ValueMental

The Dam Obscura, Part 9

I entered the train station to use the photo booth. I was pleased with the progress of my beard and wanted a few pictures to tape to postcards and send back home to friends and family. Eight photos total, all with different expressions of seriousness. On my way out I witnessed a pick-pocketing, the entire process beginning to end, from bump to pick to handoff. What caught my attention was the bump, a gaunt Moroccan walking toward me. He stood six feet in height, middle teens, and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds with skin stretched over him so tightly it looked as if it would split at any moment. He had black hollows for eyes, concave cheeks, two dark holes for a nose, and he sucked on his lips as if he were missing his teeth. I watched him approach, saw the slight build up of force as he threw a shoulder into a man wearing a camelhair overcoat looking up at the departure board. The man spun slightly, his overcoat opening a bit—and then the lift, a quick strike to the inside pocket, a billfold palmed and tucked against his forearm. He was Eastern European, the lift, with a head like a splitting wedge, wide in the back and honed to a point upfront; a recessed forehead curving into the most protrusive point on his face, a sharply edged nose. His chin hid beneath a large overbite and his face was riddled with acne, from pocked scares and whiteheads to red bulbous swellings he’d squeezed relentlessly without effect. He had blonde thin hair that fell into his eyes and he cleared it free from his face with an exaggerated toss of his head over his shoulder. He was eighteen, maybe twenty. I followed his movement through the crowd as he walked toward the train platforms and watched as he handed the billfold off to a child, a ten year old Turk with the face of a middle-aged man. Everything about him was childlike except for his brow line, eyes, and nose—the triangular section of a human face that expressed anger. The Turk child was pissed.

The bump headed for the front, the lift toward the back, the handoff walked past the ticket windows. The police, there in force to counter such measures, stood in threes and fours talking to one another and laughing, as if their presence alone deterred crime. It would be difficult to find a more inconceivable crew and although the three were of different ethnicity I was certain that they were all Dutch citizens. It would be unfair to label all Dutch people criminals, but it is certainly within reason to call them opportunists. It’s not unusual to be riding the train, wearing your backpack on your back, and turn to find an elderly woman with her hand in one of the pockets. She smiles, feigns embarrassment, and gestures to the offending hand as if she’d had no control over it. Socially, thievery is entirely acceptable if everybody partakes in the behavior; it’s only with the introduction of tourists, who are not used to the behavior, does the problem arise. It’s like setting the cattle out to pasture in wolf country…you can’t blame the wolf for taking advantage of the situation.

Back at the hostel I purchased four beers from the front desk, walked back up to the room. I taped Benjamin’s painting up to the wall at the head of the bed, lay down and drank all four beers while reading An Unabridged Yet Diminutive Text about the Everything and the All’s chapter on death, appropriately titled, What Happens After Animals Die?…The Decomposition of You:

Do you feel it…the one two beat…the systematic pushing of blood. It is your heart. The heave of air into your lungs, your breath, oxygen…You are alive.
The heart ceases to flex. There is no thump. Your chest no longer billows. Your body starts the process of dying. The cells that compose you…billions upon billions…stop functioning. You are dying piece by microscopic piece…a great cellular massacre, starting with the brain cells, which succumb in minutes. Calcium finds its way into your muscle cells; your body stiffens…rigor mortis. It takes several hours for your muscles to die, days for your bone and skin cells. In a final act of suicide, your cells release enzymes, which begin cellular decomposition, ending relationships with neighboring cells. The lifeless mass that is your body is no longer able to fight off bacteria. The bacteria and digestive enzymes which once broke down the food you consumed for energy, spread through your body and begin to consume your organs, releasing gases that inflate you like a balloon. Your cells liquefy. Insects find your corpse. Flies use your orifices as a breeding ground…lay eggs that quickly hatch, move into the substance that used to be you, become maggots and feed on your decaying flesh, raking it into their mouths with hooked appendages, shredding you apart on a minute scale. In less than a week they will consume almost two-thirds of you. The putridity of your remains attract beetles which have the capability of chewing on your tougher parts. Mites, moths, and wasps also make a meal of you. Your final gift to the living world is an insect smorgasbord. If conditions are ideal you might be bones in just nine days. But first you become a thick frothy fermented soup that slowly leaches into the earth. Eventually, you are picked clean, a skeletal puzzle.
The biomass that was you has been broken down into smaller, simpler forms of matter. Your return to basic element is complete. Perhaps your bones will become fossils or your body will mummify. Pieces of you, on a molecular scale, will become other things…Hurray!

The Dam Obscura, Part 8

He raced through the streets, steam escaping through the cracks in the hood. With two bags in my lap I was unable to see much through the front windshield, but from the passing blur through the side window I could tell he was moving twice the speed of traffic, and having gone several blocks without stopping, I was pretty sure he ignored all traffic stops. He paid no attention to the constant barrage of horns, a ceaseless wailing in full Doppler effect.

“So start explaining,” I said.

“What?” He slammed on the brakes, downshifted, hit the gas and pulled around a car.

“What’s in these bags?”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

“It’s my theory of everything.”

“Like Stephen Hawking?”

“No. I said it was mine.”

“Then what am I holding in my hand right here.” I squeezed the plastic bag and could tell that it was wadded with loose scraps of paper by the way it crinkled.

“That’s the final piece, the Myriad Equation.”

“The Myriad equation? Myriad…as in innumerable, as in infinity?”

“Kind of, but not really.”

“You’re telling me that within this one bag you’ve answered infinity, kind of but not really.”

“I’m not done yet.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous,” he said. “The answer cannot be written on paper or explained in words.”

“Of course it can’t,” I said sarcastically. “And all of these other bags?”

“Subsets. The components for what is in your hands.”

“So you’ve figured out the workings of the universe…physics, quantum mechanics, the fundamental forces of nature, string theory, superstring theory, M theory…all that bullshit?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “You’re right.”

“Yeah…I’m right…what?”

“Yeah, you’re right that it’s all bullshit.”

“You’re saying that the leading physicists, the smartest people on the planet, are all wrong.”

“Yes,” he said. “Physicists, theologians, philosophers, scientists…they’ve been chasing their tails for centuries. If they were any where near to figuring things out they’d be dead. But some of them were in on it.”

“‘in on it’, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Aristotle and Einstein.”

“In on what?”

“The Great Misconception.”

“The Great Misconception, where are you coming up with this shit?”

“Listen,” Paul said. “Ever since man’s attention freed itself from the trappings of survival they’ve turned toward answering the fundamental questions of their existence…who, what, how, when, were, why…which essentially ask the same question: ‘What the fuck?’”

“You’re a lunatic,” I said.

“Do you believe in God, any sense of the word, religion, philosophy, science, nature? In some way do you believe that your existence on this planet, in the universe, is justified, an expression of something greater.”

“I don’t believe in God in the sense-”

“You know the whole ‘I think therefore I am’ shit.”

