The trees lining the icy pavement on the avenue two floors below are frozen limbs in the dead of night. A stray pair of feet here and there walk the new streets and do little else but cast shadows over the cold. A new window looms before me; a new unknown. Unfamiliar street names and a horizon that I’ve only recently met as the sun went down on another chapter of my life.
I’ve been away a long time, haven’t I?
So it seems, to me anyway. But this is the new scene, the new vantage for my viewing, the new base for my wanderings. There are no horse hooves clipping and clopping on the cobblestones; there are no cobblestones at all, actually. Just headlights and tires rolling over the thick ice that covers everything. Yes. There is asphalt and there is ice, and over these two layers a fool tries to make his way; tries to find his footing.
–
Jesus. Over the past two years I’ve been everywhere, man. From Tangier to Prague and from Oslo to Riyadh, I’ve covered Europe and the Middle East. Covered it. Hit the sweet spots, find the juice, move along. That’s been the motto, the driving force. And what a rush. What a mad, fulfilling, fast rush. Like crack but with more airline miles and hotel points.
So I was a bit surprised when I found myself overwhelmed by the buroughs of New York. The whole move started to hit me - the fact that it was happening, that is - much like it hit me when I’d moved to Amsterdam: later than it should have. In Amsterdam it wasn’t until the plane hit the ground that I realized I had no idea what was going to happen next when I got out of my seat and headed out the jet way. For New York at least, it was sometime halfway into the flight from Germany though it only occurred to me because of a situation on board.
Careening over the north Atlantic at 35,000 ft is no place to have a maniac on your hands. The third time she yelled “DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T TOUCH ME!!” to the flight attendant, I checked the flight monitor and sure enough, flight 4677 out of Frankfurt was somewhere between Ireland and Iceland.
That is a bad place for violence.
I leaned my head back on my seat and turned so my cranium rolled up and out on the headrest to more discreetly look at the large woman in the rear corner of the 777 who was sitting a few rows behind me. She was clearly having a fit of some kind but it seemed there was nothing that could be done but clear the area and give her room to flail around and yell at people. The flight attendants seemed to know enough to form a perimeter around the woman and just hang back until the episode passed and then give her peanuts or something.
“Wow,” I said to the empty seat next to me, “it’s a good thing the professionals know what they’re doing.”
And just as suddenly, I caught myself, realizing how ridiculous that sounded coming from a guy who knows that the only thing that makes an expert is that he know more than the person next to him.
What the hell am I doing?, I thought. I haven’t the foggiest reference for how to make this work.
I thought about this for a while. I might have dozed off for a bit, or maybe just had too much scotch, but the next thing I knew I saw the city come into view from behind the wing.
“Ok, New York,” I said, “here I come…”
A small child walking up the aisle with daddy in tow stopped at my seat and gave me a serene look. I had a moment of thinking that the innocence of that child, that smooth face and soft hair would be symbolic of the city showing me that no matter what tribulations I might pass, what doubts I might have, there was a side of the city that had good intentions, that would put a smile on my face, even if eventually.
Then the kid threw up on the seat next to me.
“Too soon?” I asked the kid.
“Dah!” it said, though I think it meant ‘duh’.
Thanks, New York. I’m coming anyway.
–
Even having studied satellite images of New York on Google Maps, I was surprised at the spread of the thing. Another scar on the surface, I had to keep reminding myself that I’d seen bigger, lived through tougher. New York has nothing on São Paulo and Bangkok, even if only for the sheer savageness of those places. But New York has a way of making you forget all that and focus on that Apple. Maybe it’s something in that awesome tap water they have.
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think this is what happens to people who move to New York for the ‘New York experience’. If you’re from a small town or haven’t traveled much, you’re doomed to be eaten alive by the city. Everyone knows that. But even for those who’ve been around, whom come from large cosmopolitan places, who’ve seen the dark corners of the asphalted world, even for them New York offers a unique challenge.
It’s a problem of expectations. People are told that the city will toss them around if they’re not careful. But what’s missing from that is that it’s not a question of being careful. The city will toss you around no matter what. You’ve just got to stay afloat, hang on, get up again.
That’s one of the things about New York. When you live in New York, you’re not in control. The city is in control. Its traffic and its subways are in control. Its crazies and its people are in control. Its size and its attitudes are in control and you are along for the ride. Like the rivers that split it, New York has a current, and if you’re going to use the river to get somewhere, you can’t fight that current. You have to go with it, be prepared to take it and stand up again.
If you haven’t caught on yet, I’d missed a crucial step in preparing for the situation of finding a flat in New York.
Sure, I’m familiar with the housing markets of San Francisco and Amsterdam and have done well in finding housing and good flatmates in both places, but those are villages compared to New York City. Those are straw and mud communes next to the steel and concrete that litters the grid of Manhattan, the industrial complexes of Brooklyn, the immigrant populations of Queens, the ghetto of the Bronx and the trashiness of Staten Island. To say nothing of the other areas around the city.
And if you thought that working in Paris, Istanbul, Oslo, Riyadh, Madrid, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Budapest all in a matter of a month was a trying thing on the body, you should try to find a flat in New York in 5 days.
Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.
