I woke up early, showered, ate, and packed my backpack. I double-checked every room then left the key on the coffee table. I flushed the remaining cocaine. After giving the apartment a last look, I put on my jacket and backpack and walked down the stairs. It was partly sunny but very cold. As I hopped down the steps I remembered my first day sitting on them and being offered help by three strangers. I turned toward the apartment one last time and waved goodbye. I heaved a sigh, sadly smiled, and turned on my way to Kadijksplein and then left onto Prins Hendrikkade. I would have liked walking through the Oude Zijde but I needed to make time to Amsterdam Centraal to catch a train to Schiphol. It was a long, nasty walk along noisy, busy car traffic. I wasn’t used to such angry noise. The cold wind didn’t help matters. I did appreciate the sunshine, though.
I finally arrived at the train station and bought a ticket to the airport at a kiosk. I found the platform I needed, weaving my way through the hustle and bustle of a Tuesday morning. Plenty of commuters even though there were far fewer tourists and travelers than when I had first arrived in November. It could have been the simple fact that it was still early in the morning, though. I boarded the train and found a seat. I plopped my backpack down beside me and waited for departure. A man who looked all business in a grey overcoat and fedora sat across from me. He pulled out a newspaper and began reading. I looked out the window and watched people meandering here and there. Eventually, the train jumped into motion and I was on my way.
I disembarked from the train, up the escalators, and checked the overhead terminals for my flight. I was early enough that my departure wasn’t showing. I bought juice at a stand then found a bench to chill out. I noticed my departure and walked to the International terminal. I checked through customs in no time—the Dutch weren’t as stringent as the U.S. I was glad of that. I didn’t feel like receiving an anal probing. I didn’t even have to take off my shoes or turn my head and cough.
I found my gate easily. I had an hour to spare so I went to McDonald’s to get some coffee and a McBiscuit or whatever it was called. It was weird seeing a McDonald’s in Holland, even if it was at an airport. I knew American fast food had a presence in Amsterdam—there was a Burger King right around Leidseplein—but it still felt odd and wrong to me. I would have preferred a generic Dutch stand serving mayonnaise-drenched fritjes. I was hungry, though, and McDonald’s was as bad as any of the other chain restaurants in the area. The food, predictably, didn’t sit well. After eating well for a month I felt like I was eating refuse from a dumpster. I didn’t want to walk back out of the terminal and have to go through customs again, though. I was also grateful I had just a backpack. I would be able to load it in the overhead and not worry about baggage pickup at customs in the U.S. That had become a nightmare of wasted time.
About a decade earlier, frustrated with days being lost to flying, I changed my attitude. I wrote off the day, telling myself days beforehand, “Hey, you got a day coming up that is going to be tedious for an indeterminate amount of time. Don’t stress, just relax, read, observe, and be.” Airport days were meditation days; nothing could be done so I gave the mind a break from thinking.
I sat at the gate and waited, watching. Zen-watching. Everything was interesting. Nothing had any more import—nor any less—than anything else. I was at ease. The boarding call came and I waited for my seat section to be called. I boarded the KLM plane and was seated next to a woman who seemed to be about a decade older than I. She had the window seat and was reading a book. I sat in the middle and no one sat in the aisle seat next to me. I was comfortable so I figured I would wait until we got in the air to move over.
Instead, though, the woman started chatting with me. She was from Rotterdam and she was a Christian—not pushy about it, but she declared it as if it needed to be declared—but we had a wonderful time talking about all aspects of Holland. She told me stories about Den Haag, Delft, Rotterdam, and so on, as well as little Dutch oddities. She had a way about her that put me even more at ease. If she had asked me to pray with her I probably would have. I have a feeling it would have been a relaxing experience—as long as the prayer was silent. She was a peace-loving woman. We talked through takeoff and the plane’s plateau at 30,000 feet. The captain came over the loudspeakers mentioning the fjords of Greenland. They happened to be on our side of the plane. I got up to get my camera from my backpack overhead. The woman next to me allowed me to sit in her seat for a bit while I snapped pictures. It was extraordinary seeing the glaciers and icebergs from high above.
