The Yes Man could find fun in any city!
The National Cheese Museum of Holland features more than three fascinating audiovisual displays on the history of cheese, taking in famous cheesemakers as well as the huge array of forward-thinking cheesemaking equipment offered to the modern cheesemaker today. Visitors to the museum in Alkmaar are able to sample more than six different cheeses, from Gouda to Edam and back again, and the whole, thrilling, cheese-based experience was kept from me only because the museum had closed two hours earlier.
I had with me a small pamphlet I’d picked up on the train into town that afternoon, full of useful suggestions and handy hints as to how I should spend my time. The problem was nearly everything it suggested was closed, shutdown, or finished. I’d even missed the “Holland Experience,” on Jodenbreestraat, which promised 3-D glasses, a moving floor, and smell-o-vision. That was the last straw. You know a day’s gone wrong when you’ve missed out on smell-o-vision.
My tummy rumbled, and at first I assumed it was a deep-seated rage borne out of a lack of 3-D windmills before realising that as I hadn’t eaten all day, it was probably hunger. I was near the Leidseplein, the heart of touristy Amsterdam, with its bright and blinking neon signs and constant flow of people and traffic and people. I wandered away from the main square, still cursing Dr. Molly Van Brain under my breath (not only was I twenty million dollars down, but thanks to all the faffing around, I knew virtually nothing about cheese, either), and found my way to Leidsekruisstraat and a little restaurant called De Blonde Hollander.
The staff was friendly but the restaurant busy; so much so that they told me I may have to share a table, if many more people arrived. I shrugged and said that’d be fine, and then ordered a pancake and a beer.
All around me were happy people from all over planet Earth. I wondered how many people ended up here as a result of Dr. Molly Van Brain and her evil team of scammers. Surely it couldn’t be just me? When I’d first thought about her, she was a kindly figure; an elderly lady scientist who most likely worked for free on cures for diseases during her spare time. Now, the name Dr. Molly Van Brain conjured up images of an evil lady torturer, who wore a long white coat and was probably really good at cackling. My beer arrived, and I tried to put her out of my mind. But then something else arrived too. Two men. Two men who had nowhere else to sit and had been shepherded, apologetically, to my table.
“Thank you, please,” said the waiter, pulling out their chairs. They sat down.
“Hello,” said the first man, and then the second.
“Hello,” I said back.
Now, I know the drill when it comes to things like this. The person on their own is supposed to act like they don’t even notice the other people are there, and they in turn will act like the first person isn’t there, either. Then those two people will gossip loudly and mercilessly, and the person on his own will pretend he’s gone deaf and isn’t eavesdropping. I call it the “Wagamama Effect.” But there was to be none of this. Because the first man extended his hand and confidently said, “I’m Jahn.”
“Oh,” I said. “Danny.”
“This is Sergei,” he said, and I shook Sergei’s hand too.
And from there the conversation flowed.
Jahn and Sergei were backpackers. Or were they? They were certainly backpackers when they’d arrived, but they’d been in Amsterdam for nearly six months or so. Jahn—tall, thin, and blond—had arrived after travelling through Europe from South Africa, and Sergei—shorter, squatter, and bearded—was from Poland. The two had met in a hostel round the corner and been firm friends ever since.
“Amsterdam is the finest place I have visited,” said Sergei. “Absolutely. When I am here, I feel at home. It’s the way that things should be.”
“We both tend to go where the wind takes us,” said Jahn. “If I want to see somewhere, then I go. But sometimes I just sit back and see what happens. Get a casual job, stay in a hostel, see what comes up. My dad used to say, ‘The only time you have no opportunities is when you decide to stop taking them.’ I feel that way too.”
We talked for another hour or so about whatever came up. About London, about Poland, about South Africa. Both Sergei and Jahn had wanted to know what I was doing in Amsterdam. I told them I was visiting my friend, Albert. They asked me where Albert was tonight, and I cracked under the weight of my deception, quickly explaining the whole thing. They laughed and told me not to worry. For twenty million dollars, they thought, it was worth a fifty-quid flight.
