This is Brighton

This is Brighton my postcard says. I was eighteen and a continent and a half away from home. Eighteen and wandering the streets visiting pubs and longing for the cafes back home. Drinking Jack Daniels and coke—double, of course—and eating chips (no fish). The smell of falafel was everywhere and I once had one with chips covered in dough.

A year prior I might have thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I died briefly but heaven was not the result. I remember Brighton because you can’t watch a UK film without images of the Brighton pier, where we tried to recover from the night before, pupils still dilated and bellies still empty.On the sand with cans of coke, kids making out, families out, waiting in the sun for a resolution. For come downs to bring us closer. Instead we had shoes full of sand.

Lets get far far away from here—from this—and all I never wanted to say. Rome—Pope’s funeral. Spain—cocaine, dark corners, their laughs—a stitch misplaced.

Brighton—more cocaine, the sea—why is it always the sea in the UK and the ocean, here? Does the language create the view or vice versa?

I miss the sea; I lost myself there, in Brighton. So long ago, too young to be so free, an existential meltdown waiting to happen. The backpack with the flag—run away, did you? I was asked, well, sort of. And I go back all too well, realize the characters that never left—the gremlins and fairies in Ireland where I was dreadfully sick—and everywhere the moving—here to there—everywhere—a stolen wallet. A boy who couldn’t care less—an excess of impure ecstasy—spinning into a place without words, but more spinning, more locking, more grinding.

Did anywhere but here have to be so far under?

On request I take it back—the plane ticket—the hostel bed.

And suddenly wanting to pick up that eighteen year old, dust her off—you’re safe.

But I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to do with her, afraid she would run and hide, she would crawl like a caterpillar and flee-fight like a wild pig. I’m afraid we would not know each other but oh, I do, I do. I love you, really, underneath it—bless your bones.

The Brighton pier always looks eerie to me, like empty carrousels and playgrounds littered with dust and cigarette butts. I am not advertising Brighton well, however, I am no tourist. And, appealing or not, this was Brighton, to me. It was cocaine and pubs and questions about hockey and what a toque is. (A toque is a hat, I don’t speak French, and I don’t really care much for hockey).

I’m going back to pick out the shards of glass—the sea was supposed to smooth out the edges. Years of being warn to the bone—but still it jolts the most awkward of places, I am hanging upside down, everyone appears more purposeful this way, like colonies with horizontal leadership and a taste for progress. The French revolution is on TV again and we become something separate. I’m still inside and outside.

I’m back on the beach wishing, just wishing.

Angels of cocaine overdoses march the pier—I try to sleep with my toes in the sand, to bury the part of me that thinks—what doesn’t kill me…

Went online and bought the cheapest plane ticket I could find.

This is Brighton at age eighteen. I had no ruby slippers. And I made it back home, with this postcard. This is me years later, with wisdom I needed at this pier, years ago.

And, as Morrissey says (a band I was introduced to in England, years ago), “That’s how people grow up.”

This is me wishing I didn’t need Brighton to learn.