Then her dad says, “Congratulations!” and seems to mean it. He gives Martha a big hug and shakes my hand. Thin-lipped Norwegian smiles all around. We stand awkwardly in the foyer for a few more seconds until he says, “Boy, it’s cold out there.”
Then we talk about the weather for twenty minutes.
I can see Martha is crestfallen. I know she wanted her parents to be more excited for her, to compliment her ring (indistinguishable, by the way, from an actual Tiffany ring), for her mom to talk about dresses and arrangements and all the gossipy plans women make the minute a wedding is announced. But that doesn’t happen. Instead her dad and I silently watch the Vikings on TV while her mom bakes a hot dish (Minnesotan for “casserole”) in the kitchen, and Martha pretends not to mind their indifference.
I feel bad for her. I want her happiness teased out to endless lengths. I want her congratulated for making such a fine choice in a husband. We are high on hope for our own futures and want others to catch our buzz. When that does not happen, it’s a total killjoy, man. Here in chilly Minnesota, our mellow has been effectively harshed.
Looking back now, I wonder if their nonchalance was not about us at all, but was instead a general wariness toward the whole idea of marital commitment. Not that they don’t believe in marriage. After all, they had been married for over thirty years themselves at that point. I think perhaps they just knew things about tying two lives together that we did not. Like the fact that a lot of the time it sucks.
CHAPTER 7
you’re not doing it right
We’re at Kennedy International Airport, newly married, heading off to a weeklong honeymoon. When debating where we should go, we came up with a bunch of ideas including Paris, Florence, the Caribbean, Barcelona, Costa Rica, and Thailand. Amsterdam did not make the list, but that is where we are going. One does not necessarily associate Amsterdam with “honeymoon destination.” I don’t know why, perhaps because of all the whores. But we go there because Amsterdam is the cheapest option and I have just paid for the entire wedding myself.
I don’t really mind. The idea of the bride’s parents paying for the wedding always seemed kind of antiquated to me anyway, although it would be great if she at least had a small dowry. Like maybe some goats or something.
I make myself feel better about spending all that money by thinking of the wedding as an investment in our future. Plus, if I amortize the costs of the wedding on an annual basis, the longer we stay married the less the wedding will have cost. For example, if we stay married for thirty thousand years, it works out to only a dollar a year.
Amsterdam became the most cost-effective place to vacation after we joined a home exchange program. This is a service that allows you to swap houses with people from all over the world. You just pick a place you want to go, work out compatible dates, and voila! Free lodging. We contacted people in all of the cities I just listed but could not find anybody who wanted to come to New York on the dates we were available. Our only offer came from a couple in Amsterdam, and we took it.
So now we’re at the airport waiting on line at the ticket counter. Both of us are dreading the flight because it’s an overnighter and we’re stuck in coach since business and first-class tickets were outrageously expensive. But we’ll try to sleep a little and hopefully it won’t be too uncomfortable. Plus we’re in love! (I cannot even persuade myself that love helps in coach.)
When we reach the counter, we present our passports and the agent says, “Are you newlyweds?”
“Yes,” I say. “How did you know?”
“Your rings. They look brand-new.”
Indeed they do—as bright and gleaming as our new marriage. Martha tells her we’re going on our honeymoon.
The ticket agent smiles, taps some buttons on her keyboard, and hands us our tickets. It takes a second before we realize she’s just upgraded us to first class. We thank her profusely. “Congratulations,” she says. Marriage just became totally worth it.
Neither of us has ever flown in anything but steerage before so we’re both excited to see the difference. When they call for first-class passengers, we practically trip over ourselves to board the behemoth 747. The flight attendant looks at our tickets and points us toward a shiny spiral staircase. I have often wondered what is on the second floor of those big airplanes. Now I know: heaven.
It’s like a private lounge up there, dimly lit, spacious, fantastic. Instead of being crammed into five tiny seats abreast, we each have our own private cocoon. The seats are enormous leather recliners outfitted with personal movie screens. As soon as we sit down, our flight attendant gives us both a little bag stuffed with toiletries, eye screens, and slippers. Slippers! I put mine on immediately. Flying first class is great. Flying first class while wearing slippers? Fucking amazing. For the next several hours, they stuff us with food and drink and toward the end of the flight, present us each with a little earthenware Dutch house filled with liqueur. Slippers, food, and adorable alcoholic collectibles?! WOW!
We land around dawn and attempt to give the taxi driver our address, but the Dutch have inconsiderately written everything in their native language, making it very difficult for visiting Americans like us to pronounce anything. The driver seems unsure about where to go, so after driving around the city for about exactly as long as he can before we start asking him if he’s ripping us off, the drab apartment building where we are staying appears on some random street, a street whose name I think translates to “some random street.”
Mitigating the somewhat disappointing exterior, however, are two factors. The first is that there are lots of cute bicycles everywhere, making everything look cheerier. The second is that our hosts are likely to be even more disappointed with our building in New York than I am with theirs. Because our place in New York is a shithole.
Inside, their apartment is spacious and attractively decorated. There’s a big kitchen, living room, and a single large bedroom. Everything has that slightly off-kilter European look where it’s all familiar-looking but at the same time kind of off. Not unpleasant but different. Pineapple juice in a box, for example. The whole place is like that.
