Oscar and I sat in the back of a shisha lounge called Green Light Cafe. The bar was tripped out and smoked in, a hopeless scene of smokers from all walks of life, not a one of them local, which meant no Dutch people.
Don’t get me wrong, you know — Dutch people and I have a lot of things in common and I esteem their practicality and straightforwardness. It’s just that, hell — I needed a fucking break from the freaks of blunt.
And for that I was thankful. In that pillow-covered hole of wall to wall carpeting and blue and green and yellow and red neon floating on the ceiling there were no Dutch people. Not even the barkeep, who alternates on different nights from being a beautiful and petite Thai girl and a chunky English douchebbag.
Worlds, man.
The music there is usually a mellow kind of Jazz remix that seems to have engaged in acts of coitus with punk rock and steel drums. The chilled out clientele — overeager Erasmus young’ns, dreadlocked white guys, hippie chicks and Israeli stoners — always in character. They’re all straight off the train, backpacks and all. Haven’t even found their hostels yet.
I watched Oscar blow elegant smoke rings from the shisha pipe we shared. The man’s been everywhere and when he says he learned to blow smoke rings in the Middle East, motherfucker means Mecca, man. Or, at least as close to it as non-Muslims can get.
“Jeddah is the coastal port on the Red Sea, just outside of Mecca,” he informed me after seeing the blank stare on my face. He seemed surprised by my ignorance and I snapped out of it.
“I know where it fucking IS, Oscar. I’m just contemplating what a fucking cool job you have that by the sheer will of the mind, you can, on certain weekends, decide to just hop on a plane into the port of Jeddah and smoke enough shishas alone on the edge of the Red Sea until you learn to blow smooth smoke rings that smash calmly into the ceiling.”
He dragged the pipe a bit, and still took a second deep breath, exhaling slowly, as if his soul was leaving his body through his mouth. “You know, man, this job…it’s great. But it’s not as great as you think.”
“How do you know what I think, Oscar,” I said, with a spritzy tone in my voice that I hadn’t intended. He wasn’t annoyed.
“I’m telling you that this job has its curses and isn’t for everybody. Especially if you have specific needs.” I nodded, my head in my hands, showing him how bored I was with that topic I’d heard so often, so many times before.
Still, the man has been everywhere, it seems. But I knew that there are two roads to Mecca: one that actually goes to the city and one that goes around it, for foreigners or non-Muslims that think they can see Mecca just because they’ve traveled for god-knows-how-long? Nope, they’ll put you back in your blistering car and send you off. Everyone has their own problems.
He tightened his lips and thought for a moment, eventually saying, “Yeah. That was an interesting weekend. What a fucking shit country, that is, though.”
“What do you mean,” I asked, reaching for my pint of Heineken. “You told me you went from an air-conditioned Marriott — with a pool, which you swam in quite enjoyably, to hear you tell it — to a beach-side restaurant to smoke and watch the sunset and then the next day you took a drive to the sandy penninsula to search for a boat and ended up meeting a bunch of Dutch guys on the docks…”
“First of all, exactly. I went to Saudi-fucking-Arabia and who do I meet there, as if I didn’t have enough of that around this town of lunatics? The Dutch. I don’t see what you see in these people, honestly.”
“In my defense, I’m not all that happy with them either,” I said, looking around and smiling. I’m pretty sure I let that little gem slip every now and again. You should pay more attention.” He hesitated.
“Anyway,” he said, “it was shit. The town lists TGIFriday’s, Chilli’s and Pizza Hut among their top ten restaurants. People who go there return with pictures of their standard rooms at the Hilton, of unimpressive statues, some sunsets and occasionally, sidewalks.”
“I can picture,” I said, “the kind of people that take pictures of their hotel rooms at the Hilton. Clear as day, right?”
He furrowed his brow at me and took a deep drag of the pipe. “You mean people from the midwest?” he asked, holding it in. Then he blew another elegant masterpiece that grazed my left ear.
“Never mind,” I mumbled, grinning.
