Mugged

This is a story I’ve told a hundred times in oral form but never written down. It’s slowly becoming something of a creation myth, each retelling losing certain details while others become increasingly vivid. That’s normal for stories, and for the better. All your memories are embellished, imperfect, incomplete. The point of stories is to orient yourself and enrich the world, not to be entirely truthful. I’ll give you the short version, because there are infinite possible starting points and conclusions I could draw. Another cool thing about stories; I get to try this one out in a new way now, canonise it, cast it in a new mold, tell it with words more meticulously plucked than when I speak them. This is the story about the time I got mugged in Nice.

My buddy and I arrived at our hotel under the stars. We were on the last legs of a backpacking tour through Europe, and had undergone several important rites of passage; annihilated our livers for a month on a Contiki tour, ploughed through all my spending money and appealed, unabashed, to my parents for more, slept in some truly horrendous accommodations and encountered the usual assortment of colorful people with strange stories. We had just escaped a particularly shitty hotel room in Venice - as far as we could tell, the last available one when we arrived in the city, testament to our total lack of planning - in an actual one-star establishment, a fact I still cannot understand why the hotel advertised and remained firmly in our minds as we spooned in a tiny bed together and shared a communal, mouldy shower. When we arrived at our hotel under the stars, we were tired.

Unfortunately for us, we were also sharing a room with a highly gregarious, charming and persuasive Frenchman who had ready for us a bottle of chilled apple-flavored vodka in the room’s fridge. As exhausted as we were, we found ourselves finding something of a second wind as the alcohol gently tugged back our inhibitions, and the Frenchman pointed out that it was a Saturday night, that there were many clubs along the Promenade des Anglais, and that women might also be at these clubs. For a nineteen year old boy anxious to party as hard as he could and relishing in a newfound sense of freedom, these were compelling points. The bottle of vodka was, after all, also drained. We owed it to ourselves to hit the town.

The actual details leading to the mugging have only emerged slowly over the years, because of the alcohol and because the details don’t really matter for the purposes of the story. The salient facts are that me and my buddy drank too much, that the Frenchman had his own motivations for going out that will remain forever a mystery, that we were highly unsuccessful courting any ladies, and that as the night progressed bouncers weren’t too keen to let us in anywhere. My buddy saw the writing on the wall and wisely went home early. It was just me and the Frenchman. At one point, he found his way into a club and I did not. I was spectacularly alone, hammered, and cast about for some new friends. Fortunately, a friendly-looking fellow was beckoning to me from an alleyway and asking for the time, so I sauntered over for a durry and some banter.

As you may have guessed with an impending sense of doom at my stupidity, this proved to be a mistake. He rapidly escorted me further away from the crowd milling about the nightclub, and I had no inkling at what was happening until five or six (the faces and number of my assailants will forever escape me) guys had silently surrounded me. It suddenly dawned on me what was happening, and they seized me, pushed me to the ground and began to comb through my pockets. At first I resisted by shoving my hands in my pockets. This was foolish, because they just pulled them out and rewarded me with a few kicks to the ribs. Realising that acquiescence was the optimal strategy from here on, I relaxed and let them empty my pockets. I savor the memory a bit, knowing they got about twenty euros cash and picturing their faces when they inserted my credit card into an ATM and seeing that I had maybe a hundred more in the bank account. I was days away from returning to the bank of Mum and Dad. That’s what you get for mugging a povo backpacker with no sense of financial responsibility.

The downside was I was really craving a smoke, and I distinctly recall a flash of anger when I realised they’d taken my cigarettes. Alone, roughed-up, and standing in a dimly-lit lane, the first thing that disturbed me was that I couldn’t smoke a dart. Unbelievable. So I began wandering the streets of Nice to search for my hotel, who’s name I couldn’t remember and may as well as have been on Mars. I didn’t know where I was, so just walked toward the sea and strolled the Promenade des Anglais looking for a comfortable palm tree to slumber beneath. Perhaps it was my disheveled appearance or quiet air of confusion, but an old man emerged out of the darkness and politely inquired if I was alright.

His voice was weak and grated like chalk, like he was shouting a whisper in a quiet room, lilting with an Irish accent. His name was (is?) Thomas Dobson, and most of what I know about him stems from his immense kindness and a business card he gave me. Some things I wish I could ask him na ow;

- Why were you walking around Nice at such an unholy hour?

- What compelled you to ask me if I was alright?

- What happened to your voice?

- How did you become a successful art dealer?

- Who was your favorite artist and why did they move you?

- How did you figure out kindness and patience when the world seems to ask the opposite?

He asked what had happened. I said I had been mugged. He asked if I was alright. I was alright. He asked if I knew where my hotel was. I said I didn’t, but I could trace it back from the train station. He said he could walk me to the train station, and so we did. He was an art dealer, and wealthy. He holidayed here. He had no problem seeing me back to my hotel. I can’t remember anything else we talked about, but we walked for at least an hour before we came, miraculously, to my hotel. Unfortunately, you also needed your roomkey to enter. Naturally, this was in the wallet my muggers had taken. Before I could start looking for another palm tree to kip under, Thomas invited me to stay at his apartment.

And so I woke up to the sun gleaming into my eyes, which squinted out from under gummy, cracked eyelids to match my gummy, cracked tongue, the rewards of a hangover well-earned and a story I was already rehearsing for my friends and family. I was on a couch in a gorgeous studio apartment, herringbone wood-floors and an impossibly large silver mirror taking up an entire wall. Thomas Dobson had a partner, a man he loved who made extremely delicious scrambled eggs. I found this out as they emerged from sleep themselves, laughing about my adventures and wishing they were also young enough to be stupid and get away with it. I don’t remember his name, just Thomas Dobson’s because as they set me out into the brilliant blue day he gave me his business card and whisper-shouted in his Irish accent to call him if I found myself in further trouble. The scrambled eggs, the hospitality and the laughter have ensured my mugging in Nice always felt - then and now - like an adventure rather than a trial.

I could say more. I could talk about how comically dismissive the police were when I came in to get a report for insurance purposes, barely looking up from their computer as I told them I’d been violently robbed. I could talk about the reactions from friends and family as I told them - amused, frightened, intrigued all in good measure - and I could talk about the delicious moment my buddy swung the door to our hotel room open, still in his underwear, and exclaimed “where the fuck have you been?” But as I write about in 2025 I keep thinking about a Japanese word I recently learned called yoyu. Absent a direct english translation, it roughly means ‘heart-space’, a kind of emotional-empathic abundance.

Anyway, Thomas Dobson, if you’re out there still with your chalky whisper-shouts and partner who makes amazing scrambled eggs, my parents would probably like to the thank you for putting me up during a particularly bumbling phase of their son’s life. Personally, though - and don’t take this the wrong way - you’re more of a symbol to me anyway. An image of what people often are in quiet moments, and that we increasingly refuse to believe under all the news and media and debates and drama. On a night when the usual insufficiencies of the human spirit were on full display, moreso was all of its benevolent fullness. I still laugh thinking about the muggers, their meager payday, the sad meanness of their lives, but more often I remember Thomas Dobson and his abundant yoyu.