Always Scribble, Scribble, eh?

Many, many years ago, I was 3 days away from starting my first professional gig, out of college for a year and fleeing the Round Table Pizza nest. I was, in fact, leaving sedate and predictable Sacramento for energetic and dynamic San Francisco, where I would work for just over 4 years before (now regretfully) returning to that same city of sedation and predictability. It was the best job I ever quit, and I have to count it as among my major mistakes. As someone whose mistakes continue to accrue and are seldom minor, this says much.

I spent the first year in San Francisco trying to figure out what, exactly, a corporate technical writer was supposed to do. One of the first things I learned was that such a writer had to learn to endure with corporate reorganizations, one of which took me away from the woman who'd hired me and into a group of people who knew less about what to do with me than I did. The second year, though--things changed! I applied for a job with a different group, got hired, and ended up working with some excellent people and writers. My new boss turned into a wonderful mentor, the boss after him is still one of my best friends, and I learned more about writing in the following 3 years than I think I've learned since. It was an exciting time, and we were enthused about what we did. Perhaps I was just less cynical and jaded then, but I like to think that we were a group of people who thought we could write anything. I wish I had that same confidence today as I now work with writers who make me look anything but professional.

I left San Francisco for a job as a writer in a small consulting firm, and about the same time started graduate school. The job itself turned out to be terrible (or, at least, I was a terrible fit). But, one of my coworkers there turned out to be a very good friend, and he gets extra points for introducing me to the Yosemite Valley. I made other friends there, but I pretty much let them slip away. Getting laid-off from that job is one of the best things that could have happened to me for a number of reasons. Oh, it wasn't an easy time when I lost that job: My mother had been sick for awhile and would die just 5 months later, and my father would die only 3 months after that. Damn--what a year that was! The next job was at a distant Air Force base, and I stayed there longer than I should have. There was no stress at that job, but after awhile a 100-mile-per-day commute gets tiring and expensive. The next company was young and vibrant and growing, but it was soon purchased by an old, stodgy, static financial institution. And the next company after that was another fun place--lots of energy, wonderful co-workers, a dot.com enthusiasm that, unfortunately, was squelched when the company was bought by another boring, conservative corporation.

Now, for just over 2 years, I've been employed by a company that was once small but has also been bought by a larger entity. There's always a bigger fish, I guess, but I am happy now because I work with people who challenge me professionally and aren't afraid to tell me when I'm not doing something right. Actually, it's their job to tell me such things, and they are good at their jobs.

So, where does all of this come from? Partially, I suppose, it comes from thinking back to those feelings of excitement and fear that followed me on the train into San Francisco that first day so long ago. The title here was, from what I remember, spoken to Edward Gibbon after (or maybe before) he wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not thinking of Gibbon's work, however. Rather, the title itself is included in a collection of sayings and quotations gathered by the writers I worked with when I started my second year in the city. (I'll have to check with Kominski, but I believe we then sold that collection, entitled Almost Human, to raise money for one thing or another.

Finally, I am not much on New Year resolutions; I'm more the type to make adjustments as I move along. But, as I remember when I first ventured into San Francisco, I also now sense impending changes in many areas of life, though for the life of me I can't imagine what they'll be.

Winter Solstice 2011

Not much cohesion here, but who'll notice?

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time learning how to be alone. And I have to say that I got pretty good at it. When I was in the navy, it became a great skill in an environment where privacy, if you were lucky, was a few moments alone in the latrine. I think about this--being alone--now because we are finally in winter, which is arguably my favorite season. Winter seems to be a time when expectations and requirements are few, though that might be a self-imposed illusion.

Also when I was a kid, I had a small-town paper route that required me to physically collect money from each of my customers so that I could, just as physically, pay my bill to the paper's publisher. It was when I learned how to deal with money: The publisher gave me a bill every week, and I was responsible for getting the money. I had to pay the bill on Saturday morning, so I would go out on Friday night and gather coins from the subscribers. Winter nights in the Midwest can be quite cold and snowy, but I would simply dress for the occasion and trudge through snow and darkness. It was great fun, really. Between my house and the streets that made up my route was an open field in which I spent many, many hours, and on those winter nights I would often perch myself on a large granite boulder and stare up at the stars. Or, I'd sit there as the snow fell and simply enjoy the silence.

