On May 1 I took a one-way flight from JFK to Barcelona but when I landed the airport was closed, the workers on strike for May Day, the only occupants a group of young Spaniards in uniforms with beards and machine guns. I’d never met Laurent, had only seen pictures of him, but figured it would be easy to spot each other—me, the only American with two cats—Laurent, a larger version of Robert DeNiro, bronzed and Catalan. And sure enough he soon emerged from behind the soldiers wearing a polo with a sweater tied around his shoulders in that distinct French way.

My head had been scratchy all spring in Pennsylvania with the pollen and the night before, from staying up too late with my friend JK smoking some awful Mexican weed, but all that mental fog lifted as we curled around the Spanish coast to France with peek-a-boo views of the turquoise sea and far-off cliffs, my cats in the back of Laurent’s little car mewing, doped-up on sedative.

Laurent leaned forward against the wheel, a large hulk of a man wedged in this tiny auto, a bit of an accent but otherwise perfect English, wincing as he drew on his cigarette and always offering me one. He was the son of the real estate agent my mom and John hired to buy their new house in the small French fishing village Port-Vendres, one town over and a short walk from where I’d be living, Collioure.

Mom had remarried an Englishman named John Pearse—in fact they’d just gotten married not long before in the house John bought from one of his guitar students, Richard Lockwood. John patiently taught Richard guitar for years hoping one day Richard would decide to sell his house and finally he had, and through a bizarre twist of fate John won a lawsuit against a spine and neck surgeon who’d nearly paralyzed him in a botched operation—now John was flush with cash and buying up real estate beginning with Richard’s house in Pennsylvania, next the condo in Collioure, and now this new one in Port-Vendres.

Mom had said to me on the phone one night after some wine that now with this new house no one would be living at the condo and maybe I could if I wanted, and it didn’t take long for me to put in my notice at work and start telling my friends guess what?, I’m moving to Europe.

That last December in Seattle the weather was unseasonably clear and every morning I walked the hour-long trek from my one-bedroom rental in the Central District down through Pioneer Square, then SODO, Seattle’s industrial district. As I descended, the sun would meander its way above the Cascades, often streaked with blue, peach and red, and I’d imagine my new life in France as I turned 27, still single, just these two cats and a bunch of cassettes, some houseplants I’d leave behind with friends in case I ever returned.

On one of those last Sundays a guy from the Rainbow Family and a girl I vaguely knew came by my apartment and asked if I wanted to buy some acid, the kind of thing that never happened, so I bought as much as I could figuring I’d smuggle it with the books I was shipping by train, and hid it inside a twelve-hundred page Webster’s dictionary in the crease between pages 666 and 667, in the Fs.

The plan was for me to move into my mom and John’s house in Pennsylvania over the winter while they settled into their new house in France, and then change places with them when they moved back to Pennsylvania. Because John was on a green card he had to leave the States on a recurring basis, and now with three properties they’d started a pattern of living in the U.S. for 90 days, then France, then the U.S. again, back and forth with their two dogs, John’s collectible guitars, then later, whatever treasures they found in the French flea markets, whatever art or collectible clocks John amassed, however much wine they could transport pre-9/11.

I can see why John gave so many free guitar lessons to Richard Lockwood because that house remains the most unusual and spectacular place I’ve ever seen. The architect had studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, and the space carried those trademark Wright features. For one, it was built in the side of a cliff, cut inside a hill, mostly hidden beneath nearby highway PA 100. Turning down the driveway you could hardly see the house at all: a set of brick-red doors opened to a modest entryway but then looking down, toward the east, the interior space opened to a vast two-story open floor plan with floor-to-ceiling glass facing a wooded valley and a large expanse of morning sky. In this way, the house kind of “bloomed” upon entry, an oak-colored spiral staircase connecting the bottom floor to the top, a double-sided, gas-powered brick fireplace in the middle, rust-colored floor tiling, native American rugs on the walls, antique stringed instruments, a piano, John’s impeccable, oftentimes quirky art: African fertility figurines, Navajo kachina dolls, spooky-looking masks.

The layout also modeled Wright’s compression and release tactic, where parts of the house were deliberately small or under-sized, followed by more expansive areas that gave a feeling of tension followed by an almost cathartic release. I’d often find it soothing to spend time in the smaller bedrooms for the sheer fact I needed a break from the expansiveness of the main living area.

It was in that area I decided to finally get some sleep that first night I sampled the acid in mid-January after my mom and John departed for Spain, and I was left alone with the two dogs and the one from across the road, Ben, the one we called Ghost Dog because he ran back and forth across busy PA 100 and never once got hit.

It had snowed that night and I’d turned off all the lights and put the stereo up so high that the sound caromed off the interior walls, through the very interior of me, as I got down on all fours and yapped with the dogs and galloped across the tiled floor, some queer kind of communion.

I’d get a temp job for summer spending money and spend the rest of my time in the hot tub smoking cigars, digging into the wine cellar, writing, taking long walks in the country or trying to lose myself on those small country roads.

Just 27, I’d dipped into adulthood and decided the water wasn’t right, then got back out of the pool. I had a CD discman and a wallet with about 25 of my favorite discs for the six-hour flight from JFK to Barcelona. All April I’d been thinking about how it would feel to get on the plane not knowing when I’d ever come back. The thought maybe I wouldn’t.

I knew what disc I’d put on when the plane got in the air because the sound of the organs and guitars rose the way I imagined I would in that plane. And then I ordered a drink from the flight attendant and got out my notepad and started writing. It began with the date at the top, May 1, 1998: Monday. On the plane to Barcelona.

Categories: Memoir, travel, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, journal writing, prose