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SPRINGBREAKER, EMANCIPATION SHOE
While my parents were busy tearing each other apart over what to do with their lives, at the age of eighteen I took matters into my own hands and decided to perfect my English by spending a term in California with the money I'd earned selling cheese at the market on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, near Bastille.
I arrived in Santa Barbara at the end of the second term, disappointed not to see any actors from my childhood favourite series, despite my wandering nights trying to find them. Once I'd got over the disappointment, I took up residence in one of the two dormitories on campus, which I shared with a goth girl, pierced all over. Her name was Tiffany but she wanted me to call her Thomas. She spent all her time on her pipe smoking weed, talking about the possibility of an island and sketching everyone at the university. She wanted to get into comics, to get into Marvel, to shake up everything that had been done so far and come up with a gay superheroine, tattooed all over, who spent her time smoking pot and rescuing people not by physical force but by persuasion, becoming, in short, a super-psy who didn't work in an office, or receive people on a sofa, but just like that, on the street, whenever she saw a soul in trouble. She seemed cold, distant and haughty to me, but she turned out to be a completely different person in reality and she invited me to join her tight-knit band of 'gals', the ones with whom she had set up a music group. The other two were just as strange to the eyes of a little Parisian girl whose only adventure had been to drop in from time to time on the Right Bank.
They took me under their wing and invited me to all their parties to introduce me to their friends, so that I could get my bearings and feel at ease away from home. So when the famous Springbreak arrived, a time for American students to relax and do whatever they wanted with their parents' money, they asked me to come with them to Mexico for a memorable trip. We set off the next day in the sky-blue Volkswagen combi with the white roof owned by Laura, the band's drummer, heading for Cabo San Luca, twenty-six hours from where we were. They loaded up with all their gear: guitars, microphones, percussion instruments and a few hallucinogenic mushrooms to help shorten the journey, during which they composed and played a whole bunch of songs that were protesting, funny, tender or zany. Then, on the outskirts of San Felipe, a young Mexican man as handsome as Zapata (played by Brando) was hitchhiking on the side of the desert road where the wind was blowing enough to take out his sand yacht. Given the guy's good looks, it was inconceivable to leave him in the middle of nowhere when we could drop him off a few kilometres away. He got in and instantly pulled out, not what you'd think, but his harmonica to accompany the girls until we dropped him off at his house, which looked like a small farm where a few carcasses of cars were parked in the sun in the garden.
To thank us, and as it was about to get dark, he suggested we stay and rest. An hour or two, the whole night if we wished. We had a bit of time on our hands and even if the house seemed a bit unsanitary, we could, at worst, sleep in the van on his property. He invited us to get to know his home and his family, so the four of us went inside and had some orange soda to quench our thirst, and when that was done, he got down to the nitty-gritty and gave us a taste of his own mezcal. Juan lived with his parents, brothers, sisters and grandfather, but they were all in the village at the time for a festival of the dead. He disappeared into his garden and returned with a staggering handful of ganja, shimmering green with a fuchsia heart. I shuddered at the mere sight of it and passed when he offered to take a drag. Despite this, the fumes were enough to make me laugh, retch and then doze off. When I woke up, in a daze, I opened my eyes to see Juan rubbing a sponge over my forehead and telling me, in Spanish, not to worry, that everything was under control and that he was looking after me. Then he tried to kiss me on the mouth, but I turned my face away and tried to punch him in the face. But it was impossible and I started screaming because the pain I felt was unbearable. My arms and wrists were bound to the chair with barbed wire that cut into my skin. The more I moved them, the more I suffered and the more I heard sardonic laughter mocking the wounds they inflicted. I then discovered that I was at the end of the table in front of Juan's family, who were delighted to see me panicking, not understanding why I was tied up and asking where my friends were. I didn't speak Spanish very well, but I knew enough to understand that if I continued to struggle, he was going to tighten the wires until they shredded my flesh. Then Juan rolled his grandfather over to me in his chair. He looked at me, scrutinising me like a safe being examined from every angle before he cracked it. He smelled me as if I were roast beef, then began to run his tongue all over my face, making the sounds of a rutting beast. Horrified by his breath of wild garlic raclette cheese, I fainted.
I was awoken by the shrill sound of a chainsaw bursting my eardrum from behind as I lay in the dark, blindfolded and gagged, unable to make the slightest sound, trapped like a cute little dragonfly between the teeth of a carnivorous plant. I thought one last time about my parents, whom I'm sorry to say I won't be able to see get divorced. It was then that I heard my flatmate Thomas's voice over the sound of the chainsaw. At first this only fuelled the fury of the monster who seemed to be holding the tool, but Thomas soon found the words to calm him down by telling him about his mother and his relationship with her. She took the time to ask him about his Oedipus. Then the guy collapsed and started crying profusely. The other girls came to my rescue to untie me and we tiptoed back in the Volkswagen combi towards Springbreak. . When we got there, we went to the house of one of the bassist's friends, who'd rented a two-room apartment where he'd put us up. It was hard to believe we could sleep in all that chaos, in the middle of bottles and all those people in a trance dancing to Sonic Youth.But the guy asked us straight for money if we wanted to sleep there.We preferred to keep our money and sleep in the van or even on the beach. So that's what we did, with four sleeping bags, a big bag of grass, their instruments, we set up at the foot of the cliffs and spent the week away from the hustle and bustle, the four of us having fun watching the most beautiful sunrises in the world. At night we witnessed the turtles laying their eggs in the sand.I even became godmother to a baby turtle that I see from time to time when I return to Mexico.
That's why, at the start of the season, I decided to name this wonderful mid-boot Springbreaker.