Sergei had to leave soon after to start work, but Jahn made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Mainly because there were very few offers I could refuse these days.
“If you’re doing nothing this evening, I will show you around,” he said. “You can experience my Amsterdam.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’d be great!”
This was actually really cool. I mean, it was only thanks to a precise but random chain of Yeses that I’d met Jahn in the first place. We should, by rights, never have crossed paths. But now that we had, what was the harm in allowing a stranger to dictate my evening? Particularly as we were in his city. If it’d been down to me, after all, I’d probably still be in the bloody cheese museum.
“Okay … First we must go to Warmoestraat …,” said Jahn as we left the restaurant.
“Right. What’s there?”
“Argos.”
I nodded.
Hang on.
“Argos?”
“It’s a bar,” said Jahn matter-of-factly. Clearly he’d had that conversation with Brits before. “A guy there owes me some money. We’ll pop in, get the cash, and head off again. Cool?”
“Cool,” I said.
We stepped out of the cab and straight into Argos. It certainly was unlike any Argos I’d ever been in before. Jahn was immediately cheered by a couple of guys on a nearby table.
“Some friends,” he said.
I smiled as he moved off, and took a look about the bar. There was something … different about this bar. Something … missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It had chairs. And lights. And drinks. And men. Black men. White men. Tall men. Short men. Lots of … men. And then I realised: girls. Girls were what were missing from this bar. And also … Oh! … Normal clothes. Normal, manly clothes, like corduroy and denim … There was a lot less corduroy and denim than I was used to in this bar. And a lot more, well, there was a lot more leather than was normal for me.
Oh my lord.
I was in a leather bar.
“Argos is Europe’s oldest leather bar,” said Jahn by my side again.
“Excellent!” I said, hoping enthusiasm would translate as some kind of urbane cool. “The oldest leather bar in Europe. That is bloody brilliant!”
“There are these two bars, and then there is the cellar.”
“A cellar. Wicked. What’s the cellar for?”
Jahn shot me a look. I knew at that moment it was probably best if I didn’t know what the cellar was for.
Jahn went back to talk to his friends and get his money while an unnerving truth gradually dawned on me—a virtual stranger had taken me to a gay leather bar in the heart of Amsterdam. Now, don’t get the wrong idea about me. I’ve been to plenty of gay bars in my time, and each one has been a stylish and plush night out. And I’ve nothing against leather—I own a real leather jacket, two leather belts, and when I was at primary school, it was the only material I’d even consider carrying a satchel made from. But I had never been to a gay bar—much less a gay leather bar—as the Yes Man.
I realised with some degree of terror that I was a man fall of Yeses in a bar fall of opportunities! What if someone had a suggestion to make? Or an invitation? Or—good God—a favour to ask? I’m not claiming to be a particularly attractive man who would have gay fellas flocking to him—I’m just saying that from what I’ve seen in gay bars in the UK, sometimes they’re not all that picky.
“Hi!” said a voice to my right. “Are you a friend of Jahn’
s?”
The man was clean shaven, neatly turned-out, and very friendly. There was no leather to be seen, though his trousers did look a bit tight. Suddenly paranoia gripped me. Maybe he was after me! Hey—he was after me!
Now, I find homophobia to be a vile and despicable human trait. It is an uneducated and unevolved way of thinking, clumsily cultivated by that section of society who think singing “Wonderwall” by Oasis at pub closing time is high culture. But at the same time I had a moral obligation to say yes to this man. Whoever he was. Whatever he wanted!
I would have to think quick. I would have to dominate the conversation. I would have to steer it into safe waters. And I would have to say something soon, because he asked me that question about fifteen seconds ago, and I’ve still not answered him.
“Yes,” I said suddenly. “Yes, I am a friend of Jahn’s.”
I scanned and rescanned the sentence in my head. Was there anything in there that could be seen as a come-on? Shit! I shouldn’t have said yes. And I said it twice! That was like flirting!
