In the morning, it pissed down rain. It was a continuation of the night before, and by dawn the pool of rain-urine collected in the corners of my tent and psyche alike. I'm a novice camper, but my tent went up as easy as an erection. Both acts have so much to do with quantifiable manliness, the euphemism is hardly a coincidental sight gag. In my confidence, my vainglory, I remember holding a thick rectangle of tent fabric and thought, "What is this useless piece of shit? The floor? It doesn't even fit in the bottom of the tent..." It was summarily discarded. I did at least attach the rain fly, if poorly.
When I woke, my bag and sleeping pad soaked through, cold bullets of rain ambling down the seams of my tent, fattening along the internal trellis of fabric and mesh until they were laden with weight enough to drop their purchase, I just kind of said, "fuck it," and went back to sleep. I had strange dreams, dreams about my father watching me brush my teeth. My neighbors snoring rain out of the clouds and a group of English Boy Scouts--or whatever they were--mucking about and being, well, boys were the unexpected master strokes elevating it all to high art.
"Did you sleep well, mate? You got 2/3rds of the Irish snoring team right here."
"So, I fell. Into this girl. Right into her..." you didn't even have to see his hands to know they were cupped in the international sign for boobs.
"And then you probably started ogling her. Uhuhuhuhuhuh."
"No...it was...MY. HAND. But she didn't care, she was like," up a few octaves, "Oh, I'm sorry."
"Was she fit?"
When the rain finally soaked through my third and fourth layers, I knew I had to unchain myself from the raindrop pixilated tarp humming with grey light. I remembered the campground had a TV room, with glorious WiFi, so I gathered my iPad and left the sinking ship.
A quick note about European campgrounds. They have pools! And electricity! And hot showers! And bowling greens! And TV rooms! And a market on site! And WiFi! But no place to build a fire. I'm still not sure what to think.
In the safe, dry echo of the TV room I did a little work. I did some writing, blogged a bit, messed around on the Internet, and my world took shape. Around lunch, the Boy Scouts (Air Cadets?) came rumbling in from a morning bike ride soaked to the bone. Jolted to life, the room quaked in the presence of the young storm conquerors. Mothers calling in boys from the rain clucking at them to remove their wet things had lost. Their troop leader was organizing lunch for the group even though there were multiple signs posted in the room reading, "NO EATING! NO SMOKING!"
"But, sir, the sign says no eating."
"Brian, you've never read a sign in your life. Why are you starting now?"
The list of menu items: "Okay, we've got some stewed potatoes but they have to last for everybody. We've got some pie with...some kind of meat in it. ('Yessssss' one of the boys interjected) There's some bread and some apples and some...cheese, idinit."
Oh, it was cheese. I could tell from where I sat, and it occurred to me how hungry I was. I was weird English meat pie hungry. I wasn't quite ready to go look at my tent, more inclined to spray paint some Katrina code on there and walk down road, but I had the hunger on me something mighty fierce.
After the boys ate they went outside and played no-rule-having-made-up kid games. On their effort, after another hour or so, the sun came out. It was time. I at last went to survey the wreckage.
My sleeping pad, my sleep sheet, my tent bag, my sleeping bag sack, and my food bag were waterlogged. A whole round of groceries lost. My sleeping bag itself was damp. Most everything else was relatively dry. I hauled my stuff onto the lawn and rebuilt. My things, not in the tent, not in their right place, so stark laid out on the lawn, it was all a painful referendum on my campsite. My existence. Maybe he can't pitch a tent? If the other campers didn't judge me, they should have.
I secured the floor under the tent (Ohhhhhhhh....that's how that works). I tied down and staked the rain fly. I laid my pad out in the sun. I draped everything else over my improved shelter and sopped up the remaining mess with my towel. It took some time, it would have been a fine montage, but I raised my area back to respectability. My sleeping pad and sleeping bag dried out quickly, the little storage bags I just tied to the tent, but the sleep sheet needed a good old fashioned dry on the line. I hung it across two wires on the clothes line and...just...I just waited. It wasn't as though I thought someone would steal it, I thought it would be rude of me to leave it up there.
For the next hour or so, sunlight measured the length of the lawn and the space over the hedges and the size of my face until clouds took hold of its wandering ambition. Immediately I snatched my half-dry sheet off the line and placed it inside my warm, dry square inch of space. As I reflected on my domain, this rugged slice of can-do-ism at its best, the moment of repose finally opened the window for my hunger to lay me out.
Like industrial chainsaws echoing from a forest gorge, my stomach struck up a goddamn row. I felt hollow and frayed and did the recent meal rundown to compensate my belly. We had...a beer for dinner last night? And...we definitely had toast and a coffee at breakfast in Lyon yesterday. I'm not sure who was less impressed, me or my gut, but we both agreed this cannot continue. Then, in the state of being where Baudelaire's angel indeed wakes, I remembered something special, a secret: on the way in, I'd passed a Chinese buffet. I don't remember how far it was, but I could recall the red and yellow neon sign like it was my lover's face.
