Bar du Port

On this weekday evening i sit on the terrace of this town's local bar, at the corner of the town's heart, down the street from the market, through the barricade wall built in the 14th century, i can see the fort quare, partly lit in the twilight time of day.
I sip on horrible wine and sit amongst the people who have now become my friends. This is by far, the crappiest bar in town, worn down, neglected, with paint pealing off the walls and light bulbs cracking and missing everywhere. The bathroom has been renamed to another word to better fit its minimal function of relieving you at your most desperate of states after having spent four hours on that terrace with failing planning every hour or so, to move on to somewhere else. There's a pool table at the back of the bar, where the green lining separates from the wooden table as you shoot, and someone used chalk to draw a little football field at a more drunken innovative time.
This is the craziest bar in town, i successfully avoided it altogether my first 11 months living in the south of France, my best friend bar-tended there, and i still didn't go, i dated her best friend last November, and only then was i persuaded to give that place a chance, "it's the bar everyone goes to, it's this town's local bar", and somewhere between then and now i have become a regular.

I sit at the terrace sipping on atrocious wine, and my favourite people in this town are all here;
The best friend i couldn't have dared to hope to find
The hellish/lovely on and off boyfriend
The english girl who happens to be the only one who is not a drama queen in this town
The ever so intellectual and witty C who studied to be a priest and ended up consuming every sort of drug there was after getting bored of 3 years of daily confessing sins
The handicapped/alcoholic who is the only other person who has an office job

Other than that familiar faces are everywhere, the local hash supplier who comes biking in, the drop-dead gorgeous dread lock guy, the girl with the most beautiful smile i have ever seen. The preverse and the obscene, the kind and the lost, the rasta man back from the Caribbean for the summer and the swedish man with his notes for the book he's been writting for 20 years about the origin of man kind's behaviour. The live band starts playing, i know them both too, and i reflect on how bad this wine is, and secretely re-inforce my will to not start drinking beers, then i will have completely given in to this place.

The bar de la porte du port, otherwise known as the bar du port, i think of myself sitting here and think of who i was a little less than two years ago, and i wonder...
Was i disciplined and now i'm lost?
Or was i conditioned and now i'm free?

And just how many other sides are there to me?