“Yeah, that I exist because I-”

“So you do agree that you exist.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Now in order to exist you need space to exist in, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well Immanuel Kant, who is not in on the Great Misconception, said that you can never imagine yourself existing without space, but that you can imagine space existing without you. Meaning you or I cannot have a place existing without space to exist in. Follow me.”

“Kind of.”

“Well this space, otherwise known as the universe, expands infinitely outward, but it also expands infinitely inward as well…”

“What about the big bang? The creation of the universe?”

“Misdirection by the Great Misconception. The universe always existed, it expands infinitely outward and infinitely inward…to put it in words you are used to, one unending point is God, otherwise known as infinity, and the other unending point is Soul, or zero. These are different representations of the same thing. Infinity and zero, God and Soul, inward and outward expansion of the universe, are all different representations of the same thing. The universe articulates itself in an infinite amount of ways; we are just one articulation, a refraction of the infinitely outward expanding universe as it passes through our dimensional plane toward the infinitely inward expanding universe. We are a part of it, although, an infinitely minute part. But we are still a part all the same. And because we are a part of it, we have the capability of destroying it as we know it.”

“Destroying it how?”

“By knowing, understanding, and acting upon it.”

“That’s crap,” I said, mockingly. “It’s like saying one cell in my body can kill me.”

“Like cancer.”

“Yeah, but that’s mass proliferation. There is no way we can wipe out the universe by overpopulating an infinite expanse.”

“As we know it,” he emphasized. “On our planet, on our plane, pertaining to our awareness. What you don’t understand are the forces behind it. This refraction, our representation, caused by a slight twist in the cosmic fold, is not inherent. The universe wants a void, wants to be empty, and it constantly works to achieve this. The idea that matter cannot be created or destroyed is bullshit. The guy who came up with that was in on it. But everything has its opposite, matter included, in the form of antimatter. And one constantly works to destroy the other. Einstein of course said that the antimatter does not eliminate matter, but changes the form instead while keeping equal energy. But Einstein-”

“Was in on it,” I interjected.

“Right. Everybody working now to figure things out are working off of Einstein’s theories, which are cleverly misleading. I’ll tell you this—the people who work for the Great Misconception are the smartest people on the planet because the shit they have to come up with has to fool those who are supposed to be the smartest people on the planet. And you never hear about them. They work quietly, behind the scene—that is until they send out an agent to implement their plan.”

“Like Einstein,’ I mocked.

“And Dick Cheney,” he said.

He slammed on the brakes, brought the car to a squealing halt. “Time for you to get out,” he said. I looked out the side window and saw the front of the train station with crowds of people rushing by. “Remember about tomorrow night, seven o’clock.”

I eased myself out from beneath the Myriad Equation, stood at the door looking around the black bulge to Paul sitting on the other side.

“Paul, why should I go if you’re going to end everything?” I asked.

“Because you’re my savior. Now shut the fucking door.” I closed the door. He tore off, narrowly avoiding an oncoming tram as he turned and raced down Damstraat.

The Dam Obscura, Part 7

When I opened my eyes the boy was standing over me. His hair was mussed and his eyes were weary with sleep. He wore a long t-shirt to his knees. I sat up and he handed me a glass of water which I drank down quickly. I watched as he went over to the painting and removed the stones from the corners. He rolled up the paper, walked to the front door, opened it, and held the painting out for me to take. I put the empty glass down on the end table, stood and walked over to the door and took the painting from him.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

“Benjamin,” he said, letting go of the paper.

“Benjamin what?”

“Benjamin Kurohoshi.”

“Thank you, Benjamin Kurohoshi.” I stepped out onto the landing and he closed the door behind me. I walked to Rembrantplein and took a seat at an outdoor café and ordered water and coffee. The waitress wore three-inch heels worn down to one-inch nubs. I wondered if her worn heels pleased her the way a broken-in pair of work boots pleased me. She took the orders on the patio then disappeared into the café to fill them, passing a mirror on her way in and out, where she stole a quick glance of her reflected self. She wore a black miniskirt, uncomfortably tight around swollen thighs; her legs fought the slight chill, splotched red and white like ham hocks. The sun had yet to find the square of Rembrandtplein and Amsterdam had not yet fully given itself over to spring. I held a cup of coffee in both hands and watched the sun splinter across the square, felt the steam on my chin, closed my eyes, and awaited the creeping warmth, heat and light, according Professor Nihil, that left its source seven or eight minutes ago as the byproduct of an erupting particle, traveling some hundred and forty million kilometers to meet my face. And just like that everything warmed, accepted, absorbed…

Screeching tires and the sound of a minor accident brought me back to the present. It was the red Renault still hissing steam and it had knocked a dummy pole aslant. Paul Able got out. “Well collected, I hope,” he said. “I’ve just come from seeing our mutual acquaintance. I wanted to get the results.” The people sitting around us stared in awe and contempt.

“Results?” I asked.

“From the test, the one you took last night.” The night came back to me, more as a dream than anything concrete. “It’s worse than I’d ever imagined,” he continued. “It’s so bad that she has decided to take you on without charge. Yours is a case she has never seen before.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you understand what happened last night?”

“No.”

“Do you remember what you saw?’

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Should I start at the beginning then?”

“Please.”

“What happened last night is the culmination of years of research. The young woman with whom you visited is of Chinese and Japanese descent. Her father was a Chinese foreign minister, her mother a Japanese courtesan, a geisha. She was born out of wedlock and raised by her mother in Japan. Her father still kept up relations, visited often, and became a father-figure to the child. She had never known him to be her father, at least not until much later. He supported her and her mother financially. When the time came, the mother decided to educate the child in the states, much to the father’s opposition. Mother and daughter moved to New York City, where daughter attended school and mother took work. The father visited from time to time, whenever business brought him to the states. The daughter did well in school and earned a scholarship to Harvard, where she studied psychology and anthropology. She focused on hallucinogens as means of unlocking anxieties. You could say she continued in the light of Timothy Leary, but what she accomplished was wholly her own. Leary was a ghost by then, his teachings merely a mumble. Her work was so impressive that Harvard offered her a place in its graduate program. She dealt mostly in organic hallucinogens—mescaline and psilocybin—believing the effects were more affective than LSD or other manmade derivatives. She’s more mortar-and-pestle herbalist than chemist. It was while in the graduate program that she developed the tattoo, the one you saw last night. She saw the tattoo as a starting point, a stepping stone for further treatment. The tattoo is an assemblage of Chinese and Japanese masters, a landscape of both rough and smooth features, exquisitely detailed. Much like the ancient Chinese paintings, there is a traveler–“

”The man leading the donkey.”

“Right. But the donkey was your own creation. The man, the traveler, starts out on the beach a quarter-inch tall, becomes the creation of the viewer as he approaches. But back to the tattoo. The idea behind the tattoo is the journey the traveler takes. The path created in the tattoo is the only path. The details of the tattoo are as such that the path stands out to the viewer. The traveler is supposed to continue on the path as high as the viewer wants him to go. There are certain dangers that the traveler encounters, the cliff above the dunes being the first.”