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In the late autumn, the yellowing leaves don’t always stop falling just because it’s night time; that’s why even in the dark and strange cold of Amsterdam in November, the canals will still fill up with leaves and other trash no matter what the streets are stirring up, no matter what the sweeps are sweeping up.
People bumble slowly down the narrow walkways and the city glows with an eerie darkness that lets through a fraction of the light scattered by the soft haze. A dead leaf floats gently on the cushion of the thick air that hangs between buildings and eventually lands softly onto the liquid below. An alerting cold started at my toes and threatens to crawl up my ankle. I am tense tonight and I know exactly why.
Tuesday is coming, and with it, November 4th. On three quarters of any other year this day would pass by with the meaninglessness of all of those fallen leaves resting on the surface tension of the waterways of Amsterdam, but not this year. This is Election Year.
There is a bad noise coming from the birds that occasionally swoop over the canals but not tonight. People who know Seagulls tell me that the birds always go out to sea to die but I suspect this is not always the case. No sir. The various alleyways and narrow canals of Central Amsterdam are crawling with things that are ready to die but seem to want one more fix of whatever it is for which they yearn. And a quick glance outside tells me that this is Seagull country. These birds are waiting for something too or they’d be long gone.
The mansion across the water continues to shine its bright light in my face and will until 2008 is over. That’s when the city will take the celebratory thing down off of the Tripp Family building and things will change then. It won’t, of course, be just this bright white box hanging on the building I see from my Dutch window that I won’t have to deal with anymore. Indeed, 2008 will die and will take with it a very dark stain on the American Way of Life.
But first, Barack Obama must defeat John McCain. Until then, I will have to put up with these goddamn birds.
–
Make no mistake about it; we are headed into a dark week and things are only going to get weirder from here. John McCain and Sarah Palin may indeed go silently into the good night but I wouldn’t count on it. I have put my money on getting more laughable sound bites from that jackass pimp, Tucker Bounds, to aggravate anything with a functioning cerebellum and at the same time energize the republican base to show up and vote their black little hearts out. What a fun night Monday will be.
I’ve also doubled down on some more absurd rhetoric in Pennsylvania and Florida, even though it’s Nevada, Ohio, Missouri and Virginia that are flippable at this point. Pennsylvania and Florida are just the ones that would cause damage to some very big Egos if they started going Red right now. And no one is ready to talk about that, so we here won’t either. Call it “solidarity”.
You betcha. The politics will get heavy this week, and don’t lose sight of that because other things will be happening as well. This will be a very good week for ugly things to come out of the closet. No one will notice anything - from illegitimate babies aborted on the supreme court bench to corrupt senators being ousted from their states like feculent rats, straight into federal prison for 35 years. Except you and me because, well, we’re here, taking note to not be duped, right?
Indeed. The only way to miss the main event this week will be to bury your head in the sand like a blind animal or a Raiders fan living in a fairy tale. It’s possible, of course, to overdo it and lose yourself in the quagmire of whiskey and despair, a phenomenon that CNN is calling “Election Obsession”. There are many people in the continental US that are affected by this horrible psychosis and flee to the woods for days at a time in order to escape stimuli. Imagine that. Regular fathers, mothers, doctors and plumbers, suddenly realizing that they’re struck/stricken with an uncontrolled obsession with election year politics and can’t get away from any media that won’t shower them with the same information in a dozen different formats. Foaming at the mouth and snapping at strangers, they get a grip just long enough to make a lucid decision to make for whatever back country woods they can find in their home state, searching for shelter and an absence of an internet connection to calm their woes. The symptoms for Election Obsession include spending hours in internet chat room discussions that go nowhere and nervous ticks, primarily in the corners of the eyes that are strained from trying to read into the vague statements made by campaign staffers. Foaming at the mouth occurs in rare instances and may be more linked to babbling than anything else.
But that’s not me, folks, and I have different plans. Though I haven’t yet decided if I’ll be on a flight between here and Norway or perhaps Eastern Europe, I will certainly be connected once I land. And god help the stewardess that tells me I can’t turn on my laptop during landing. A night like next Tuesday only comes every 4 years and I hope to avoid a repeat of 2004 and 2000 this time around. I will be prepared for the worst, and expect Nothing. This will take Concentration, of course.
Total. Concentration.
Which is why I’ll be in midair for a large part of it. Matters are different this time and that could complicate things. 2000 caught millions off-guard and we couldn’t even articulate what happened before our very eyes. In 2004 we overestimated the intelligence of the average American in time of war (or at least, in a time when war rhetoric is spewed from every orifice of government) and we watched in many different ways and with many different eyes as the tragedy unfolded itself from the weirdest corners of idle minds somewhere in a strange place called Ohio.
Sure, there were some of us that didn’t even know it was happening and went on with our midterms and our Christmas shopping and our reality TV. But some of us sat glued to the tube counting counties in abject disbelief and struggled to accept it. Others perched on their rooftops, howling at the moon and throwing half-empty bottles of Tecate at their neighbors and passers-by, climbing down briefly every 10 or 15 minutes to refresh their browsers for updates. Others couldn’t handle the crisis and did horrible things like dig holes in the sand on a dark beach, or sit on tall bridges over places like the Golden Gate and ponder horrible actions. Meanwhile the CNN logo flashed on a screen flickering in the empty dark of their distant living rooms filled only with the gnarly sounds of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth.
