Amsterdam: Part I
My ass is on the floor, eyelids pressed tightly together, feeling my bacon turning cold and numb.
I was contemplating new ways to masturbate the shit out of my penis, choreographing mentally a session including a jar of marmalade, two waffle irons, a Tae Kwon Do master and one thousand midgets on pink ponies that could just as well be pigs (see connection with bacon above), when a sturdy smack on the head made the fantasy click and feel just right – like it has so many times before, fueled by my Ex’s keenness to torture and ping pong paddles.
“Feel like getting raped?” I quasi-threatened my brother, the perpetrating head-smacker.
“By you? Ha,” he exclaimed.My eyes still closed, I mused over the idea of pretending to be annoyed by the slap for a while longer. Clearly I wasn’t, I rarely am, but oftentimes I feel that I have to stick with the protocol. Smack on the head - show irritation. Otherwise people will feel weird, out of place, the space and time continuum might cease to exist as we know it and I don’t feel like being the star of yet another film graced with the unimaginative title “Jesus Christ: The Return, Again… For the Last Time… We promise.”
My brother said: “I think we should go to Amsterdam. It will be fun.”
I smiled approvingly, and went ahead with making an important phone call.
“Yes? Midgets-R-Us? I’d like to place an order please.”***
A few days later, my brother and I were standing in the middle of Amsterdam’s Central Train Station, luggage-handles in loose grips, glances darting right and left. We were pivoting round and round, puzzled over strange words that looked Germanic, while our shoulders bumped each other every now and again. Resembling scarily to bored square-dancers, and with a stupefied expression fixed permanently on our fat faces, we tried guessing the meaning of semi-arbitrary signs.
I said: “So a plane going up means…?”
“Departures.”
“And a plane going down means…?”
“Arrivals.”
“And which one do we need?”
“Neither, you moron! We’re going downtown.”
I laughed and he smiled, realizing that over the next few days, I will be a handful.
“We should try those ticket-selling ATMs,” he said. “They should have an English menu.”
We trotted towards them, handbags clinking and clanking.
“Should I pay?” I asked, presenting a fistful of crumbled Euros and oily coins.
“No, let me pay by credit card. We might need the cash later on.”
He started patting his jacket pockets confidently. First the chest, then below the ribs, trying to feel out his trusted plastic companion. His jeans’ pockets followed. Front, back, front, back, then chest pockets again. Soon he looked like he was on fire, putting out flames of denial. He lost the credit cards.
I, on the other hand, was amused and a snicker came out of my nostrils, which snowballed into a backhanded fist thundering on my nose, breaking it.“Oh man, there goes my cocaine-driven partying that I had in mind.”
“Shut up, fatso,” my brother cut me off swiftly. “We lost the credit cards!”
“The credit cards that we must take to the hotel reception to prove e-payment?”
“Yes!”
“The ones we were gonna use to buy our return tickets?”
“YES.”
“Hahaha, sounds like a funny movie. I bet Ashton and Seann William are in it. We should definitely go watch it, bro!”
“It’s not a movie you fucking idiot. It is happening to us right now.”
“Oh…”L - o - n - g - - - p - a - u - s - e . . .
“So, no movie watchy tonighty?”
And an old-fashioned beating-of-the-crazy-family-member rampage ensued. Airport security intervened and I ended up, once again, spreading my butt-cheeks in front of a guy with a flashlight and rubber gloves. Snap, went the glove. Crackle and Pop, went my ass.
***
End of Part I. Continue to Part II.