The boulder itself was, in fact, always a mystery, and as I look back I wonder if it was an erratic left behind by one glacier another. In subsequent visits to my hometown, I believe I have found that boulder near the Little League fields I played on. Now that I think about it, the boulder also plays a role in my first novel, a terrible piece of work that starts with the line "Neil Armstrong broke my heart in 1969."

Where I live now there is no snow, and I must travel into the Sierra backwoods to experience such a thing. My favorite days there include not cold so much as gray skies and falling snow--a diminishing of sight and sound. There are few experiences as nice as this. For the last several years I've spent a couple of January nights snow-camping with friends in Yosemite Valley, and a couple of those times we've lucked into fairly heavy snowfalls. Those days and nights are wonderful.

After today, the days get longer in small increments; life tends to speed up, and soon enough I'll think about getting the spring garden ready for planting.

Words Like Love

Something old until something new comes along (fiction)

After six hours of what started out to be aimless driving, I ended up in Bridgeport in front of a combination café and bar called Little Clancey’s, though I was probably headed there the moment I left home. The “Little” on the hand-painted sign had faded, but “Clancey’s” in red letters was bright in a sunrise diffused by thin clouds. I’d traveled through California’s dry central valley, then turned east through Yosemite and finally north on Highway 395, just like we sometimes do when we visit our daughter Becky and her husband Ron in Carson City. By the time I reached Mono Lake, the eastern sky was crimson and I knew that Bridgeport was just north and would be the place to stop.

All four windows of the Impala were open when I rolled onto the gravel in front of Clancy’s, and a cool breeze brushed gently against my bare arms. I used to drink a lot, and when I did every window in the house or car would be shut tightly. The voices, the ceaseless wind, the smells—everything used to bother me. Now, though, working my way through sobriety, I welcome the fresh air and keep at least one window open wherever I happen to be.

“You’ll catch cold,” Nora, my wife of twenty-five years, says when I keep both bedroom windows open all night even in winter.

“Viruses cause colds,” I say as she pulls the heavy quilt closer to her wide chin, “not open windows or even getting your feet wet.” But after awhile she gets up and shuts the windows, caught up in one of my old habits.

I sat in the Impala and thought that Nora would be wondering where I had gone. She’d given up actually worrying years earlier, when I was drunk most of the time and hardly found my way home anyway.

“You could call me if you’re not coming home,” she would plead. “A little respect is all I ask. Just the smallest bit of consideration. Is that too much?”

It was too much, as far as I was concerned at that point in my life, in our marriage. “I’m an adult,” I’d tell her. “I don’t have to check in with you.”

We went on like that until one day Nora quit asking questions. But she would always wonder, even when I left the house last night with her yelling at me. We’d been watching television and a beer commercial came on. I told her that a beer would taste good, a nice cold beer in chilled mug, just like on television.

“A what?” Nora said very quietly. “God damn you, Brian. You go this long without a drink and after all that’s happened and you can still say it so easily, as if it meant nothing to either one of us?”

“I didn’t say I wanted one,” I said loudly. “I just said it would taste good.” I looked down at the worn carpeting in front of the couch, where our feet spend so much time.

And then she yelled about how my father had been drunk for so long that nearly his whole liver was eaten away by the time he died. About how close my drinking had come to killing both her and me, that if she hadn’t been in the car on my last birthday I surely would have died. She stopped yelling when she ran out of breath. Her chest was heaving beneath her lightweight pink blouse. Nora’s eyes were dark with disappointment like they were after Sam Tinker threw me the surprise birthday party, when she came to see me at the hospital. It was two days after I’d lost control of the Ford wagon we owned and Nora and I went bouncing into a large stand of aspens.

