A bit of a Dionysian evening led up to this experience at Underground Amazing Gay Club, so you know this one's a bit of a doozy. A quick warning to my mother or anyone else who might not want to have to look up "backroom" in a dictionary, I did say it was Dionysian.
We needed a night. A real night. We had rehearsed until it hurt, we were frustrated. We had never taken the time to really bond as a cast. So we did. In the house by the seaside on a not-totally-miserable night, we ate French hot-dogs (the thinnest sausages available pressed into baguettes with fancy mustard), watched France v Spain, and got hammered. After that, we went out.
To Underground Amazing Gay Club, of course, because, well, obviously.
Just like every gay club, amazing or not, a throng of drunks surrounded the front door. Cute boys cruising while smoking, intense lesbians talking to their girlfriends on cell phones, veritable children learning the rites of gay by getting too drunk and hitting on... me."Mais toi, t'es gay?" she pigsqueeled as she tumbled into me, eyes squinting - or quickly closing against consciousness.
Except one of them recognized me.
"You are Scott Turner," she said omniciently, matter of fact. "YOU are scott turnER" is what it sounds like in Franglais.
Then some long conversation ensued among the women which I easily ignored while Morgan, poor bilingual Morgan, tried to explain who I am and why I am here. He makes me sound really awesome. He's a good wingman, that Morg.
"Stay in school, kids, don't do drugs," I smiled with a wave. Then we entered the club. Like any gay club, an empty but well-lit dancefloor decorated the bar. (Have you ever noticed the size of the bar in ratio to the size of the building at a gay bar? It's positively aggressive.) And then, a backroom. Not, like, a VIP lounge. Not a party enclave. Not a private room for functions. A backroom. Pitch black so you could trip at the shin and fall onto the plastic-covered mattress overtaking the space. God help you then.
This being a gay bar, of course all I saw were straight couples, doing it. IS THERE NO END TO YOUR GENTRIFICATION, STRAIGHT PEOPLE?!
I have to say, I was impressed. Most gay bars don't have backrooms anymore. It's like a health violation, or too much of a throwback, or the people who own the place are too straight (which does not mean not-gay, btw). To travel all the way to Lorient, population 60,000, four full TGV hours out of Paris, and find a more sexually liberated bar than in New York City? Fuck yeah. So, you know, I looked around. But this isn't what makes it graphic.
What makes it graphic is the fact that one of my cast mates, the one driving me in fact, decided to get his dick sucked by two guys at the same time in the backseat of our car. Do you know how long that takes? Too long, at 5am, as a hangover of Dionysian proportions threatens to set in.
I would like to take this moment to bemoan the fact that no Waffle Houses exist in any part of France. That in fact, one cannot find a greasy spoon at any hour of the day, much less 5am on a Sunday. No, not only is there no place to get the latenight drunk meal you so crave, there is furthermore no venue at which to brunch from 1-4pm, depending on how hard you partied. If you don't have eggs in your fridge by now, you are screwed, my son. Screwed.
I decide to enlist the help of my cast members in getting me home at a reasonable hour. Dude-bros all, they are only too happy to surround the car and rock it harder than it was already rocking. The boys jump out, and I make for shotgun - ain't no way I'm sitting in that backseat. At which point, one of the suckers says, "YOU are scott turnER."
I freeze. What did he see? I was only looking around in that backroom...
"You were ere some years ago. You gave a lesson to my class." Which means he is, at most, three years out of high school. Then he started speaking in French to the other sucker, claiming me to some fame beyond reality given how the kid looked at me.
I wish I had said "Stay in school, kids, don't do drugs," like Abby Gaskins responded the next day. Instead, I shut and locked the door, and felt not the slightest bit scuzzy. I'll be recognized any day and love it, but please God, not like that again.
PS - A few days later I told this story to Eric Vigner, my director. He said, "But you are like a unicorn in this town. An American who comes to Lorient? This is unheard of. Really."