I put on both of my jackets and tied on a scarf and was still shivering even though it wasn't very cold, which couldn't have been a good sign, and I set out. I was prepared for this to be a bit of a goose chase, but it was okay. I knew it existed. I'd just be really, really hungry when I got there. Then, as I walked through the camp's exit, there it was. It was so close I could hear it whisper, "All you have to do is reach out and take it." I wanted for nothing, but I'm still greedy and wished for more. Thirteen electric guitars, arranged in octaves, screaming a version of "The Star Spangled Banner," in time with every step I took. I was gonna show these Frenchies how fat fucks do it in the USA.
His fake-authentic silk top, the man who seated me, told me a story. Decorated with caricatures of the Orient, a hackneyed vision of golden thread and cloud motifs--not a hint of sincerity--I knew I was home. He brought me a champagne flute filled with a tart citrus drink and then had the audacity to bring me a basket of rice wafer chips. I almost grabbed him by the collar and made him watch me knock them to the ground. Unable to maintain, too far gone to play along with the ritual drink order where we humor each other and he smugly brings me a glass of water, I did it. I just got up from the table and grabbed a plate.
The center of the restaurant was a red pagoda crafted with an angled roof carved to look like it had scalloped shingles. Where roof beams met support beams gold dragon heads jutted out with their curled lips and long, curled whiskers. Along the hexagonal base, the lighting focused with unbending fixation, there were the steam trays.
I was a little disappointed. They were about sixteen dishes short from really being a Chinese buffet. And where each tray is usually brimming, heaped with whatever twice fried and sauce covered offering they have in The States, the bottom of most of these trays were covered, but little else. Europe, what are we going to do with you?
I grabbed my first plate and made the round: caramel pork, fried rice, steamed dumplings, fried duck, fuck salad, fuck hardboiled eggs, fuck fruit, never sushi, something that looked like egg rolls, and some crab Rangoon. After what most would consider the perfect lap, I sat down and resented thousands of years of human evolution. I should never have to breathe when I need so desperately to pack my gaping maw.
Everything on the plate was perfect and predictable. Crispy bits and overly sweet cornstarch based sauces and duck skin which made me want to tilt my head all the way back and dangle it into my mouth-trough. The real revelation were the dumplings, really delicious. Also the egg rolls, which contained no vegetables whatsoever, but were some sort of pork mixture wrapped in an egg roll cover and deep fried. When you finally touch they sky, they probably have a tray of those waiting.
Plate two: noodles, beef and onions, fried shrimp with peppers, fired chicken, more pork only egg rolls, more dumplings, and some crab Rangoon. They hadn't even had time to clear my first plate by the time I was face deep in plate two.
Plate three is when you expand your conciseness. Plate three is where your resolve is tested. Naturally shorter of breath and "feeling full," but quitting there is the mark of a deficient spirit. I loaded up with my favorites and some crab Rangoon, saw the horror in my server's face, and finally felt good, really good, about what I was doing.
The world slows down. You look up from the cheap dish-ware lousy with goodness and survey the humanity around you.
One table was an English family on holiday. The English, the only other really dedicated fat people in the world. The son was trying to insert chopsticks through the tight bun on top of his sister's head.
There was a single father there with his two daughters who wanted a nice warm meal for his girls. All buffets have a discount for kids under ten. One little girl kept putting sugar on top of every plate she took from the buffet. Or maybe Mom was just out of town.
An old couple who came and went before I'd even hit my stretch plate.
A blonde French girl with her boyfriend, full, tantalizing proportions crafted in defiance of gravity. Stripped down to cotton panties, sitting on her pink legs, an expectant glint in here eye welcoming what incongruent response you have to offer, the icon, the fertility goddess forever etched into your cave wall. The prettiest girl in Bayeux. She rides the train to her shitty job in Caen everyday, and everyday swears this is the time she goes all the way to St. Lazare in Paris and never comes back. The bubble shimmered around her in the grease filtered restaurant light begging to burst.
The lone laborer whose long day after long day were spelled out in flecks of paint on his jeans and plaster covered boots, drywall dusting his grey hair. He was a three plate man, I could tell. This was the looking glass, one of many other selves on either side. He kept looking at me over his bell shaped glass of port. I was certain, hope against hope, he was going to wipe his mouth, pay his bill, cross over to me, and offer in his French accented English, "You want to...erm...how you say...get into some terrible shit?" No rape. No murder. Let's go. I'm still just a child with an over-active imagination.
Philosophically I had a fourth plate. Not some pathetic fruit and gross buffet dessert plate, a chicken wing and egg roll plate, but my stomach couldn't do it. I'll get that fourth plate back for her. Someday. I paid the nice lady, and paraded--fingers fanned through the long streamers of magic hour light--singing Tom Petty's "American Girl," all the way back to camp.
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