Amsterdam, Part III
Inside the coffeeshop, some stupid music was crapping on my eardrums but who cares. A couple of teenaged groups were sitting on high barstools around varnished tables. Names of people and of worldly places were keyed in their surface. One group looked Middle Eastern and the other American. We straddled inside like raped cowboys (who were over the nightmarish incident and were now compensating by being overconfident… or something similarly vague). We stood between them, stared at them scornfully, shrugged and leaned on the bar, eyes burning with rage.
I said to the barkeep: “Hey! Do you, perchance, have any freshly squeezed juices?”
“We have weed and hash,” he replied.
“Oh. Because I’m a little bit thirsty,” I persisted, waving my fingers in front of my mouth as if I have eaten something hot, and were REALLY gay.
“Weed-OR-hash?”
“Haha, just kidding man. Jeez! Give us 2 grams of your strongest weed and 1 gram of your smoothest hash.”
We paid the man, sat outside on his uncomfortable wickerwork chairs while his tent above us was doing a half-assed job with the drizzling rain. But as I said before, who cares. "We're in Amsterdam, man".
Our steel pipes were on the table, their bowls stuffed with weed and our lighters lit. I inhaled and watched my flame defying gravity for a few seconds. My oral cavity was full of smoke and so were my intestines. I exhaled from both ends and spread my joyous relief to everyone around me.“Oh God,” complained my brother. “Did you shit your pants?”
“Haha, no no. Don’t worry.” I said reassuringly. But I think I did a bit.
“So how is it? Is it good?” Theo asked, his pipe still unlit, savoring the moment.
“Yeah it feels good.”
A few tokes later I felt heavier than Joshua Homme’s guitar riffs. Everything slowed down and dragged, leaving trails of images past. “I thinks it’s working. Heh… Oh it’s awesome. I haven’t felt this for SO long.
“Felt what?”
I logged off momentarily and then snapped: “What!?... Oh, the feeling I got when I was first getting into Metal. Thrash Metal. I remember that, at the beginning, when I listened to too much of it, I felt this pressure on the top of my head. Like a huge wobbly dildo was smacking right down in the middle of my scull. Repeatedly… But when it stroked it, it wasn’t touching my scull exactly. It was… ahm… hitting my brain. It was hitting my scull but actually touching my brain. Petting it like a dog. OH! OH! It wasn’t a dildo. It was a dog’s tail. Oh that’s so cool, man… Do you get it...? Do you feel me?”
“Totally,” he laughed, though he wasn’t tuned in my thinking just yet. But soon.
“So yeah. A dog’s tail. Hey I miss Lemmy [our dog]. I miss you too man. We should have done this years ago.” I smiled.
“Hehe, we should.”
“So has the green fairy sat on your shoulder yet or not?”
“I think she’s here.”
“What’s her name?”
“Errrrr… Candy! No, Suzie!”
“Ah!... a prostitute’s name.”
“Which one? Oh, both. Haha.”
“Haha.”
We dozed for a minute or two and then Theo sprang on his feet, shouting (or at least it seemed like he was): “Come on, get up! We should leave. If we stay here any longer we’ll be here forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Guaranteed. Come on. Let’s go to another one. You must try “bubblegum”. I loved it the last time I was here.”
“What’s bubblegum? Gum gum gum. Bubbly bubbly bubbly. Hehe, say gum gum gum, all the time. Isn’t it weird and funny?”
“Yeah, hilarious. By the way, can you walk? It’s sort of dangerous here with all the trams running around everywhere. You have to be careful. Because I know you. I can’t be paying attention to you right now.”
My feet weighed a ton. It felt like walking in swamp waters, heavy on the herbal sludge and scum. But I muttered: “In the mud. In the mud.”
“Ok... Just be careful.”
And as if I need a reason to become completely paranoid with any kind of drugs, he puts this over me: Fear of Getting-Crushed-to-Death-by-Giant-SteelWorms. Great! Before long, everything and everybody was an inch too close. Too close to my face, too close to my neck and shoulders, with their stinking, rotten breath. I tried to ignore them, “Hey I don’t care if you want to stub me dear passers-by, heh. No, really, I know you’re not real. Heh! Not real, not real, real… Get away from me goddamn it. AAAAAARGGGHHHHH!!!!” Out of nowhere someone jumped me and was stubbing me on the chest. I fell down. Get away, get away!
Theo was screaming at me: “No one’s stubbing you. You’re just coughing you freaking idiot.”
“Oh!” I said. Eyes wide open, distrusting, scanning for danger. They were gone… momentarily. For I knew it in my gut, they were around.
My brother’s hand on my arm felt as reassuring and warm as a mother’s. He was leading me again and we stopped under a balcony to shed ourselves from the rain. Nearby a preacher was wailing over eternal damnation and spat “truths” of hell to anyone passing. The Dutch crowd disapproved and most of them laughed. He was growing angrier. I chuckled and felt good in my belly, when suddenly two police officers on mountain bikes were heading directly towards me. I started spewing Cypriot cusses through grinding teeth, snarling like a rabid dog. In reality though, I was in a fetal position praying on the floor.
“Get up you moron,” Theo said. “We’re not in Cyprus! Police won’t harass you here...
“Hehe,” he feigned laughter to appease the police.“Is your friend alright, Sir?” one of them asked. [She was gorgeous by the way.]
“Yes. I guess he had a few puffs more than he should of had,” Theo answered charmingly.
“Isn’t everybody,” she replied, smiling courteously.
“I guess so.”
“Can you move from here? Because I don’t think that guy is safe for your brother. He looks crazy,” she smiled at him again. I would’ve loved to lick that smile right there and then, but when you’re crying on cold cement your chances are pretty bleak.
“Come on you fucking menace. Let’s get you up and somewhere safe.”
So we went to a variety of coffeeshops, lit up, lingered a while, then I thought somebody was trying to light my leg on fire, screamed like a little girl, kicked our short-legged table, pieces of broken bongs scattered on the tiled-floor, a barman threw us out, my brother had enough of me, it was dusk anyway, on the way home a variety of small green animals was following us, gaining ground on us, with knives clenched in their jaws, so I started running in a frenzy of panic and despair, frequently looking back (my rubbery legs weren’t helping), when I crash into a traffic pole, give a little twirl of a dance and black out.
End of Part III
To Be Continued...