He went on. “And did I tell you that when I was about to sit at the restaurant where I smoked that shisha — by the way, it wasn’t beach-side, it was water-side; they don’t have beaches in Jeddah. There are some stretches by the highway that hug the water that are lined with large rocks to muffle the waves, but definitely no beaches.”
“ANYways…” I said, suggestively.
“Right. Did I tell you that at that restaurant I had to sit on the second floor, away from the water because the section — the empty section, I should say — of seats by the water is reserved for family seating? No single men allowed.” He seemed happy to have gotten that off his chest.
“Really?” I asked. I knew that Saudis segregated their men and women, but I figured there was space to move or something.
“Single men,” he repeated, “are the lowest fucking rungs on their social ladder.” He folded his arms and leaned back into his chair, his long, curly black hair bouncing on his head. I was surprised no one in Saudi had ever suspected he was Jewish. In any case, he was very satisfied with himself for that story.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I remember when you told me of those boys on that lawn in Riyadh one time and how the police chased them down…”
“But they let me go,” he reminded me, “when the bell boy came out to explain I was a foreigner in the hotel.”
“An expensive hotel?” I asked him.
“The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever stayed in,” he said, which is saying a lot. “In the Egyptian Marble shower I could lie flat on my back and roll away from the showerhead, rolling five times before I hit the other wall. I know this for a fact. I had enough space to do cartwheels in that suite.”
“That explains why the guard didn’t give you a hard time then, right?” I offered.
“Right,” he said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that single men, especially young ones, are scum, the lowest class.”
“Why do you think that is,” I asked, suddenly kind of seriously pondering the reason.
“Honestly? I think it’s society’s way of projecting their own self-hatred onto something. I mean, I just can’t reason with the notion that separating men and woment results in anything other than repressed sexual urges. Just look at the Catholic Church.”
“Mmmm,” I nodded, and it felt like he was on a roll, so I didn’t say anything.
“I think that somewhere deep within them where human needs can’t be touched by silly rules, religious or otherwise, there is at least the faintest whisp of a wish that those men didn’t need for marriage to be their highest priority in order to escape the social hell it puts them all in. A kind of a obtuse logic: single men cannot be in the presence of or seen with a woman to whom they are not related. Deep within people must find this repressing and wish it weren’t so. And if all single men were married, they would not have this problem. Therefore, single men are frowned on.”
I looked at him in awe. “Oscar, that was, by far, the craziest thing you’ve said tonight. And that’s following your story of rolling on the floor in the shower in your hotel room in in Riyadh.”
“I know,” he said, half-ignoring me, sort of beside himself for nailing a thought like that down. And then his face lit up. “And what about the Catch-22 of how a boys meets a girl?” he asked excitedly. “Have I told you about that?”
I shook my head no and reached for my beer.
“I had been wondering –” he explained, “after being in that country for 2 months with no alcohol, cheap gas and nothing but sand and flat land around me, how it was that people could, in the 21st century, still go along with the notion of arranged marriages.”
I nodded again, and sipped my beer. He dragged the pipe again and let the smoke pour out of his mouth slowly, like a waterfall. That fucking guy.
“So I did what I normally do when I want a straight answer,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He smiled, and blew the dense smoke off the table in front of him. “I ask a cab driver,” he said, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows. Fucking Oscar.
“And?” I demanded.
“And…” he dragged it out, “he told me that when parents won’t look away or pretend that they don’t know what’s going on, what the kids do is go down to the shopping mall with their mobile phones…”
“Mobile phones?” I interrupted.
“Yeah. He said what they do is set the Bluetooth receiver on the phone to be discoverable and when they find a phone they like they start texting and chatting with them. If the kids hit it off, they agree on a meeting place and a way to feign either marriage or relations for long enough to be seen in public before they become engaged.”
I was stunned. “Was he lying?” I asked, only half-kidding.
“No,” Oscar said. “I did this in a mall in Riyadh once and used my Bluetooth thingy to search for other discoverable devices. What came up was sort of sad.” I tried to sip my beer, realizing that I was sipping an almost totally empty glass. “A list of at least 30 or more phones came up. Their names were mostly illegible, but there were some with names like ‘Sexy, Sixteen and Single’ and ‘Ready for love, boy’.”