“Jahn’s cool,” said the guy. “Where you from? England?”
What could I say to that? What wouldn’t give him the wrong idea?
“Yup.”
“London?”
I nodded.
“And is he showing you around Amsterdam?”
I nodded again. “Yup.”
“I’m going to the bar—would you like a drink?”
He shook his empty glass. Which is neither a euphemism nor rhyming slang.
But bloody hell! This was going terribly! All I was saying was yes! And now I’d just nodded and smiled and accepted a drink! This man had me right where he wanted me! I think it only fair to point out that I would have been equally uncomfortable if this had been a bar in the city’s notorious red-light district, and the guy had been a scantily clad girl. Well, almost as uncomfortable.
Suddenly Jahn was back.
“Hey … I got my money, shall we go?”
“Yes!” I said. “Let us do that.”
The guy smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.”
“Hello, Dieter,” said Jahn, and Dieter raised his hand and did a little wave. “Dieter is one of the friendliest guys you can meet.”
I suddenly felt a little ashamed. I had allowed my own paranoia and preconceptions to rule me. Dieter was just a really friendly guy.
“But you have to watch him,” said Jahn. “Because he will try to sleep with you.”
Dieter faked a look of shock.
“In fact, he’ll sleep with anything.”
Dieter laughed, called Jahn a bitch, and went to get another beer. I laughed too until I realised that in Jahn’s eyes, I pretty much constituted “anything.”
“So,” said Jahn, “there’s this cool bar in the red light that I should show you …”
Silently and to no one in particular I mouthed the word “help.”
Before we braved the potential horrors of the red-light district, though, Jahn insisted on taking me somewhere just down the road from Argos. It would be a surprise, he said. A true Amsterdam experience. So long as it didn’t involve leather chaps, I said, I’d be happy to take a look.
Moments later we were there, standing outside a place called, rather suspiciously, Conscious Dreams.
“What is this? A coffeeshop?” I said, knowing full well that the last thing people visiting coffeeshops in this town wanted was coffee.
“No, not really … It’s called a ‘smart shop.’ Do you smoke weed, Danny?”
“I find it best not to,” I said. “The last time I did I became obsessed with geese.”
Jahn looked like he understood.
“Well, come in …”
We walked in, and there again I noticed the words “smart shop.”
“What is a smart shop?” I asked.
“It’s where you buy drugs that are good for you.”
“Like a chemist?”
“No …,” said Jahn, taking a seat. “Drugs that make your memory better or help you concentrate or bring you energy, you know? It’s all natural alternatives to the chemicals. Why take LSD when you can have something from nature? Natural LSD. Much lower health risks.”
“But LSD is illegal here, isn’t it?”
“Sure. But all this stuff is legal. Good alternatives to speed, ecstasy, whatever you like. And really, since you’re in Amsterdam, you should try a little of what goes on here….”
He was smiling, now. I got the distinct sense that this was the kind of thing Jahn loved doing to people not as familiar with Amsterdam as he is.
“You could do magic mushrooms. Psychotropic. Totally legal when fresh.”
“But they’re bad for you,” I said, a little offended at the suggestion. “When I was at school, we had a whole assembly on them, because Jonathan Davies ate some in a field and then spent the whole afternoon chasing trees.”
“But they are natural, and what comes from nature can’t be too bad, surely?”
I thought about it.
“Earthquakes?” I tried.
Jahn shook his head.
“Hitler, then,” I said.
Now he just looked blank.
“Well, maybe I’ll buy a couple of mushrooms, yes,” I said. “I’ll take them with me tonight, when I leave. There’s no need to dive straight in, you know.”
“You can’t take them home with you. And you can’t let them dry out. If you do, they are illegal. There was a big fuss a few years ago when this place started selling magic mushrooms, but they got away with it, when they rebranded themselves as a greengrocers.”
I looked around me.
“So, essentially, tonight you’ve brought me to a greengrocers?”
Jahn smiled.
