A Tale of the Bone-Cold Stupid
by Walter Agnew Moore II, Your Eye on the World
29 January 2002, Amiens, France

So (Brassy), (Classy), and (Little Emma) are three nice English Girls who were born 60 years too late to be using long sticks to push model airplanes around on a map of Britain as plucky lads sprint to their Spitfires and Hurricanes and other plucky lads huddle inside the freezing cockpits of Messerschmidts and Heinkels already up in the air. Instead, they are in France at various tiny little towns teaching English most days of the week, except today, when we are all in the Amiens Sports Complex, iceskating.

For 6 Euros (about 5 bucks real money), you get a rented pair of skates and entry to the rink for up to 3 hours. One hour is plenty enough to wring you out. Also, if you flash an expired Student ID card at the gate, they'll knock the whole deal down to 5 Euros.

I have done my one terrified ritual creep around the rink's edge and am venturing out onto the real ice. (Brassy), (Classy), and (Little Emma) are, of course, better than I am at this. There is quite a crowd, but (Classy) is easy to spot gliding along in her green sweater, and (Brassy) would be the one in a fuchsia jacket, pretending like she's going to knock you down everytime she comes by. (Little Emma) is invisible most of the time—wearing a black jacket, she is indistinguishable from the 100 or so French people out on the ice.

The ice is roughed up pretty badly, which slows things down and keeps me from busting my tail.

The last time I was in here, I was a spectator. It was the Amiens Gothiques hockey team thrashing some visitors from down south in the Basque country. The die-hard Gothiques fans were whooping themselves into a frenzy with a Napoleon-at-Austerlitz line-up of drummers and a hoarse barked-out Popeye-the-Sailor-Man chant:

"Nous som-mes les rouge et noir
Nous som-mes les rouge et noir
Vous autres, vous etes les EN-CU-Lés
Nous som-mes les rouge et noir!"

(We are the red and black
We are the red and black
You others, you take it UP THE ASS
We are the red and black!)

The Gothiques were technically impressive, but there wasn't one single fight, so I have yet to see a HOCKEY game here...

I try to imagine skating well enough to play even fightless French hockey, and it is beyond my comprehension. Just going round and round in circles has me dripping with sweat. I still have my jacket on simply as padding for the inevitable spill.

The girls are sitting on a bench. I stop by them, chat for a second, then out of nowhere, slip and fall while holding the rail. My one time this session. I pull myself back up, and they are looking at (Brassy)'s knee, which is swelling up to golf-ball size. She fell on her knees, then slid on her belly across the rough ice (which she insists on showing the world), and then when she finally quit skidding, a little kid flashed by her and deliberately kicked ice in her face.

Sounds like time for a pint. Lots of "aaarrr matey" pirate jokes at peg-leg (Brassy)'s expense, Crazy Eddy the bartender trying to hit on them all even though they've got "blokes back 'ome, don't they", then they all catch the afternoon trains back to their teaching-assignment villages.

I, being a big-city Amiens-type guy, hang around and go about my business.

It is later, night-time, and I am back at My Goodness. Why not. They are nice to me, and I'd just spend that money somewhere else. People yowling out, "why Why WHYYYYY, DeLIIIIlah" along with Tom Jones. The Welsh said they'd be here an hour ago. I pop out my portable and type them a texto:

"BUDGE UR WELSH ARSES"

I get an immediate buzz back. "MORNING WALTER, WE R ON OUR WAY"

They come in, missing Ruth, Chris, and Veer. The first two are out of town, but Veer needs to show up. I pop a texto to him:

"THE SON OF AGNI DEMANDS YOUR PRESENCE AT MG"

He sends back: "HAIL WISE FIRECHILD, ALAS TREACHEROUS HEALTH PREVENTS ME FROM ATTENDING"

The Americans are here. Several college students from a large squarish centrally-located state not known for its forests or coastline. Here doing academic tourism. Probably wouldn't notice them in Austin except to snarl, "Who let all these damn frat-rats and suzies in my bar?", but here we are all countrymen, and I drift back to talk to them.