Yes. This time it will not go unnoticed by anyone. The ratings for CNN are as high as the market is low and the prices of ad space for Tuesday Night is starting to look like the Superbowl. If you miss out on the fun this year it will be not just by choice but by active effort. Some people will still perch on their rooftops and hurl bottles and others will dig holes, as always. Most people will have a 24-hour news channel on mute as they go about domestic chores. There are those that will try to have a normal night, maybe go to the movies, maybe hit the bars. But the only consistent topic of conversation will be The Outcome.
–
Even the traditional pornography sites will have political leanings on Tuesday night for those who think they can get away from it by dodgier avenues, like non-stop masturbation or else by watching Fox News. Certain prostitutes in the red light district of Amsterdam have been investing in costumes and paraphernalia for the event. Bill Clinton dick sheathes and American flags with sperm instead of stars were popular a few years back but shop owners in Amsterdam have been mum on what’s popular this year.
“The girls have been asking us to keep it a surprise for their patrons, and we respect that,” said the floor manager at the Casa Rossi sex shop. Well, ’said’ is a strong word, but it was heavily implied by his demeanor.
But not everyone is so keen to produce an opinion on the touchy matter, even in a place like The Red Light District of Amsterdam. Bouncers at strip clubs claim to have no events or gimmicks planned for election night, insisting it’s business as usual.
“Just another Tuesday night here,” said a large, bald Russian who then quickly shooed me away with his stare. I asked some of the regular girls in the windows if they’d bought any costumes or fun toys for election night to get the crowds excited on but they were, surprisingly, very shy about the topic.
“I don’t really care about any of those guys,” said ‘Sasha’, squirming in that thin and cold air, asking me to “come in and have some fun for 25 minutes.” All it would take was €50.
“Oh, come on,” I pressed. “You’ve got to have SOME kind of opinion…who would you rather have visit you here?” She thought about it for a little longer.
“Obama,” she said, “because he’s younger and pretty tall.” No denying that, I thought.
But ‘You’re not much if you ain’t Dutch’, they say around here, which is strange because it might turn out to be the other way around. The Dutch ways of discretion and moderation owned the situation with the hosts of “The District”. But the patrons were something else entirely. A stroll through The District quickly illustrates that discretion is a concept wasted on anyone in the red-light district of Amsterdam. No one wore their colors on their shoulders, but opinions here are as pervasive as the natural sexual desires and perversions that often only see the light of day in this alleyway of narrow boats and bimbos and decked out pimps that walk with the gait of a clown or a goose out of water. Or Tucker Bounds.
With the lines between locals and tourists, hosts and patrons and winners and losers continuously blurred by a tenancy towards anonymity in those dank streets, it seems that even the direct approach may be too dangerous an endeavor for this election.
So pollsters, go home. Sit back and wait for the real numbers. That’s about the only thing we can count on now.
Posted in Politics, Rants | No Comments…
The sky didn’t darken until late in the afternoon that day in Amsterdam. It’s normal for it to rain at least once every day here but I had confused the shadow of the towering thunderheads with the coming of night since their coming coincided completely.
Our trio had hurried home from a stroll around the old center of town that had culminated in our stopping by our favorite Thai food place in Amsterdam, “The Bird”. We’d ordered the usual takeaway pad thai and other miscellaneous dishes. We went back up to my flat at the Nieuwmarkt and finished the hodgepodge we’d wandered out for earlier that night. Then we filled up the glasses on the table. Each of us had a half pint of beer in front of us and it was Shane’s job to keep them full with the tall boys I’d scattered around the kitchen. He and I also had small tumblers of bourbon that I was to keep wet. Jo had a glass of wine since she was wary of the Jim Beam I was pouring, and even more afraid of the unopened Jack Daniels that stood eagerly over the fridge.
I’d recently returned from my trip to Saudi Arabia, where I did business for two weeks straight plus another two weeks after a pause. I’d suffered in their heat and their strange customs for what seems like longer. I’d spent almost two months on the road, coming home for barely six hours at one point just to do laundry during a coincidental layover in Amsterdam. I’d strolled in Rome, hopped to New York, hung out in Barcelona, slaved in Riyadh, taught in Prague and then made a sale in Zurich, with a bit of time to head back to Amsterdam and take some sailing lessons. It had taken a brutal toll on my body. And, you know, it doesn’t really end there: Edinburgh and Istanbul are next.
It wasn’t the travel, though; I’ve been doing this for far too long for my body to complain about small confined spaces like economy seating and the perils of jetlag. I’ve been doing this for long enough to have withdrawal symptoms if I stopped, come to think of it. No; what was taking a toll on my body was a combination of stiffled desires and high levels of stress induced by the rigors of social mores in Saudi Arabia and a very serious lack of fun. Never knowing what’s appropriate and what’s not, not inclined to be the jackass American and start guffawing inappropriate questions left and right and no access to good information will drive a writing traveler insane in no time at all. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Because for a moment there I was back home and there we were, drinking ourselves silly under the pretext of discussing international politics and the place of culture in business and ethics in culture.