“Which is as far as I got.”

“Exactly. The village offers rest and comfort. A normal stopping point for most cases. After the village is a small rickety bridge over a torrent of water. Most rational people see the torrent, take notice of the poorly constructed bridge, look back at the safety of the village, and end their travels. Others see the high mountain meadow filled with wild flowers and consider the risk worth taking and cross the stream. After that comes the forest, which is either welcoming or ominous depending on the viewer. Then the cliffs, the crags, the bluffs, where the path is sometimes unnoticeable and it is up to the viewer to find the way. Very rarely does a test subject get this far. As to when somebody actually makes it to the top, nobody knows, nobody has ever accomplished this.”

“And I got no further than the dunes.”

“Yeah, your traveler did poorly. It is equally rare for a traveler not to make it to the village as it is for a traveler to make it high into the mountains.”

“Which means?”

“You’re fucked up,” he said with a laugh. “What makes your case so exciting, so rare, is that you created the donkey. What that means, she has yet to interpret. Not only did you create the donkey, but you sided with it. Most people become the traveler. It seems that you became the ass…and equally unique is the fact that your traveler took an object from the tattoo…”

“The sapling.”

“Right. Your traveler uprooted a sapling and began whipping the donkey with it. The design of the tattoo is supposed to discourage against deviating from the path. The objects that line the path are not meant to interact with the traveler. Not only did the sapling interact with the traveler, but it resulted in an action other than the traveler traveling. It resulted in the traveler beating the donkey.” He started to laugh again. “I don’t mean to laugh, to be unkind, but the only thing worse that could have happened is if the traveler turned toward the sea and drowned himself, which is not supposed to be an option due to the large crashing waves, but in your case it appears that nothing is off limits.”

“I was under the impression that you didn’t know this woman. That it was your appointment.”

“I lied. I did my undergrad with her at Harvard, but I came to Germany for my grad work. Only when I came to Amsterdam did we reconnect. Now I’m somewhat of a patron of hers, interested in her work and always on the lookout for good subjects. You seemed the perfect type with your slacker disposition. And I was correct. Like I said, she’s agreed to take you on for free. You have renewed her interest in the study. Most of the cases are similar and boring. Hundreds of cases and you are entirely unique. Of course, she needs a day or two to figure out how to proceed. She wants to see you tomorrow, seven in the evening, eat nothing before you go.”

“Harvard educated, huh?”

“Not entirely. She was thrown out before finishing grad school. They thought her study too cavalier. Plus she started testing on students without permission. The test subject cannot know that he is being tested in order for the results to be valid. She tested on professors without them knowing. She even tested on the dean. He answered an ad, believing it to be an erotic Asian massage. With three-quarters of the Harvard elite hallucinating, staring at her back, drool dripping from their chin, they thought it best to quietly usher her out. She came to Amsterdam where the supply of hallucinogens is unlimited, as is the test pool.”

“Does she test females?”

“The test is geared toward males. She finds their minds more susceptible, easily malleable.”

“Now that you had me secretly dosed and tested are you going to elaborate more on what’s in the bags.”

“Yeah, sure, but we have to keep moving. I can’t stay in one place for very long. Are you drinking these?” He pointed to the coffee and glass of water.

“Not if we’re leaving.”

“Great. Bring them here.”

I followed him to the Renault. He reached through the window and popped the hood. He unscrewed the radiator cap with his denim shirt, stepped back as it steamed. He took the coffee and poured it down the radiator, followed by the water.

“That’s not going to help,” I said.

“Sure it is. These things are built to last. I’ve been driving this car like crazy all over Europe for the past five years. Haven’t had a single problem. Get in and I’ll explain everything.”

I returned the empty glasses to the table, grabbed Benjamin’s painting and hurried back to the car. He was stuffing the garbage bags into the back trying to make a space for me to sit in the front seat.

“You’re going to have to hold onto a couple of these,” he said.

The Dam Obscura, Part Six

Having three hours to waste I walked through the Albert Cuyp Market, purchased a bag of smoked almonds, and went back to the hostel. I bought three cans of Heineken from the front desk and went up to my room, lay down in bed and ate the almonds while drinking the beer. I took out the card Paul had given me and examined it. In the middle of the card was an X. To the left of the X was the silhouette of a man, no taller than a quarter of an inch. To the right of the X was the same silhouette, only upside-down—the inverse to the picture on the left. Below the symbol was the name of a street, Oudezijds Achterburgwal, but no address. The street was the main drag in the red light district. I turned the card over. The back was filled with lettering. Running the length of left margin was Chinese; the right margin, Japanese. In the middle of the card, from top to bottom: Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, and Dutch. The only font comprehensible to me was English, and this is what it said:

“…benefit comes from what it there, usefulness from what is not there.”

The quote was vaguely familiar. I opened An Unabridged Yet Diminutive Text about the Everything and the All and found the passage in the chapter on eastern philosophy. It was from the Tao Te Ching. I read the section a few times, which was only a page long and consisted only of the sections on the ineffability of the Tao, knowledge, and emptiness—which is where I found the quote. I finished the almonds and the second beer, drank the third while taking a shower and watched the gray sudsy water swirling down the drain at my feet—saw the collection of pubic hair that had gathered there and wandered what percentage of the tangled mass belonged to the Frenchman.

I left the hostel and walked the four blocks to the Dam Straat and entered the red light district. I ambled past the shop windows, the sex clubs, the occasional prostitute. It was early still and the windows were almost all curtained. Only the hardest working of them all, the Islanders, were lewdly coaxing me, kissing the air when I passed, pushing their ample tits together, quivering their flanks. I made sure not to hesitate, to draw them out with their perpetual fuck-talk.

I made my way to the street mentioned on the card. It was ten to five and I had no idea of how I would know which door I was looking for without a street address. I walked down one side of the canal, checking for any sign, any hint of the place, crossed over a bridge, and came back. I was about to give up when I came to a set of stairs that dropped down to a black door. There was a single bare bulb shining at the bottom of the landing, illuminating the same insignia, the X flanked by the inverse images of a silhouetted man. I walked down the six cobbled stairs, hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked louder and waited and still nothing. I contemplated leaving when the door cracked open slowly.

Standing before me was a small Asian boy, seven or eight years old. He wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses, too large for his face. His black hair was cut bowl-like, trimmed just above his eyebrows, moving diagonally across his ears to his neck. He wore a white t-shirt and a pair of black sweat pants. He had thin boney arms and tiny bare feet. I stumbled for words, mentioned to him in stuttering English that I had an appointment. The boy just stared at me through mirrored lenses, using my own minute convex images for eyes. I felt ridiculous and was unsure how to proceed. Then I remembered the card. I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to the boy. He took it, inspected it, turning it over in his hands. Then he smiled, adjusted his sunglasses, took my oafish hand in his, and led me inside.

