With an unexpected day off, our possibilities were endless. We could go to Rebours, a robot war in Holland, we could show up to a squat in Karlsruhe, Germany and play a show, we could go to Brussels anyway, we could go to The Black Forest and camp without camping gear. With so many options, like orphaned pups at our feet, we decided to just stay in Metz for another day.
Luckily, our hostess, the lovely Flores, said we could stay at her flat for another day. She didn’t mind, she would just stay somewhere other than her home for one more night. Flores rules by the way. Her flat came equipped with a guitar, a pump organ, harmonica, melodica, a bamboo xylophone, and didgeridoos.
We grabbed some pain au chocolat and visited a giant church with Chagall designed windows. I was actually impressed. Usually churches have a Pavlovian affect on me where I become immediately sleepy and uninterested. This church left me conscious and uninterested.
Mike and I found interest in an afternoon snack of heavenly carpaccio.
Flores met us in the afternoon for crepes and Belgian beer. Over forty drinks in two bars, she tickled our day with girlish giggles and language barrier silliness. It felt like we were all collectively on a wonderfully drunken first date. In a legless moment of improv, Flores and I switched jackets before she vanished for work in the rain.
I woke up in a film of drinking sweat on a futon wearing a small leather Michael Jackson jacket. It was dark. Some teenaged men were listening to G-funk and figuring out the chords to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” while playing with a four foot long pipe that had a clock built into it. The rest of the band had already gone out to see Aphex Twin play a free concert at the art museum. Except Reid, who unbeknownst to me was still in the flat passed out from the afternoon gluttony. But at the time it was 11pm. And I was simultaneously groggy and in France.
I went to the bar, hoping to get my jacket back from Flores. The bar was empty except for Alan, Mike and Greg. Apparently they had had their fill of Aphex Twin. A curiosity by the name of Stephan entertained from behind the bar, sliding beers to Alan and Mike like in the westerns, cracking jokes about his suicide attempts and his son’s mysterious name, and making faces that Jim Carrey could only dream about making.
At a doner kebob stand Mike and I were offered hash from some funny French knuckleheads. The short one, “Joe Pesci”, pulled out a lead-looking pellet from a box of Marlboros. “So which are easier to fuck? French girls or American girls?”
We got our doner kebobs to go.
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