“Is it true that they have no women there?” Shane asked, only half joking. I guess that’s because I could only be half sure, since all you have when in Riyadh is half a notion that someone is a woman covered in a black abaya, or else a ninja assassin, which is what I told him about.
“How do the women feel about how they’re treated?” Jo asked.
“You mean the ninjas.” Shane corrected her.
“Yes, Shane, the ninjas. How do the ninjas feel about how they’re ranked in society?”
“Well…” I started, already knowing it would make little sense. It never made sense to me and I had to go there just to understand why it would never make sense to me. “I asked around, because nothing I ever read made any sense to me. It still doesn’t, but I can tell you what they told me.
“I talked to these two women at the airport, foreigners, of course. A Brit and an Ozzy. They were wearing their abayas, though not covering their faces. I approached them at a coffee place at the terminal and using my charm and signature reporter’s notepad, told them I was writing a piece on women in the international marketplace. They must’ve assumed I was from the New York Times or something.” I paused, then looked up at Shane and Jo.
…
“Yeah. You must’ve been SOOOOO charming.” She said, breaking my silence cynically as all hell. She can do that. Shane smiled his goofy smile and waited for my comeback.
“Yeah, well. They talked to me, so, there. She didn’t retort but Shane looked disappointed, and rightfully so.
“They told me that their agency had told them to get abayas before coming and that they had to put it on before they got off the plane! Crazy, right?” I could see they agreed.
“Yeah, but how did they feel about it?” Jo asked. Obviously, her interest in the matter was more deeply rooted than Shane’s.
“Who? The foreigners or the Saudis?” I tried to clarify.
“Everyone!”
“Well, the foreigners are pretty much in accordance that they resent it and don’t understand it, but do it because it’s not their law and they don’t want to make a commotion. The locals don’t seem to love it, but that’s what they’re used to - taking it away from them would leave most of them in a distraught state of disarray. Not to mention that to them tradition is more important than history or happiness. Or at least maintaining the illusion of tradition. Understanding is not a requisite of obedience for them.”
Blank stares. I knew it. I didn’t understand it; how could I hope to explain it? I tried again.
“It’s like I heard the other day: ‘you’ve got to catch a girl without getting caught’…” I paused, hoping they would get it because a taxi driver had told me this with a lot of confidence, and I didn’t have time to have him explain it.
But, nothing.
“Look, as an example: I asked 3 cab drivers, 3 Saudi co-workers, 3 co-workers from Dubai and then did some reading…there’s no legal or acceptable way for a boy and a girl to meet.”
“WHAT?” snapped Shane, incredulous.
“I know. Crazy.”
“Does it have to be arranged, then?” Shane followed up.
“Legally, yes. But no one does it. You can imagine kids our age these days… our generation, as spread over the globe and facebook and myspace and all that… it is knows enough about the size of the world to realize that arranged marriages are about as good an idea as moving to Kansas City… it’s bound to fail.”
Shane laughed but Joanna didn’t get it and just mumbled, “… you American boys…”
“So how do they do it?” Shane asked.
“Well, there’s chat rooms online, but most people use bluetooth technology on their phones to find people within 10 meters of them and chat that way, and if they like each other they agree to meet secretly.
“I turned my phone on once and searched for available devices… you wouldn’t believe the shit that came up, man.
“In the airport, with parents and what not all around them… all I saw were children, between 10 and 16. The older girls were already old enough to cover themselves with veils and abayas… but a list of at least 40 different phones came up, with names like ’so good to you’, ‘lonely and looking’, ‘girl unclaimed’, and ‘what’s your mobile nmbr sexy?’ I was appalled. I’ve never heard of such sexual frustration. Not even at an airport.”
“This is nuts!” Jo proclaimed.
“Everyone knows, of course, but the important thing is not to get caught. Parents supposedly facilitate it for their kids by looking the other way and giving them some privacy, but if caught, the fines and jail sentences are steep. It’s a savage place, man.
“Do people get out?” Shane asked. “You know - like the Dutch from Holland?”
“Some do, but it’s very difficult. You have to either be unemployed or else have permission from your employer to leave. And god help you if you’re a woman. Then you need a husband’s permission or a father’s… or you can go to Bahrain like the older men do for prostitutes.
“Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s like putting too much liquid in a glass bottle. You can’t try to stuff it in there; it’s got nowhere to go. People have needs, man.”
“Why do you keep calling me, ‘man’?” Jo asked. A fair question, I thought, but I ignored it all the same.
“But that’s just HYPOCRITICAL!” Shane announced. I agreed.
“I know. But it’s no different then those Catholic priests in Boston, man. These guys get on a plane in Riyadh on Wednesday nights (their Fridays) bound for Bahrain, a plane full of men in traditional and pious clothes. Everyone knows why. They get off in Bahrain, or Dubai, or wherever they went and their first stop is the duty-free shop, where they load up on whiskey, vodka, cognac and cigarettes. I’m talking CRATES.
These rich guys disappear into the prostitution houses of Bahrain and Dubai and when they come out on Friday (Sunday) they have their traditional clothes on, their heads covered and their smiles soft, likely like other parts of their bodies at this point. They get on a plane back to Riyadh and live out the rest of the week proclaiming how bad alcohol is for the spirit and so forth.”
