A Weekend in Amsterdam
Just got back from Amsterdam, Holland; a city of vices, seven deadly sins, and stoners on bicycles. Most peculiar was the Dutch Language; nearly every street in Amsterdam has some archaic 11 syllable Dutch Name: "Duiujkundorfguijk" or the like. There was not one exception. With English as Prevolent as it was (Every proprietor spoke decent English), and with such a huge population from abroad (nearly half of the citizens in Amsterdam are tourists or Americans), I was surpised not to see any signs or street names with an English sound. (i.e. "Holland Way" or "Main"). With Italian, French, or Spanish, hell even German, you can still pronounce the lanaguage. With Dutch it's impossible; similar to trying to pronounce an Asian language. You need a background in the phonics and strucutre; unlike the Romance languages.
I flew "RyanAir," a low cost European Airline based out of Dublin, Ireland. For a mere 50 dollars, I flew From Bergamo, Italy to Einhoven, Netherlands. I again flew over the Swiss alps and into the low-lying moist, foggy abyss that is north-western Europe. The flight was surpisingly pleasurable, a clean, new airline. The Dutch are much nicer than the Italians, hell, everyone is nicer that the Italians in Milan, beginning with smiling. Hardly anybody smiles in Lugano.
The houses look idiosyncratic, like the Anne Frank House pictured above. They betray a lean, kind of like Holloween relics from your childhood; like the shacks in the renaissance festival in Sterling Forest, New York. They are apparently suffering from their foundation on marshy sand soil, and are thus sinking. It is a fitting touch to this cannabis-laden village; the tourists love the feel of the houses, personifying them as being high on Mary J. “The architects were high too!” Shouts one. The concentric semi-circular canals which surround you look poisonous and neglected; dirty and thin, debris floats freely and birds eat whatever they can find. The watercraft in the canals were impressive, as they all have to fit under bridges that have maybe 5 feet of head room. The wealthy Dutch bourgeois class wines and dines in these slender, low lying canal crafts which are practically submarines, in order to comply with the low bridges. The canals remind me of locks. Other crafts forgo the height requirement; they are permanently docked in the canals and made of wood.
Shades of Brown and Grey dominate the city; making for a handsome Dutch/English Tudor look. Downtown, there is no new development, except for signs and windows filled with pictures of Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, and other psychedelic fetishes from that strife-torn decade…
The non-Dutch tourists here are like giddy schoolchildren when it comes to the cheap, inexpensive, ubiquitous marijuana, something like 10 dollars for three or four “joints.” They are like 16 year olds with alcohol, and I find it pathetic. There is an occasional “Coffee Shop” (Euphemism for place that sells Marijuana) with businessmen and local Dutch, who smoke and watch soccer, and read the newspaper, maybe a joint, but most of them just smoke cigarettes, perhaps using the rolling paper since it is supplied; it classy, and my cultural assumptions aside, acceptable.
Then there is the raunchy stench to some of the other “coffee shops.” Completely American, there is a disgusting, hippie-love fest feel that encompasses these other 90% of the pot shops here. I thought bell bottoms and tie die was so 1994, but apparently the trend just moved here. Aliens and neon lights, and yellow teeth and braids and Jamaican music, yuk.
Even worse, as nice as the Dutch are, the proprietors downtown are almost always high, and as a result, don’t give a damn about customer service. I waited two hours for a cup of soup, at a diner. Pot makes nobody care here. Ask what’s up, and they’ll tell you, “I’m Busy.” Lazy culture, lazy service. Don’t worry, be happy, right?
After going to a few museums, (the highlight of my trip), I visited, my curiosities compelling me, the red light district. If you think Las Vegas was a guilty pleasure, you think again. What first strikes you is how few females there are walking around in the Red Light District. The only ones that are have a boyfriend and grip him tightly. The other 80% of men, mostly single, mostly walking around in circles, confused. I assume most of the shady characters I see are pickpockets, criminals, many just want to start a conversation with you. There are hundreds of these sketchy individuals just standing in the street, looking for a juicy opportunity, where someone’s wallet is half sticking out. Or some naïve tourist doesn’t know how to order a legal prostitute or get legal marijuana and gets ripped off for the illegal stuff. I’m a target because I’m white and appear wealthy, so nearly every one of these characters tries to make eye contact with me and start a conversation. I stop for a moment, because I’m tired of looking behind my back. A string is loose out of my back pocket, and a well dressed man is right behind me, apparently about to pull on the string. I quickly turn around and he skurries off. I’m paranoid about my wallet and my passport, so I put them inside my blazer and cross my arms. But surprisingly, there is very little violent crime here, since there are no hidden alleyways, so many people and much police presence.
