Amsterdam Redux
April 28, 2004
I took a bath with water so hot it made my skin hiss like a lobster until it turned deep red and nearly bubbled off. Maybe I wanted it to. As if growing new skin would make me a new person. I put my head under and as the water went glug glug glug into my ears, I thought about what she asked:
"Why do you do it?"
"Do what? The blog? I dunno." I glanced into her eyes only briefly.
"I read a little of it the other day. I could never do that. I don't understand why you do."
Good question — but I had no good answer. In fact, I didn't have an answer at all. "I don't know," I said and then thought for a minute. "I've taken it down a bunch of times."
"Please, don't misunderstand," she said. "I'm not being critical, I'm just curious."
"No—I know. But it's true, I have taken it down a few times. I'm not sure why I keep doing it. I admit it might be a little self-destructive. But it’s an outlet. A hobby."
"I write down that kinda stuff all the time, too," she said. "But I'd never want anyone actually to read any of it."
"To tell the truth, as more and more people discover the thing — people who know me in my day-to-day life — it's gotten harder and harder to write in it. Like you, for instance. I'm sure there's stuff in there, I'd rather you didn't see."
"Then why'd you show it to me?"
Apparently, there was more than one good question lurking behind those huge eyes of hers. Although I haven't been writing in here very much lately, it still has a hold on me. I'm deciding whether to bring my laptop to Amsterdam to post pictures and stories from my trip. Not sure.
April 30, 2004
First, you'll need to open an unmarked door. Then you climb several steep, narrow staircases to another unmarked door. Behind that door is an even narrower and steeper stairway. And there, on the top story, wedged into a corner so tight that you can't open the door all the way, sits my little room. I'm too delirious and vaguely nauseated to write anything else right now, but I'm here. And I brought my laptop. (Obviously.)
April 30, 2004
I arrived on Queen’s Day — the Queen's birthday. The queen mother's birthday, actually. But she's dead. She died in her 90s and was apparently quite insane. She thought that her butler was her dog. Although I'm sure she wasn't the first queen to make that mistake. When the guy at the train station told me I was arriving on a good day because "It's Queens Day," I asked him, "What do people do on Queen's Day? Get drunk?"
He seemed offended. "No! You don't have to get drunk," he told me. "There is plenty of music and dancing, and lots of stuff for the kids."
But then he thought for a minute and realized he wasn't fooling anyone, so he admitted, "Yes, and of course people will be getting drunk."
And they were. Tens of thousands of them crammed onto the narrow streets and canal bridges, dancing to a mixture of bad American dance tunes and even worse Dutch ones. I hadn't slept at all on the redeye flight from New York, so when Pauline met me at the hotel, I was a zombie. "You look tired," she said as I stumbled out of the hotel and found her waiting on the steps. "Should we go get a coffee?"
A literal boatload of people danced and partied on a dinghy that passed under us as we crossed a bridge. "It's like a gay parade for straight people," said Pauline. We squeezed through the dense mass of undulating bodies and poked through the crap everyone was selling on the street. (In addition to all the drinking and dancing, Queen's Day turns the entire city into a giant garage sale) "There is some criticism," Pauline told me, "that Queen's Day is the one true Dutch national holiday — and what do people do to celebrate? They try to make money by selling their unwanted shit on the street." We stepped over piles of housewares, old records, and T-shirts. "That's the negative view," she continued. "The positive view is that sometimes you can find good bargains." Pauline rummaged through various piles strewn about, searching for clothes that might be suitable for her to wear when she returns to her life as an intrepid reporter in the Côte d'Ivoire. She's been living in that crazy West African country for what must be a year now. She lives there with a guy she refers to as her "man friend" because he's nearly 20 years older than she is. She held things up and asked what I thought about this item or that. "It's so hot and humid there," she said. "I want to be comfortable, but I want to be professional, as well." As a journalist, she spends a lot of time interviewing nefarious people to get her stories — corrupt politicians, mercenaries, and the like. All of whom invariably make passes at her. "I want to cover my navel," she said as she pulled a black top out of a pile and held it up. But because she's six-foot-two, the shirt didn't meet the criteria, and she threw it back into the mix.
"I thought you told me you'd gained a bunch of weight," I said as she held up a few other things.
"Did I?" she asked. "I don't think so. I think I've lost weight."