After we unpack, the first thing I do is look through our host’s photo albums because I am hoping there will be something naughty in there. I am in luck. There are several topless pictures of our hostess. She is young and fairly attractive and has good breasts. Because I am in Europe I do not think it inappropriate to stare at them for several minutes, nor do I consider it inappropriate to then go back and view them again repeatedly over the course of our trip. What would be inappropriate would be to masturbate to them.
We try to nap a little because we’re jet-lagged but we are unable to sleep more than a couple of hours. Eventually we give up and try to figure out what to do with ourselves, which is when we run into our first problem.
Martha is the kind of traveler who likes to research her destination, find the best places to go, the finest restaurants in which to dine, and then plan a meticulous itinerary. I am the kind of traveler who likes to sit inside and watch TV. This naturally causes conflict when she wants to visit various Gothic cathedrals and I want to see what Wheel of Fortune sounds like in Dutch.
She tries to motivate me to do stuff with cheerful exhortations of “This is our honeymoon! We’re supposed to do shit!”
I know, I know. Of course she is right. I am a terrible traveler. In later years, this will change as I begin to recognize that part of what makes travel fun and worthwhile is actually seeing the place you are paying to visit. At the moment, though, I am of the opinion that simply arriving at a destination is accomplishment enough.
Finally, I agree to take a walk with her around the neighborhood. Despite its debauched reputation, Amsterdam is a lovely city built on a series of concentric canals. These canals were conceived and created in the seventeenth century. I have no idea how the Dutch built citywide canals four hundred years ago without the benefit of either electricity or slaves, but somehow they did. P
ossibly they are a magic people. The Dutch also earn points in my book for hiding Jews during World War II, the most famous of whom was Anne Frank. Although I guess one could argue that they didn’t do such a great job with her considering how that turned out.
We find an outdoor bazaar just down the street. It’s a lot like the street fairs they have in New York, which is to say it’s mostly just a bunch of vendors selling junk and socks. The main difference is that I cannot figure out how much anything costs and wind up buying a cheese sandwich for either two dollars or two hundred dollars.
We spend much of the day walking the cobblestone streets, darting in and out of unfailingly cute shops, and trying our best not to look overly American. Martha instructs me this means not yelling “Speak-ee English?” every time I need to talk to somebody.
Food-wise Amsterdam is pretty much crap, although we do discover pannekoeken, Dutch pancakes. There’s a basement restaurant near us that serves them, and they are fantastic. Pannekoeken are thicker than a crepe, but thinner than American pancakes, and served either sweet or savory. Martha orders hers with ham and cheese. I get banana and Nutella. Although they are each big enough for two meals, we both clean our plates and promise to return.
That night we take a stroll through the famous red-light district. This is where the city’s sex trade is plied. Prostitution is legal here, and the various painted ladies set up shop in small storefront windows, above each of which is a red light. Most of the women wear corny lingerie and pass the time sitting on stools smoking cigarettes. They pretty much all look bored or stoned. When a customer enters, the ladies pull a curtain closed and conduct their business. None of them makes much of an effort to attract the shifty-looking men wandering around other than the occasional halfhearted gyration vaguely directed toward the outside world. It is about as sexy as a trip to the DMV.
I have never been with a prostitute and do not think I ever could. Not because I have a particular moral objection to it since I feel like people should be free to do with their bodies what they want, but I just can’t get into the idea of paying for sex. Does it impugn my masculinity to say that I don’t crave sex enough to ever pay for a blowjob? Maybe. But it’s true; what’s also true is that I am uncomfortably like the stereotypical female who needs emotional stimulation as much as physical. If I don’t believe that my partner is as invested in the sucking and fucking as I am, then I can’t get into it, either. Guys aren’t supposed to care about stuff like that, but I do. So much so that I don’t think I could even get an erection with a hooker. Then I would feel bad about it because I would be afraid her feelings would be hurt, and then I would start overapologizing, which would just make everything worse. So I think it’s better if I just stay away from such things. Plus, I guess there’s the fact that I’m married.
Also scattered around the red-light district are clusters of “coffee shops.” In Amsterdam, this means “marijuana store.” I don’t know why they don’t just call them that, but they don’t. They’re all pretty much identical: a few couches, some Bob Marley posters on the walls, dreadlocked twenty-somethings at the counter, the burbling sound of hookahs. Occasionally we see some passed-out dude on the floor, presumably American, and I think to myself, What an idiot.
My experience with marijuana is limited. I have none. Again, this is not because I have a moral objection to its use, but because I am afraid to smoke anything. I don’t like the idea of inhaling anything into my lungs, and so I have never tried cigarettes or pot. But I am in Amsterdam and resolve that while here I will give it a go.
A few nights later, after a long day of sightseeing followed by a big Italian meal, we choose a coffee shop at random. I am still nervous about smoking, so instead we order a huge “space cake,” a dense brownie baked with pot. It tastes bad. Like equal parts chocolate and lawn clippings. I am stuffed from the meal we’ve just eaten, but I force down the chalky dessert and wait for delirium.
