Part Two—Ile de Re, living in the dunes

My first sight of the beach was after climbing a grassy dune that rose above a small, wooded campsite, and it took my breath away.  I smiled broadly and let out an exclamation; Coco was beaming too. His boards were hidden behind one of the tents that would become my living quarters, and we hurriedly changed into our trunks and raced out to the water. 

I spent endless hours with Coco or by myself in those waves, watched over by curious Parisians who had never seen surfing before. The island was their middle-class version of the Hamptons. Coco was so beloved that any friend of his was everybody’s friend, so the four families vacationing in the tents behind the dunes took me in as well.

One of their daughters became my “girlfriend,” and at age sixteen the relationship was pretty chaste. Lina was an Audrey Hepburn lookalike—down to the pixie hairstyle—and, like all the families, didn’t speak a word of English.  She and her friends would speak “lentement” when I was around so I could keep up, and my conversational French got better by the day. My most memorable moment of speaking French was translating “Satisfaction” to the group over the evening fire. It was difficult enough to understand the lyrics in English.

Unfortunately, Coco had to spend most of his days in La Rochelle as a missionary, and he was teetering on the edge of going AWOL.  As a nonbeliever—and selfishly missing my friend—I encouraged his absences, and pretty soon his mission leader in Paris was getting upset. I wasn’t exactly the rascally fox from Pinocchio, but I definitely was a bad influence on his duties. Finally he got a summons to return to Paris, and we both nearly cried as he bid us adieu. I had a few more days there by myself, and then I had to say goodbye. Lina had tears in her eyes as we stood kissing tenderly in a drizzle.

Coco donated the surfboards to the campsite, and as far as I know he never returned.  I drove back to La Rochelle and took the exam, said a stilted goodbye to the family and headed home. Eventually I found that I had passed with a score of 100%. There’s more than one way to learn French…

1969, UCLA Film School. I had been an art major at Berkeley, but when I transferred to UCLA in 1968, I switched to acting. I had a certain look that attracted the film department’s filmmakers, and I played the lead in three or four films, learning the craft by watching them make obvious, beginner mistakes until I transitioned from acting to directing.  One filmmaker stood out: he was a giant, blond-haired viking named Larry Mallory, and he was a uniquely talented filmmaker.  I played the lead in his first film, then became the DP on his second. 

When I learned he was Mormon, I asked if he’d been on a mission when he was younger. Yes, he answered, in fact he’d been the lead missionary in France five years earlier. I asked him if he ever knew one Coco Boshard, that I’d spent a month surfing with him on the Ile de Re.  He blanched and his eyes widened. “That…was YOU?” 

I confessed, and he told me Coco had been sent home, back to Laguna Beach, where he’d had to repeat his mission, this time in a landlocked country.  I tried to locate Coco for years, but he’d disappeared.  Eventually I found someone who had known him.  He had come out—I’d wondered later if he was gay—and had contracted AIDs in the tragic 1980s epidemic.  He passed away at the age of 35.