It was a simple room, small and rectangular, bare walls painted stark white, lit in such a way that made the walls feel self-luminescent. Against the wall opposite the door was a worn couch and end table. To the right was another door. On the floor to the left was a blank piece of paper weighted down on the corners by four smooth round stones. There was a porcelain dish filled with bamboo brushes and a small palette filled with ink. He led me to the couch, motioned for me to sit, which I did. He smiled again, then disappeared behind the other door. I waited in silence and stared at the white walls. Minutes went buy with nothing but an indiscernible buzz to keep me company. The boy returned, carrying a tea pot, cup and saucer. He placed the cup and saucer on the end table, filled the cup with steaming tea. He gently placed the pot down and lifted the cup and saucer for me to take. I took it and thanked him. He motioned for me to drink. I held the cup close to my lips and blew. The boy came up close to me, leaned against my legs, and motioned for me to drink again. I tilted the cup and sipped. It was hot, smelled of musk, tasted of earth, something I was very familiar with. The boy shook his head and tilted the cup with his hand. I swallowed rapidly, trying to keep pace with the tilted cup. The liquid seared my throat. He kept his hand on the bottom of the cup until I finished the tea, then he poured me another and handed it back.

“Thank you,” I said.

He smiled and turned away, walked over to the paper and kneeled before it. I stood and followed him and watched as he took a bamboo brush from the porcelain dish, dipped it into the palette of ink, and started to paint. His strokes were precise, efficient, long and sweeping, short and sharp. He dotted, swiped, not one errant stroke or movement wasted. Slowly, the subject appeared—a dancing toad. In a few more quick strokes he added a plume, a feather or leaf, to its head, then two more strokes and he added an enormous penis, almost a third leg. I was shocked, but given the location of his apartment I was sure he’d seen enough dildos in the windows; all he had to do was cross the canal to see a live fucking show. I went back for my tea. By the time I returned he added another toad, this one obviously female, complete with swollen breasts and an impressive vagina. He was like Matisse in the scarcity of ink used to extract an inordinate amount of detail.

“Where did you learn how to paint like that?” I asked. He began filling up the margins with Japanese characters. “You’re really talented.” The calligraphy was smooth and flowing, the individual characters each a painting unto itself. “Surprising subject matter, though. How old are you?” He remained silent. “What’s it say? Some kind of profanity?”

Then I felt it, the leaching of digestive juices, a turn in my gut. A chill swept over me as the nausea crept through my body. The tea cup rattled. When he heard this, the boy stood. He took the cup and saucer, led me to the couch and sat me down. I tasted my stomach in my throat. It was bad this time.

“I’m not feeling well,” I told him. “Is there a bathroom? I think I might get sick?” The boy smiled. “I’m sick,” I said slowly. “Sick.” The word sounded ridiculous to me as I spoke it. “Sick,” I repeated. He took both my hands, held them with his own. “Sic…ick.” They were soft hands. Gentle, like a toad’s. He pulled me forward, removed his sunglasses, took my head into his amphibian hands and drew my face close to his. He pulled my right cheek down with one hand and my right eyelid up with the other, and peered into my widened eye, as if sighting a scope. He had wise, antediluvian eyes. Having my face cradled by him, having him peer into my eye so deeply, brought a great calmness to me. The feeling in my gut subsided and was replaced with a feeling of absolute contentment. The boy smiled—his lips sharp and defined like his brushstrokes, a perfect dimple below his nose, a nubbin of a nose, flush palpitating cheeks. He pushed me gently back, held up one finger in the air, as if to say ‘one moment’, and he disappeared behind the door again.

The couch cushions took me in, enveloping me in warmth. The rectangular room fought its own dimensions, the corners softened, the angles rounded, providing an amniotic sensation, as if I were inside an egg—the air a warm yolk all around me. I felt protected, elated. I wanted the boy to come back, to paint some more. I wanted to talk to him, or maybe just to listen to him talk. He didn’t have to speak English. He could speak Japanese or Chinese or Dutch. I loved it when little kids spoke foreign languages; they are such amazing linguists. He could tell me a story, anything. I just wanted to listen.

“Hey, little boy,” I said. “Come here. Paint another picture. Tell me a story. Do you have any Legos? Legos are made in Holland, right? Or is it Sweden? Let’s play Legos.”

The lights turned off.

I sat in the darkness and listened to my breathing, became amazed at the simplicity of it, the sempiternity of it—how I never think about it and yet my body autonomously continues the process. And my heartbeat, a perpetual one-two count, performed every second. Somewhere in my body there is a minute mass of cells regulating my life-systems. What if it were up to me to constantly think about breathing or flexing my heart? I couldn’t remember birthday’s, annual events…

A single shaft of light switched on overhead. The door opened and an Asian woman walked out. She wore an orange silk kimono, tied in the middle. She walked toward me on the pads of her bare feet. She made no sound when she moved.

“Obi,” I said, pointing to the sash tied around her waist. “That’s an obi. I know that one. It’s a crossword clue.” She said nothing. “Hi,” I continued. “I have an appointment. A man…looks like he’s homeless…It’s his appointment actually,” I rambled. “He told me to come. Is that okay? The boy let me in. Gave me some tea. Really good fucking tea.” She remained silent, stopped in front of me, looked down at me. She had the boys face, only longer and with sharper features—the same perfect lips, narrower and more drawn out. Her nose was slender, with sweeping detail. Her cheek bones cut streaks down the side of her face. She had the same archaic brown eyes as the boy that peered from tapered apertures. Black shoulder length hair with obsidian sheen.

“He painted a picture,” I talked in an attempt to fill the awkward spaces between us. “Dirty picture, but really amazing. Where did he learn to paint like that?” She turned around. “Really fucking dirty…the frog has a huge dick.” The silk hung off her bottom, shimmered in the light. “I wasn’t sure this was the right place. There’s no street address. I’m not the other man, the…the weird guy…the one who made the original appointment. Is that okay?”

She gathered her hair in both hands and pulled it over her right shoulder, revealing her delicate neck. She let the kimono slowly fall free from her shoulders and I immediately understood everything about oriental pottery. “I was told you weren’t a…I mean to say that this isn’t…I mean it’s alright if it is…I’m okay with it. Is this paid for already?” The kimono continued its slow cascade down her back, revealing the beginnings of a tattoo. “I don’t really have all that much cash on me. I can get some. Is there a cash machine somewhere around here? Nice tattoo.” I couldn’t make it out. It was large, starting just below her shoulders and spanning the width of her back. Half of the tattoo was revealed—mountains, cliffs, great monolithic crags, entire forests and fields of flowers, sprawling meadows. Clouds hung just above the tops of the mountains, below her shoulders. Fog haunted amidst the cliffs. The sun peered from behind a peak. And still the kimono fell, revealing more. Streams, waterfalls, pools and ponds, torrents of water. The trees grew larger, more intricately detailed. Everything was sharply focused. The streams poured into a river and the river ran through a village. The village sat atop a cliff. The cliff gave way to dunes covered in sea grass. The dunes flattened out and the sand ran into the sea. Great waves, frothed and foamy, rose up and crashed on the shore just above her left butt cheek. Everything came to life. The clouds wafted, the fog lifted, the sun shone brightly as it rose slowly from behind the mountains. The trees swayed in the breeze. The water flowed downward. I felt a part of the scene, as if I were in it. The picture in front of me became reality, I was certain of it. I could smell the pine, the crisp air, the brine of the sea, feel the sun on my face.