"Either way, you look good."
"It must be the malaria," she said.
"Malaria? Are you serious?"
"Yes," she said rather nonchalantly. "I've had it about three times already."
"I guess it agrees with you."
In addition to malaria, the Ivory Coast seems to me like a dangerous place for Pauline to live. And now that a couple of journalists have been kidnapped and killed there recently, she's starting to agree. After a failed attempt to retrieve Pauline's bike from storage, we headed to a bar to meet up with some of her old friends, including an ex-boyfriend who gave me the evil eye the entire time we were there. I wanted to tell him to lighten up — that he was jealous of the wrong guy. "Does he know about your man friend?" I asked Pauline.
"No."
The two of them went off to talk about whatever it is that ex-lovers talk about in quiet corners, while I hung out with a shitfaced drunk guy named Greg who tried to teach me some Dutch swear words, which all seemed to involve STDs. After he tried to teach me the phrase that translates to "cancer dick," another drunk guy smashed a plastic cup full of beer on Greg's head. Then someone else tried to make me drink this weird concoction distilled from marijuana plants. When I declined, Greg called me a pussy. I shrugged and told him, "I've been called worse."
After a couple of hours, I said goodbye to Pauline, said I wished we could have spent more time together, and then wandered back to the tiny hotel room at the top of the stairs.
"You look tired," the guy at the front desk said.
May 02, 2004
The group of friends I know from New York is leaving Holland today. Or maybe they left yesterday. I never found them, though I didn’t try very hard. Pauline is gone, now, too. So I've fallen into my old "lonely guy from out of town" routine. I've nearly perfected the art of wandering around aimlessly. I came upon a band playing in the Nieuwmarkt square. They were finishing a song as I showed up, and the singer was engaging in stage banter. This is what he said (In English with a Dutch accent): "People from France, they look like dogs—" (sporadic laughter from the audience) "—And people from Paris—they—they look like pigs." Then the band broke into a raucous version of The Who’s "Pictures of Lilly." I'm not sure how the things he said related to the song — or if they were even supposed to. It may have just been that he'd been formulating his thoughts for a while and figured that since he had a microphone and an audience, he'd seize the opportunity to get the message out.
May 02, 2004
Fun fact: it's easier to get a blow job in this town than it is to make a phone call from a pay phone. The phones here don't take money; they take phone cards, and if you don't have one, and it's a Sunday, you're pretty well fucked. (They supposedly take credit cards, too, but not mine, apparently) I walked all over town looking for a store that was open and sold phone cards. I finally found one that looked promising. "Do you have phone cards?"
"For what?"
"For the pay phones."
"Local or international?"
"Local."
"No, we are all out. Only international."
"Well, what's the difference? Can't I make a local call with an international card?"
"Well, yes, but it is very—uh—very—"
"Expensive? "
"Yes. Expensive."
"Well, let me have one of those then."
At that point, I'd already walked a hundred miles looking for a card, and I wasn't going away empty-handed. To use the international card, you dial a special toll-free number, then punch in the card number that's printed on the back of the card. Next, it prompts you to enter another PIN, found under a scratch-off box below the card number, and then you can dial the phone number you're trying to reach. That gives you a hell of a lot of opportunity to fuck up. Which I did. It took several tries before I got it right.
"Hey Jara, it's Jamie.”
"Hey man, what's up? Howya doin'? So you're in town then? You wanna go get a coffee?"
They drink a shitload of coffee in this town. Jara is a nutty artist chick who makes assemblages out of crap she finds in the garbage. She's American, but has lived in Amsterdam for ten years and has recently gained Dutch citizenship, so she's an excellent person to know. Well, she's an excellent person to know anyway, but you know what I mean. Unfortunately, she lives way the hell on the east side of town, which is about a 45-minute walk from where I’m staying.
"You got a bike?"
"No. But I don't mind walking. It's all I've been doing anyway."
"I have some things I have to do," she said, and began rattling off a list of errands that mostly involved her cat. "You wanna meet me over at my place, say like, three? There are a couple of new places over here that I wanna try out."
She took me to a new cafe and we had lunch and listened to a Dutch rock band whose every other song featured a flute solo. Although the band wasn't great, I was happy to see them. The last time I was here, I couldn't find a live band anywhere — only DJs. But this time, I've seen a live band every day without looking.