“That disgusts me,” Jo said. I told her I understood.
“What’s really weird is how there is a lot that is similar to Brazilian society, at least on a detailed and fundamental level. You know, things like male-dominated structures, strong sense of religious propriety and favoritism for outsiders. Actually, that’s just like anywhere that has allowed religion to dominate the society…
I paused for a second, contemplating the fact.
“But nothing quite like Riyadh. Take this time, for example, just outside my hotel on like, the 2nd night that I’m there…
“I had gone to the food court at the mall across the way for some fish & chips and spring rolls (yeah, that’s a combination they’re into) and was going to eat them sitting in the middle of the grass. It was 11:30 at night and the heat was starting to get bearable. That and there was a fantastic full moon I wanted to get familiar with.
“I didn’t know whether it would be ok for me to sit on the grass in front of the hotel… I didn’t know if there was a policy or religious rule, you know, that said that that kind of thing is or is not ok… but I went and sat anyway.”
Shane scoffed at me. “You rebel.”
“I know, right? But soon I saw a handful of kids come running out onto the grassy area where I was sitting, doing cartwheels, sommersaults and basically being boys. They fell somewhere between 12 and 16 years of age but in that kind of crowd, boys will definitely be boys.
“They were chased off of the hotel’s grass suddenly and efficiently by 6 men in black suits that came out of nowhere. 4 men in desert fatigues came after them, armed with automatic rifles and vests that looked heavy with something or other. I froze, trying to reason that I couldn’t possibly be in any real danger there, right in front of the hotel but totally unsure of that. Riyadh is not a place to dick around and kids here have to learn fast or else get their balls cut off.
“Well, on that day, 2 of them were arrested, it seemed. I guess all I know is what I saw. They were 14 or 15 years old and they were dragged off by a group of 6 to 8 armed men… who KNOWS where they’re being taken or what became of them?
“As I watched the kids go off in a dark sedan I noticed a black figure coming towards me across the lawn. Still sort of frozen, afraid to run and unsure of what to do if I stayed, I squinted until I could see that it was a thin black man in a dark suit, approaching me at a pretty committed pace. Even though his stature was small and his face was thin I was filled with a sudden panic. His stride was long, his steps, purposeful. It was definitely ME he was coming for and I didn’t know why. All I was doing was eating bad fish & spring rolls and drinking orange soda at 11:30 at night… but then, what were those kids doing?
“He walks with no swagger, but full of purpose - scrawny, unshaven, like so many of his ilk…
“My left hand shakes, ever so slightly. ‘Don’t let them see it, Pete’ I tell myself, unsure of what else to say. ‘Don’t let them smell the fear on you…’
“Another black suit approaches on my left. The air is warm. The night is fiercly dark and the dust is building in the atmosphere, but things are well-lit by the full moon. As the man on the right approaches he has a stern, slightly confused but genuine look on him of what-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-doing? I remain silent, sure I’ve had it for good this time but still curious to know why, to know how deep this hole here goes. I must understand the obstinately obtuse resolution of these people. I say nothing. He says something in Arabic and I quiver but I don’t cower. How bad could this be?
“The man on my left approaches, smiling like he recognizes me. Must be a security guard from the hotel, I think, to kindly tell me to leave the hotel’s grass. That’s fine, I think to myself, having figured that I was pushing it anyways. But the other guy…
Uh-oh. The other guy is pretty upset, still.
“Then I hear the word ‘guest’ from the smiling man. He repeats it to the upset man, ‘hotel guest’. He smiles at me and tells me I can stay, ‘it’s ok, alright, please.’ he points to the place where I was sitting.
“‘Hot damn,’ I think. Thank God for preferential treatment for foreigners. They’re just like Brazilians in that sense. Man! I love a good string pull.”
Shane chimed in: “Yeah, I’ve heard the people there can be very angry-sounding.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Yeah,” Shane replied.
“Totally,” I said. Joanna shook her head.
—
“So what about this heat?” Jo asked me with an urgency that suggested her next meal selection might depend on this knowledge.
“Well, it’s serious,” I said, trying to get it across. “I mean, 45 degrees isn’t a number to be taken lightly. And it’s DRY, you know? Sometimes at lunch time I have to walk something like, 5 blocks to get to the shopping mall where there’s food. In my work shirt and pants, I walk 5 blocks in 45 degree heat and don’t sweat a DROP. It’s nuts.
“And they keep the air conditioning in the office down to like, 4 degrees. That’s like a refrigerator, dude! These people have no concept of the term “comfortable work environment”. I have to take my suit to work because it’s too cold to work without it. And then when you leave the building, if feels like you just stuck your face next to a catalytic converter.”
“Wasn’t there a sandstorm you called me about once?” Shane asked me. I remembered back to the first time I’d seen a sand storm in Riyadh.
“Was there! The sky that morning had a yellowish hue to it, as if a field of mustard had exploded in the distance and spread over the horizon. Around the time I got to work and viewed it from the 13th floor of the al Anoud tower I could tell that whatever it was, it was closer than it had been before breakfast, and coming on fast. By noon time most of the city was covered as if by a thick desert fog, cutting visibility down to less than 200 meters. Riyadh had disappeared right before my eyes in the matter of a few morning hours.