Nothing happens.
“Are you feeling anything?” I keep asking Martha.
“Not yet.”
“Because I’m not feeling anything,” I say. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel and I’m afraid I’m going to miss it.”
“Be patient,” she says.
I try to be patient but I grow increasingly convinced it’s not working. Maybe we didn’t eat enough space cake. Or all the pasta in my stomach soaked up the THC.
Martha’s eyes go to half-mast. “I’m starting to feel it,” she says.
“I’m not feeling anything,” I say. Forty-five minutes have elapsed and I feel exactly the same.
“Be patient,” she counsels again.
I wait another five minutes or so. Her head is bopping along to the Bob Marley. She seems mildly dazed and I am jealous.
“Let’s get a joint,” I say, thinking that maybe I need to bypass my stomach and infuse my bloodstream through my lungs. If I’m going to get high, maybe I just need to conquer my fears and smoke.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think you’ve waited long enough.”
“It’s been, like, an hour.”
“Okay.”
“You get it,” I tell her.
“Why me?”
“Because I feel stupid.”
“Fine,” she says and goes to the counter. She orders something mild from them and returns to the table with a good-size blunt.
“Show me how to smoke it.”
She lights it, and explains how you suck the smoke down into your lungs, hold it, and release. I copy her actions but nothing comes out of my mouth when I exhale. Then she says something for the first time in our marriage, five words that neatly sum up my own feelings about my entire life:
“You’re not doing it right,” she says.
I try again. And again. A few smoky wisps escape my nose and mouth, but whatever I’m doing isn’t working. I don’t feel anything. Meanwhile, Martha is slouched down in her chair with a goofy smile on her face. What am I doing wrong? I take another hit and another.
“It’s not working,” I complain.
The joint is getting smaller between my fingers until it is almost gone. Suddenly I hear somebody screaming. It’s a female voice, coming from close by, and the woman sounds terrified.
“Help!” the voice is screaming. “He’s dying! He’s dying!”
What’s going on?
And then I realize: I am unconscious. The woman screaming is my wife.
I have now become that asshole American passed out on the floor of the coffee shop.
Then I feel a hand at the back of my head and a glass pushed toward my mouth. The unseen hand forces a sweet sugary liquid into my mouth. My eyes open. Martha is staring at me, panic-stricken. One of the dreadlocked guys is beside me, his hand on my shoulder, holding me upright.
“Are you okay?” she asks me. I do not answer because I no longer have a mouth. She turns to the guy. “I think he’s dying!” she yells.
“Nobody ever died from pot,” he drawls. Then he disappears in a puff of smoke.
Martha is wild-eyed. “Are you okay?”
I nod but no words come out. My head feels thick and mushy, like a bowl of oatmeal. I watch her lips move.
“You passed out. You were yelling at me that it wasn’t working and then your head hit the table and you fell off your chair and landed on the floor.”
I nod again. Her lips remind me of kite strings and I find myself thinking about panda bears. Panda bears do not fly kites, I tell myself.
“I thought you were dead,” she says.
Maybe if you taped a kite to a panda paw and scared the panda so that it started running, the kite might start to lift off. I clench and unclench my fist to make sure I still have motor control. I seem to, although I am concerned that if I touch anything my hand may pass right through it since we are all made from atoms and atoms are mostly empty space.
“Are you okay?” she asks again and again. I nod again and ag
ain. I do not know if I am okay. I do not know if I even exist at this point. I make a motorboat noise and sip some more sugar water. I’m high. She’s high, too, and freaking out. “Should we leave?” she asks. I nod.
We stand up and help each other outside. The air is cool. It feels good. All these atoms pressed against me. Mmmm.
“I forgot my purse,” she says. “Stay here.”
I sit on the curb, pushing down against the cobblestones with my feet so that they do not float up above my head and pull me upside down into the sky. I sit like this and watch the night carnival pass by, all the horny young men and middle-aged tourists and locals heading home from pubs and I see myself in their eyes and am appalled.
“I’m not American!” I yell at them because I love my country and do not want them thinking ill of us.
The walk back to the apartment is long and confusing, particularly because, after thinking about panda bears, I discover that I have now become a panda bear, and must walk like a panda bear through the streets.
“Why are you walking like that?” she asks.
I try to tell her about the pandas flying their kites, but she does not understand. What’s not to understand?
Then we are in bed and this logy feeling will not go away and I tell her I cannot sleep like this how much longer will it last just a couple more hours she says but I don’t know because I think the air pressure is different than it used to be and that can’t be good and maybe it’s not the drugs that make me feel like this but maybe we are now living in an entirely different atmosphere and eventually I pass out and when it is morning I open my eyes and the sun is out and I am just as high as when I went to bed and I want to cry.
“This is never going to end!” I yell.
Martha seems to feel a little better. She helps me out of bed and pushes me to the bathroom. I take a shower, hoping a hard blast of water will jolt me back into my body, but it is a European shower, so the pressure is not sufficient to do anything more than smear me with water. The plumbing in Europe is terrible. Also, I will never get used to the idea of “shower gel” no matter how many times I use it.
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