Wrote a very little story
Is it shit?
- The apprehensive woman who mechanically reacts, reacts, each morning, afternoon and evening
- The alert woman who lies awake rigid in the dark night after night, imagining, narrating, sweating, yet can never claw up the courage to just hunt down the bloody pen and write
- The beautiful, clever, visionary woman who just can never herd all of that energy together to blaze in one place and bring something to LIFE
It’s all in there somewhere, I know. But knowing ain’t ENOUGH!
Something peculiar happened that first night in Amsterdam. We’d found a picturesque night-drinking locale, on a Thursday, completely at random. Birthday girl or no, I was not a happy bunny; so much latent insecurity had been pouring down on me all evening. My conviction that it was all wrong, it was all tainted, that I was to blame. That somehow I could never be enough. Even the beauty of the canalside symmetry by night had waned, and my eagerness to trek though the primary streets of the infamous Red Light District proved an own goal, if I’m honest.
We’d met up with our friends that evening; we’d walked, wandered, explored, the novelty of ‘Dam’ coffeeshops wasn’t even half done-with; and yet I was fretting. Something hurt. I couldn’t relax. The canals had frozen over that night - it was very cold. I remember admiring the halo effect from the ice reflected in the lights of the bar where we were sitting, a ghostly angel promising us all a good time.
Had a few drags, inhaled. Well. Whatever.
When we came out I was still freezing, and the girl was beautiful, obscenely full of pull and hunger; “Tap tap tap” from Lolita eyes that curved dewy, blinking to her raised eyebrows; her red-lit body was honeyflesh.
I wanted to cry.
So we enter this bright, warm place. Even as we all troop in, I don’t like the look of the blonde lady behind the bar - hostile stare, two chips of blue ice - something resembling fury. I try smiling, a greeting, no reaction. Never mind.
We install ourselves at the tables in back (all Dutch conversation at the bar, as ever), and peruse the liqueur list. Unsurprisingly it yields little; once we get the attention of the glacial lady, over she wafts to explain.
No need to choose a flavour, she assures us; just let me look into your eyes for one moment, and I’ll tell you what will suit you.
This is where it all gets odd, at least for me - immediately she seems to fix her gaze on mine, penetrating, and she says that, first of all, this one’s for a woman.
I’d swear to my dying day that, as I saw it, she kept looking back at me and holding my eyes as she spoke. It’s so vivid - I’d not had all that much dope. She was animated, accented, she gestured; her ample frame swelled and fell with her voice. We were instantly transfixed.
This is some of what I heard:
“You are a woman born to love and be loved.... you are overwhelmingly in love... this is your purpose, your soul... so many will love you, your beauty is irresistible... and so the mixture I choose for you is The Venus, because you, my young lady, are all Venus...” at which point she dramatically turns to the liqueur bar behind, pours a golden concoction, and hands it... to Becky!
To our friend’s beautiful young girlfriend, just turned 21, who is unequivocably (and often demonstrably) so very much in love with him - but I'll say, no qualms, I’d had a genuine shock, because up until then I’d thought she’d been talking about me! I'd been simultaneously surprised and flattered. Delighted. Then suddenly, shockingly taken aback.
I wasn’t even that stoned.
Only then does she turn her attention to me. Properly. And unlike that first time, when she’d seemed to fix on me, she looks me briefly in the eye then turns away. I think I saw scathing in her ice-eyes. Just for a moment. It verged on the dismissive.
This is what she said:
“You too are very beautiful. But your beauty has a different end. It is fertile, it is ripe... you are the Fruit, the bringer, the bearer of Life... hence this, my choice for you...”
At this point she gesticulates, curving her palms over her stomach, suggestive, almost obscene - I’m irrationally offended.
Offended because she’d just summed me up, me and Becky, from the moment we’d walked in - the young girl glowing with love, the older female, fretting about it all. To her we’re like crudely stained glass, is all.
I think I could probably have dismissed it, had it not then been for her pinpoint accurate summary of my boyfriend.
This is what she said:
“I knew it, as soon as you came in. You have fantasy, you have vision, you think to always make and create, at all times. We love this of our boyfriends, of our husbands [looking at me again here, though I glance sharply away], always planning, preparing, building, never quiet in their minds.
“You work in computers, that is your passion. You will have much to give. [hands him a sticky, dark concoction]. I give you this. It is called, ‘Lift Your Shirt’.”
Well now.
I can't really remember the drink I was given - I think it was pink. But I can't remember the name, or the nuances of the taste. I don't think I liked it.
She did also sum up another of our party pretty well - lover of life, feeling, experience, champion of the good things, sensualist, materialist, but by the time we’d swapped and sipped and sampled the taste of each other’s fortunes the spell was broken. We were laughing, we were reasoning - hell, we know we’re all pretty strong, expressive characters - especially when intoxicated. Surely any performance artist in the fortune-telling sphere worth their salt could’ve summed us all up in less time than she did.
A cheap parlour trick, turned by an expert, we said.
We left, when the final shots were finished and the conversation had dried up. As we exited into the mists and whispered frenzy of the freezing Amsterdam night, we were silent. Later, we realised we’d not been charged a penny extra for the (unusually delicious) drinks; and we’ve not been able to find the place on any map since.
It’s her eyes that haunt me though. “Bye!” I said cheerily, on the way out, just as I’d greeted her on the way in; but those blue chips were frozen and wary as they’d been before.
I peer down into my gently steaming bathwater tonight and think, what a lady.