"These poor young Dutch bands," said Jara over the music. "They struggle and they struggle, but they just can't get out of Holland. Even when they sing in English, like these guys, it doesn't help."
"Maybe they should get rid of the flute," I suggested.
"No! I like the flute."
Like I said, she's nutty.
May 02, 2004
The next time someone asks me what I'm doing in Amsterdam, I'm going to tell them: "I'm here for the Nederlander Flipper Vereniging, of course."
As I killed time before meeting Jara, I came across a tent filled with pinball machines. A few of the machines were on a stage, but it didn't keep the atmosphere from being decidedly informal. Scotch taped to a tent post was a little black and white Xeroxed poster proclaiming that it was the Dutch Pinball Open. It wasn't terribly exciting. Well, not as exciting as what was going on at the nearby Ferris wheel, that is. An older gent stood at the base of the Ferris wheel while it turned very slowly. The cars were filled with a variety of people — young, old, male, female — each with a chessboard in front of them. As each person in turn came to the bottom of the Ferris wheel’s rotation, the old guy would lean over and make a move on their board, leaving the player in the car to ponder and make their own next move before coming back around. From what I could tell, the guy was defeating everyone.
May 03, 2004
Jara is planning to move back home to Seattle at the end of the summer. Over the ten years that she's lived in Amsterdam, she's had a variety of jobs — in restaurants and bars mostly. She decided that the one thing she'd never done, but really wanted to, was to work in a coffee shop selling pot, hash, and mushrooms. I guess she figured that when she starts her job search back home, it'd help to have "drug dealer" on her resume.
I went to visit her at work tonight, but first I had a few drinks with Eilidh. Eilidh is a Scottish girl who's lived in Amsterdam for around five years. She teaches English to Dutch businesspeople and has a boyfriend who is one of the premier techno DJs in Holland. That means she spends a lot of late nights partying and a lot of early mornings teaching. We met at a bar near her apartment, but the noise was deafening, so we went somewhere else. The second bar was nearly empty when we walked in, but by our second round, it was packed. We watched a girl smash a glass over a guy’s head. It didn't exactly smash on his head; it bounced and then smashed on the floor. But it’s funnier to say it smashed on his head. The quarrelling couple yelled at each other until they were politely asked to take it outside.
Despite the short-lived drama, the bar remained relatively quiet, and Eilidh and I were able to talk — but we mostly just talked about the girl smashing the glass on the guy’s head. Eilidh and Jara are friends. I met them both at the same time, the first time I was living in Amsterdam and often had lunch in a cozy restaurant where they both worked. But Eilidh had to be up early to teach, so I went to The Grasshopper to visit Jara by myself. ”Tell Jara I said hello.”
By the time I got to the Grasshopper, Jara was stoned out of her mind. She claims she gets that way from simply breathing the secondhand pot smoke. I had my doubts until I spent a few minutes there myself. I couldn’t take it and didn’t stay long. Just long enough to hear some funny stories about cocky American college kids who think they can handle the Amsterdam pot, but wind up passing out and pissing themselves instead. "Wait," I asked, "They literally piss themselves?"
"Yup."
"Who has to clean it up? Not you, I hope."
"There’s no one else here!"
"Are you gonna put that on your resume, too?"
As I was leaving, a guy who had been zoning out on a red velour couch stood up and promptly fell forward into the pool table before pushing himself off the table and landing back into the safety of the sofa. All I could think was that a place where people regularly piss themselves should have a velour couch.
May 04, 2004
I'm finally awake early enough not to miss the hotel's complimentary breakfast. I don't care if it’s just a plate of cold cuts and a soft-boiled egg; it's included. After breakfast, I called Joost.
Joost is an old codger of about seventy who has more bikes than he has teeth — In other words, he has two. Pauline suggested that I call him to see if I could borrow one. Apparently, he had lent one to Pauline while she was here in Amsterdam, and she told me that it was a nice bike. "I'm sure he will let you borrow it," she said.
I'd met Joost when I was subletting Pauline's flat a couple of summers ago. Joost acted as the superintendent of Pauline's apartment, and he would stop by now and then. I don't remember why anymore, but I guess he wanted to check in on me to make sure I wasn’t trashing the place. He was nice enough, and whenever he stopped by, we'd make small talk about the weather. However, he was tough to understand. It wasn't because his English wasn’t good, or that my Dutch was bad. It was because I was so distracted by the one lonely tooth rattling around in his skull that I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. Anyway, I took Pauline's suggestion and rang him up. "Hello, Joost? This is Jamie, Pauline's friend from New York."
