darryn

I haven’t posted much lately, and my excuse is that I am sick. I have been sick for over two weeks now and have been sleeping 16+ hours per day. I thought that I had a really bad cold, but I went to the doctor and found out that I have a sinus/middle ear infection. This makes sense as I am now about 90% deaf in my right ear. The doctor says that this deafness is just temporary and has prescribed me some hardcore antibiotics and ant-inflammatories.

I have been looking for places to live but as yet have not found anything good. After living in this awesome location I am not ready to accept anything outside the Ring, especially in winter. I don’t want to be riding my bike around in -5

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I haven’t posted for a while, nothing new has happened, but things are evolving, and this post is about one of them.

I don’t have any friends in Europe. My nearest true friend is Mel in London, and everyone else is in Australia, 21,000km away. This is not a sad story. I am not lonely. This situation has given me a kind of freedom, I am a stranger in a strange land. And I use this freedom.

I go out a few times a week. I don’t go out to pick up, I don’t go to discos or nightclubs. I go to cafe’s (bars) to drink beer and meet people. The first few times it was a bit awkward. I would go into a bar full of strange people, speaking a strange language, and get a glass of beer. I would stand there by myself, watching them. Sometimes I would start up a conversation with someone, but the Dutch are a bit aloof and more often than not they would turn their back to me. But sometimes they did not. Sometimes they would talk. That’s how I got my foot in the door of Amsterdam society.

For some reason I keep meeting photographers. I am now on a first name basis with some of the top young photographers in the Netherlands. Supposedly.

It is currently almost 5am, I have been writing this for 30 minutes already. I wanted to get down what happened tonight.

I went to Weber at about midnight. I was Tokyo subway full, so I really had to push and squeeze to get in to the bar. The barmaid (Fleur?) recognised me and had a beer waiting when I finally made it to the bar. I looked around. None of my friends were there, I wonder who I will target? The decision was made for me when Stiev (not his real name) came up and cheersed me. I met Stiev on Tuesday night when he tried to chat up the girl who was trying to chat me up. He has a dodgy tan and is older than me.

We had a few drinks, a few laughs. but as time progressed it became clear that, despite his denials, Stiev was in a hunting mood. He spied a group of sixteen year old girls near the door and he was locked on. He kept mentioning them, and before long he was sitting with them. He was unsubtle in his approach, and although some of them seemed to be enjoying it, it was clear to me that this was not right. It took a little while, but I convinced Stiev that we should leave and go to Leidseplein (“for the women”). As Stiev went to get his coat, the barman leaned over and shook my hand for getting him away from the girls.

So I led Stiev to Leidseplein, and he took me to places I had never before visited. Dodgy pickup clubs. I spent the next few hours with him, drinking beers as he pointed out and harassed decreasingly attractive women. He was a pure percentages man, and his only real techniques were volume and unsolicited touching. This is not a game I can play, I need to have a conversation with a girl before I can be truly attracted, and a noisy nightclub with 50% slores is not the place.

We ended up at “Surprise Bar” (I think) which was, despite being dodgy, not as dodgy as the last few places. We shook hands with the bouncers and were let into a secret side entrance. Must remember that one. This place, still a meat market, had a higher grade of meat in it. There was some kind of toast going on, so we joined in and I bought us each a “green drink” for the purpose. It tasted like bubblegum. We went up the back and danced with some girls until he scared them all away.

I left then and got a shoarma and coke on the way home, to prevent a hangover. I am writing this as I drink my mandatory 2 litres of water before bed.

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On Saturday night, as normal, I went out to meet new people. I went to the usual places on Marnixstraat and had a few good conversations. At about 00:30 I decided to go and check out Pianobar, a piano bar in the restaurant area near Leidseplein. I was briefly there the week before but I wasn’t paying much attention to the bar.

I arrived and was immediately aware that this was not my demographic. My first impression was that Pianobar is a place for forty-year-old men and young golddiggers to meet. I have a rule that in every place I go I am not allowed to leave until I have had two drinks, so I got my first drink and found a free table to watch the people. I was only halfway through that beer when a man came and sat next to me and started to chat.

It turns out that this man is the owner of the “best” escort service in Amsterdam, a high-class outfit that charges €300 per hour and only employs blonde girls over six feet tall. He boasts that five of his girls are top fashion models, and his clientele includes record labels and wealthy businessmen. Apparently when someone enters a room with one of his girls, that person is the centre of attention. I have never spoken to someone in that industry before (although I was once asked to manage a brothel), and I don’t really know much about it, so I asked him. It was his favourite subject, and we talked about it for some time as he bought the drinks. He had four local tourist magazines in his pocket and he proudly showed me his ads.

The subject of his websites came up, and I was shocked to learn that someone in the adult industry does not have any websites. He was thinking about setting up a private (secure) site, but had no plans for a public website. I spent a while convincing him that he was crazy and outlined a plan to get him up-to-date. I gave him my business card (a Heineken coaster with my contact details) and told him to send me an email if he wanted any help.

I bought the next round, and he told me about a new agency he was starting, called “cowboys and angels”, to cater to female clients as well. Then he dropped the bomb, he wasn’t interested in websites at all. He was trying to recruit me! He wanted me to be a cowboy. I was surprised, to say the least. I had discounted this possibility early in the night. I told him that surely he couldn’t be serious, that I was not exactly escort material, but he did not agree and said that I was what he was looking for.

He spent the next hour or so trying to persuade me, trying to lure me with money and promises that all I had to do was go out to dinner with the ladies, if that was what I wanted. I was drunk, but not enough that my analytical side was turned off. I caught a small discrepancy with something he had said earlier, and I switched modes. It was basically the most stereotypical pimp recruiting story that you hear over and over. He starts out nice and promises that you don’t really have to do much, but then one day you find yourself with cocks in every orifice wondering how you got there. Not a place I want to be.

I got home after the bar shut and called my sister to tell her, certainly one of the more interesting nights I have had whilst here. Although I don’t want to do it, it is certainly flattering to be asked. And, you know, if I am unemployed, I will always have something to fall back on…

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