- The apprehensive woman who mechanically reacts, reacts, each morning, afternoon and evening
- The alert woman who lies awake rigid in the dark night after night, imagining, narrating, sweating, yet can never claw up the courage to just hunt down the bloody pen and write
- The beautiful, clever, visionary woman who just can never herd all of that energy together to blaze in one place and bring something to LIFE
It’s all in there somewhere, I know. But knowing ain’t ENOUGH!
Something peculiar happened that first night in Amsterdam. We’d found a picturesque night-drinking locale, on a Thursday, completely at random. Birthday girl or no, I was not a happy bunny; so much latent insecurity had been pouring down on me all evening. My conviction that it was all wrong, it was all tainted, that I was to blame. That somehow I could never be enough. Even the beauty of the canalside symmetry by night had waned, and my eagerness to trek though the primary streets of the infamous Red Light District proved an own goal, if I’m honest.
We’d met up with our friends that evening; we’d walked, wandered, explored, the novelty of ‘Dam’ coffeeshops wasn’t even half done-with; and yet I was fretting. Something hurt. I couldn’t relax. The canals had frozen over that night - it was very cold. I remember admiring the halo effect from the ice reflected in the lights of the bar where we were sitting, a ghostly angel promising us all a good time.
Had a few drags, inhaled. Well. Whatever.
When we came out I was still freezing, and the girl was beautiful, obscenely full of pull and hunger; “Tap tap tap” from Lolita eyes that curved dewy, blinking to her raised eyebrows; her red-lit body was honeyflesh.
I wanted to cry.
So we enter this bright, warm place. Even as we all troop in, I don’t like the look of the blonde lady behind the bar - hostile stare, two chips of blue ice - something resembling fury. I try smiling, a greeting, no reaction. Never mind.
We install ourselves at the tables in back (all Dutch conversation at the bar, as ever), and peruse the liqueur list. Unsurprisingly it yields little; once we get the attention of the glacial lady, over she wafts to explain.
No need to choose a flavour, she assures us; just let me look into your eyes for one moment, and I’ll tell you what will suit you.
This is where it all gets odd, at least for me - immediately she seems to fix her gaze on mine, penetrating, and she says that, first of all, this one’s for a woman.
I’d swear to my dying day that, as I saw it, she kept looking back at me and holding my eyes as she spoke. It’s so vivid - I’d not had all that much dope. She was animated, accented, she gestured; her ample frame swelled and fell with her voice. We were instantly transfixed.
This is some of what I heard:
“You are a woman born to love and be loved.... you are overwhelmingly in love... this is your purpose, your soul... so many will love you, your beauty is irresistible... and so the mixture I choose for you is The Venus, because you, my young lady, are all Venus...” at which point she dramatically turns to the liqueur bar behind, pours a golden concoction, and hands it... to Becky!
To our friend’s beautiful young girlfriend, just turned 21, who is unequivocably (and often demonstrably) so very much in love with him - but I'll say, no qualms, I’d had a genuine shock, because up until then I’d thought she’d been talking about me! I'd been simultaneously surprised and flattered. Delighted. Then suddenly, shockingly taken aback.
I wasn’t even that stoned.
Only then does she turn her attention to me. Properly. And unlike that first time, when she’d seemed to fix on me, she looks me briefly in the eye then turns away. I think I saw scathing in her ice-eyes. Just for a moment. It verged on the dismissive.
This is what she said:
“You too are very beautiful. But your beauty has a different end. It is fertile, it is ripe... you are the Fruit, the bringer, the bearer of Life... hence this, my choice for you...”
At this point she gesticulates, curving her palms over her stomach, suggestive, almost obscene - I’m irrationally offended.
Offended because she’d just summed me up, me and Becky, from the moment we’d walked in - the young girl glowing with love, the older female, fretting about it all. To her we’re like crudely stained glass, is all.
I think I could probably have dismissed it, had it not then been for her pinpoint accurate summary of my boyfriend.
This is what she said:
“I knew it, as soon as you came in. You have fantasy, you have vision, you think to always make and create, at all times. We love this of our boyfriends, of our husbands [looking at me again here, though I glance sharply away], always planning, preparing, building, never quiet in their minds.
“You work in computers, that is your passion. You will have much to give. [hands him a sticky, dark concoction]. I give you this. It is called, ‘Lift Your Shirt’.”
Well now.
I can't really remember the drink I was given - I think it was pink. But I can't remember the name, or the nuances of the taste. I don't think I liked it.
She did also sum up another of our party pretty well - lover of life, feeling, experience, champion of the good things, sensualist, materialist, but by the time we’d swapped and sipped and sampled the taste of each other’s fortunes the spell was broken. We were laughing, we were reasoning - hell, we know we’re all pretty strong, expressive characters - especially when intoxicated. Surely any performance artist in the fortune-telling sphere worth their salt could’ve summed us all up in less time than she did.
A cheap parlour trick, turned by an expert, we said.
We left, when the final shots were finished and the conversation had dried up. As we exited into the mists and whispered frenzy of the freezing Amsterdam night, we were silent. Later, we realised we’d not been charged a penny extra for the (unusually delicious) drinks; and we’ve not been able to find the place on any map since.
It’s her eyes that haunt me though. “Bye!” I said cheerily, on the way out, just as I’d greeted her on the way in; but those blue chips were frozen and wary as they’d been before.
I peer down into my gently steaming bathwater tonight and think, what a lady.