“‘What IS that haze that’s covered the city?’ I asked no one in particular as I paused my work and stared out the window for a bit. The office didn’t even have cubicles, but was one of those ’shared workspace’ environments that are getting more popular these days: just open desks all over the place. I suspect that it has to do with making people less apt to surf facebook or other such riff-raff, but anyone who walks around any IT office environment knows that hasn’t stopped.
“‘It’s a sand storm,’ said Hiatham, a friendly and deeply religious Saudi co-worker. ‘It’s the season for these. This is the 3rd one since you were last here.
“‘Sand storm…’ I mumbled to myself, remembering seeing these in films and having no idea there were this viscous. I’d always thought it was an exaggeration of Hollywood. But this thing was consuming radio towers and football fields and beginning to pile sand high against the corners of buildings still under construction. Nothing stays young for long in that place, man.”
“I’m glad you got back with your life,” Shane said.
“Me too,” I agreed.
“COME BACK ‘ERE WIT’ MY PANTS, MATE!” we heard some dripping wet English bloke yelling outside my window on the streets. I appreciated the distractions of Amsterdam, and was, surprisingly, still getting to know them well.
Outside there stirred our own great storm, fierce and violent like ancient angry gods. Whenever we saw the flashes we’d get giddy, and when the thunder roared, we cheered. When the sky brightened we jumped, laughing like hyenas and we felt like children staying up past their bedtime. It brought back memories of those afternoons in Brasilia and of those nights in São Paulo, where all the world was in a spiral around the tower of my hotel, where it seemed the very wind wanted to whisk me out by the throat, where the lightning wanted me saved for its own prickly little fingers. That was a turbulent time for me, when my divorce was still in its early stages of conception, when the trouble was brewing slowly and the bubbles hadn’t even reached the surface yet. And that lightning and that noise grounded me, gave me focus. I remembered it well.
But what I saw now only reminded me about the good parts of those days, like the fury and the texture of the violence in the wind that was such a rush to me. It brought back none of the loneliness or guilt or regret that I struggled with then because here, there was company. Good company.
Jo changed the subject, fumbling with a bowl of M&M’s and running her fingers through them like it was a beach full of sand: “I’m glad you’re back too,” she said, “you boys need to stop and stay in this town for longer than a day or two sometime. It could be fun, you know?”
Shane and I looked at each other.
“You didn’t tell her?” I accused him. “She’s gonna be pissed!” Shane shrugged, unsure of what to say.
“Tell me what?” Joanna asked, sort of innocently.
“Jesus. Jo, Shane lost his job and has to go back home.” Shane looked at me accusingly.
“Yeah, well, HE’s decided to move back to the States and start a business with me,” Shane said, putting what I thought was a little too much emphasis on the ‘HE’, but whatever.
“Oh,” she said, after some pause. We didn’t know what to say. I knew how badly the three of us needed each other’s company in this lonely place and I was afraid that with the two of us gone, Jo would either retreat into a corner somewhere or else blow her top and go absolutely nuts. Maybe she’d find a Dutch guy to hang with, or maybe she might even move to Belgium. You never know what a person will do in the throngs of sudden desperation, right?
“We need to get drunk, immediately,” she decided. I was relieved.
And then we did.
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It was sunny for a couple of days, and I’d taken the incentive to realize that no one would miss me if I just worked through the night, during the hours when everyone else sleeps and I don’t. So I’d spent a day or two sailing by myself in one of the absurdly man-made lakes around Amsterdam, eating Albert Heijn prepacked ham & cheese croissant sandwiches and drinking enough red bull to keep a corpse on its toes.
But there was strife in me — internal struggle — and there had been for days already. The long hours of summer sun had been on their way down and the rain was coming more frequently, and it was colder when it came. The friends I’d made over the year had either disappeared into jobdom or else moved on from that city. It was starting to occur to me that it would soon be time to leave Amsterdam.
And that’s ok. You can only follow one path and my time has afforded me a vision of all the paths spread before me. It has shown me at least that much. Amsterdam hadn’t made it easy, but that’s more of an observation than a complaint. I’d put in my hours of silent struggle with this place, with these people, and if you were to snide at me for seeming to throw in the towel then you’d snide at someone who knows better than you the woes of a lonely existence among the Dutch.
Silly reader.
But there was a question that was keeping me in agony, stirring me from sleep, and that question was where to go next from here? The work situation had degenerated with the American economy somewhat and that wasn’t helping things; in fact it was only limiting my options. Thankfully, having spent a year traveling in Europe I had fewer preferences and knew, for example, that under no circumstances did I want to live in, say, Antwerp, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Madrid or Brussels. Good weather and proximity to large bodies of water had become a much bigger priority for me than say, tall, blond women.
I had plenty of time to ponder the issue when Maryla threw a going away party for herself. I knew almost no one in my house that night. They were all her friends from grad school - various nationalities represented in my living room. I made small talk and flirted a bit with the cute German girl from Maryla’s class and had a nice laugh with the group of Greeks and Spaniards, who seemed to talk about nothing but olives and politics. I even danced a bit with the African girl from Tanzania. They talked loudly and smoked in the living room but I felt myself slipping and soon I was straddling the window sill in the kitchen, nursing a mug of vodka, wondering how it’d gotten so low.