“Come on. Are you willing to give a new experience a go?”
And there it was. The sentence which would push me over the edge. I felt like Marty McFly from Back to the Future, when someone dared to call him chicken.
“I have to say … I’m a little uncomfortable about this,” I said. And I was. I had never, ever done anything even remotely approaching Class A drugs before. I’d struggle if you asked me to even name them all. It’s just not something that my circle of friends has ever really considered. That comical cigarette in Brixton with the peace protestors was as far as I’d ever gone. And yet now here I was, feeling for all the world like the Amsterdam tourist cliché, sitting with a South African who deemed the whole thing perfectly normal and decent and fine, and about to take it to the next level.
“Only do it if you want to,” he said. “I mean, you wanted to see how I live. And I’m going to have something….”
He stood up and wandered over to the bar, while I sat there, wrestling with my conscience. I couldn’t do this, could I? But I was in Amsterdam—the city of Yes. If I didn’t say yes here, where would I say yes? Swansea? Suddenly I felt invigorated. I felt that I was approaching a watershed moment. If I did this—something that in everyday London life would have never even crossed my mind—then surely that would mark a certain level of commitment? That would mean I was up for this.
And hey—like Jahn said, it wasn’t even illegal. Not technically, anyway.
He was back at the table a moment later. He lit a spliff he’d bought and sat back. And then he put a small pill on the table and slid it across to me.
“Try this,” he said. “It’ll blow your head off.”
As a recommendation, that one was lacking something.
I looked at the pill.
“Jahn … when you say it’ll blow my head off, well, I was more thinking I could have something a bit nicer and more gentle. Have you got anything that might stop short of actually blowing my head off, and maybe just give me a lovely headache instead? This sounds a bit … bigger than I was thinking.”
Jahn tried to wave my worries away but failed. But I thought about what he’d said earlier. The only time you have no opportunities is when you decide to stop taking them. Well … this was an oppo
rtunity, of sorts. A chance to try something new. Something that, without a precise chain of Yeses, I never would’ve. A proper level five.
Suddenly I remembered something.
“Hey … are you … y’know … stoned yet?”
“A little.”
I leaned forward and looked him in the eye.
“Imagine if there was a shop called Pizza Hat and all it sold was hats shaped like pizzas.”
Jahn frowned, and then shook his head.
I couldn’t believe it. That joke was actually getting worse.
“So, anyway,” he said. “Are you going to try this?”
The answer was already yes.
“What’s it called?”
“Well, the translation would be something like … mind … bomb.”
“Mindbomb?” I said.
“More or less.”
“But what is it? I can’t eat a mindbomb unless I know what it is!”
“You don’t eat them. And it’s a bit like LSD. But more like a double-dipped tab.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“It’s powerful but safe. I’m going to do one too. You’ll be fine.”
Jahn smiled. His confidence was reassuring, but I was still nervous. I can’t stress enough how unusual a thing this was for me to be doing. I’ve never thought I would make a particularly good drug user. When I was a kid, I remember thinking I’d had an out-of-body experience after an out-of-date Junior Dispirin. How on God’s green Earth would I cope with a psychotropic mindbomb?
Nevertheless, in perfect unison with Jahn, I picked up the mindbomb, and slowly, carefully, placed it in my mouth.
The following morning at 7 a.m. precisely I sat bolt upright in a bed in the Novotel Amsterdam, confused, alone, dry mouthed, and wide-eyed.
I knew that things had happened in the last nine hours, but I didn’t know what things, and I didn’t know how they happened. I was still feeling woozy and boozy, and I appeared to have a sticker with a clog on it stuck to my face. Gradually a few images eeked their way back into my brain. A man. A flashing light. I looked down to the floor and noticed my jeans and one trainer, and next to them a small, black disposable camera. I stretched down to pick it up. The film was all used up. On the floor, under the cheap coffee table, there was something else. A scroll of some sort. Oh God. Please don’t say I’d got married or something. Please don’t say I’d gone back to the leather bar and got married.
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