“Yikes.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Look, the pool was nice and all, but talk about a vast emptiness… I mean — who pays for all that gold trim?” he asked. I shrugged in agreement. He continued.
“In Jeddah, after wandering around the immediate neighborhood and finding nothing to do I finally found someone who understood enough English to be cajoled into telling me something, even if it was to give up hope. Those are the stakes.”
“Yeah?” I asked. I was partly distracted by the young Israeli kid rolling a joint of hash next to us.
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “This young Jordanian manager at the Marriott, when I badgered him enough about WHAT TO DO there he sort of lowered his voice and lowered his shoulders, leaning in to talk to me. He said, ‘listen, I’m a foreigner trapped here too. None of them will tell you but I’ve been here for two years and all there is to do is go to the mall.”
“I wonder why,” I said out loud, with a grin.
“‘Nonesense,’ I said to him, sort of startled by his honesty. ‘There must be a café where you can go read a book by the sea, right? These people are pious to a fault but they can’t be averse to a good life.’ I decided. He cast a look that told me he was not getting through to me.
‘It’s worse than you think,’ he said.
‘It can’t be,’ I countered. He smiled.
‘You’ve been to Riyadh?’ he asked me.
‘I’ve just come from there,’ I told him. ‘I’m here for the weekend’.
‘What do you think of Riyadh?’ he asked.
‘It sucks,’ I told him. ‘That’s why I came here. At least there is ocean here, right?’ I have him a smile. He smiled back but it was more wishful than it was agreement.
‘Look, the only thing the ocean adds to in Saudi Arabia is humidity.’
My heart sank for a moment. ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re telling me that there is nothing to do in Jeddah except either pay $250 for an hour for a wave runner or else drink tea in the hotel lobby all afternoon by yourself? Why are there even hotels in this place? Why are you people here?’
He adjusted in his seat and a grave feeling dripped all over his face. ‘I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. I think I understand what you want. You won’t find it here.’”
—
“And that,” Oscar said, “was the greatest reaction I’d gotten there, by far. By FAR.
—
His circles of smoke glided over the pages I was reading in the dim light, casting strange shadows and faint shapes over HST’s words. I struggled with my crude attempts at such cool manufacturings and eventually just gave up, sucking it all down and expelling it forcefully towards the dark blue ceiling.
It tasted like apples.
—
A long-haired blonde down the bar continued to throw suggestive glances at Oscar while shaking her shoulders in time with the mad noise the DJ was making. He glanced up from his writing every now and again to return them. I got the unshakable feeling he was playing some kind of game but I wasn’t a part of it.
He was deep in thought and I had just taken a deep inhale of the pipe when I saw her, out of the corner of my eye, get off her barstool looking over in our direction. I panicked and looked across the street at the signed bolted to the next building. It read, fortuitously, “Obstakel“. I knew exactly what it meant.
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No fun at all, being back in the ugly gray, buried in the dull and mild bleakness of an existence that doesn’t even know enough to care. Having been - no more than 36 hours ago - on a beach in Costa Rica, sipping rum out of a coconut and shielding the sun from my salt-battered eyes, the soft lap of whitewater cooling my feet and completely covered in sunscreen… it’s, aah… well, a bit… umm, kind of dreary then to, aah…
Shit. You finish it.
Usually a trip like this sparks the mad fervor that keeps me ticking; lights the fuse that leads to somewhere, and all without ruse or effort. But not this time.
No, upon my return to the place where the pillows smell like home, the first thing I wanted to do was stare blankly at a white wall and hope for a catatonic state. I’m a patient man but I didn’t think it would take very long.
Purpleshitchrist, I still have sand in my ears! I was sitting at a wet bar a few days ago, by which I mean that the bar was INSIDE the pool. Can you COMPREHEND such a thing? To make matters worse, I’m not traveling yet this week and have, therefore, more scattered time than I would if I were, you know, on the road. That’s sort of how it goes.
Putting my feet to the pavement, tires to the asphalt or just taking off into the clouds keeps my mind away from things like career ambitions and life prospects. It makes the next step the same one that is right in front of me. It gives me focus by blurring the edges, keeping things that are off the scope off the scope.
