9. A silly thing that happened once
9. A silly thing that happened once
March (part three)
This is part nine. If you’re new, read on at your peril. Or find part one here.
Last time: Japanese whisky, American food, Dutch drugs, Belgian company.
21.
We find our way back at the Airbnb to try and catch a few. Saffron already cycled home. Peter is somewhere in the stairwell, which is par for, and Brandon is making his way through a cone of patatje oorlog1, stopping only to cover it with ranch dressing he brought from home. Brandon eating is an experience, one many people can now have as he’s filming himself. Like most things he does, it’s loud. I have to don headphones or I’ll be forced to defenestrate myself. Misophonia is a neurological condition that makes sounds like loud chewing and slurping impossible to endure. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s probably because you don’t have it. It can’t be turned off or removed without going deaf, which, without the advent of noise cancelling technology I might have done long ago. Van Goch almost certainly had misophonia. Were he alive, he’d be mailing Brandon his other ear about now.
22.
I’m smoking a bad cigarette on the balcony. Every pack has one. Down on the street, tall women traverse towpaths and geese fly in pairs between bridges. Dutch geese rock a handsome livery of dark pink and black with deep brown reds. Dutch men and women both dress like the nineties never ended, which is handy as the nineties are very much back in fashion, drugs and all. A street sweeper waves at me twice, to make sure I saw him the first time. Inside, Pete and Brand are laughing as much as their energy levels will allow, playing puff puff pass with a spliff Pete bought from a man he met on the stairs. I like that they get along so well. I do. Perhaps it’s less complicated for them to enjoy their time together when they only see each other once a year and don’t talk in between. Looking at them now with one fresh eye, it’s easy to see why I’m the odd one out. They are both easy going, indie band handsome, approachably attractive. Both have scruffy beards and an uncomplicated intimacy that lets them sit together in their underwear, smoking and laughing. I wish they were that way with me. I wish I were comfortable enough with myself. My friend V says the problem with most straight men is that they know too many straight men. It’s not that straight men don’t have good ideas or don’t encourage each other, it’s that they encourage the wrong ideas. Like skipping leg day, or reviving swing culture in mid-90s Los Angeles, or invading Ukraine. I think the problem with most straight men is we choose banter over candour and credibility over vulnerability. And we tend not to talking about our feelings unless copious amounts of mood altering drugs are involved. Pete and Brand have switched on Mario Kart which I’m famously terrible at, so I retire to a fold out cot in the kitchen and try to snooze.
23.
I tap the device on my wrist. It says it’s eleven-thirty, which makes this one of two times a day it functions as a timepiece. According to the internet, the device goes by a few names: Acid Watch. LSD Bracelet. Transdermal Injector. What it does is dose the wearer with small quantities of LSD at set intervals. It also monitors your heart rate, blood pressure, sweat, and temperature, and records if you’re stressed, happy, or otherwise. In order to answer some of the many questions Brandon has, I click a YouTube link. In the video a man who speaks like the emails I received – Like! This! – is giving a talk to a room of people who look like they were there for the talk before or after this. A chiron explains that this is Dr Matthew Hoffmann, a professor of something too small to read right now. He walks the audience through transdermal injection, a process which uses microneedles to deliver doses of a drug just under the surface of the skin. He also talks LSD. The problem with LSD, he says, is you can’t patent it, so big pharma can’t make money off it. It’s a potential life changer for millions, and they won’t even fund studies! A graph shows how over time LSD can work to rewire the neural pathways in those with depression and PTSD. But this, he says, holding up an Acid Watch. This is how we get them interested! Pharmaceutical companies can patent the shit out of the delivery mechanism! See? He points at shell shocked audience members. Do you see?!
24.
Pete and Brand have passed out top and tail on the sofa. Brandon is snoring now, another thing he does at full volume. I give him a lot of shit, but I love the guy. He’s the only male friend I made in my thirties. He’s a few years younger than Pete and I, and is like a little brother slash internet tour guide who keeps me up to speed when I shut the world out. During the bad January, Brandon was there, anytime I text, with a Dude, what’s up? I’m not sure I’ll ever repay that. I ask my phone to make a make a note to tell Brand I love him more often, but the virtual assistant doesn’t understand the request.
