The Diver
a tale from my own journal
He was quite tall - 6’6, his obituary read - but despite his stature (and my initial wariness of all men) he was not threatening or imposing. I was traveling around France last October, beginning in Cassis - a seasonally tourist driven fishing town near Marseilles, when I encountered Virgil.
Situated on the terrace of a raw bar, I feasted solo with a tower of 2 dozen oysters and wine. The owner of the bar, amused by the fact I was housing 24 of these massive Bretagne bivalves as one person, brought over some sort of rum / banana concoction for a chat.
She inquired why I travel alone - to be honest I just prefer it, ‘I always meet interesting people’ was something along the lines of what I said - when not two minutes later a very tall, very lost, very American man appeared - seemingly out of thin air, asking if we could help find his hotel.
His skin was tanned and he smelled like the sea - almost as if he’d just walked out of it. Eyes bright and blue, and although evident of intoxication they contained a touch of wonder. He looked like a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, in the greatest and most cliché way.
Charred by years of smoke, his voice crackled warmly with a question pointed at me, “What are you doing?”
He asked this as if we’d known each other long before this interaction - so I responded as such.
”Drinking with you.”
Two Americans on a wine fueled tear of a tiny fishing village - at one point we ran out to the pier, just to scream into the expanse of obsidian sea before us, cradled by the great white calanques - which sent our screams right back to us. I’d been reading Rimbaud, a French version with the English translation side by side, in an attempt to improve my French. In this particular version, ‘sound’ translated to ‘rumeur’ - a word I favored and was excited to throw at the sea that night, just to hear it come back to me.
Virgil was a freediver - there was some competition the next morning he was participating in - where he would dive around 300 feet. He could hold his breath for 9 minutes - and was training to go longer. This was shocking to me as I watched him alternate between smoking through a pack of Marlboro lights and taking long drags from his banana yellow ‘french vanilla’ vape. On our journey around Cassis, he told me of his previous life as a musician, opening for none other than the great LMFAO. His prized possession was a Hammond B3 organ that he bought at a garage sale for $25. He owned a toucan with a blue beak - I forgot its name - but he fed it blueberries.
Throughout our adventure there was no indication of us going home together - merely two solo travelers looking into each other’s windows, each taking what was needed from the other. At the end of the night he walked me to my AirBnb, which was perched on the top of a very steep hill overlooking the town. The moon illuminated our world in a soft shade of blue, dotted with amber lights from the flecks of white yachts which hung in stasis in the port. Halfway through our walk up the hill, I nearly passed out from exhaustion, so he threw me on his back and carried me the rest of the way. When we reached the top he kissed me, just to kiss me, and held my face in his hands. He told me this was one of the “greatest nights of his life “ with so much sincerity I almost believe him.
Over a year later, I pulled an old journal out from under my bed and read my own tale of The Diver. It felt like reading the words of another writer - one with a different set of circumstances and a fresh pair of eyes. A woman without fear and the world cracking open before her, meeting a man who’d lived many times over - lacking a different kind of fear.
Out of curiosity I looked him up - and with a punch to the gut my jaw hung open as the Google search page filled with dozens of articles detailing his disappearance after a diving accident on Mother’s Day. My heart stung - I’d met him just months before his death.
It snowed last night, blanketing everything in a bit of weight and fresh perspective. Christmas is just days away, and I’ve been so caught up in the machinery of it all - severed from wonder, I feel myself losing touch with the nectar of life.
So if you’re reading this, and are feeling a similar sort of distance from the expected joy of the holiday season, I encourage you to do the braver thing - the more difficult thing - and be vulnerable. It takes guts to lean into wonder, it’s embarrassing and uncomfortable, but you might be some sort of window for someone.
anyway
Happy Holidays to all of you -
I’m very grateful for you.
-
gabrielle
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