I know the two guys already. They are big bouncing puppies, all "Dude! No Way! Dude! Ah, DUDE!" Besides (Dude!) and (AhDude!), there are two girls, (Collapsed Drunk Girl), and (Pixie Princess).

(Collapsed Drunk Girl)'s main contribution to the conversation is a series of slurred "huhhh"s, "whaaat"s, and various other words to indicate that she is 5 minutes behind the rest of the planet. (Pixie Princess), on the other hand, is popping off perky out-of-context statements one after the other, all the while using the hey-I've-got-droopy-eyelids flirting technique to get French guys to buy her drinks. She keeps asking me, like, about AH-stin? cuz she like, wants to go to GRAD school? there, n like she does FILM? n her films r rilly well reCEIVED?

Well, maybe so. (Collapsed Drunk Girl) and (Dude!) leave together. (Pixie Princess) keeps talking. After a while I try to use my mind to make her have an epileptic fit, but it doesn't work, she's too powerful. Then she stops talking film, and segues into:

"I'm an Indian!" and she bats her baby blues and brushes back blonde hair from her ear.

"You're a what?"

"I'm an Indian!"

"What tribe... the Dutch?"

(Pixie Princess) droops her eyelids at me but botches the effect by letting her jaw go slack at the same time. Must be thinking. (AhDude!) jumps in: "Ah, DUDE! Every white person where we're from says they're Indian!"

She is on the alert now: "No! Like, I rilly AM, like, a LOT. It was my great-grandmother, so like that's 1/16th, and that's a LOT! No—like wait—(thinks thinks thinks stares at ceiling) my great-grandmother THAT's 1/8th, that's even MORE!"

OK, I'm looking around for the Welsh, there's gotta be somebody I can hold a conversation with here. When (AhDude!) and (Pixie Princess) start talking about rolling a J, maaaaaan, I decide I am Officially Bored, and I leave them to their plans to worship at the altar of Stasis.

I'm chatting to people a couple of tables away. Yep, (AhDude!) found some papers, (Pixie Princess) is hunched over the table towards him in anticipation, he's got his little bag o' stash there on the table—

He's rolling it up to smoke right here in the bar.

(Pixie Princess) and (AhDude!) never see the Owner, or the Bouncer, even though both of them were hovering nearby at the time. One is violent and fairly big, the other is huge and paid by the violent one. The two kids barely have time to squeak as they are hustled around the rail and out the front door in a muffled clumping of bumped stools and twisted jackets.

They are both getting mashed against the outside wall when I get outside, and the Owner has dialed the Gendarmes with his free hand. Neither kid can put together a coherent French sentence, and I butt in "They didn't know, they didn't know—"

The owner stops me short: "Damn eet Waltair, this is not Amsterdam. I am not having zees people make me loose my licence!", but they both at least ease up on them.

Then the cops show, and make us leave.

I hear that (AhDude!) and (Pixie Princess) spent two days in the lock-up, and then they were put on a flight out of Paris directly back to the Heartland.

Well, that's one way it could have ended.

It is the next day. I am flashing my expired Student ID at the lady who works the front desk at the skating rink. It's just me this time. Her name-tag says "Je m'appelle MYRIAM". We joke about how the rink is only open another hour, but that's plenty to wipe me out. She says: "What is your origin?", and I lock up like I always do, because it confuses me when they put it like that, in my mind I hear the sails thumping against the ropes and the Greek Girl and the English Sailor are looking at Charleston harbor through the rain. Simple is best: "I am American."

"And your French is PERFECT!" cries Je m'appelle MYRIAM.

"And you are a good LIAR!" I think, but I thank her, and she tries out some English:

"Welcome!"

It's the little kids who scare me the most when I skate. They have no care for their safety and will dart out onto the rink at high speed going the wrong direction, weaving at me like fighter-planes swarming a big bomber, bent over with their fragile little skulls right at my knee-level. I am terrified I will collide with one, because, you know, that could really hurt my knee.