We switched back and one of the beautiful KLM flight attendants brought us food and drinks. Tired of talking, I put on my headphones and watched one of the movies available on the flight. I dozed off and by the time I woke up we were flying over Lake Michigan toward Chicago. We landed and I said goodbye to the woman. I made sure to get an eyeful of the KLM flight attendants as they wished me well wherever my journey might take me. I wished my journey took me wherever they were going. I made it through customs lickity-split. That surprised me. Soon I was boarding the plane bound for Madison, Wisconsin. It was a short flight and when I got there I boarded a shuttle van I had pre-arranged to take me back to the house I was renting from Mark, a great friend who lived in Minneapolis.
There was snow on the ground everywhere and it was freezing cold. I was terribly underdressed, but I was home. Home. Was it home? For now it was. I was eager to get inside and warm up. I tipped the driver, grabbed my backpack, trudged up the snow-covered driveway, and made it to the front door. I unlocked it and went inside. It was warmer, but I immediately turned up the thermostat. It had been cold in Amsterdam, but that was Amsterdam cold. This was Wisconsin cold! Amsterdam was far north of Wisconsin but the gulf stream provided warmer weather.
I put my backpack on the ground, walked up the stairs—it was a split foyer—and went to the bathroom to wash up. I looked in the mirror as I washed my hands and face. I thought, “Who is this guy?” I remembered looking in this mirror a little over a month ago. This guy in the mirror looked nothing like the other guy. The other guy was bloated, dead-eyed, and waiting to die. This guy in the mirror was slimmer, wide-eyed, and lively. I took a step back to look me over. I approved. I walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom I used as my office. There was my old desktop computer, the one I had used to find the apartment on Entrepotdok and book a flight to Amsterdam. Had I really only been gone just five weeks? It seemed like a lifetime had passed.
I remembered how dead I felt inside staring at the computer and realized down deep there was an ache for a life I once had. There were seeds within that life and I chose to plant and nurture one. It sprouted and took on a new shape and form. I may have watered it and pruned it, but it was a life of its own and it carried me along. I looked at my watch, still set to Amsterdam time. It read midnight. It was only 5:00 PM in Madison.
I went to the kitchen. There was almost nothing in the fridge. I checked the freezer and saw a frozen pizza. I unwrapped it, sprinkled a few spices on it, and put it in the oven. I didn’t want to go out in that snow. For one, I would have had to shovel the driveway and I was too tired for that. I just wanted to stay awake until nine so I could avoid jet lag as much as possible. As I waited for the pizza to cook I went upstairs to the bedroom. I saw the bed, the same bed I used to lie in at night thinking it couldn’t get any worse, the same bed I woke in crying because it was even worse. I spent seven months like that. I was suffering from severe depression and I had hidden myself from the world because I felt, on my best days, numbness.
I checked the pizza. It looked golden brown so I pulled it out. I wasn’t used to frozen pizzas any more. I cut it into eight pieces and put half on a plate. I filled a glass of water while waiting for them to cool. I took a bite. It tasted like cheese on cardboard, so much so I double-checked to make sure I had removed the cardboard. I had. It was a cheap pizza. Along with numbness my taste buds had disappeared during my depression. Cardboard pizza tasted no different than gourmet pizza. Everything had a sameness so decisions were easy to make; whatever required the least effort. Those were typically the cheapest and most tasteless eats. It was that way for everything.
I finished a slice for sustenance, wrapped the rest in foil, and put it in the refrigerator. I drank water. I went to the living room and saw all of the furniture that S. and I had accumulated over the years. She had allowed me to keep it as she probably wanted to purchase new items for her apartment in Chicago, something more suited to who she had become. The furniture in the living room was Shaker style from Ethan Allen. It looked nice. It looked like an American living room sans TV. I felt nothing for the room except a sense that it looked okay.
