bruised rib

injuries and the Euro Trip

I bruised my rib a few months ago. Biking home after a softball game. We lost again but our dusty gloves are getting more worn in and we’re less fearful to run with both feet. My friends often tell me I’m accident prone while poking bruises on my legs and scrapes on my elbows. I’m clumsy, I’ve long accepted this. I’ve been told it’s endearing but I still struggle with it. Like maybe I will forever be a bit kid-like.

The bruised rib didn’t feel extreme or important. Just my sternum colliding with my handlebars because someone stopped without warning in front of me. An Uber Eats deliveryman on a motorized scooter; the kind that does not belong in the bike lane for this very reason. I gave him the finger and got myself home, trembling and tired.

Breathing felt more tactile. I couldn’t really do a downward dog in yoga without wincing. Sleeping on my back pained me. I often thought about when my dad broke his rib on his bike and how it confounded my 11-year-old brain that he went to work the next day, him saying to me in his uniquely brash way, “it barely hurts, here, punch me right there, I won’t flinch” (which I did giggling, until he threw me on his shoulders and displayed his seemingly insurmountable strength). I know now that his ADHD simply denied rest and healing; that if he stayed home the first beer can would’ve been opened even earlier. That to show weakness meant he really was weak. His body was pretty broken on the insides by this point anyway, so maybe all the other stuff swirling around in there acted as some kind of internal band-aid.

***

It’s been months since Petra and I got back. How quickly things feel fuzzy and distant. Every time we stepped onto a plane, we’d both place our palms on the metal cylinder for vaguely superstitious reasons. Me the left, her the right. My mom used to touch the right side. I’m finding mothers in those around me now.

Petra fell asleep any time we were in motion. Which was often. So I stared out windows or read books slowly. Nothing needs to be so rushed when you’re on borrowed time from your own life.

Berlin felt like religion to me. It felt like the healing of some bone I had left dormant and un-mended. The spray painted walls and the ashtrays on patios and general sense of ease left me feeling both lucid and drunk. We’d coast on Lime scooters, over cobblestone streets that chattered our teeth. We were housed in a bright room, with a Juliette balcony and a wispy, white bed. As the week passed, the surfaces filled with jewelry and sunglasses, transit passes, tampons, beer cans, a shawarma wrapper, empty vogue packs, used books and, most notably, two paper bags of nuts that we bought at the Nut Bar across the street.

We were very excited about the Nut Bar. Ironically, the bags remained nearly untouched after purchase (although I think Petra made a poor and boring decision in buying sunflower seeds). We’d spontaneously, oh-so excitedly gone to the Nut Bar after a night clubbing at a converted train station. It was the kind of space you heard whispers about; the kind where your phone camera is covered with a sticker and everyone smells like cool. After descending the stairs, we found ourselves in something that resembled a sort of tiki bar, the pulsing techno music audible beyond a thick metal door, behind which a crowd of people moved and danced like jellyfish. Fleshy and smoky.

When Petra and I got back to Kreuzberg, not hungry but more just high on free will, we decided it was time to gift the Nut Bar with our patronage. A few tables were occupied by our neighbours, tapping cigarettes and toes. Peanut shells at their feet. Eyes glazed, mouths filled with rapid German. We sat outside, ignoring the nuts, sipping lemonade, marveling at the stupidity and eagerness of our very living.

We’d wake up from the sun and text people across the ocean whose days were winding down. Petra would pull out her iPad with the hard pink case. It never failed to make me laugh, how very out of character it was. She’d look at Google Maps, spotted with pins, and we’d plan our day with no real plan for our day except to go outside. We’d usually start with a strong coffee and a pastry and a people watch. Sometimes we’d shop at stark, curated vintage stores. Sometimes we’d loaf. Rarely we sought out history. I regret this bit a little, but I think we were too wrapped up in our own delight and company.

We got tattoos in a parlour that required three different buzzer codes to enter. I watched Cammie experience permanency in ink for the first time and hardly squirm. We drank radlers till our blood was made of it. We completely abused the Photoautomats. There seemed to be swans everywhere, their long necks angled towards nothing in particular. Like most living things in Berlin, they seemed more invested in the natural progression of minutes. Minutes that didn’t need to be filled with action. Their feathers bent to the will of their bodies and I would watch them float while Petra read from a paperback whose cover was about to fall off. She is terrible at keeping the custody of book covers. It’s one of my favourite things about her. Apart from the effortless way she exists alongside me.

We fell in love with Cammie’s friend Sarah who seemed to have her finger on what is important while never seeming too worried about anything except listening and making Berlin quietly shine. We sat around a small table in an even smaller restaurant and ate food that made us weepy. And then we met with their Irish friends and shared bottles of wine and raced on bikes, the full moon behind us a necessary guardian. I soaked in the gravity of Berghein, drinking tequila sodas outside a hostel and watching people dressed in all black, reeking of angst, enter its premises. It made me gitty.

We left Berlin and its shaky streets and took two planes to get ourselves to Marseille. Two more brushes of palms to metal cylinder. We exited the airport into a Nevada-adjacent landscape with Nevada-adjacent heat. After a bit of trouble finding our AirBnB - the people in France displaying their proud aloofness like a dusty badge and thus being of little help beyond a lethargic point in a noncommittal direction - we climbed seven flights of stairs and entered our tiled haven. The toilet flushed using a string, the fridge had enough space for cheese, cured meat and mini Heineken bottles and the windows were coated in cigarette ash. Idyllic.

We sat on the beach as the sun turned the sky different colours, each one richer than the last. We looked at kids chasing each other, weaving their way through hairy-chested men and topless women, stopping to swoon over a small black kitten sitting on a man’s back. We ate sandwiches, the repetition of a man yelling “ice cream! Cold drink!” from his little stall filling the sweet silence. We fell asleep to the quiet racket of our washing machine which we accidentally put on a 3 hour cycle.

The rest of our week in Marseille was a smudgy, joyful, lazy existence. Late night meals on patios, gorging on seafood, sun-fucked and sleepy. Binging House of Cards in bed with cold white wine. Scooter rides down the coast. Cliff jumping in Cassis. A vineyard meal, surrounded by people who had the money we were pretending to have. Books, books, books. My body so sunburnt I couldn’t sleep, scouring the city for aloe vera gel like a junkie. Beer turned lukewarm as we lay awkwardly on rocks. The best tomatoes we’ll probably ever eat.

It felt like another planet. I found this remarkable.

I feel a bit dumb romanticizing the Euro Trip in such earnest. It’s either tone deaf and indulgent, or grateful and romantic, depending on who you ask.

But I think about the preciousness of breathing. I think about the ones who aren’t anymore, who should be, who left me too soon but didn’t mean to. I think about bruising my rib and how it was just that: a bruise that purpled and yellowed and left too. And so I will glamorize a vacation I took with my best friend. And hope we take another one together because it was just so fucking fun, really.

I’m reading a book right now called “Deep Cuts” and in it, there is an argument about how happiness and fun are intrinsically connected; one cannot exist without the other. I closed my book and thought about this and decided that I don’t agree. I think happiness can also be serene. It can be all-consuming love. It can be sleeping. But how stupid great it is to be able to be happy and have fun with a friend, running through the streets of Berlin and choking on salt water in France. To let the bruise heal and not be scared to bruise it again because this tactile body is still here to do it. So, as I’ve mentioned in past pieces of writing, my pursuit for joy continues. And I will keep mucking up these arms and legs that move this brain and soul forward. But today I will be thankful that touching the plane on the left side keeps me safe. And that I have friends who will touch the right side with me.

The Trip Music - Spotify