In the glass windows, there are prostitutes everywhere. They dance and stare at you in the eye. Look at them, and they motion and dance, (most guys don’t look too hard because they’ll have to pay hard since the prostitute knows he wants them.) Many guys casually stroll around alone, feasting their eyes on which girl they want to have sex with. Some walk around for hours. Some just fantasize. An occasional husband with his wife will play with the prostitute.
There is a great variety of ages, races, body-shapes, and come-ons. Some women sit on chairs looking out at the canal with bored expressions on their faces; others pose, dance, gyrate like "exotic dancers;" others eat fast food or do their nails; others open their doors and call out offers to interested-looking passers-by. You see a man in front of you walk up to a lit window and knock. The door opens and a price is negotiated. The man enters the room and takes off his jacket. The prostitute closes the door and shuts the drapes over the window. Some prostitutes are on their cell phones, others are posing in the windows, some are smiling, others look really board and pick their nails About half of them have their windows covered with drapes, as they are “occupied.” When the prostitutes talk about their work, they don’t describe it as being inherently exploitative -- in fact these women, while they may not have been happy with the financial state which led them to consider prostitution as a good moneymaking option, did indeed find it to be a preferable alternative to other ways of making a living which were either insufficiently satisfying or insufficiently lucrative. The feminist objection to the trade here doesn’t really work. Typically in a money-for-services interaction, the person walking away with the profit is understood to be in the superior position -- or at least to be on equal footing. Prostitutes here, can make 150 dollars in 20 minutes, and as much as 2000 dollars day… It’s the horny men who are getting “fucked” over. You don't say that you exploit your barber, your mechanic or your doctor. To be fair, the feminist anti-prostitution argument can be more complex than just a charge that prostitution is an inherently degrading profession and proof that men are cruel brutes who find the degradation of women erotic. Not that the argument is any more convincing (to me, anyway) as its branches extend from these roots, but it is more sophisticated. My epidemiological objection to prostitution has been challenged as well. The consensus among Dutch health authorities seems to be that prostitution is of a negligible risk when compared to, say, the singles bar scene. They say that prostitutes here are religious about the proper use of condoms – and that they would make good actresses for safe-sex education films.
A Spiritual Discovery in Milan
Anyways, the more spiritual part of my weekend was when I returned to Bergamo on Sunday, then Back to Milan, and met up with ███████ for a few hours one of the few heated sandwhich shops near the duomo. We ate lunch and spoke about my broken heart. I cried, again, in front of her, though this time, it was completely different. I was completely vulnerable and there was a sense of burnt out honesty. Looking down, I confessed being abroad has made me a bit homesick, a bit confused and frustrated with the Americans in my program who have already resorted to the cliquey, drama bullshit that I traveled thousands of miles to get away from. She told me she is as in love with J████, already, as much as she was in love with me. Completely numb from the constant processing of this information my mind has done, tears just came down my cheek, and everything else about my body was still. She without hesitation hugged me and wiped away my tears. SO tired of being upset and knowing there was nothing she could do to comfort me, I managed to listen to her advice about love and life without my petty objections – and manage to smile.
I told her I am in a very strange state of mind. I have not made such a wonderful impression on some of these people here, and am not on solid, secure ground, being here in Europe. (No American really is). This is my time for a spiritual cleansing, and as zany as this may sound to those who know me –this is a time for me to find myself. But then I told her I invested so much of who I am in her, I told her that by abandoning me, she killed a portion of me. She said that I managed to accomplish great things at
Rutgers, like starting the Centurion and going on a fellowship, without her. I told her those were possible because I had love in my heart, and it acted as a buffer, kept my smiling, energetic and creative – kept me strong.
So why did I take the wussy way and cry again? I swallowed my pride, ladies and gentlemen, because I barely had any of it left. Deep down in places men don’t want to acknowledge because they want to be strong and attractive, and women don’t have the gall to respect because they want him to be strong, there is a part of a guy’s heart that is brutally sensitive and honest. Do you really want to play games? Do you really want to push her away? Or this that just an objective to get her to come to you. What happens when she won’t play back- she’s in love with someone else. ███████ and I, agreed not to see each other for a while, probably until April. She said she’ll call me when she thinks I’m ready. It’ll be hard for me to meet someone until I’ve built back up some security, she says, and meet someone I must.
So Valentines Day, in a week, will be the four year mark of when we started dating. I may send her a message or something, but at this point, I am feeling the other side of this thing. I invested everything in this girl, and lost when the market crash, but markets go back up, eventually. First I have to spend a few weeks alone, do some thinking and relaxing, and rediscover who I am without the girl I grew up with. I’ll get my mind off everything, not just her, expect nothing from anyone – and figure things out for a bit.
NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.