Then I noticed a figure, a man, walking on the beach toward me. He was leading something. He was no bigger than a quarter of an inch but I could make out the wrinkles on his clothes, the whiskers on his face. He wore black canvas pants, tattered with holes, a black dusty coat sewn up with patches, an aged fedora upon his head. What was he leading? As he approached he turned inland. It was then that I noticed the trail. It started as a footpath in the dunes, led up to the cliffs, and became a road that ran through the village. The road crossed the rushing river over a rickety wooden bridge. It wove its way through the landscape, tapered, cut back and forth through fields and meadows. It narrowed even more, became a simple foot path, winding through the forest. It reached the mountains, worked up the crags and cliffs as a series of switchbacks. It wound around spires, disappeared, reappeared, kept climbing higher until it vanished for good in the blinding rays of the sun.

I looked back at the man. He was broadside now, leading a donkey by a rope. The donkey was packed heavily, burdened by great canvas sacks, its head down, hooves clopping in the sand. Its tail swung side to side. The man led the donkey up into the dunes, the sea grass wisped about their legs. Man and donkey followed the path up the cliffs. The trail became steeper, slightly more treacherous. The man bent over, grabbed at shrubs for leverage. The donkey, burdened by his load, struggled to find purchase among the loose rocks. The donkey’s forelegs gave out and it dropped to its knees, letting out a great wail that echoed off the rocks. The man slipped, pulled a sapling up by its roots. He turned on the donkey, began beating it with the sapling, the donkey bleating in protest. The man continued to whip it. The donkey rose up only to fall to its knees again. The scraping of hooves, the clattering of rocks, the whipping and wailing…I didn’t want to watch anymore, to hear anymore. She heard me whimper and asked:

“What is it you see?”

“A man leading a donkey,” my voice was barely a whisper.

“A donkey?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are they?”

“Just out of the dunes.”

“What is happening?”

“He’s beating the donkey.”

“He’s beating the donkey?”

“Yes, with a sapling he’s uprooted.”

She pulled her kimono up and turned, cradled my face with her hands as the boy had done. She closed an eye and gazed into my right eye with the other. She leaned closer, her hair brushing softly against my face. I put my hands on her hips—felt the perfectly formed symmetric lobes of her hipbones in my palms; my fingers reached around to tap the swell of her ass. I pulled her close, wrapped my arms around her waist and pressed my face against the silk-covered flesh of her stomach and once again became aware of my breathing, my pumping heart. She unclasped my hands, held them in hers. I felt brutish and ugly, my hands large and calloused and scarred, their full awkward weight held by hers, lank and delicate. She placed the tiniest of kisses on my forehead. She dropped my hands into my lap. Bent over and picked up my legs, swung them up onto the couch. She guided my head down to the armrest.

“Sleep,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes; tunnels materialized in my mind, twisting and winding, and I followed them…

Can you smell what Valuemental’s cooking?…

…Peasant pasta!

The Dam Obscura, Part 5

Idle time, if there is such a thing, is easily consumed in a great city. There are many ways to amble away the seconds. However, when you’re hung over the seconds beat inside your chest and pound out a rhythm between your temples. Your hearing achieves an abnormal acuity, sucking in sounds that rattle the components of your middle ear, revealing the true meaning of hammer and anvil. Your sight wanes, as if seeing only the peripheral. Your temperature fluctuates from uncomfortably hot to bone-chilling cold. The city beats you senseless. Normal daily routine becomes burdensome. I carried this burden like a yoke through the streets while on my way to a café near the Rijkes Museum. Sweat beaded on my forehead while my arms felt cold and clammy. I kept my head down, my hands in my pockets, my shoulders hunched, and watched my feet fall heavily on the bricks. Each step sent shockwaves upward—starting with a soreness in my legs, a quivering in my bowels, an ache in my chest, a disparaging scratchiness in my throat, finally ending as a reverberating pang inside my head, as if my skull were a thick bell dissipating vibrations. Crossing the street I heard the jarring ring of a tram and looked up to see it coming toward me. I stepped out of its path only to be threatened by a car horn. I hustled off the street and was bombarded by the incessant ringing of bicycles bells and the subtle mumbling of curses as they whizzed by. I spun off the bike path into the foot traffic on the sidewalk. The scurrying of pedestrians quickly brushed me aside until I found myself against the building, my right foot in a fresh pile of dog shit. Occasionally, reality recognizes you, puts you back into place. This is why you see the addicts hobbled over and limping. The city eventually moves too fast for them and they get blindsided by one of the many moving hazards. I scraped the shit from the sole of my shoe on the grit of the bricked sidewalk.

In order to distance myself from the present I put my mind inside the café, a dark recess in the back, until finally I arrived at its doors. I joined my thoughts at the table in the back corner and ordered a toasted brie sandwich, a bowl of onion soup and a cup of cappuccino. When it came I ate methodically, enjoying each bite, savoring the flavors. In putting such concentration into the meal I overcame my hangover. By the time I finished the last of the cappuccino and the anise-flavored cookie that came with it I felt reinvigorated.

Being so close to the Rijkes Museum I decided to finally see what was inside. I made my way to the entrance, paid the fee, and meandered through the hallways and rooms and was soon lost amidst Dutch home furnishings, fifteen through nineteenth century. In such a setting, among so many others, each piece seemed to lose all significance. A table became simply that, just a table. A tea set, beautiful and delicate, was only a tea set. It was hard to see the craftsmanship, the art in object, when it was surrounded by so many others like it. Where were the home furnishings of the Dutch peasants? The furniture of the aristocracy could never stand up next to the worn chairs of farmers, the rat-chewed hutches of the poor. I wanted to see the table belonging to the Potato Eaters. The table where the queen picked and nibbled her muffins in 1643 meant nothing to me. These particular table and chairs belonged to no one, were enjoyed by no one.

It took me the better part of an hour to navigate the maze through Dutch home furnishings. I found my way into the galleries. Each room was filled with paintings. Again, the sheer volume of work numbed my perception. Occasionally, a painting stood out from all the rest, but mostly they just passed from one to the other as pages in a book, flat and uninteresting. I could hardly blame the artists or the museum. The Louvre had this very same effect on me—everything passed by as object, no different than anything else. The collective body of work was so immense it seemed to be about what wasn’t there, like looking at the Venus de Milo and asking the person next to you, “Where the fuck are her arms?” The only emotion stirred within me was what happened in the bathroom when a Parisian pervert stood on the tips of his toes to look over the urinal partition and glance at my dick, and that only stirred uneasiness. Looking back on it now, I should’ve been pleased—he paid a fee of one hundred francs at the door and chose my penis over the Mona Lisa.

