Summer 98

This summer of 1998 was memorable.
We spent our weekends on the Vendée coast. It was not the end of the world but the end of our world. The last days of the week never passed quickly enough to find us, climb in the car and go, faster than they could, windows open, music offered, crossing the towns that led us to our paradise.
We slept in the dunes, under the stars, our bodies entangled to keep us warm. Some, far-sighted, took out their Quechua tent, which had been in their safe all season long, in order to anticipate improvised overnight stays. Others isolated themselves, out of sight, the better to copulate. From these, two categories emerged: the adventurers, who started a doggy style at the top of a dune and finished it at the bottom, by force of thrusts, leaving behind them the imprint of two furrows dug in the sand by their knees and the hands of the sweet, who, too nice or too alcoholic, dared not complain about the pine needles which entered under her skin as they slipped and the intrepid who began their night in their arms the better to end it in other.
In the early morning, we would wake up in the light of dawn, our eyelids still heavy from the day before, our mouth pasty, our voice hoarse from having smoked too much, our hair mixed together, sand over our ears, the fragrance of iodized air in his nostrils, the light heart of having once again enjoyed a beautiful summer evening, the smile hooked to be there, together, facing eternity.
We would pick up our makeshift beds and go out to find food, enough to fill us up for lunch and to mop up any leftover alcohol that has not evaporated. A few beers of course, just to make it flow. Sated, we spent the rest of the day on the beach, basking the pill, letting the hours tick by, regularly reversing the front and back to perfect the tan that the fat to be milked was sure to stir up. .
We did not imagine then that upon returning from one of these distant escapades, at the end of August, death would invite itself. That beyond the sheets, it is our bodies and our hearts that it would crumple, our lives that it would turn upside down and our paths that it would separate.
However, even today, closing my eyes, I go back there willingly, caress the insolence of our 20 years, dive into the sweetness of this summer and see us again, for a moment, at the turn of a dream or an improvised nap, all there … happy, tanned and very much alive.