Marrakech’s Queer Underground

“He said again, much more clearly, ‘100 Euros… for my ass!’”

Before the pandemic, I worked as a hotel critic. For 11 years, I went all over the place, moving from one hotel to the next fronting myself as some kind of expert of hospitality. By the third or fourth year it was beginning to be true, but near the start, I was a mess.

One of the first trips I took for that job was to the Moroccan city of Marrakech. I brought my friend Justin along, who is always fun but is also — a lot. I wasn’t technically supposed to bring friends, but I figured, what could go wrong?

Justin and I were in artificial-chic Marrakech for close to two weeks. We fully experienced six different