I made my way down the back stairs of the museum to the Asian art gallery and was comforted by the palpable imagery, the sculptures of metal and stone. Not smooth white marble busts but rough rock weathered by the elements. These were roughly hewn effigies to appease gods, not an artist’s vanity. I wanted to put my hands on them, feel the grit on the tips of my fingers, hold the weight in my arms. They held dimension, threw shadows, altered reality now as much as then. But still they were out of context—behind glass, on pedestals and shelves, lit by fluorescent light—a collection that lost most of its significance when it was removed from its natural setting.

It took me some time but I found the exit, passed through a tunnel beneath the museum and came out the other side and into the park. I found shade beneath a small tree and lay down, read a little from the book and fell asleep.

XXX

I awoke to a kick in the ribs and opened my eyes to a pair of brown moccasins, a fungal toe peeping out of a busted seem in the leather. I followed the pair of white painter’s pants upward to the face of the man who’d got me drunk the night before. A wedge of sun came over his shoulder and I held an opened palm up to block the light.

“We keep the same schedule it seems,” he said. “Fortuitous isn’t it, how we keep bumping into each other.” He was nervous and fidgety, more so than usual, picking his fingers and scratching his forearms. “I have a problem and here you are—the solution, rested and ready.”

I rose up onto my elbows and he put out a hand to stop me. “Please, don’t get up,” he said. I lowered myself back down and rested my head on the trunk of the tree. He continued, “I know it’s a bit early in our relationship and presumptuous of me to start asking favors but understand that I wouldn’t be asking you if I wasn’t truly in a bind. It might do you some good to help me out, though. See, I’ve committed to something, a certain engagement for this evening, an appointment…a professional who is quite busy and very hard to make arrangements with. I’ve been trying to see her for sometime now and finally I have my chance, an opening for tonight, but something has come up.”

He glanced back over his shoulder toward the tunnel in the museum.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think someone is following me…I know someone is following me. They have been for a while now, just not here in Amsterdam. I thought I lost them in Bruges. But they’re here now.”

“What about?”

“That’s none of your concern. Will you see the lady or not?”

“The hooker?”

“Hooker? No, not at all. She’s a specialist—a proper lady dealing in dualities, someone who sorts life’s ambiguities…prods the senses, stirs up the mundane…and, frankly speaking, you seem to be a bit stagnate yourself.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“I’ll do it only if you tell me what is in the bags.”

“Everything,” he said.

“What?”

“Everything is in the bags. I’ll explain later. Here, take this.” He pulled a card from his vest pocket and handed it to me. “Five o’clock. The address is on the card. Don’t be late. I think it will really do you some good. See you around.” He took off running toward the Van Gogh museum.

“Wait,” I called after him. He stopped and turned. “What’s your name?”

“Paul Able,” he yelled, running to join the crowd of tourists.

The Dam Obscura, Part 4

There is no order to Amsterdam…unless, of course, order is the perfection of chaos—which I think is the way the theory works, according to Professor Nihil—and I interpret his ideas loosely when I say if a system is a group of simple singular units interacting in relation to each other, forming a contrived natural organized aggregate, then Amsterdam is a fucking system. Obeying the natural order of things, the city is structured on a cellular level, entirely on a whim. Nowhere else has the singular handheld unit of the brick been used more effectively to construct a masterful clusterfuck. Some time centuries ago someone baked a brick out of the abundant sand, placed it on the ground, baked another brick, mortared the two together, and repeated the process ad infinitum—an intricate network that spans for miles in all directions—the streets bend and crook, twist and wind, loop back and turn about. Past and present heaped together. Walls built to keep out invaders, dikes to ward off the North Sea, towers built in defense, defense no longer needed so towers fixed with clocks because time has become the new pandemic and punctuality our implement of precision. If you know nothing of your own existence, at the very least know that you’re on time. That’s why we move in pedestrian streams, breezes of bicycles, currents of cars, orbits or trams, and always the trains and planes to carry us away, if only momentarily.

There are one hundred canals spanning one thousand kilometers. One thousand bridges spanning one hundred canals. Not-one-thing knows whether it’s coming or going. The buildings loom outward, tightly packed like teeth, stand tall and slender, ornamentally capped by gables. The staircases are narrow and winding, tucked into corners near the back. There isn’t a single right angle in all of Amsterdam, not one plumb joint or one surface flush with the other. I am comforted by generations of masons and carpenters not on the level. Such pandemonium spawns perfect design. Every brick has been properly misfit, every board disjointed correctly. Within this contrived natural organized aggregate these simple singular units act upon one another in a seemingly chaotic way; but it was order from which they generated and it is order to which they will return…most likely in cataclysmic fashion, the cause of which, a mundane ordinary event.

XXX

I saw her again. She occupied the very same window, the same red light. She closed the curtain as I walked by. I passed the others in their windows quickly, circled the block, and waited by the corner. I wanted one more glimpse, a chance to match the image inside my head with that of her flesh. I feared I may have built her up into something entirely different. Fifteen minutes passed and the door opened. A fat man in a gray suit slid out, allowing only a small amount of space to fit his ample frame through. The guilt came through in his movements but the pleasure glinted in his eyes. He clicked the door shut carefully, as if not wanting the city of Amsterdam to know of his presence in the red light district, and joined the line of men in their elephant parade through the narrow alleyway. I waited for the curtain to open but it never did. The light turned off and I walked away. I made my way out of the red light district and onto the Dam Straat and continued down the street to a favorite pub of mine, took a seat at the bar and ordered a Guinness. I waited anxiously until it came. I had never really got used to being alone in the city. Waiting for a drink amplifies the solitude. Outside, I can walk with purpose and destination even if purpose and destination have no current relevance in my life. The Guinness came and I sipped it slowly, occasionally casting sideways glances, but mostly keeping my eyes screwed down into the grain of the bar top. With growing apprehension I picked up the pint and swallowed down the rest of the Guinness and the final dollop of foam. I set the empty pint down and slid it away. I was about to stand when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the man from Leidseplein. Again, he wore the green Kool cigarette cap, the denim shirt, fringed leather vest, and white painter’s pants. He looked the part of a slovenly hippie scarecrow, straw hair and all.

“Please,” he said. “Stay. I need the company. I drink alone enough as it is.” He ordered two drinks in Dutch from the bartender and took the stool beside me. “I’m sorry, your name again?”

“I never told you my name.”

“Right, we were never properly introduced. I was in a bit of a hurry. Seems like I’m always in a hurry. Too much to do and not enough all at the same time. Know what I mean?”

I made no attempt to answer.

“And never enough time,” he continued. “A tricky thing, time, a commodity just like anything else. I make my living dealing in it and a decent living at that. Specialize mostly in the wasting of it. I’m so busy wasting the time of others that I can’t find time of my own to waste.” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “Enough about me,” he said. “I’m sorry, your name again.”

“Jack.”

“Jack what?”

“Jack Freight.”

“Of course. And American I see. We Americans might as well be wearing stars and stripes tuxedos like Uncle Sam. Speaking of Uncle Sam, did you see the news today?”