25.
Thirty-nine is thus far very tiring but that’s probably because I was up all night doing drugs and smoking. I have managed, in a series of twenty minute increments, about two hours sleep. I decide to cut my losses and stroll to the local supermarket. The streets in Amsterdam are a hassle of liberal transport options: tram lanes, bike lanes, footpaths, car lanes, tiny cars driving in the bike lanes. At least in the UK you’re pretty sure what’s going to kill you. Somehow intact, I find my way into the supermarkt. There are few greater pleasures in life than a stroll through a foreign food aisle. The Dutch, it turns out, have a superior selection of Doritos, and I spend a good fifteen minutes weighing up the options. I also get cruised by three different men, all very handsome, which is a great birthday compliment. I text Saffron, and she informs me that cruising is usually limited to the frozen food section. But yes, she says. Hungover, high, drooling over Doritos. You are probably irresistible right now.
26.
Another problem with straight men is we don’t talk about how handsome men are. The most handsome men that have ever existed, by my reckoning, are the playwright and actor Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, and Patrick Swayze between 1987 and 1992.
27.
Over the years I’ve found men to befriend. Men I revered and respected. Men I thought handsome and masculine. Men I formed bonds with. Not sexual, but intimate. Sometimes the friendship equivalent of a summer fling. Sometimes a years-long attachment. I was searching for approval, for answers. I longed to know what it meant to be a man. How to hold myself, what to listen to, what to wear. There was the guy on the basketball team who taught me how to not get pushed around. The chef from my first job who taught me to love ‘80s rock without shame. The surfer from Australia who set me up with a girl I was afraid to talk to. The Scottish raconteur who taught me that aviators are the only acceptable eyewear. The American journalist who valued my bad opinions on pop culture and always answered when I called. What I wanted from these men was to be accepted. What I wanted was to be embraced. To be able to say: I’m so scared, would you please hold me? And for them to reply: Of course brother, allow me to comfort you. Few of them lasted long. The men I’ve known tend to move on to other things. I’m sure if you asked them, they’d say the same about me.
28.
I’m sobbing into a bag of paprika doritos and thinking that maybe the ecstasy has had an effect after all.
29.
Alarms are followed by hasty packing and soon enough Brandon is leaving. Write something, will you? He says. I give him a hug, and tell him the internet is doing fine without my words. Peter and Brandon embrace. It occurs to me in this moment that Brandon might be the only male friend that Pete made in his thirties, too. We’re standing on the balcony to wave him off. As he gets in the world’s smallest Uber, I shout down: Dude, wait! And we disappear inside and shut the door. What?! He shouts. And then, a full five minutes later when he realises the ruse: You mother-fuckers!
30.
Pete and I make our way to the train by tram. I feel like microwaved salad. Pete says he feels great, but we have to abandon a video call with Lily when it becomes clear neither of us are able to hold a conversation. He shows me the present he bought her, a Miffy doll dressed like a Vermeer painting. A souvenir of a silly thing that happened once. We split a smoke on a bench outside Centraal station and I ask his final tally. Thirty-one, he says. A record. I don’t ask if it was worth it. We make our way through customs and passport control without minimal grief and board the train. He pulls a pamphlet from his jacket pocket and slides it across the seat table to me. It’s the brochure for Seagate. I was supposed to talk to you about this, he says. So if Heather asks, you know. I pocket it and pull out a small gift wrapped in a Dutch shopping bag. He unrolls it and pair of cheap plastic sunglasses land on the table. Happy birthday, I say. He tries them on. They suit him. These are pretty cool, he says. I pocket the plastic bag. Well, I say. You were always the coolest person I know.
31.
My brother is already asleep as our train departs. Dad duty beckons and he needs to look less dead. I press play on my favourite episode of It’s Always Sunny. It’s about the gang on a cross-country flight trying to break a mythical drinking record. Idiots without borders. March was once the first month of the year. Named for Mars, the Roman god of war, it was when military campaigns resumed after winter. It’s also the start of spring, when hibernating mammals begin to rouse. One of those things is probably apt, but I’m starting a comedown that will last a few weeks and don’t have the energy to decide which.
French fries covered in mayonnaise, peanut sauce and diced onions. Literally war fries.