thu 20 nov 2008 16:47:49 — witte de withstraat
that beats all
i don't think i will need to go out for a while. last night beats all for unexpected. i mean it didn't start out as an adventure. sometime in the afternoon, i got a vague urge to go out for a walk.
i needed vloeitjes. i needed tobacco. and most of all i needed some freakin exercise. so instead of taking the tram i walked all the way to leidseplein. i went to the tobacco shop that has those vloeitjes that i like. then while i was in the neighborhood i decided to take myself to dinner at tong ah, the chinese restaurant that's been around since 1948. i sms'd pani to let her know where i was going, cuz maybe we would meet up later. but then she showed up and joined me for dinner. i had the zoet-zure szechuan soup (soon laat tong) and kung po kai, and she had kung po with tofu.
as we left tong ah, i had this vague inkling that i should re-visit café eylders. we started walking that way, and my phone rang and it was dvr wanting to meet up for a drink. so the three of us met at eylders, and the waiter roy took great care of us, and we had a nice time at eylders, and i drank some beer. we talked about the impending doom of the belspel company who may be on the verge of offering my friend a full time job. yikes. belspel tv shows were outlawed in holland as of last year, but they still produce them here for belgium and france.
then, as pani was leaving, marina showed up with micky. so at least dvr got to meet micky before he went home.
now here's the thing, micky is a very unusual person, in a good way, but kinda provocative. when she goes out, she dresses up and puts on very careful, elaborate makeup, and then puts on a wig. and not just any wig, i mean like something from a neon manga cartoon. i look at her and dunno whether to expect an opera or a porn flick. she's wonderfully, theatrically sexual when she goes out, but not exactly sexy, per se. (or as the great bob glover once said: "i wouldn't touch her with *your* dick".) sorry if that sounds mean, cuz i really do like the lady. at one point i was trying to teach her my favorite dutch sentence, "zo is het en niet anders" -- with some extra pronunciation help from dvr, who can sound really dutch when he wants to.
that day, marina and micky had visited the torture museum. but that wasn't enough torture for them, so they'd also gone to the albert heijn supermarket. they were toting around bags of food. so they needed to go back to the house, put away the groceries, rest a bit, and (i didn't realize this at the time) re-costume themselves for act two. would they see see me later on? no, i was probably gonna just go home to bed soon. uh huh.
and as i said good night to roy, and was preparing to leave eylders, who walks in? hg and my pal micheline, who is teaching him tango. this was already weird because i had been thinking "i need to call micheline soon" that same afternoon. so i sat down again, and we had a nice hour or so together, and i drank even more beer. sometime after ten, they needed to get to their tango appointment. we parted and i started toward the square, then walked a bit further, thinking maybe since i'm in de buurt i should just drop in at the cave for one more before going home. then my phone rang, and marina told me to meet her at rock-in-roll-out.
we sat at the little table near the door at r&r. micky had a whole new wig on now, this one was like some deep wine/mahogany color. and we were having a nice time there, and i drank even more beer. then menna showed up, and then so did revaro and lydia, and revaro's brother rovare. then marina's phone rang, and djox told us to come to the cave.
so we went to the cave, which is where i set eyes on that delightful girl nieke, who appears to be very soundly spoken for but i have a crush on her anyway, sorry. "i wrote about you!" i told her. "i wrote about you too," she said. irmo was working. the music was loud enough to enjoy but not loud enough to sabotage attempts at speaking to each other. at one point micky and marina were pantomiming a "live sex" act. (i've always thought live sex was preferable to the other kind.) and we all had a nice time at the cave -- and i drank even more beer.
and then the lights came on. what's the first thing i hear, of course: "we need one more drink, let's go to bourbon street!"
i'm like "no, no bourbon street! no! no way!" because i've sworn never to go there after the cave closes again, it's always not a nice time there, why ruin a good thing.
"where should we go, then?" marina asks.
"let's just go back to jk's house," i said. meaning, we've had enough fun, let's all just go home and go to sleep. but that's not quite how she heard me.
she interpreted my suggestion to mean we should all go back to jk's house and party till sunrise. so seven of us all arrived here at four in the morning. this probably wasn't the wisest thing to do, cuz the poor guy was downstairs trying to sleep, had to go to work in the morning of course. i can't imagine we didn't disturb him. but what are you gonna do, that's how it happened. zo was het en niet anders.
i just hope jk didn't trip over the five-inch silver stiletto heels on his way to work.
i remember at one point i had one of my interesting little hissy fits that i sometimes get when someone isn't listening to me. i lost my temper and yelled at micky. and she pulled this weird cowering "yes master" bullshit, which kinda ticked me off a little, and i said "i'm not your fucking master, i'm just another human being, you need to treat me like any other human being." then my little hissy fit was over and i went outside to listen to the windchimes. i don't lose my temper very often, but i must be a sight to behold when i do. sheesh.
all in all, i was glad to have experienced all that interestingness, dwz i'm grateful to have been alive yesterday. the fact that i woke up again today seems like icing on the cake. i dunno -- maybe the only reason we ever wake up the next day is so we will have a chance to be grateful for having been alive yesterday.