"Oh yes, hello."
"Pauline said that you may have a bike that I could borrow for the week. Is that true?"
"No. That is not true. You see, I have two bikes, this is correct. One that I ride every day, and the other that I keep in reserve."
"Okay, thanks anyway." So much for that idea. I guess the “one in reserve” is in reserve for pretty girls like Pauline. Can't say I blame him, really. I wouldn’t want to lend my bike to a fly-by-night drifter like me. Besides, the more I thought about it, I didn't really want to be responsible for the old coot's bike anyway. So I broke down and rented one instead.
May 05, 2004
Although most of the prostitutes in Amsterdam are centered in the famed Red Light District, there are a few quiet residential streets that have tiny glass-fronted rooms on them as well. Last night I went for a late-night bike ride and turned down a narrow little street that had a prostitute sitting behind her window — street level, with the telltale red light above her door. She wore ill-fitting red lacy lingerie and swiveled on a stool as she talked on her cell phone. Directly across the street was an apartment. There were no curtains on the apartment's window, and I could clearly see a young woman inside, standing over a kitchen stove, appearing to cook herself dinner. There was a table inside the apartment near the front window with a single place setting on it. It seemed as though, when the woman sat down to eat, she would be looking out directly into the prostitute's room. I wonder if they are friends or if they ever wave to each other.
May 06, 2004
Riding around town on my rented bicycle makes me realize one thing: I'm out of shape. Yesterday, I had planned to ride the bike as far out of Amsterdam as I possibly could before I collapsed. Then I was to have a cup of coffee and ride all the way back. I didn't get very far. Actually, being out of shape was only partly to blame. It was pretty cold when I first woke up, so I decided to go to the Rijksmuseum to look at some art while waiting for the weather to warm up. By the time I left the museum, the festivities on Museumplein were in full swing. There were several tents set up and a couple of temporary band shells. I watched a band called "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." They consisted of ten female singers and one drag queen backed by a standard rock band. They all took turns singing lead on various classic rock songs — each one singing a little flatter than the one before. Their outfits were like goth Halloween rental costumes — all except for one lady, who wore an Oprah-style pantsuit. I felt like I was watching tryouts for Absolutely Fabulous The Musical. They had the balls to attempt "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was undoubtedly the most ill-advised selection, but it wasn't the only one. "Pinball Wizard" and "Psycho Killer" were right up there, too. But like a train wreck, I couldn't help watching. I figured I could do my marathon bike ride today instead. But that plan went right out the window, too, when I ran into Eilidh and Bart on my way home. The two of them kept me out drinking way too late to want to do anything like that.
May 06, 2004
I was going to write something about the shooting of Ocean's Twelve here in Amsterdam, but what do I look like, a Hollywood insider? I stood with the crowd for a few minutes, straining to catch a glimpse of Brad Pitt or George Clooney. "What the hell am I doing?" I suddenly thought and scooted off down the street.
May 07, 2004
I'd just finished dinner and, with no other plans, rode my bike through the misty dusk. Cruising slowly down the long, narrow streets of the Jordaan, I began to feel a sense of contentment. Or as near to it as I ever seem to get. That is to say, the usual empty pit in my stomach was filled in with dirt, and although the grass hadn't started to grow in yet, I could believe it eventually would. It was quiet, and the few people who were out were merely silhouettes in the fog, like a romance novel or a horror movie. A church bell rang in the distance, and a trolley bell clanged in response. Voices seeped out from the warm, dry cafes where people sat under yellow lights, drinking and laughing. I stopped briefly to listen to an old man singing and playing the accordion. He sang a Dutch song I'd never heard before, but the way the people inside sang along, it was clear they had heard it a million times. I buttoned up my jacket and rode away. Like I said, I felt content in some strange way. Not happy exactly, but not wanting either. I had no sadness or depression or frustration or longing. I could've laughed or cried, and either one would've worked to express an emotion that there doesn't seem to be a name for. Not one that I've ever heard of, anyway. Faith? Is that an emotion? A faith that everything will be okay — a faith that, despite it all, everything always has been okay.