The TV was downstairs along with my friend’s furniture. It was a mini-man cave, the centerpiece being the TV. I looked at the couch and thought, “How many hours did I lie there wasting time, numbing my brain, and living vicariously through some actor playing out a part in a ridiculous plot?” It didn’t matter. Those days were over. I was tired, though, and the effect of seeing everything from my previous life was wearing on me. I felt the old numbness, whiffs of depression. It was like a ghost haunting the space. It certainly wasn’t me; it was a memory of who I had been. I realized, with some terror, that it would be easy to slip back into that old life. I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered that I had booked a flight to Amsterdam mid-January. I felt like dropping to my knees in prayerful gratitude to myself for being wise enough to make that decision. I could tell that even though those five-plus weeks had changed me, I was just beginning to sprout. A drought now would kill whatever was growing within me. I needed to knuckle down, get as much work done as possible, and stay focused to remember that “this too shall pass.”
I refused the impulse to turn on the TV. I said the hell with jet lag. I took my backpack upstairs, dumped it out, grabbed toiletries, and prepared for bed. I was asleep before I hit the pillow.
…
I spent the next month or so indexing, writing emails, making phone calls, messaging with Vanessa, watching HBO, and shoveling snow. It snowed about eight inches every other fucking day for over a month. It was cold as shit, too. It seemed to always snow at night or in the evening and then in the morning the sun would be shining invitingly. I would open the garage door dressed in several layers of clothes and a heavy coat and look at the nearly foot high swath of snow covering the wide driveway built for a two-car garage then began the long slog of shoveling. A guy across the street shamed me with his gigantic snow blower, but the guy living next door to the east was a shovel man, too. I respected that. He did freak me out because he always wore camouflage gear and a U.S. Army hat. When he talked I felt l was listening to a caricature of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. There were commies and liberals everywhere in Madison, I was told, and some people didn’t mow their lawns.
“The guy who lived here before you, he never mowed his damn lawn. Dog shit all over the backyard, too.” He was talking about one of my best friends, Mark, who had helped me through some of my worst times after my separation and divorce. He was renting the place to me at a price that covered only half his mortgage. For all I cared, Mark could have set off grenades in the backyard just to piss this guy off and I would have patted him on the back. I didn’t hate the guy, though. I even kind of liked him just because he was a character. But when he started talking about the People’s Republic of Madison I desperately wanted to tell him about a truly liberal city. If he thought Madison was bad—and we were living in a subdivision about as far from the UW-Madison campus and the state capitol as you could get within the city limits—I wondered what he would think if I plopped him in the middle of the Leidseplein.
These were my cohorts coming out to shovel snow every morning. The guy with the snow blower did my sidewalk and driveway for me every now and then. I never asked him to do it, but he was a good neighbor. I thanked him with a six-pack of beer every now and then and he said if I kept it up he would do it all the time. Truth was, I liked shoveling the snow—up to a point. I broke a sweat and other than some stretches inside the house I didn’t get much exercise. Too fucking cold to walk and I didn’t want to drive to a gym every day for a month. Mostly I indexing, read, and wrote for relaxation and stimulation.
I had so many other friends to thank for supporting me through my worst times. Julie and Kevin, Brooke and Todd, Anne and Amit, Mark and Ann, my brother, my parents, and even my extended family to some degree. I also received support from some I had met in Chicago, but mostly I lived a wild lifestyle going out drinking and having random sex with strangers nearly every night of the week. That led to Madison and hyper-isolation. I needed it to some degree, but it was too much. My friends and family were scattered around the country so there was no one place I could have moved and slipped into a supportive social network. I did what I had done most of my life in difficult situations: I dealt with the shit of life in private on my own. Without guidance I learned through trial and error, mostly error.
I paid off credit card charges from the first trip, but otherwise I was broke. I had income coming at me before I left for Amsterdam again, though. I received offers for several indexes spaced out over two months. I accepted them knowing I would be spending a lot again—but at a pace much slower than the first trip. I wasn’t terribly concerned about money and giving Vanessa the gift was a one-time deal. I had regained my ability to trust others and that had allowed me to put myself in situations in which I was able to open up more, to be myself with others. I felt healed, at least in part. More accurately, I felt like I was healing and that gift was a surgical strike on a part of my heart capable of selfless love.