Late in the evening, almost 9, I put on a coat and went out, looking for something that would catch my attention for a bit, make me think of something other than waves licking the body of a beautiful girl at the edge of a beach of white sand and an unreasonably unreachable horizon. I had been running earlier in the day and had passed a dodgy area of town that made me think of dimly lit pubs in London and strange little winkels selling everything from old lamps to illegal cartons of cigarettes and condoms I wouldn’t trust to safely hold jello. I walked back around that way, hoping for a closer look.
At night all the lights are mostly off, with the exception of a couple of cafes, a coffeeshop across the street and a mysterious ground floor studio with bars at the window that separated the light thrust out to the street into neat little squares of yellow. Weird.
Inside I see what I least expected to find in this place: violins and cellos of every shape and size hanging from special shelves, leaning against tables and laying on individual workbenches. The floor inside is filthy with wooden shreds and oil stains. By a desk lamp in a distant corner is a mad little foreigner, working late into the night. All his might is focused on rubbing a small cloth vigorously against a violin that is already shining. He changes cloths, rubs and wipes again. A real pro, working this late at night.
Either that or an insomniac, a voice says in my head.
And why shouldn’t I understand his plight? Sometimes sleep is elusive as hell.
I keep walking into the darkness towards another canal at the end of the street. When I turn the corner I almost run into what I initially mistake for a gentlemen, his sharply grown gray goatee slightly yellowed from decades of tobacco. He is tall, thin, maybe 55 or 60 and wears a black overcoat that drops down to his calf. In each arm is a girl, blond and brunette, not a day over 22 each. He dresses like a Frenchman but when he speaks it’s with a viscous Austrian accent, rolling his r’s and hardening his w’s:
“Caan yoo teil me vaarr ist de red light deestreect?”
I give him the simple directions and he hobbles off with his ladies, giddy as a pervert in a schoolyard. Where on Earth is he taking them, I wonder, but the question quickly fades in my mind, as such question must in a town like this. Wondering too much about pimps, perverts or punks in a town like Amsterdam will either turn you into one or drive a man straight into the canals with madness and blues.
–
In the dim light of a thinning moon, the damp streets already smell of scattered debris and cheap Chinese food. The violent rain from earlier in the morning scrubs the cigarette buds from the sidewalk. But you can’t wipe the soot off coal without dirtying up something else and the streets have a film of filth in their corners and ridges.
The air is thin, though, giving another sense of cleanliness and above me the space between the apartment homes along the canals seems larger than normal. Scattered lights in the windows cast large squares along the streets and throw hard shadows down into the black water.
A blue sign leaning lazily against a large glass window reads in white Gothic letters: “Christian Rationalism”. To boot, it’s in fucking-of-all-things Portuguese. I ponder the meaning of it for a moment, wondering if it’s something like the inverse of Scientology or if it’s some poor hack who actually thinks he has a grip on something that actually has - as it will surely turn out - a grip on him.
Religious Brazilians struggling in foreign lands, though - there’s little that would be more obvious. Whatever, I decide. It’s probably nothing like Scientology, and yet somehow, just as stupid.
–
At one point I find myself nearly giving up, standing at the edge of a canal, under one of the steel bridges that temporarily spans these waters while Amsterdam is reconstructed. I note, leaning against that cold steel in the darkness of criss-crossing I-beams that there is no guardrail, that the water, the steel, the rivets and I are all a part of the same continuous medium through which the vibrations of the rail trains above move violently. I become entrenched in the city for a moment.
Time goes by like the boats in front of me and the cars and trains overhead. Here, there is no one. The dark thoughts, the demons, they pass through me like the vibrations of the bridge that enter me via the rivet against the back of my skull. Amsterdam is also a place of energy like New York or Rio… but here, where I am, there is no music. There is no memory. There is light on the other side of the canal, where hundreds of bikes are parked with no owners in sight. But not here - here it is just dark.
I try to think of nothing but my head is crowded with distractions and I find it nearly impossible.