“Jesus Christ,” Nora had said after pulling me from the car and cradling my face in her hands. She got only a few scratches across her chin, but I caught the steering wheel with my sternum and then the dashboard with my forehead. For months afterward it hurt even to breathe.

Lying on the grass, I’d looked up at her, feeling her kiss my mouth time after time. Everything was confused, but I didn’t know if it was because of the accident or the pitcher of martinis I’d helped Sam drink earlier that night. It was raining, and drops of cool water were falling from Nora’s hair onto my face. Then everything turned a dark purple and I shut my eyes as Nora’s voice disappeared.

After Nora finally got her breath back last night, she stood from the couch and started in on me again, using words like responsibility and trust and love. So I took my keys from their hook beneath the phone in the kitchen, and I walked out the front door, letting her yell from the front porch as I started the car and left. At the Shell station I filled the Impala and got a cup of coffee, then drove away.

When I stepped into Clancey’s, Maureen was doing the beer orders for the week; I was the only one in the place. I’d met her years earlier, one of the times I’d driven alone to see Becky. Nora travels on her job selling pharmaceuticals to hospitals, so sometimes when she is away I wander. This morning I asked Maureen if she remembered me, but when she said she wasn’t sure, I told her that it made no difference.

Maureen had dark, curly hair and the smooth facial features—thick cheekbones and a mouth burned down at the edges—that I’d found myself falling love with for as long as I could remember. She reminded me of a waitress, a good dancer, that I’d known when I was in the Navy. But then, it seems every woman I’ve either had or desired has reminded me of someone else or the lover before.

“Why’d you come back?” Maureen asked when she filled our mugs with coffee. One coffee pot had DECAFFEINATED stenciled on it in bright orange letters. Some of the letters were partially scratched away, as if the pot had been in use for a long time.

“Restlessness,” I said, wondering if I should say that maybe it was because of her that I’d stopped there.

“How does your wife feel about that?” She gestured with her mug toward my ring finger.

“She understands.” I looked at the ring and tried to think of the last time I’d taken it off.

“You mean, she puts up with it.” She looked at me as if she’d heard lies from men for a long time.

I left the bar after two mugs of coffee, after Maureen got busy with other customers. Wandering around town until lunchtime, I finally stopped at Cleo’s Drive-In, where I ate a chicken-breast sandwich at one of the redwood picnic tables. I watched Maureen come out of the bar across the street, walking toward Cleo’s. She smiled when she noticed me.

“Still restless?” She said after ordering at the walk-up window. Her hair was neat and her legs thin, and I knew that she was the type of woman who took care of herself.

“Yeah,” I said. The Sawtooth Ridge was visible over her shoulder.

“At least you’re eating,” Maureen said. “I haven’t had a customer so early on a Saturday for quite some time.”

“I like coffee after a long drive,” I told her.

She took a bag from the girl at the window just as I finished my sandwich. “You feel better, now that you’ve eaten?”

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel almost....” I paused and looked up at the gray, ragged Sawtooth, trying to think of the right word, the right feeling.

“Almost what?”

“Almost human,” is what I told her. It was the most fitting word I could think of.

She nodded slowly, then followed my gaze up to the Sawtooth. “It’s going to rain. Come over later and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Thanks,” I said, again thinking that a beer would taste good.

Maureen smiled as she turned and walked back to Clancey’s. I sat at the table and stared at the mountains. The ridge was high, nearly eleven-thousand feet, and I had spent a lot of time hiking in the area when I was younger. Below the ridge itself was Matterhorn Canyon, where a combination of ignorance and exhaustion almost killed me and Sam Tinker both. Just as after the car wreck, it was an experience that left me changed, though it changed me into someone who drank heavily. Though I never figured out why, it was after that when I started believing that nothing I did in life mattered. Most people would have reacted differently, but I just stopped caring about a lot of things.

After Maureen left, I decided to drive to Carson City after all. Becky always appreciates it when her mom and I visit, since she’s so far away from us. She and Ron have a small hardware store, and more than once I’ve helped them stock conduit or boxes and bins of nails.