I still felt fondness for Vanessa. My libido missed her as well. When we messaged it was sometimes salacious, but far too often it was bland or immature. She was being herself, perhaps, a young woman in her late teens or early twenties (I really didn’t know) and the excited emptiness of some of our exchanges bored me. She often invited her friends to chat and that was when my boredom peaked. It wasn’t the same without Vanessa’s physical presence. She was so alive with her body and facial expressions and her tone of voice that absent that life I didn’t feel a connection. I was never going to fit well with the digital age. I liked being in the presence of physical beings. Seeing a person on a screen gave me no more closeness than talking on a phone; in fact, it gave me less as it was more distracting because people typically looked at the video of the person they were engaging rather than the camera. Thus, there was not even virtual eye contact.
I messaged with Vanessa less and less as my time in Madison passed, focusing more on friends in the States, my indexes, and the endless shoveling of snow. I made sure to let my friend Mark know when I was going so he could arrange for someone to shovel the walkway at least. I told him I thought the neighbor overflowing with American machismo might call the city to bust him on an ordinance related to shoveling. We laughed about the belligerent intolerance of the man now and then. Mark said his cousin could help out with the snow shoveling.
Vanessa kept pressing me about my return and I wondered why? Did she want to see me as a friend? Did she really miss me? Did she miss my money? If she didn’t want to be friends, at least, and see me in non-escort situations, I planned on not seeing her at all. I didn’t need to rack up more debt and while I still had strong feelings for her as a person and, well, sexually … I didn’t need her. Something within me felt satisfied with who I was, with who I had become, and I didn’t think continuing to see her as an escort was going to lead to the continued development of what I valued most about myself. What was it I valued about myself? That was a question I wanted to explore in Amsterdam. While in Madison the answer existed in a haze and I couldn’t make it out. It was impossible to live as I did in Amsterdam while in Madison, especially on the edge of town. Even when I ventured downtown—which was something I hadn’t done since arriving in 2007—I didn’t feel anything for the place or the people. There was too much cliquish and status-oriented grouping. People weren’t interested in meeting someone new except for networking and, occasionally, sex. It seemed base and pedantic. I had one fun weekend encounter spent out in the wild with a small group of free-spirits, the type of eccentric goofs and yahoos Madison had been known for before it became corporate and status-oriented in the late 1990s and 2000s.
The week before I left I started making preparations. I contacted Humphrey from Direct Wönen via email to let him know the date and time I expected to arrive at the apartment. I gave myself a safe window so I could be there before he arrived. He had my flight number so he could check my status in case of delays or my inability to contact him. He also had my U.S. phone number and my Amsterdam cell number. I felt satisfied that I would receive the handoff of keys without incident and be able to settle into my new apartment without problems.
I packed a lot more for this stay given that it was going to be about three months. I wanted to feel at home. I longed for that, I realized. Perhaps that was what was eating away at me: I didn’t really have a home. Amsterdam was the only place that felt like home since being with S. I had barely started to feel at home there, though. The first trip was an exercise in excitement, coming alive again after a long slumber of depression. This time I intended to build on the friendships I began because those friends made me feel most at home.
It was also the city itself, the architecture, the urban layout, the way people moved through the city, their attitudes. My attitude had shifted and the prospect of building deeper friendships as well as meeting new friends made me feel as if I might be cycling through the city singing Dutch songs in no time. I made a list of things I needed to take and needed to get once in Amsterdam. “Bicycle” topped the list of items in Amsterdam. I could hardly wait to zoom around the city ringing my bell at pedestrians who got in my way. It was a very Dutch thing to do.
I had a giant black bag that I planned to check in as baggage for the flight. I was again flying out of Madison with a layover in Chicago. I would have two bags for this trip, my backpack as carry-on and my huge black suitcase. It had wheels and a handle. I figured I would have to take a cab from Amsterdam Centraal or perhaps even the airport, especially if I wanted to meet Humphrey on time. I would arrive early afternoon if all went as scheduled. I finished packing and made arrangements for the house while I was gone. I was ready to go.
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