Think of nothing. Think of nothing. Think of nothing.
You’re thinking of thinking of nothing. How does that work?
Shhhhh. I’m trying to think of nothing.
I know, but it’s not working. Try something else.
What does that mean.
I don’t know what it means. I wonder if all those people walking around are actually thinking of nothing.
They’re thinking things.
Shhhhhh!
Oh, sorry. Think of nothing… got it.
You do?
No, no, I’m just saying I’m going to try.
Oh. Ok. Shhhhh.
…
…
I wonder how those yoga people think of nothing. Are they thinking of nothing? Really?
Yep. Nothing at all. It’s tantric or something.
What does that mean? Tantric.
I don’t really know.
I know you don’t know. You’re me.
Right.
Say, this would be a weird conversation, right?
You betcha.
Wait, weren’t we supposed to be thinking of nothing?
Shhhhhh!
–
Christ. I am so alone in this place.
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Days of waiting have added up to weeks now. It’s been a cold so bitter and biting that I’m pretty sure my next reflection will show me that my nose is, in fact, no longer present. I suspect the northerly that blows so consistently these days sank its icy teeth and ripped it off sometime last night but without any feeling left in my face, I’m left to speculate. Oh well.
With the nights colder and the days getting shorter, it takes a little more determination to do the things one must do to survive this life of uncertainty and constant travel with no end in sight. Music, exercise, socializing — life. You know.
It takes real effort when the sky is grey and flies drop like weighted-down clumps of lint from the sudden loss of temperature. Sitting down at a desk next to a window to write means taking off gloves, something I’m averse to in an ice age apartment littered with the corpses of frozen mosquitoes. And writing like this takes more than inspiration; it takes determination, a combination of will power beating up on creativity. It takes balls. Also, it takes something I lack at the moment, and that is a space heater.
But discipline is a very valuable thing, and it’s malleable, since you can pound the hell out of it and eventually get results. Creativity, though, is a much larger bitch altogether and you can’t beat her to death with a stick - like a woman that’s worth having, she comes when she wants to, not when she’s called.
But discipline is what’s important and if you beat it for long enough, creativity tends to come out - not as a general rule but statistically the odds are there. Even Mark Twain had to write copy to pay the bills, and HST wrote a lot of shit that would’ve found a more comfortable home in a recycle bin than on the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. And these things are worth remembering in times like this. It builds character and gets you through the troughs. Fortunately, whiskey also works well enough and my friend Jameson always goes to bat for me in the face of desperation.
–
It seems only weeks ago that I moved to Europe and became stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for my employer to figure out where to send me. Days and days went by with nothing produced but the paycheck stubs…they were rolling in on schedule and as planned, and thank God for that, since it’s all that justified my continued existence for a while.
What amounted to weeks of time went towards facebook, writing blogs for an audience of unknown size or demographic, and planning the end of the year party. Sometimes they blamed it on the commitment from the sales folk but whatever the reasons, there were those who noticed and took the time to describe my life as some kind of fantasy camp of doing nothing, receiving a steady paycheck and being told that you’ll travel next week. Sounds great, right?
Sure. But if doing nothing persists and next week never comes, the situation slowly becomes toxic. All kinds of pestilent and toxic things fester in stagnant, standing and idle waters. When no winds blow to dis-branch the leaves and ruffle the feathers, to ripple the waves and spread tourist trash, deadly things build up, and so it is with men. Like a frog in boiled water, it’s easy to adjust to what’s killing you, so long as you’re ignoring it. I almost got stuck in that trap once.
But these people know nothing of boiling frogs. Doing nothing for extended periods of time is an endurance trial; it’s the most exhausting and physically draining activity you can engage in, next to cab driving or soccer.
So I try to endure. Remain dour and steadfast - hold out. Man is a beast of very few actual needs; an incredibly stalwart and resilient animal. Man can survive on astoundingly low quantities of food and water, comfort and shelter; he can push the limits of rest where sleep is concerned, intoxicate his body beyond reason and even watch entire marathons of Kirsten Dunst movies, if it came to that. But he needs validation; he needs purpose. Without it he goes insane with ennui, and that’s just the best case scenario. Sometimes a man will snap, and that’s when you get things like serial killers, tractor pulls and Miss America pageants, and eventually, in extreme cases, Scientology.