“Oh, Daddy,” Becky said when I called her from a payphone at Cleo’s. “We’re just on our way out. We need some stuff from a warehouse in Reno, so we’re making a long weekend of it.”

“That’s fine, Becky,” I said, and it really was. “Enjoy the weekend. Maybe Mom and I will drive up next month.” If I had told her how far I had driven that morning, she might have changed her mind.

“Give her my love,” Becky said, and I told her I would.

I hung up the phone and looked at clouds covering the Sawtooth and thought back to when Sam and I got caught in the autumn snowstorm and nearly didn’t make it out. We were carrying neither a tent nor warm clothing, and for a full day we huddled around a small fire and waited for the storm to pass. We never told anyone about it, either, because we knew we’d been fools for being so unprepared. But several times in the years that followed, when Nora and I weren’t even talking to each other, I thought that the mountains might have been the place to die when I had
the chance.

The wind had grown colder, and the clouds had dropped over Bridgeport. I smelled rain as I pulled my windbreaker from the Impala’s trunk. When I got back to Clancey’s for the last mug of coffee, Maureen wasn’t surprised when I said I was leaving.

“I had a feeling you would be,” she said. Her hands were wet from washing glasses in the small sink behind the bar. “I could still buy you a beer.”

“I have a long drive,” I told her. “But I might be back, if you want to save it for me.”

She smiled, showing teeth that were white and straight. “You’ll be back,” she said, though I wasn’t sure how she meant it. I stared at her, but she turned away before I could tell her that she probably was right.

I got home late that night after driving slowly through rain most of the way. The weather didn’t break until I stopped at a mini-mart to buy cherry Lifesavers. Outside the store I saw stars winking through small gaps between clouds sliding across the sky. As I parked the Chevy in the driveway, I slipped a Lifesaver beneath my tongue. Candy had once been a way to hide the smell of what I’d been drinking, but now it just tasted good. When I stepped quietly into the house, I let the last sliver of a Lifesaver drop down my throat. Nora was watching television, and I smelled her lilac perfume, my favorite, as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“You came home.” She didn’t look up. Her feet were propped up on the large footstool we’d bought just a week earlier.

“Yeah. I had some things to work out.” I took off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the carpet.

“We were supposed to go to dinner,” she said, and I noticed then how she was dressed up, still expecting to go out. That was why she was wearing perfume. “We were supposed to eat at someplace nice, and that’s all I’ve been waiting for. I thought you’d be home, so I never cancelled the reservation.”

I didn’t remember anything about dinner, but I didn’t doubt her. “Tomorrow,” I told her. “I forgot. I’m sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow and make it special.”

“Have you been drinking? You’re eating candy.” It was the first time she looked at me since I’d come into the house, and her stare was cold.

“I’ve been driving,” I said, fingering the single remaining Lifesaver in my pocket, wondering how she had noticed the candy from twelve feet away. I thought that even after twenty-five years of marriage it would be nice to have at least one secret, to have something that Nora did not know.

“Nice way for you to show your love for me,” she said plainly. “Skipping dinner for getting drunk. You could have called and then at least I could have eaten here. I could have fixed something instead of sitting here and waiting.”

“I do love you,” I told her. “And I’m not drunk.” But she’d been drinking—a half-full bottle of gin and a glass with ice were on the floor beside the couch. I wondered about the Sawthooth, about whether the ridge was now covered with snow. And I wondered about Maureen and her beer orders, even about what she’d bought for lunch at Cleo’s.

Nora had tried to hide the gin, and I wanted to say that it didn’t matter to me what she did or whether she believed that I was sober. I didn’t care if she was drunk then or drunk for the rest of her life.

“You do love me?” she asked. “You do?” She wasn’t convinced. But she was drunk and nothing would matter by morning. Her perfume was strong, and I wanted it to be stronger yet, to envelope me and the house and all that I knew in its silky embrace.

“I do,” I said, “I really do. You’re a princess.” I thought then that one day soon I would tell her about nearly being frozen in the mountains, about what that experience had done to me.