I sat there, pretty much alone and looking towards the other rooftops, wondering things - occasionally watching the people walk past me a floor below. What is so different about this place?, was the thought that constantly found its way back into my mind. Why is it important to me, this “Europe thing”… what is it? Was it the charming and ancient streets that some towns have? That kind of architecture that makes everything feel like a village is not far off? Was it the horse-drawn carriages that woke me up on Sunday mornings? Because these were just THINGS.
Was it the people? Maybe it was the vacations, the attitude towards work that cares more about results than it does about appearances. That could be it. I mean, I went to London once for a couple of days and worked out of the Wi-Fi signal of a PUB, drinking BEER to sustain my right to be there. I went to Barcelona and worked in my brother’s attic for some time. I went to Zürich and worked on the banks of the Limmat for the cost of 7 coffees… hell, last week I went sailing and worked at night…
And no one noticed. The American working style of answering email every two minutes simply wouldn’t allow for that kind of effective productivity. But that couldn’t be it.
A drunk Lithuanian boy scurried by, unaware he was being watched. A few minutes later two Irish blokes looked up at me from the street below and asked me “you live here? Where are the hookers?”
Ahh, Europe.
–
I was walking up a cobblestone street today the width of a horse’s ass and I noticed that the buildings around me were stone, worn and full of history, not a trace of memory. I don’t know what that means, really, but there’s something there. Try to get past the association with subsistence farming for a second, try to get beyond the hippy-ish notion that “we can ignore the corporations, man”, and see the value, the nobility in having the things and comforts you WANT to have, and ignoring the argument that you use on yourself that you NEED these things.
I don’t know. A stable economy? Universal Health Care. Foreign Policy that makes sense? Hypocrisy and corruption in your government that you can stand against, maybe even understand?
Hmmm. Maybe it just turns out that I’m a socialist or something. Barry Hart would go to pieces if he ever found out.
It could also be the unforced linkage to a more civilized age, a connection to society that is more intimate than what I grew up around. The resistance to unnecessary technology and services, to absurd products and ideals thrown at you from the oligarchy above was something I could admire in a people. Their ability to think critically and to give a shit, to have an educated opinion that even if you didn’t agree with you could a learn a thing or two from it. The notion that the world is not black and white, despite what say the powers that be. That they understand, on this continent, the shame I feel for what America has become.
I’m not sure; none of that quite hits the mark.
My fascination with the closeness of the major cities, the proximity to such disparate cultures and languages might very well be a driving force. I love driving on a highway and having virtually every road sign you pass have the name of a major city that you’ve visited, or would like to visit. Zürich, Basel, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Lyon, Prague, Budapest, Geneva, Milan, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon… the list is virtually endless. It’s not as if you see a sign for Sacramento, and then drive 2000 miles and see one for Chicago, having been through countless Virginia City’s, Winnamucca’s, Lovelock’s, Battle Mountain’s and Elko’s. And even then… Chicago? Who cares?
That’s the familiarity talking, I’m sure, but it’s an important part that can’t be discounted. These things are now, and will always be foreign for me. The languages, the customs, the people, the street signs, the license plates, the food… no matter how used to it I get there will always be an element of strange, of different, of exciting. I thrive on that shit.
There is also the obvious inter-relatedness of things that are so close to one another is equally captivating to me, how the history of everything has common causes, and I can understand things more easily this way. History is a fascinating thing, and we don’t have enough of it in America. Here in Europe you can see it in the bending of their streets.
I thought of all of this, of course, the first time I watched the Bourne movies. It all made sense to me then. Damn you, Jason Bourne!
Ahh. Europe.
–
A girl dressed in a plaid shirt walked into the kitchen for, I don’t know, more cake, let’s say. She saw me by the window and thought mistakenly that I was in the mood for a bad conversation and started telling me where she was from in Canada but that she was actually born in Montana, but that she thought that people of the northwest in America were basically just misplaced Canadian hicks or some other damn thing…
Jesus.
I hadn’t told her where I was from, but I got the feeling it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to a girl in Amsterdam from Halifax, Nova Scotia. After a few minutes of my not engaging her conversation all that well, she decided to get political.
A mistake.
Of all the things I didn’t want to discuss in my state of flux, in my indecision about my career, in my vacillation about what to do next, the last fucking thing I wanted to be reminded of was what would happen if McCain actually wins the Presidency. Or why that was still a possibility. And Canada-Montana there, who was feasting ravenously on some kind of a biscuit chocolate cake thing sitting on the kitchen table, wanted me to explain the FISA bill to her, postmortem.
sigh…
Why does it have to always be reactive with you people? Why can’t you fucking follow the important stuff while it still matters? We shouldn’t be putting these assholes in office and THEN wanting to learn more about their addiction to escort services, Cuban opium, toenail fetishes with 14 year old boys and this thing that you can do with a few star fruits if they’re ripe enough.
I don’t want to talk about that one.