I was on the verge of crossing this line.
Yet now, as I continue to observe the city, its people and its tourists, I am reminded that I am not one of them. I may walk among them now, but I am not one of them no matter how much I want to be. And so the old question burns me more than ever.
I no longer wonder whether to move abroad, of course - it’s a little late in the game for that kind of hesitation. I’ve already peaced-out, closed accounts and paid foreign taxes. It’s not about moving because that’s just logistics. And when it’s on the company dime, I eat logistics for breakfast. After all, here I am, sitting canal-side, watching boats go by with “Amsterdam” written on their aft, and admiring myself for having taken the game even this far. But where does it stop? When do you go back?
Hmm.
I’m starting to suspect that it doesn’t stop; that I don’t go back. It’ll go on until I collapse or do something stupid like get married again. And we can’t have that, can we?
No, no we can’t. And now we know better.
I guess the itch, the question in question was never so much about Can it be done but rather: Can I see this through? Can I make this work? Friends, on this side of the pond permanently now, I am that much closer to something that I can describe as redemption & validation at the same time. Stay tuned for a more finalized judgment. But know that Europe and I — we’re working.
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The message came in much earlier, sometime around 22:00 last night but I was somewhere else, maybe watching LOST in Spanish or at a bar, or something. Yeah, that’s it - when her message came in I was at a bar in the casco viejo of Madrid.
The bar was all dark wood, carved by the hands of artists. And I don’t mean just the bar either, like, just a plank of hand-sculpted wood on which to serve drinks. No. The whole establishment was one large cave of mahogany or something. If you farted or your cell phone vibrated, I’m sure the whole place would feel it. I didn’t really realize it until my eyes got used to the dim lights and the Buena Vista Social Club started playing loud Cuban music out of the jukebox. The rusty metal signs were hand-made for sure, bent with pliers and cut with hack saws. Sangria and olive oil was kept consistently within arm’s reach of everybody, probably for good measure, and a smoked leg of ham stood propped on the bar on some home-made stand with its hoof out, like a dog ready to shake paws. It was almost carved to the bone but there were still another couple of hours worth of raw meat from that pork.
But the rafters of the place; they really did me in. I like old rafters the way older men like Buicks and Cadillacs and, in some cases, Volkswagens. The beam was supported by a strange thing indeed, a shape which both terrified me and captivated my eyes and my fantasies. My attention was ensnared and I couldn’t look away. It was, on closer inspection, a wooden sculpture of a sinewy human form, deathless for eons and sickly thin. Like a slave sailor on an old Spanish Galleon, it was positioned hunched over with its feet on the wall about 2 meters up, with the rafter over its shoulders, as if supporting the falling mast of a ship. If the wall had been the floor instead and the ceiling, the figure might have been sitting against a tree trunk with its knees bent, its arms grabbing the tree behind its head. Dark visions clouded my thoughts and it called into being all kinds of pictures of angel and images of vampires, pale mariners in the dark and the punished souls of demons. And in a place that full of sangria, it scared the ever-loving shit right out of me.
On the hand-painted walls, poor stucco jobs half-covered images of pistol-toting Mexican mermaids with conch shells covering their tits and dangling from their ears. The stucco was spattered, which had the effect of muffling the shouts of “cerveza” or “sangria: aqui.” On the walls where there weren’t images of flamenco-dancing beauties, lonely Guernikan nights, ancient masts for rafters or Bauhaus-twisted iron you saw things like rusting knights’ helmets, tastefully chosen warm Spanish colors and lots, and lots of vino.
…and I got mixed up in that Basque wine, half French, half Spanish with no identity to speak of and barely an identifiable language with which to associate. But I was under control, which is rare these days. I knew where I was, as I recognized that place from a few months earlier when I had spent a grand total of 16 hours in this city, 4 of which were spent on finding the hotel, 8 of which were spent on much needed sleep after careening around Europe for the last 2 weeks, 2 of them were spent in a movie, leaving another 2 to walk the streets of Madrid. And I recognized it immediately: Plaza Santa Ana. That was where we’d walked, had a Spanish tortilla, where it had all ended for them and started for me.