“Yeah?” She came over to me and took my hand, holding it to the side of her face.

“Yeah,” I said, and I sat down beside her to watch television.

Endings

As I try to dedicate some time to this blog-stuff at least every other day (recently motivated in part by woman I knew in graduate school and who has become quite successful), I intended tonight to sit down and continue writing about my latest trip to Europe. But, after several false and boring starts, I'm moving on to something else.

For the 2 novels I've written over the previous half a decade or so, I've discovered their respective endings relatively soon in the writing process. For This Far West, I had the final scene visualized after only about 50 pages were done, and I was able to write to it. For The Golfer's Wife (the opening paragraph of which is embedded here), I needed a bit longer to figure things out. When I was able to write short fiction many years ago while working in San Francisco, a line--often a phrase but sometimes the title--would pop into my head and then, WHAM!...the story would get done.

Now, much less creative and prolific, finding even a germ of an idea is difficult. Personally, I think too many years in corporate cubicles and sterile suburbs have played a role, and more than ever I think I should live in either a large, vibrant city or an isolated, quiet forest. Suburbia is to life as agnosticism is to religion.

But, to the point. I can generally tell when something I've written is done or not. Example: The screenplay that's stuck inside this computer is not done, but while I know most of the ending, I can't seem to figure out how to get those final 15 pages written. It may never be finished in a literary sense, though it might someday have a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.

Things We Couldn't Say Yesterday, which ended here, was fun. In the world I gave them, though, the characters had done as much as they could; actually sitting down and planning their lives and the storyline might have helped things move on further.

So, what do do next? Void of fresh ideas, doing some rewriting might be a viable outlet. Take the screenplay: Actually printing it out and then working with the characters and plot might help me figure out how to both get to the ending and then create it. The novels, too, need some attention and, I'm sure, feel neglected. The Golfer's Wife especially requires work since it never got developed much beyond a complete first draft.

Perhaps I should see if I can find a printer tomorrow.

Things We Didn't Say Yesterday #13

In the end, not everything stops

He thought Brussels would be a good place to start--a city more ambiguous than London, not a place where people hide. Years ago in New York City Chris had met Sharon, a Canadian who worked her way through and around Europe sometimes as a waitress but usually as a busker who specialized in juggling and magic. "You learn to work the crowds in one place, you can do it anywhere," she had said. She had told him that the trick was to get the crowd involved physically and engaged mentally. "You get a couple of men in the show," she'd said. "You have them hold something or help in a magic trick. Sometimes I do some stand on their shoulders and juggle, and I try to get them to look up at me. The smart ones, they noticed that I'm wearing a short skirt, and if they look up, they might see something. Sometimes the husbands and fathers look up and I can tell by how they suddenly drop their eyes and look into the audience that they think they'll be in trouble with their girlfriends or wives later, just because they looked. Once when I was drunk during a show--I was a lot younger then--I wasn't wearing anything. It was a stupid thing to do. I'm not afraid to show a little tit now just to keep the guys looking, but I'm not over the top about it. I mean, I am Canadian."

Everything was packed again, though this time he would be putting the boxes and furniture into a storage unit. When he'd given his notice at work and told everyone how the divorce had shown him how he hadn't been happy in his job for a long time, most people walked away as though he'd said he hadn't been happy with them. Rebecca, who was in the initial throes of divorce herself, said that she didn't blame him at all, that if she wasn't taking care of her invalid mother, she'd join him.

Phillip had seemed exasperated about the whole thing. "This doesn't make a bunch of sense, Chris. Europe? Christ, you're not a kid, you know. You're supposed to be mature, contributing to society. That stuff. What the hell will you do in Europe?"

"I really don't know," Chris had told him. "People have been venturing away from home for a long time, haven't they?"

"What about Cindy--you told her?"

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?"

"She said that I should have fun. She said that in the end, not everything stops."

Phillip at looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know. But it's all she was going to say, and I really don't need her permission."

