Day 12 - Mail-Order Brides/ The French Connection

Good Morning Everyone!!  I hope this morning that your skillets are all full and greasy , and your shorts aren't.  It's a lovely day out at the Trailer Park. 

I live in a one-trailer trailer park.  I'm on the single-wide side next to the hen-house.

I've been getting emails lately from a Russian website featuring  young voluptuous mail order brides. That's just stupid. Had they consulted with the Catholics, they would have known - I am severely marriage impaired. Wedding injured.  Matrimonial melanoma.

Do you really think one of these Russian girls is going to be any less pissed-off and disillusioned than her American sisters, after the first 3-4 days of Hulu & corndogs at the trailer park?  I don't.  I've been called a lot of dirty names in foreign languages before, and it doesn't matter, you can still tell.

PERFECT

(Tony Rosario)

Don't You tell me you're not perfect

Don't you tell me you're not fine

I'm a man of strong opinion

I can make up my own mind

And I can see

A certain light in your eyes

I brought a young french woman home from Switzerland once. She was a sultry and painfully enticing vision of every fantasy  I had ever fantasized on . A real race-horse .:-)  Petite brunette, with luscious red lips like strawberries and a delicious eroticism about her that made even concrete just a little harder. 

I was playing a month long gig at the Casino De Montreaux in Montreaux, Switzerland with a good friend and crazy-assed cowboy, an absolutely brilliant songwriter from Comanche Texas, Tony Lane. At one point Tony had been a protege of the great Townes Van Zandt and there was no guessing why.  He's really, really good at what he does. Check him out.

On the plane from the states  a stewardess had threatened to throw a very inebriated Tony Lane off the plane over the Atlantic  and I, very inebriated,  had nearly gotten shot by airport security in Amsterdam over a pocket knife and a bottle of Bordeaux.  Our escapades only seemed to escalate once we landed. The hangovers were massive but the music was brilliant.  It was a game-changer for me as a writer.After our first month at the Casino they held us over for another month. That's another story.

 The Casino De Montreaux was our home for the next 2 months. It's the  place that Deep Purple sang "Smoke On The Water" about.  We played 6 nights a week at a "Western Bar" in the lower level of the Casino. There was a cabaret (Strip joint)  on the floor below us, and a world-class 5-star restaurant above us. We had gone over on a songwriters showcase that some folks at Polygram in Nashville has arranged for a few of their songwriters.  Sort of a cultural exchange, except hey realized all too  late that due in large part to our participation , the word "cultured" would be redifined forever.

Through the magic of music , and the complete abandonment of principles, I had already , within 2 weeks abroad, grown quite comfortable with the international set.  I was completely enamored with the boozy lifestyle adorned with so many lovely women. They were everywhere - like ornaments on a Christmas tree.  Shiny, sparkly.......I digress

 Suffice to say I was likin' the situation way more than was advisable. For a country Yutz with a mug like a shovel, all of a sudden I was killin' it!

Nathalie tended bar at an after hours techno club just down the street from the Casino. Tony & I would go over after we got off stage at 2 a.m. at the Casino. Being from Nashville, and never having heard the word techno, we thought it cute.....and fun. 

Tony or I went there to stare at beautiful women and drink - pure and simple. To hell with dancing. Fella could hurt himself doing that stuff in cowboy boots. I think the flashing black lights made us both a little queasy as well. 

We both had eyes and we both enjoyed being served those icy cold tumblers of  single-malt by a lovely little mensch like Nathalie;  the woman who, within months,  I would wake up next to in a hotel room in Vegas just married as hell. 

Her English wasn't bad at all. I asked her to teach me how to say "buy my cassette" in French.  We discovered that our birthdays were on the same day. Apparently there was something about the way I drooled, or perhaps it was my signature "deer-in-the-headlights" grin, but for some reason the poor thing took a liking to me.

It started innocently enough with coffee and pastries,  at a Turkish tea house overlooking  Lake Geneva on a brilliant May morning. Our birthdays were both August 18.  She loved Billy Holiday and John Coltrane. She thought country music was "stupid and "pas bon". Not long after that day I wrote a country song called "Perfect" about her.

The  next thing I know we're climbing each other like monkey bars, and within a couple months we were haulin' ass for dear life down a Swiss highway at 100kph in an old VW van that howled like a drowning cat, screaming for the airport with an entire family of pissed-off and well-armed gypsies hot on our tail. 

Some damn thing about the heartlessly wounded dignity of a young and quite voluptuous Swiss lingerie model,  and her also quite voluptuous "early 40-something" mother. Both, having recently discovered that I had secretly been in intimate congress with both simultaneously over the past several months,  now sincerely desired my head on a spit with an apple in my whatzit. All stemming from, what I must embarassedly admit were shameful dalliances with their affections. The cousins and uncles with pitchforks and pistols were just backup.

In my defense , I was at this point, off the rez and completely unscripted

When that 747 came off the tarmac in Geneva I peed a little tinkle of relief right their.  I believe Nathalie may have as well.  We landed at LAX with about $100 in our pockets between us.  Enough for 2 Greyhound tickets to Vegas and a cab ride out to my Dad's place.

We didn't have a car or any money.  We stayed at my Dad's apartment for a couple weeks until I got a job at a cabinet shop and a couple little gigs around town. With my 2nd paycheck we got an apartment just a couple blocks off the Strip.  At night you could hear gunshots and sirens.  

I was drinking more than I should have been and so was she. The next few months took a serious toll on both our worlds and Nathalie and I, painfully, went our separate ways in Vegas.  She's back in France now and I hope she is as happy as she can be.We still communicate occasionally on Facebook.  I will always wish her well and will always be grateful for the lesson - "ACHETE MON CASSETTE SIL TU PLAIS`!" "Je` T`aime, Je` T`aimerai  mon Cheri"

"Peace Out"
"Don't take any wooden nickels"
Until manyana

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