“No,” I answered.

“Bombed the shit out of Iraq. Operation Shock and Awe they called it. Who’s running the country, a bunch of fucking children with G.I. Joes and bottle rockets? Call it Shock and Awe in the situation room, but fuck almighty, when you release it to the press, call it Operation Raining Liberty or some other hackneyed red, white, and blue bullshit.”

“That explains why the bum called me a ‘Fucking American’ today,” I told him.

“He called you a ‘Fucking American’ because you are a ‘Fucking American’. This side of the Atlantic you’ll always be known as a ‘Fucking American’, lamentable battle strategies or not,” he said. The bartender returned with our drinks. He pulled a bill from the inside pocket of his vest and handed it to the bartender without breaking stride. “Who would have thought a land full of immigrants could produce such boring folk. Elitists and ideologues, too.”

“Not everyone.”

“Yes, everyone!”

“Even you?”

“Especially me!”

“Not me.”

“Definitely you.” He poked me in the shoulder with a finger. “You’re just a lazy loner ideologue. I mean look at your beard, what the fuck is that all about? Now what are we drinking?”

“You ordered it.”

“Right, Scotch. Now there’s a country that knows all about the shit-end of the stick. To the Scottish!” He raised the Scotch on the rocks to his pursed lips and slurped loudly until nothing remained of the caramel-colored liquor. He slammed the glass back down on the bar. “Maybe just one more. We’ll take it neat this time…ice hurts my teeth.” He curled his upper lip and tapped his two crooked front teeth with his forefinger.

“What were we talking about?” he asked, proceeding without answer. “Right, war. We don’t fight the wars we should until properly provoked and we fight the wars we shouldn’t without provocation at all. It makes no sense. We are a bunch of ‘Fucking American’ hypocrites.”

Spittle collected in the corners of his mouth and foamed between his lips when they touched. His tiny rectangular glasses pitched askew on the end of his nose and he made no move to correct them. He was flushed red and rubbed raw on his neck from incessant scratching.

“Now Native Americans, that was a fucking race of people—of course we ran them through the ringer so fucking much they came out as flat and boring as the rest of us. Too many soldiers and not enough patriots, that’s the problem. America, where are your warriors?”

The bartender placed two glasses of Scotch in front of us. He dipped a finger in his drink, swirled it around, put it in his mouth and sucked it clean. “Founded on Puritanism,” he continued. “Bullshit! You can’t start out pure and expect to achieve the slightest semblance of greatness. You’ve got to root around in the dark ages before any hint of a renaissance shows itself.” He drank down the Scotch in one big swallow, the bite of the drink tightening his face. “Take this bar for instance. Fashioned out of a Catholic altar. Seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

I looked up at the bar. I’d always known that it was an altar. It was separated into cubbies, each signifying a station of the cross. The first time I came here I scribbled the stations onto the inside cover of An Unabridged Yet Diminutive Text about the Everything and the All …Jesus is condemned to die, Jesus receives his cross, Jesus falls the first time. Only the first eight stations were represented. The remainder of the altar existed somewhere else and I couldn’t recall the rest of the stations from my Catholic school days. The cubbies were intricately detailed, long and slender and arched at the top. Beneath the arch the stations were carved and painted. Glass shelves portioned each cubby, holding various spirits.

He continued, “More contemplation happens here than inside any church. In both places self-loathing is doled out by the cupful. People use both to throw the hood over their own deceit. In both we covet, lust, hold contempt, and when we leave we feel better about ourselves without ever having any tangible reason to. It’s an absolution of sorts that keeps the minions temporarily at bay. Prayer is the libation for the soul. You can learn just as much about a culture by studying its libations and places of drink than you can by studying its religion and halls of worship. Halls of worship…what a crock of shit. To think that an omnipotent being would want to be worshiped is ridiculous. Only human arrogance would assign ego to a deity. As far as religion goes, it’s a lost art.”

He ordered two more drinks before I was even halfway finished with my second. “Let’s make it three fingers this time,” he said, holding up four to the glass.

“Jesus Christ was a lonely man without vice,” he continued. “There is nothing more dangerous than a lonely man without vice. If you’re not careful he’ll start a religion. A lonely man with vice is an artist. A lonely man without vice is a fucking saint. The Romans knew this—they were just too slow to react. Then they made a martyr out of him, which is the final step. Had they let him live he would of painted his boney ass into a corner eventually. That slut Mary Magdalene would’ve flaunted her cunt in front of him so fucking much he’d have no choice but to turn hypocrite and fuck it. Unless, of course, he was a homosexual—in that case he’d surrounded himself with so many male devotees that a bathhouse orgy was bound to break out. The washing of feet would’ve become the soaping of cocks. Either way he would have lost his luster, quietly slipped back into the void. Instead they elevated the man to myth.”

Three more fingers of Scotch down his gullet and still he talked without interruption. “The stacked stones of the druids held more relevance than anything we’ve been able to concoct since. Now the Mayans, fuck, they were ahead of their time. Had it figured out, except of course, for human sacrifice. But then again, violence is inherent in our nature. We’re no different than the dinosaurs. Imagine it, colossal beasts roaming around tearing huge chunks of flesh from one another. Outrageous, yet it happened, and they were here first. The omnipotent didn’t think of us first, not by a long shot. We’re failed experiment number one hundred and two by my count. Our time here is only temporary. This planet will cleanse itself of the human race and the only evidence of our existence will be our refuse. Make no mistake,” he placed a hand on my shoulder when he said this, leaned in close for effect. “The lives we play out stem from the imaginations of children, not gods.” His breath was caustic, smelled of peat and soiled ash.

It continued like this long into the night, Scotch after Scotch, until my head no longer sat on my shoulders. It had long since been removed, placed down upon the bar top like a massive drop of water, with only the delicate surface tensions keeping the insides from spilling out. His words permeated, swam around dull and leaden like eggs in pickling brine. He expounded more on Druid ceremonies, the Mayan calendars, talked in great length and with much enthusiasm about how Native Americans could construct a bow and shoot an arrow clear through a buffalo why riding bareback on a horse. “Nowadays, there is no elegance in the way we kill things,” he said. This led him to the subject of extermination, of genocide, of how American politicians executed perfectly a plan to wipe out a noble beast and a noble race, to banish them onto small tracts of land in controllable herds, Indian and buffalo alike. “We have no remorse,” he said. “What our fathers do will shame us, but we will forgive them because they are our fathers. Shit, most of the time we grow up to become just like them.” He sat quietly for the first time, his head favoring one side, his eyes bloodshot and glassy. It lasted only a moment.

