Boozehound - Jason Wilson [27]
As luck would have it, I found out that my old friend T., a photographer from Denmark, was in town to shoot Amsterdam’s brand-new Muziekgebouw—“the music hall of the twenty-first century”—but had nothing better to do that afternoon but join me in a bender. I’d met T. years before, when both of us were traveling aimlessly in Iceland, me avoiding work on another failed novel, and she waiting to hear that she would not be accepted by the Royal Art Academy and taking a break from a boyfriend (whom I later deduced was an ecstasy dealer in Copenhagen). Though we don’t see each other often, the two of us have spent dozens upon dozens of hours across from each other drinking at some smoky table in a café or bar. T. is my one friend who, like me, embraces both gezellig—there’s a similarly untranslatable concept in Danish called hygge—and seediness.
Amsterdam, let’s face it, can be pretty seedy. Wonderfully so. Genever was the perfect drink for that afternoon. Genever, especially oude genever, tastes like the incarnation of seediness itself—a primeval taste, truly from a stage further back. The bald bartender with the handlebar mustache at a proeflokaal with sawdust on the floor called Wynand Fockink (yes, Fockink is pronounced like you think) poured genever out of earthenware bottles that looked like they’d been excavated from ancient ruins. He filled the cordial glasses just above the rim; we leaned down and slurped the first sip right off the bar. Then we chased the genever with beer. The whole thing is called a kopstoot (head butt). T. and I slurped several times.
We moved over to De Drie Fleschjes, another dark, sawdust-on-the-floor spot. There we drank the house specialty, shots of jonge (young) genever, curaçao, and bitters called Boswandeling (A Walk in the Forest.) Then, we moved on to Proeflokaal de Ooievaar, where the drunk at the bar told T., very specifically—in Dutch that was expertly translated by his buddy—what sorts of dirty things he would like to do to her.
As the sun started to set, we figured we were already in the Red Light District, and so we decided, what the hell, let’s go see a live sex show. Neither of us had seen a live sex show before, and so we entered a theater called Casa Rosso—“one of the most superior erotic shows in the world, with a tremendous choreography and a high-level cast.” We had another kopstoot at the theater bar. The sex show may have been one of the most unerotic things I’ve ever seen, weirdly stylized with lots of pumped-up muscles and fake boobs and tans. “He just looks like he’s doing gymnastics on top of her,” T. said, and we both dissolved into hysterics. At a certain point, a naked woman came out with tassels on her nipples and danced as if she were having a seizure. We nearly screamed. Really, we were louder than the crew of British lads on stag weekend behind us. The real couples—the ones who’d actually come to the show to theoretically add some kind of spark to their lovemaking—started shooting us nasty looks. So at the intermission, we bailed.
After the sex show, we went to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen Amsterdam, where reformed juvenile delinquents cook dinner for you. This is where things took a strange turn. T., normally quiet and mellow, got into an argument with the waitress. Then she and I got into a heated debate about the nature of friendship and love and memory, which revolved around dueling reminiscences of a night in Iceland when we’d driven up to a hill above the town to make a photo of the northern lights. On that night, she’d set up her camera on a tripod and pointed it at the sky, while the car radio played Icelandic pop music, and we stood in the dark. The shot needed a long exposure, and T. left the shutter open while we waited as if we had all the time in the world. We knew we didn’t, of course. Now, our debate—over dinner in Amsterdam cooked by reformed juvenile