That’s also where, this time around, I decided that I was done with Madrid, at least for the time being. Having come to Madrid two weeks before, I’d already had my share of adventures and women and drink here. From the bar explosions to the distant clients, from the large city and its smog to the German Mädchen of fresh scents in the Tarifa adventure, I’d had too many fast times in that place. I needed rest.
So long, sucker - I have no more use for you. And all that.
It was off to the hotel in a fast cab, straight past the flirtatious reception girls that I would later take out on a few dates. But not tonight. Tonight was smack into my unfamiliar bed. FLOP! SLAM! Buenas noches.
–
Right. And here I am again, the sheets tossed around like an angry badger had it’s way with the place, and I’m no closer to sleep than Arnold is to the presidency. It worries me a little, by the way, that he’s even mentioned it, and a lot more that imbeciles talk about it like there was any fact or depth to that story at all. But that’s not what is troubling me tonight. No.
She had sent me a text message, a flirty kind of quick poke, a soft hello. An “I’m here, come and get me” scheme that rolled me out of bed and kept me there for far too long, reminiscing of kisses stolen on narrow streets in the dark, of windy lands far from here, of fast times since past.
It was Jana, the temptress from Tarifa, the sweet-smelling German girl who couldn’t stop saying my name in that weekend that I managed to escape from Madrid to Morocco. In her German accent, I would’ve been fine with hearing it until the sun came up. Now, in the silence of my hotel room, all I had of her was a little SMS icon blinking on my phone screen.
Granted, she was thinking of me, or at least that she had thought of me long enough to invest in some coordinated thumb-punching activities for a few minutes to let me know about it. That’s a sign kids; write it down.
And don’t get me wrong; I’m all for German babes with hot smiles and fast kisses thinking of me when I’m not around, and I was really into this chick. But she hadn’t responded to a message I’d left her 4 days earlier and I’d written her off as another great story and a memory that, while it would take longer to fade than others, would still fade nonetheless. Then that message went unanswered for 5 hours on a train ride through southwestern Spain. Then a day. Then 2. I’d been focused on obtuse clients and maddeningly bureaucratic business processes for the last two days -and now this
Where was the discipline? Where was the commitment to the dour principles of self-discovery, preservation and improvement? Where was the notion that I resent the very concept of girlfriends while my trek is underway? Where was the “Nooosssssssir, no anchors for me, thanks” - and all that?
Well. It almost went to pieces.
Yeah, I responded, and even proofread before I sent the thing. Yes, I sent an SMS back because the girl made me that jittery. I did almost lose my nerve and suggest that we meet up again since Germany isn’t all that far away from The Netherlands and I did have an episode of insomnia over the whole thing and yes, that’s why my sheets looked like a family of possums just had a lot of fun wrestling on my bed.
But I said “almost”. Did you forget who you’re dealing with here? I’m better now, and when I get done writing this, I’ll actually go to sleep, I think.
And why not? I loved it, babe, and you were special in those series of moments. That I was anything at all to you is sunshine on my heart; I never expected even that much. It was all for me at the time, and it was all I could get; there were no calculated risks, no saving anything for later. It was all out there - the way I roll. There was no pacing myself, giving some and taking a sustainable amount. What I saw was for the taking was pillaged and plundered, and I never looked back.
And don’t forget the rum, eh?
But I suspect that you too know something of fleeting moments. In that way we’re both folk of the road; we’ve both shared intimacy with others for extended, almost obscene amounts of time (in many senses of the word) and know that the term “one size fits all” never applied to us anyway. It’s not our bag, kid.
So I feel revived now. I’m glad this has all happened as it has and I think I’ll get a nap in before the next round of storms clears the horizon, or at least enough sleep to hold me off until my flight out of here tomorrow. But rest assured that “honey, I’m home” is far from anything I’ll ever say again without bursting into either gut-wrenching heaves, side-splitting laughter or desperate sobs of woe and fear of what I’ve allowed myself to become.