“I better get going,” he said, smoothing out the tassels on his vest. “Well, maybe one more for the road…nothing for you though…looks like you had enough.” He leaned toward me, the features of his face more haggard and worn than ever. “I hope I didn’t bore you,” he said. “And don’t go thinking badly of me. I’m just an eternal optimist forever pessimistic about human ideologies.” He jabbed my shoulder with a finger. “You should go home, sleep it off…you look like shit.” The bartender handed him his Scotch. He paid up, lifted the drink, swirled it a bit, looked into the liquid as if it showed him something, and I believed it did; this type of man could find something in nothing, like a religious zealot finding the virgin Mary in a water stain on a basement wall. “Not me though,” he said. “No, I’m about ready for a poke…one of those big Jamaican women I think. More bang for your buck, if you know what I mean.” He laughed. “Nice talking to you.” He slurped his drink, placed it on the bar along with a few coins. He touched the flat brim of his hat goodbye and exited out into the night.

What remained of the rest of the evening is a mystery. I made the walk back to the hostel in body alone with only a slight resonance of consciousness. The gentle workings of my inner ear failed with every step, my legs and arms no longer responded correctly without an active cerebrum, always a step ahead or a beat behind. I stumbled, reached out for a solid anchor, a tree, a car, a lamppost, anything to settle the equilibrium that sloshed between my ears. My vision rolled. I couldn’t recall falling asleep on the floor of the bathroom of the hostel. Upon waking I found relief in the cold porcelain at the base of the toilet. I pressed my cheek against it and was comforted by the delightful contrast to the relentless pounding in my head. My matted tongue tasted as if I’d spent the entire night licking the tile floor of the bathroom. My mouth held the taste of the rotting, my breath the stench of the dead. I turned to see Enuff standing above me, the outlines of his hooded cock in fully glory of morning wood, shrouded in thin purple cotton. I rose onto all fours and promptly released the contents of my stomach into the bowl, jaw unhinged, throat spilling forth the prior day’s contents, unrecognizable as such, which I inexplicably continued to examine while dry heaving. The smell of bile was strong in my nose and my saliva drew a direct line from my gut to the sewers of Amsterdam.

“Fucking American,” Enuff muttered from the next stall over.

Interesting Read…

A friend lent me this book.

Defintely worth reading.

…Open All Night

The Dam Obscura, Part Three

I lay on my seventeen-dollar-a-night mattress and read Professor Nihil’s take on physics:

Impedimenta utilizing space with the ability to cause impelling transmogrifying influence on other such impedimenta utilizing the same space, stimulating movement, catalyzing events, effectual causation…in other words:

Shit exists. Shit acts on other shit. Shit changes.

I rested the book on my chest and looked up at underside of the mattress above me; the bulge from the Frenchman’s ass spread the woven material like a dimensional plane suffering a gravitational anomaly. The Frenchman’s name was Enuff, and he smelled horrible; a stench that made my eyes water and the receptors of my nose sting in objection. I put a mushroom in my mouth, took a swallow of Heineken from a can. The metallic taste of skunked grain mixed with dirt and manure made for one of the more interesting combination of flavors my palette ever had the pleasure of deciphering. Enuff climbed down from the top bunk, crossed the room wearing only his violet briefs, retrieved a magazine from his locker and walked back toward the bunk. It was as if he wore a toupee on his taint; pubic hair freed itself in all directions from the confines of his underwear. He climbed back up, sagged the soiled dimensional plane. “Enough is Enough, Enuff,” one of the others said, “a la douche, you smelly fuck.”

I finished the last of the mushrooms, gulped down the rest of the beer, licked the mushroom pap from between my teeth. When the nausea crept into my gut I grabbed my jacket and made my way down the spiraling stairs, crossed the lounge and out the front door and onto the street. By the time I was halfway to the red light district my stomach was in tatters. I crossed the Dam Straat and felt it in my eyes—the great suck. The city honed its edges, started to hum. I moved through the crowd, passed bars, sex shops, caught sight of a latex fist in a window display and it seemed in my heightened state a perfectly logical item of commerce. The only people who seemed cognizant of my condition were the addicts, hobbled over and limping. I caught their recognizant glances like flashes, their faces like mirrors on a string set to spin. I picked up my step, moved quickly, allowed Amsterdam to come at me with synaptic precision. I found an entrance way, a small alley with a red neon sign above it, and passed through, came out on the other side into a small courtyard, four walls, eight glass doors, three large black women. They opened their doors simultaneously. “Babybabybaby.” “Whateveryouwant—Foryougoodlookingthirtyeurosforonehalfhour.” Thirty Euros for the most grueling meatpacking factory work imaginable. “Ibetyouhaveabigcock.” These women knew the rising value of the Euro and were willing to let you fuck their oratory canals for it. It was no more than mechanic’s work to them. “I’llsuckyourcocklikeyourcock’sneverbeensuckedbefore.” I wondered how many languages these women could solicit in…could probably offer a blow job to every member of the United Nations without the use of a translator. “Youcanfuckthisaslongasyouwantbaby…twentyeuro.” I smiled, thanked them, motioned toward the exit and hurried back the way I came.

I passed the smelliest public urinal west of the Euphrates—piss splashed everywhere but down the drain, pooled at the base and ran in rivulets between the bricks on the street. I walked the length of the (street name) and watched the prostitutes incubating in the red light. They polished their nails, talked to each other on their cell phones, occasionally winked, tickled the air at passers-by—were more or less indifferent about fucking strangers for money. I navigated the alleyways at random until I found the narrowest of them all, no more than a yard’s width, and joined the line of men shuffling past the glass doors, pausing momentarily to examine the plump flesh around a Scandinavian’s waist then I moved on. I found her near the end of the alleyway. She was small through the hips with slender shoulders, beautiful, yet out of place. Almost too innocent. She had hair the color and sheen of polished coal, cut and curled in at the jaw line. Her skin was pale and freckled, a complexion that stood out in contrast with her hair. She wore a black silk camisole that could have been an extension of her hair had her delicate shoulders not separated the two. There was a small band of flesh between her silk top and the black laced underwear she wore. It was her posture that gave her away—she carried awkwardness in her shoulders, slightly slouched, almost boyish. Her knees came together and her toes pointed inward. She chewed nervously on her lower lip, appeared as if she would implode at any moment, suck herself inward and be gone. I stole a glimpse of her eyes and became transfixed. They were wide and green. At first glance all I could see was upfront, a reflection of sorts, but having gazed long enough she allowed me to see in, all the way to the bottom where the silt had settled. I couldn’t look away. She waited for me to step forward, approach the glass door, which she would open slightly, peek out, negotiate… I shook free of her gaze and continued on. I wandered through the streets and back alleys until my senses waned, enough so at least to coherently order a cheeseburger from a fast-food joint. It came wrapped in paper with a sticker labeling it special, meaning no mayonnaise, but holding an entirely different connotation that in my present state I found amusing. I carefully pulled the sticker free from the paper, removed the book from the inside pocket of my jacket, opened it up, pressed the sticker down onto the page.

I put the book away and ate my meal quickly, hoping to settle the wretchedness in my stomach. I made my way back to the hostel, up the back stairs, negotiated the key into the lock, entered the room full of sixteen strangers, found my mattress, lay down beneath the Enuff anomaly without removing a stitch of clothing, closed my eyes and saw the image of the prostitute burned behind my eyelids like a sunspot.

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