Nice (pronounced Niece): The French Connection

In France, there is a certain respect paid to the language.  Like the most things french, the French are proud of it.  And to be perfectly honest I can see why.  It is a language that, when whispered in your ear by the right set of lips, puts all other communication to shame.  It melts and at the same time cuts sharp with a passion and a grace lost on most European phonetics.  The Dutch, in all their smiles and hospitality, have the language of a jolly people.  The pitches rock up and down like all the sways and shifts of an old wooden ship.  And it's merry.  German, on the other hand, has all the care and grace of a beer hall.  It's boisterous and aggressive.  As one heads south into the land of the Romance languages things begin to sound a lot prettier, not in a necessarily better way, just in a prettier way.  And what's more, an ugly disposition for an inability to speak the native tongue is much more prevalent.  It's the vanity of a beautiful tongue, I suppose. A vanity that leads to despised eyes all around moments after we'd opened our mouths to speak in Montpellier, in Mariselle, and in now Nice.  I guess we stick out like sore thumbs down there.  And that isn't a particularly appealing characteristic to have following you while you're humping around the city looking for stimulants before a concert.  We get hustled hard in what could quite easily be described as a projects a few blocks away from the stadium venue.  It's a welcoming and comfortable place; not.  Lovely, if lovely described a place most undesirable.  But that's where you get drugs right?  We sit in a sprawling courtyard that looks cracked and old and is surrounded by tall boxy apartments with dark stairways and tiny units.  Different groups of men in all manners of tracksuit attire watch us from afar with calloused eyes, hissing sinister things to each other in French.  Super undesirable.  When the guy who had brought us there re-appears on first-floor landing of one of the shabby nearby complexes he looks fidgety and nervous.  He quickly darts eyes in our direction and pulls us over with a slight twitch of the head in his direction.  "There is police everywhere here," he says, "we need to be quick."

So cash in hand, we make the exchange and "swish" we're gone, out of the projects and around the corner before we even get the bag open and examine it's contents.  Rookie mistake.  Whatever the fuck it is, it definitely isn't what us doctors had ordered; no MDMA, just fragments of crushed pills with letters and numbers on it that we hastily look up on Mike's blackberry.  Diabetes medicine.  Those French bastards.  So we go back and confront that short, fat pig-faced son-of-a-bitch back in the courtyard.  We're loud and pissed off and American.  Weary eyes, disgusted eyes from all around watch and we feel them bearing down on us and suddenly realize the number of people staring us down.  Older, shady, wild-looking men turning their shoulders our way.  But no one so much as makes a move on us.  Mr. Pig-Face says he'll come back with our money and he disappears into the shadows and around a corner while everyone else stands watching.  "He's not coming back, is he?" I whisper to Grant.

"Fuck."  We've been had.

After five minutes, we kick rocks out of there, tails between our legs.  It's 8:00 and the sun's getting low on the horizon.  There's still an hour though until the concert starts and all we have to our pre-game credit is an expensive pouch of worthless diabetes medication.  Great.  We flick the pithy powder into a planter and sulk into the next liquor store we come upon and pick up a couple packs of cigarettes, a desperate bottle of cheap tequila and an even more desperate bottle of cheap vodka.   There's a not-give-a -fuckery in our disposition, and we chalk up the afternoon's events to life lessons.  Something to make us feel better, if only just a little.  The tequila makes us feel a lot better.  Impressive, considering both the tequila and vodka had been stored at sweltering southern France liquor store temperature.  I'm not sure whether or not the cigarettes help.  Mike, Max, and I convince ourselves they do and we suck down half a pack in line whilst we extinguish the contents of both handles of liquor before reaching the security checkpoint.  Our alcohol tolerance this far into the trip is at the point of biblical stature.  We all feel like alcoholics, especially an hour or so into David Guetta's set when we begin to sober up and we only have a pack of Marlboro Reds and 5 EUR a cup beers at the bar to hold us over.  Despite our best efforts, we fail to find anything remotely amusing to buy off our fellow concert-goers.  Not for lack of trying though.  Mike and I get hustled again during Tiesto's set and get pissed off and chain smoke the rest of our Marlboros into a delirious tobacco-fueled second wind and dance crazy, laughing a maniacal sort of laugh that comes round when your still up and dancing at 4:00 in the morning.  The music keeps us moving and as we looked around, we notice and curiously observe the French and their abhorence to the wildness and promiscuity of those certain substances that make the music shudder through your bones and tickle that need to move your body, to step this way and that, to raise your hands to the lights and the open summer night's wind.  I close my eyes and pretend.  Meanwhile, the surrounding half-interested crowd have all the conservatism of a Republican presidential candidate, swaying in small motions, chin up, plastic glass of wine or cup of beer in hand, weary of their personal space.  It's one hell of a concert and after Laidback Luke played his last song around 6:00 and we walk down the main road towards the water laughing nostalgically at the night's fiascoes.  We're at about our wit's end, I'd say.  Completely sober, and all we want  is to be in Barcelona already.  "Fuck Nice," says Max.  "I'm fuckin' over France."