Phillip knew that Sharon spent part of the summer in Brussels and France, but he didn't think the odds were good at finding her. "Buskers are like gypsies, but we earn a pretty good living," Sharon had said. "We all stay with friends when we can. When I'm in London, I stay with Mike and Tracy. They're great jugglers, and they do tightrope tricks, too. We all go from festival to festival. Mike's the one who taught me about getting the crowd to get as close to us as possible, so we can see their faces. When everything's over and we ask for money, we want them to feel like they know us. Or, maybe that they owe us."

Chris figured that with his savings and the vacation and sick time he'd cashed in at work--not to mention what he'd gotten for selling Cindy's wedding ring--he could travel for at least a year before having to find real work. If he avoided the expensive cities, a year might even be conservative. Now, he looked at the boxes that held his possessions and wasn't sure if he should feel proud or sad at how little he'd accumulated over his lifetime. He had not yet given up the idea of leaving behind some type of legacy, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what one might be.

"You hate flying, Chris, and you're headed to Europe," Cindy had said during their last phone conversation. "You hate living without a schedule, and you're doing this."

"I'll be okay, I think," he'd told her. "I really do."

Phillip would be taking the boxes to the storage unit, and he already had a key to the apartment. When the airport shuttle arrived and Chris climbed into the blue van, he tried to imagine what would happen next. The driver had his window cracked open, and the warm July air flowed through the van. He thought about what Cindy had told him, that in the end, not everything stops. He missed her, and he often thought that he still loved her. But as the van passed the park where they'd exchanged wedding rings, he barely noticed. He pulled the small Dutch dictionary out of his rucksack, and he leafed through the pages until he found the instructions for saying "good morning."

Carmelita and Bert

Having navigated my way via tram and train to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, I spent my last remaining Euros on a small snack and sat down to wait until my plane back to London was available for boarding. I was eager to get back to somewhat familiar surroundings, but I was also regretful of not having spent more time in Amsterdam. But, things were as they were, and I had a bed in another Easy Hotel waiting for me in London.

Not long after finding what I thought would be a seat in which I could sit alone for awhile, a large black woman approached, said something in what I assumed to be Dutch, then sat beside me. Not long afterward I dug my Flip video camera out of my pocket and tried to get a few shots of the airport's interior. The woman said something else, and I said, "It's a camera." I showed her how it worked, and she seemed quite happy. In a matter of minutes we exchanged names (hers is Carmelita) and talked a bit about ourselves: She is Dutch; she was born in Suriname; she has 2 daughters; and so on. We talked about many things: her life in Amsterdam, the history of Suriname, where she lives, how we both like to read, what we do for a living, the history of white people enslaving black people. Soon, she told me that the next time I am in Amsterdam, I (and my wife) should visit her, and she took my pen and notebook from my hand and wrote down her phone number and address.

When we said our goodbyes, I thought it would've been nice to talk with Carmelita a bit longer, but my boarding time was near and I had, it would turn out, a very long walk to the gate.

In the evening of my last day in Amsterdam, I walked by a street artist and bought 2 postcard-sized watercolors showing different views of Amsterdam's architecture and canals. When I removed the watercolors from my backpack not long after liftoff, the man next to me pointed to one and said "I used to live right there." This was Bert, and he described the building beneath his fingertip as a place he'd spent nearly a year. He explained that the artist had taken certain liberties with the painting, but none that detracted from the work's quality. A Canadian, Bert told me that he had lived in Amsterdam for 2 years, and I learned that he is a civil engineer by education and is now involved with the oil and gas industry though he has also started several companies, 2 of which had failed. He was flying to Houston, a city that he said he enjoyed. I have been to Houston, and I suppose I missed the enjoyable parts. I did almost have fun there one night, but that's not something I talk about.

But Bert, he loved the place, and he told me that the best sushi bar and steakhouse there are in nondescript strip malls. For most of our journey together we talked--about politics, about Canadians and Americans, about the Olympics, about the world economy, about global warming, about living in Europe. Once again I enjoyed the perspective of someone who is not from the United States, and as with Carmelita, I learned some things simply--and mostly, actually--from letting him talk.

