All She Wants to do is DaNcE

Sometimes I just need a night out. It builds within me, like I’m sure it does within everyone else my age. The desire to party, to go dance, to socialize; it grows and grows and grows until the yearning is so great you just have to satisfy it. You have to go out one night and have a damn good time.

For me, that was tonight. It began with a lovely dinner at La Ponche in St. Tropez. The typically-French food was good, but the view was better – the calm harbor littered with yachts, St. Maxime’s city lights flickering endlessly in the night air, a beautifully decorated Tropezian ally with Christmas lights and soft music. It was nice to see my dear friend Tony who, after tomorrow, will be back at sea again for 10 days.

We were having such a nice time catching up that after our three-hour dinner we still weren’t sick of each other and decided the next step ought to be drinks at the port. Bar du Porte? Too many people. Café Paris? Too far away. Papagayo? Too typical. So we settled on Senequiers for martinis.

Sometime after our second drink, I was overcome by a passionate desire to speak French. “Sorry Tony, it’s been a lovely night but I got to move on. You’re welcome to come, if you want.” He had to work. It’s probably for the best; where I was going, no one spoke English.

The P’tit Club was closed, but happening after hours. Denis had all sorts of friends in town, all which gave me a hard time simply by being me – and showing up at 2am with the power to open all the doors and get free drinks, if I so chose. It was wonderful to see everyone again; I hadn’t been down much for the past two weeks. Olivier, the man who once took me to L’Esquinade for lunch, was completely inappropriate and angry that I stopped visiting. What can I say, family comes first. Somehow I talked my way into obtaining a free tee shirt – I think the fact that I worked so many nights for no pay may have helped…

Regardless, I followed Stephen on my scooter to have a night out dancing. The man drives like he’s crazy and I know better than to get in a car with him – however, I didn’t know enough to realize that following him isn’t an option either. As his taillights disappeared into the darkness, I pulled my scooter off the road, into a nice, lit parking lot from which I could call Stephen and get directions. Once I felt comfortable enough that I had translated the French well enough to find the discotheque, I turned my scooter around and prepared to drive off. Wrong. I was suddenly faced with a large, red wall. I had pulled over in a gated community and there was no way out. None. At all. I drove up and down the lot, clearly seeing the cars on the busy Route du Plage through chicken wire fences and I thought I was going to die – I just hadn’t yet decided if it would be of laughter or tears. I had visions of sitting on my scooter facing the gate until someone woke up to go to work Monday morning. There was no guard, there was no break in the fence, there was no way out.

Just when I was about to give up, the gate opened and I received looks of bewilderment from the residents pulling in as I slowly drove my scooter out. Oops? I found my way to Manhattan, a disco in Cogolin, and talked my way into entering for free (helps if you’re a girl with an accent, you know?) so that I could dance, dance, dance. It was fun. It was needed.

Driving home at 5:30 I was thrilled. (My only negative feeling came when I nearly hit a boar crossing the street – they’re solid animals. It’s like hitting a moose or a deer in a car: your car will suffer. Hit one on a scooter and you’ll be lucky if you live.) Relieved, tired, and ecstatic that I had so much fun being young in the south of France, I felt revived. And tomorrow I’ll catch up on sleep laying on a mat, baking in the sun, eating delicious food at L’Esquinade. Really, this is the life.