was not small talk.


She had made the transition from smiley smiley chatty two or three drinks ago. Now she was fired up, oblivious to comic book wallpaper and spotty teenagers and the acid green lukewarm drinks on the table with bendy straws. Her caramel locks shaking and her hazel eyes flashing. Closer and closer she edged across the table. She considered the drinks for a second


Thought better of it.

She was talking about fighting and falling and nearly making, when everything falls into place and then the one piece goes missing. Or the puzzle morphs, or someone starts another just as you had one piece left. You had been putting it together for some time, can see the image clearly, perfectly. It's just one detail missing, you just want to finish it, its only fair, you've put the hours in.

I looked at her and said.

If I think of what I want to be doing, you're doing it.but then where you are there's just more frustration, so when does it end? or lessen? I mean... at least you're surviving from your work. That's all I want I and

She cut me off.

I don't want to survive!!!!!!!!!!!????????? I WANT TO LIVE!!!

And with powerful insistence she added.

We are Gods!!!

What she meant was, we are here with a purpose, a purpose to fulfill. There is more to what we are doing than career and entertainment. We have a power to make people think, to change people. We can make people identify, to understand. We are the everythingmen. We can see all sides and connect them. Our power is observation, our gift is in the giving of it


I thought about how all of us matter. How our words, our stories matter. Everyone may not have a novel in them, but everyone has a spirit that is valuable, a chain reaction of people they have touched are touching, even those of us who are most difficult, we have people who will miss us when we are gone.


She sized up our green drinks with irritation

I want to drink nice drinks. We are gods you and me, we are gods.

But what is the world we are gods in? Look past the wall paper, and tune out the Stevie Wonder. Look out the door that everyone who leaves forgets to close. Look to the street.See the girl in the hot pants and platforms and sheer blouse. Her legs are nice, but she can barely walk in those heels. She's leaning on two of of her friends. She's giggling. Too drunk to be taken seriously, too young to be sexually interesting. A fight is starting, or what looks like it, but its really just two boys shouting. So this is what its like being a teenager in a seaside town, like the suburb I grew up in, but with sea air and more pubs.


The boy who sits down next to me passionately goes on and on about how he can't get used to this place, having moved to Brighton. He's used to no limitations, more people who are more interesting. He's used to bars that close as late as four in the morning. I could trump him by telling him I'm from Berlin, where some of the bars don't close until after the next morning, but I don't have the heart for it. It's more fun for him to let him tell me how worldly he is.


I was incognito. I had deliberately made no effort at being pretty at all. I didn't want that kind of attention then. I wasn't interested in speaking to new people that way. I liked not being interesting. I didn't want to reveal anything, nor appear like there was anything interesting I had to say.


And then there was the model, the model who tried to convince my friend they'd had a foursome once. He wasn't that tall. Didn't seem tall enough to model. He told me he would only pose nude for charity, but had done shoots in boxer shorts. He had been spotted in London of course. He had just come back from New York. He couldn't believe he could have ever lived in Hastings. I ask him if there is any work he wouldn't do, clients he wouldn't work for? He looks at me as if I'm insane. That he'd do anything (with the exception of nude non charity work I guess?)

Well that's the job innit?

He wryly adds.

The teenagers keep arriving . But now there are also people in their early twenties. The model has gone back to trying to seduce my friend. I end up telling a random girl how much i like her jacket, and she reminds me of my friend Rosalie in Berlin. She wants to dance.


I end up dancing with her. A guy joins us. I start partner dancing with her. The guy wants to join, but she doesn't seem interested. Another boy, so drunk his head lols on the table, looks up at us with childlike wonder. Two other guys start dancing. the dance floor fills, so I say to her.

Just remember, we started this. This is because of us.

She smiles at me and then shoots a dirty look at a blonde girl dancing beside us. She is cute and leggy, dancing with what looks like her boyfriend. All the boys on the floor are looking at her. My dancing partner scowls.



At closing time I leave the others and go back to bed. Her friend walks me up to the room. He says his father is eighty,and to be very very quiet. There is only one bathroom and its downstairs, so please if I need to go, could I not use the bathroom and use the tin pail he'd left in the room instead?


When I wake up hours later, after something like a nightmare, I am once again in that familiar position I seem to find myself in, of not knowing where I am. I calmly take pause, trying to understand what room I'm in and why. Oh ok, I remember now, are they here yet? No? better fall back asleep then.

At 7 or 8 am I am awoken by their stumbling up the stairs. So much for being quiet for the 80 year old dad then. Something shatters, and there are many FUck!!!'s shouted out.

There is talk of the model, whose house they'd gone to. He had ended up falling on his face, busting his lip,lying in own blood. She gets next to me and pulls the covers over her. The others scuttle under their blankets, until one by one they snore. Literally, all of them. Snoring. A symphony of snoring. Cartoon like, one nasally gravelly moan intercepted by the other. It gives me a strange sense of calm.


We had made plans for brunch, but at noon it was clear by the snore cacophony, that brunch would be more of a late lunch. My stomach growled. The sea gull calls peaked my curiousity. Quietly as I could, I dressed and snuck out. Walked down hill to the sea, sat on cold pebbles and watched early morning fisherman sitting quietly by their dark green tents.

There were no grans with tattoos, but it was still pretty perfect.