Marseille

Marseille tiene olor a puerto loco.

I walk past a woman in a head-to-toe veil: a strange purple blob, like a cartoon ameba.  Behind her, three gorgeous twenty-something-year-old women straight out of the pages of Vogue, their stiletto heels marking each step they take in unison.  Entering a small grocery store, I encounter the most beautiful check-out woman I have ever seen.  When it’s my turn to pay for my items, my heart starts to race and my palms sweat.  She is wearing a vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt, with a wide collar that reveals one of her shoulders.  I pay and run out as fast as I can without saying anything.  Across the street, I see the most beautiful street sweeper I have ever seen.  As I start walking back home I realize I forgot my change, I turn around, I got back into the store, and she’s waiting for me holding out the coins in her hands.  Reaching my house, I pass the prostitute who has been standing on the corner half-a-block from my apartment since nine o’clock in the morning.  I don’t look at her, and she doesn’t bother me.  The only unattractive women in Marseille seem to be the prostitutes.

Before going out, we stop by the a nearby fast-food kebab joint.  We head for his friend’s place.  The streets are narrow, the apartment buildings tower over us on both sides, the orange streetlights dimly flicker above; it feels like walking along the narrow hallways of a medieval castle.  His friend’s flat is bright and modern, with a bar, a spiraling staircase to his bedroom, and uncomfortable furniture.  His friends try excitedly to talk to me in their broken English.  One of them tells me (without hostility or resentment, seeking only to say something unique), “In Marseille they are building the largest mosque in Europe.”


A few drinks later (Vodka? Whisky?), we are on the streets again.  His group of friends gets rowdier; I am not sure if it’s the alcohol or simply for my benefit.  They start to catcall women that walk past us; just an excuse for them to say lewd, vulgar things to them.  Halfway to the disco, one of them unzips his pants in the middle of the street; as he pisses he yells at an elderly couple that is walking by, making an effort to ignore the spectacle: “Hey, look!  I am pissing on the street!  Look, you fuckers! Look!”  It is all the more striking, that these rude, macho wannabe ruffians should greet their fellow rude, macho wannabe ruffians with a kiss on the cheek (typical in the south of France and in Italy).

At the disco, there is a huge black bouncer who must have been born with a scowl; he eyes us suspiciously as the girlfriend of one of the members of our group comes out of the disco (she apparently works there) and leads us past the bouncer and into the music and the lights.  I drink mojitos, and talk to a pretty girl named Delphine.  We talk about how in Marie Antoinette it confused me that they addressed the king as “dolphin.”  She doesn’t know why, but says that it makes sense, because dolphins are very intelligent.  It’s a valid point.

Outside the disco, about to leave, and a fight breaks out near the door.  The fighters fall to the ground and roll around for a bit, when out of nowhere a man in camouflaged pants walks over quickly pointing some sort of weapon with a laser pointer.  The group says we should probably leave.

Marseille tiene olor a puerto loco.