SEASON : SUMMER / YEAR : 2022 / PHOTOS : @tomhgn_ / VIDEO : @23_productionss

CHAPTER 1 - LIBERATION

My name echoes in my cell, it’s D-Day. Cheered on by the clapping of my fellow inmates, I walk down this long corridor for the last time. Just a few more formalities and I’ll be free. After having spent precisely 685 days in the shadows, I will finally breathe fresh air. A thousand papers later and after a lecture from one of the guards who I was barely listening to, I’m now alone in front of the gigantic prison door, ready to face the free world. Will someone come to get me? I don’t even know. My thoughts are interrupted by a cloud of smoke and a dull bass sound on the horizon. Now with only a hundred meters separating the car and myself, I'm able to make out two familiar faces. The bastards, they hadn’t forgotten me. While the first one embraced me in his harms, the second one shoved what seemed to be a hallucinogenic mushroom into my mouth: «It’s time to free your mind mate». I get the feeling that the coming days aren’t going to be very restful.

CHAPTER 2 - BBQ PARTIES

Nothing could have beaten a big barbecue to celebrate my first day of freedom. Everybody was here, at least everybody who didn’t want me dead or to get hold of the dough that I no longer had. In the middle of the garden reigned a barbecue with a pig’s head amongst the flames. My friends were detail orientated and knew how to decorate accordingly. They knew how much I loved the constabulary and guessed that my time spent inside hadn’t affected my hostility towards the uniform. While I delight myself with my fresh Ricard, enjoying the show, I plan the days to come. I needed to get back my taste for life, ‘cause even though my physical freedom was a sure thing, my mind still had a few hurdles to cross in order to release myself from the weight of being locked up. I especially needed two things: adrenaline and sex. No surprise I will start with the latter. Luck would have it that one of my old conquests (and not the ugliest one) has been eyeing me up all day...

CHAPTER 3 - PLEASURES

After so much time spent behind bars, you would think that I would satiate my own desires. But I’ve always made a point of honor to put a lady’s pleasure before my own. I had missed sex, and it was this splendid woman, tainted by the hotel bedroom’s low lights, who was going to benefit from it. My face nuzzled into her perfumed neck, her hands caressing my skin, our senses intensifying with each bite, each stroke. I feel her body stiffen, little by little, her nails digging into my skin, it’s time to make my project become a reality. In a final effort, I speed up the pace. As soon as her cheeks turned red, the bed’s headboard crashed into the wall, knocking the mirror off to smash onto the ground, as our brains mutually drowned in pleasure. Silence set into the room after our final sighs. A work of art.

CHAPTER 4 - CALL ME LATER

A horrific bell ring pulls me from my slumber with an inexplicable violence. What was I thinking keeping this old phone from the seventies in service? With my eyes still stuck together, I tap the mattress to my left to check that the sublime creature from last night as not yet flown off. She’s still here, and that fucking phone won’t stop ringing. It doesn’t seem to bother my guest. I make the most of her being asleep to rinse my mouth with what’s left of the whisky and to light up a fag: the real breakfast of all great champions. The sunbeams that shine through the blinds light up a very satisfying scene: the empty packaging of used condoms alongside roses already turned dark from a night with no water, the bottle of Sky draped in lace torn off in a rush, numerous ashtrays scattered here and there filled with buds and other spicy mixes. The hotel room oozes with pleasure and sensuality. I lie down on my back, careful not to wake up missy. My eyes are directed straight to the ceiling and I puff a drag. Life is beautiful, and no, I will not answer that fucking phone.

CHAPTER 5 - PROVENCE

The smell of the two stroke mixes in with the lavender. In front of me: fields as far as the eye can see. My hair blowing in the wind, behind the flaming bar of a 250 CR, I’m glowing. All motor enthusiasts will tell you the same thing : the true feeling of freedom, the meaning of the word summed up into a single human activity, is, without a doubt, to steer a bike with your wrist at an angle with nothing ahead but the horizon. I come across the landscapes that I grew up with: the tree where I abandoned my first stolen scooter, the wall that still bares the traces of my first graffities, the village, victim of my first burglaries. Just off the edge of the city’s dull greyness, this countryside was my first taste of liberation. To breathe in its fresh air filled me with joy.

CHAPTER 6 - SUMMERTIME

I hate sand, but my little stall by the beach was no trouble. Weakening the neurons of holiday makers already exhausted from having spent too much time in the sun was so pleasant. From the family dad, pushed by his offspring’s never ending screaming to the youth who needed to spice up his first date on the beach, my clientele was varied and my competition was no more than the donut guy, who it turns out, was my biggest client. I ticked all the boxes for the Sunday Dealer. But what could be a better way to make money than with my legs stretched out, nothing to do but worry about the angle of my brolly and the temperature of my drink? I needed to recreate myself, and fast. Unemployment was reaching new heights, and I sensed a strange atmosphere, I could smell civil war. I sensed that the years to come would be complicated, and I was going to need cash to face them.