Toast to Open Waters pv maxi

And somehow in that whirl of adolescent oaths taken with secrets biting into his tongue; somehow in that haze of teenage liquor and the rising heat in his fireplace chest, the memories of fifteen, a decade ago under the sweltering Lyonnais summer sun, became the passing gales of autumn time’s dawning upon a city lit by new promises. So, here he stood, centred around the building scape unchanged, watching as the last wisps of a golden juvenescence dipped into the new horizons of a harvest-plenty fall, a smile playing at the edges of anticipatory lips and definitely, remarkably, a person changed.

His steps were lighter, shed free from the confines of heavy combat boots, and from a heart aching to be different, without ever realising he was already. It was at the end of a road of smudged eyeliner and a leather jacket prison that he found the revelation, stood on the docks of Marseille, a sea shrouded in a haze of shimmering summertime fog, promising an ocean that would bring him home. For as he bid goodbye to a new companion and accomplice alike, who stood a distant smudge of youth on his starboard, he learnt, through the trials of trivial arguments to the tribulations of a conflicting soul, that after all this time, a journey of the extraordinary only had one definition.

It was a home in this world of discord; a home built not only by stone and wood, not only nestled within the sprawling Bergvliet suburbs, but held up with the foundations of the people whom he loved and the people who loved him in return. And so somewhere, between all those bricks — the ones that had seen him through these twenty-six years, through his first fumbling as a toddler to when he carried his own opportunities a strapping lad — was a mortar being values that never crumbled under pressure or new experiences. A value that shaped, guided, and led him to a salvation found beyond his faith but in himself. For faith, that trust to let go even when instinct implored him to hold on, had left him at where he stood now.

In his mid-twenties, trunk held with curled fingers, eyes trailing the stray bird that swept across the French sky, its caws a little more persistent than usual, as if she was not welcoming an arbitrary traveller, but greeting an old friend she did not recognised at first glance. Having exchanged band t-shirts and tattered jeans for tailored polos and khaki shorts, black became a comfortable pastel, and his mother was right about it just being a phase. His piercings grew back together after a little too much neglect; he still mourned them occasionally, as he looked in the mirror.

He still kept those studs, somewhere in a drawer of his family home, the silver catching the light of the afternoon sun if you took them out at the right moment, just as they caught the light of his teenage years — a reflection, imperfect and dirtied, of memories he would forever treasure.

This city, stripped of all context but the faint promise of maturing, saw two men bound by the same body, distanced by the stretches of time. So as his hair grew out into curls of honied gold, the awkward first tips of still-dyed black cut away, so did the truth within his heart take on a steadier shine, letting go of the image it had imposed on itself, and reclaiming the verities it had always held. Yet no matter clad by boots or trainers, the same feet that had bid the country goodbye had now just stepped back onto the shores of France mere hours ago. And so, Anthonie found himself returning to the capsule of memory, held somewhere between his fondness for Polish królik and a European gastronomy.

He returned to Lyon. He returned to Lyon a man and a father.

That thought had been marinating in his mind since he had first crossed the English Channel, diced and pitted since he had first received the news of the arrival of twins, jarred and bottled when he had first held his duo of daughter and son in his arms, those watery eyes squinted by vivacious cries. And still the surrealism was not lost on him, the beautiful absurdities of two bundles of life that he had produced. Held to his chest, their soft heartbeats against the exhilaration within his own chest cavity, no language could have captured how lucky Anthonie had felt. No language could have captured how lucky Anthonie still felt.

And yet, there was something in that cocksure stride, in that charming attitude that sill has not faltered, that proclaimed to this land that he was still himself, his own, and unapologetic. Leaving his fifteenth year behind him and now stepping into his twenty-sixth, even through all the phases he had stood by as himself. Changed. But no less himself.

And so…. Stood in the centre of a Lyonnais street, those sky-reflecting eyes flitted across the diners and bars wedged under antique flats, and somewhere within his heart, he still felt like the teenager who had tasted his first sip of alcohol. That face he had pulled — he still did not quite know whether it was the ecstasy of the thrill of petty crime or the sharp hit of the sudden heat. Well, fake IDs could be damned now.

The first establishment that caught his eye was nestled into a white building, stout but spacious, promising a welcoming atmosphere with the distant sounds of chatter and tingle of bells from within — the door was just ajar, enough for him to barely hear the conversations within, muffled by music and the unfamiliarity of his fourth tongue. A small smile crossed his lips one hand delicately pushed the door open the full way through, to reveal a room decorated in floor to ceiling of white, from the very painted walls to the adornments that were lined up on the tables and counter.

If he had read the bar’s name before walking in, it would have at least proved itself to be no misnomer.

Whenever convenient, and especially, come the rare predicament of solitude, alone, Anthonie sought company in people he may otherwise not connect with — the passing waitress, the fleeting table-mate, and here, today, the curious bartender…. He slipped into a seat, a tall bar stool, his neighbouring chairs unoccupied as laugher and cheer radiated from the tables surrounding. And for brief seconds, as the rest of the bar hummed on while he was left to his own thoughts, he was by himself in his own secluded world, yet he was not lonely. He was not lonely, the same way he was not frightened by the shroud of night. Why would he be, when he knew that the sun would always be looking out for him, even from the other side of the world? And when she came, in her golden blaze of fiery warmth, it would be an embrace founded only in trust.

And company would come to him.

Instead of announcing his presence with a self-excuse, he waited, with patience that was learnt as a lifelong journey, for the sole bartender to turn and greet his arrival. His left hand had cupped his cheek as he watched the bartender’s measured, learned movements — a little clumsy, perhaps with novelty and youth, but he was not one to judge. The few kitchen cocktails he had dipped his toes into trying probably turned out to be mixology disasters, and he was grateful the bartender, however novice, had not been in his presence as those concoctions were created in those half-remembered underground caverns.

The youth of his bartender struck him, even though he was only a school cycle older himself. Newly graduated, perhaps not yet so familiar with the cogs of adulthood. He seemed no different from the other Frenchmen of Lyon, their self-presented refinement, from the neatly combed part of deep brown hair bordering into black to the tailored clothes over an athletic build. Rather than working the frontline handlings of a barroom, he seemed more fitting for the slow lifestyles of vineyard naps and sunbathing. And yet something in those eyes, the grey that could have been almost mistaken for black, was a harbour for ships he did not often see docked. Ships he did not often see on the vast ocean of possibility at all. There was something within him that promised a dream, a hope, as if he was a deity from a faraway world, on a quest to explore all the workings of a human mind.

And within that gaze, he found something that reminded him of himself.

French rolling off his tongue like an old friend he had not seen in months, that light twang of a Geneva accent bordering on a haughty Swiss, he ordered a drink with simple efficiency, “Good day, I would like a margarita, please.”

He swept his jacket off from his shoulders; he intended to stay, and not just to finish a drink.

@Maximilien de Fostoncy | Banner by Prat Pass