I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter that SHE was asking; I don’t even know for a fact that she was still a citizen and could make a difference with her voice, except to aggravate me on my kitchen window. But it’s so much like everyone else I talk to, who wants to know if I’m an “Obama supporter”, or if I’m a “Hilary man”. What the hell does that even mean? Don’t you realize that there’s no choice? What do I think will happen if John Mc-two-face-Cain wins the Presidency? It’ll be the end of the god-damned planet, is what. It’ll be the second coming on fast-forward. And boy is Jesus going to shit his pants when he sees what we’ve done with the place, mostly in his name. The plane will crash into the mountain, and America will be the bane of the world in less than the four years it’ll take for him to get ousted out of office, and I’m not even sure you people will get the message then.
STOP VOTING FOR THESE LUNATIC AND CORRUPT ASSHOLES
Just stop. If you don’t know, if you think all you have is what they’re giving you, you’re probably right. If you haven’t asked someone who is smarter than you about the REAL problems, if you haven’t read more than one paper in the last 3 months, just stay home. It’s the right thing to do.
Oh, and if you MUST vote republican, don’t vote for McCain. Just buy a gun and shoot yourself in the face. It’ll work out better in the end, all without violating your right to bear arms.
–
But the FISA thing? Ugghh…
You have no idea, do you? You don’t know that what the congress passed and the president signed, that what you will now have hanging over your head like the carcass of a dead ferret for the rest of our natural lives is THIS:
-Releases electronic communication providers from liability with regards to civil action that may be brought up in any court due to assistance provided to the government in obtaining electronic surveillance if such assistance was authorized by the President before January 17, 2007 or if such assistance was the subject of written directions from the Attorney General or heads of the intelligence community indicating that the activity was lawful (Sec. 201).
What I have to say about this is: IF?
… IF such assistance was the subject of written directions from the Attorney General or blah blah blah?
Why don’t you just say, “spying on American citizens is illegal and we’ll rip your balls off, but, this bill releases Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, John Bolton, Karl Rove, Don Rumsfeld, George Tenet and a slew of other incompetent but evil-ass motherfuckers from any liability or criminal wrong doing… assuming they did it.”
This is, simultaneously, an admission of total and ultimate guilt followed by an assertion that “it doesn’t matter; everything we’ve done up to now has now become legal, back to the date that we did it.” It’s the most comprehensive FUCK YOU ever given to a collective audience. It’s the largest and will be the most enduring middle finger ever thrown to a captivated people. And “your man,” Obama, voted for it, just like most of everyone else.
I told her all this in between spasms of fury and frustration.
“Wow,” she said, and poured herself the last of the whiskey. Then she scampered off to find more cake.
Fuck.
…moments become memories very quickly on a night like that. The rage just drowns out everything else, and the loneliness is like a blanket over your face to help you forget it in the morning. The mug of vodka just doesn’t hurt…
You know?
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It has been several weeks since I’ve had a good night’s sleep. But this week was the bottom rung of that ladder, for sure. I was still jet lagged on Monday morning, and to make matters worse, we’ve made the jump into daylight savings time. Now it’s getting dark at around 9:30 in the fucking pm. That screws with me and makes me miss the window. Now it’s been 5 days straight of going to bed at 4:30 in the morning and having to wake up at 7:30 or 8.
I fail miserably at it, of course, hitting the alarm clock with fervor and confusion after 8 snoozes, wondering why on Earth anything would want to make noise at that time, whatever it was. Once I shower and read the papers though, I’m usually good until about 11 in the morning when I get hungry. Then I eat to ward off the pains in my stomach and after lunch I get hit by 20 or so semi-trucks and collapse in my car, away from the office for about 45 minutes. If I can, I go home for a 2 hour nap and then feel exhausted and worthless for the rest of the day. The process repeats itself when I start writing at 8 at night and only stop when I realize it’s 3 am and I didn’t see the time go by.
A week of this. My god.
What the hell ever happened to that boy that loved nothing better than to beat the alarm clock, to wake up quick and fresh 2 minutes before whatever time he set? A fast run and a quick cold shower, followed by fresh eggs, strong coffee and lots of fruit? And by the time he hit the streets it was still before anyone else, it was still that part of the morning when the day has just started drawing its first breath and seems to be holding the oxygen in for a little bit; it hasn’t even exhaled yet.
In my cold apartment in Amsterdam, I sit at my vinyl chair and remember those mornings and all the excitement they held. Every thought in my head then was part of a to-do list that I would tackle in due time. I would walk the crisp streets on my way back from exploring a new side of the city, expecting that something would happen at the next corner, or somewhere along the next street. I would breathe and imagine the coming day in my head, conquering and defeating, dodging anything in my way and firmly holding on to the notion that when all was said and done I would be leaning back in a chair sometime in the early evening, a hand resting behind my head and sipping a beer with a list covered in check marks in my back pocket.
But waves of distraction, lack of discipline, some Beatles song stuck in my head and the ever-elusive purpose of this thing always takes me straight to the early afternoon, when the dreaminess has subsided, the rain clouds have moved in over the gray city and all hope for success has been abandoned. I start a new list for tomorrow and hang on while today blows past.
This is no way to live.
And now it’s 1 the fuck 30 in the morning and after two hours of warm milk, 2 boring-ass biology text books, 130 happy bubbling sheep and enough wine and ibuprofen to give a hobo the shakes, I’m reduced to posting again. Why?
–
dammit.
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