Out on a Limb?

That first evening in France felt pretty strange. I was transient, in between an existence I’d grown to accept as being normality and a future with no certainty attached to it at all. On the other hand, I’d spent 2 ½ months living like a 38-year-old, intrusive “beach bum” in Tenerife (pictured from the only attractive angle and distance for such an ugly place) only six years before so the thoughts of Costa Del Silencio came in very handy in contextualising my current situation in Lille. Lille was always going to be much more structured. Compared with the manner in which I found myself living in Tenerife in 2000, there would probably never be a more "tramp-like" or shitty episode in store for me.

In Tenerife, I’d lived like I had a 100% death wish. I was writing a book at the time and that book became my raison d’être for all the time I was there. I’d use the writing as a tool. A weapon. A vehicle to allow me to see things I’d never otherwise have been shown. I’d sit in known mafia bars and I’d write, as I do, incessantly scribbling on a large pad until, inevitably, some shady-looking lump would come over and ask me “what the fuck I thought I was doing”. When I’m on good form (or when I think my throat might be about to be cut) I suddenly exhibit skills in the spoken word which are usually beneath the surface. The result of these provocations was always free drinks for Gray for the night and “glasses raised to our new English (nutcase) friend”. I seduced them with my bullshit and, let’s face it, nobody but a harmless idiot would sit writing about his observations in mafia bars. Would they?

Out on the streets, I deliberately goaded and irritated the pimps in the later hours of the evenings. Why? Because I hate everything about someone who makes “their living” in a way like that. How did I goad them? Sometimes I’d go and chat to the whores (mainly exploited Senegalese) and I’d spend half an hour rationally explaining to them the truths of their situations and futures. Truths which, strangely, their employers had neglected to mention to them during the interview. Inevitably, there would eventually be some little shit on a moped who would show up and tell me to “move on” in a threatening manner. I inevitably told him to go and screw himself. (Like I said, I was living as though I had a death wish – 2 days before I’d arrived on the island, some bar owner was dying in a lake of blood on his own terrace one night and the police “knew nothing about it" in the morning. Clearly, forensic science hadn’t island-hopped that far yet. Nice place) In fact, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that, if I didn’t move away and let the girls “do their work”, I would be in serious danger. I never did what they told me to do. I always just laughed at them, told them where to go and carried on talking to these poor, thick whores up to the point at which they were put into cars and taken somewhere else.

The pimps never did any more than to threaten me. They never touched me. I found this very strange but, as I’ll maybe tell you another time, I had my suspicions as to why I was treated in that way. Those suspicions proved to be right and their conclusions about me came in extremely handy a little further down the line.

Anyway, you don’t want to know all that nonsense. You just wanted to know that I didn’t feel too “out on a limb” during that first evening In Lille.

Well, I imagine that you now suspect that I didn’t feel too “out on a limb” at all ;o) I was in a nice apartment for the night and, the following day, I’d be moving into my own nice apartment…..