I’ve still got it.
Madrid, Spain — November, 2007
Alberto Aguilera NH, Room 403
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Fortunately, the afternoon was dark and threatened rain on that day when the clocks went back. I went from bar to cafe, from church to lounge, reading my books, writing my words. The body was not hung over, but the mind was acting as if it thought it should be.
Inside an English pub I heard the jeers and cheers that were probably attributable to a football game of some kind. The bright light of a tourist’s camera flashed against a store window and slapped me across the face. The day was not making a whole lot of sense to me but at least it was confounding me in a way that was not insulting, however intrusive. It was letting me know I could keep on walking. I did.
In general, it was a wasted day whose sole purpose was to be wasted, falling into reality, or else climbing back into it, depending on how you judge the debauched fun that our merriment last night produced.
For a party of 8 people, it was one hell of a party. Sure, the Dutch don’t really do Halloween, and sure, they won’t all necessarily come just because you invite them 3 months in advance. And they don’t all dance forro. But I do dammit, and I wanted a damn Halloween party nonetheless. And if I’d had to decorate my own apartment and stock my own fridge and paint my own damn nails black, I would have.
Thankfully, there was help. There was a moment though, after all the decorations had gone up and the nails were black and the costume was ready and a couple of drinks had even already been poured when I stood and waited. Nothing left to do, nothing left to plan, just wondering, doubting, me and the empty living room.
“Well, living room, I guess even if no one shows up, it’s been one hell of an afternoon, eh?” It doesn’t respond, as living rooms hate idle chatter. Also, living rooms can’t talk.
“You know, ‘room, it’s been a strange trip, so far, this moving abroad thing. Why am I doing this? What do I want to get out of it? I can’t really say — getting something out of it was never a goal I’d thought about, you know?” It knows.
“Was it adventure? Was it style? Was it accents? Shit, it could have been for the accents. Sometimes I’m just shallow like that. Yeah, it’s best that you don’t respond to that any how. Pretend I didn’t say that.
“But that doesn’t matter; this move, it was never a means. I wasn’t running, toward or away from anything. I just needed for this to happen or something. The horizon is always my end; it’s always my means too. What does that say about me?”
–
“You know, living room, you’re a great listener and you hold a lot of answers, but your public speaking skills leave a whole lot to be desired.
“Anyway, maybe I should clarify, because there’s got to be a root cause. There’s always a root cause in informational science and this is definitely informational. Why am I always seeking to be different, to stand out? I don’t like attention; so why do it?
“Now pay attention, because this is the important part. I think what it amounts to is that I like the attention that I give myself. I like the self-admiration that I feel when I do something I know is original. Something that validates - to me - that I’m an intelligent dude and that I know what’s up. Does that make sense? Is self validation a legitimate vice in vanity?”
It’s a good thing the doorbell rang just then, because I wouldn’t have known how to explain it better if the living room hadn’t understood, and then it would’ve gotten awkward.
And after that? After that we danced. My pirate costume was better than ever thanks in no small part to the gloriously cool initiative of my good friend, Clair, who had the insight, the drive and the initiative to consider that most of my pirate gear did not make it onto the “Pete’s Life: Volume I” box in the move to Amsterdam. Not only did she think of this, she then goes out and gets me some pirate gear and proceeds to send said pirate gear clear across the Atlantic.
Clair, are you listening? I had already promised you a beer next time I see you - are you ready for this?
Are you ready?
2 beers.
There, I said it. I give; I’m just like that.
[Clair will have my head for that, so I hope you're all entertained; it probably cost her, like, 200 mangoes just to ship the thing!]
Seriously, it made my costume come to life. It’s not that I’m not really a pirate, I just have a hard time looking like one. But with a dagger that has phrases written on it like
- May she carry the swift and the beating heart of worthy men…
- Bring me that horizon, drink up me hearties, YO HO!
- We are the beaches of Normandy the night before
- Douchebag fender-offer
well, then you’re all pirate. Black fingernails and eye-shadow just don’t hurt, know what I mean?
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