At Heathrow, we went our separate ways--he had to catch a connection to Houston, I had to find the fast train to Paddington Station and then to my next hotel room. I already missed Amsterdam, but I was also glad to be back on somewhat familiar ground. I had 3 more days to fill, and I needed to find something to do.

Dutch Treat

The next day, also early, I once again made my way to the Museum District, this time to the Rijksmuseum where Rembrandt rules. Not bad. Once while at the Art Institute in Chicago, I sat on a small chair and wondered if the disinterested security staff appreciated what surrounded them. And at the Rijksmuseum, surrounded by Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters, I thought that I'd be quite happy to sit there forever and let the art roll over me. Leaving Rembrandt behind,

That night would take me into a different culture, but before that I wandered, shopped for small gifts, and then got lost for several hours. The streets were full of more tourists than I could've imagined--hordes of people walking through a city geared indirectly to tourists. At one point I found and browsed a cheese shop, then left; hungry a couple hours later I managed to find my way back to that shop and bought some cheese and a small chocolate bar. I stuffed both into my backpack, took the tram back to the Easy Hotel, and there I rested and snacked on cheese and chocolate.

Toward dusk I retraced most of my steps but then detoured in the direction that I thought would take me to Amsterdam's Red Light District. The previous day I had been asked by a young, long-haired fellow, probably American from his voice, where the Red Light District was. "I have no idea," I'd said quite honestly, and I walked away. A minute later I saw him talk to someone else and then turn on his heels and trot away. So, seeking it out on my own and without a map or guidebook, I walked in the direction I'd seen him go. I have seen experienced many things in my travels overseas but other than what I'd read in guidebooks, I did not know what to expect from the Red Light District. I made my down dozens of windy, crowded streets as darkness fell, and at one point turned to my right to see a near-naked woman standing on the other side of a large glass door. Because I am an idiot, my first thought was, "That woman forgot to shut her curtains!" A few paces later I found another window and finally realized where I was.

I once had a college instructor who said that one defining characteristic of pornography is the lack of love. Neither prude nor judgmental about such things, I've nevertheless concluded that prostitution shares this characteristic. While sex and love certainly do not require each other, they do enhance each other. A former coworker who had given me hints on Amsterdam had also advised me not to make eye contact with the woman behind the glass. At one window or another, I found that when you do make eye contact, the women will tap on the glass and beckon you in--room after room of Sirens. Within each room that I did peer into was a display of simple furniture: a chair, a bed, perhaps some artwork on the walls. I couldn't help but think of Van Gogh's painting The Bedroom, which depicts a similar setup. I never saw anyone pass from one side of the glass to the other. I knew that even initiating a conversation--or negotiation--with one of the women had to be somewhat awkward, but I also figured that actually going through the door while so many people walked by would make things even more awkward. When I was in the Philippines many years ago, all you had to do was sit in a bar and wait; there were no doors. My first time there a woman named Narcie sat in a chair next to me and, in her fluent-enough English half an hour and a drink or two later, told me that her mother had been a prostitute, as well. I'm neither proud nor ashamed to say that I returned to the ship that night neither wiser nor more worldly. I have always been curious, though, as to why I remember her name.

Finally, I sat down in an uncrowded pub at the fringe of the Red Light District and enjoyed a couple glasses of Jupiler beer. Again, I was happy to rest for a time before, re-energized, I resumed walking before making my way back toward the tram stop, which in turn took me back to the Easy Hotel.

The day had been good, and as I cleaned up and organized my things for the next day's early trip back to the train station, the airport, and then London, I thought that I wish I had more time to explore not just Amsterdam but the rest of Holland. I felt that I was just starting to get my bearings and that my circle of exploration should be expanded outward. As I finished the remaining slices of cheese, I stood at the window, pulled the shade aside, stared into a dark Amsterdam, and for some peculiar reason contemplated how long a person can run from things.