22nd
Van Gogh
I mentioned this previously, but in London Clarance and I developed the habit of referring to the location of our beds as ‘house’ rather than home.
In London everything seemed to stimulate and impress. In Rome I walk down via palestro, sliding my fingers against a corroded fence as if I live here. Last night we slept inside the airport in Milan, in front of a row of vending machines. We claimed the territory as our own. We sat and listened to music while reading our newspapers amidst the spontaneous recitation of quotes from our time in Amsterdam. We were woken up by the steady strides of pilots and air hostesses. My arm felt numb from sleeping on it, but I was content as I felt at home. Two weeks of rhythmic inconsistency have enlarged the radius of what I call home.
We left Parker in Amsterdam. Who knows where he is now; he didn’t know where he was going next when we left him. With luck we’ll meet him again in Ancona.
Amsterdam is a nutty place. The buildings tilt and the roads curve over canals that are much too numerous. Walking down the street to our hostel, we casually pass by attractive women in bikinis standing in front of luminated red windows, no big deal. At the corner of almost every edifice stands a dirty looking man, rugged and blending in with the brick. And as we pass by these men we hear whispers of “Charlie? Charlie? Cocaine? Cocaine?”.
The hookers seem to desensitize you in Amsterdam. Clarance still gets anxious about walking by them or looking them in the eye. I’ve already mentally placed them into the category of ‘product’, which is terrible, really. Each one has their own individual technique that she uses to tempt you. You walk down the narrow streets and some will pat you on the head or rub your cheek. They recognize your ethnicity and yell ‘shalom’. You see one from across the canal and she yells “If you swim across I’ll fuck you for free!”
I couldn’t bring myself to even consider fucking a prostitute. Neither could Clarance or Sam, probably for the same reasons. In all likelyhood they (the prostitutes) were brought into the sex trade unwillingly at a young age. Sometimes I even feel guilty for looking at them, but we all look anyways.
It gets to a point where they’ve changed the way you look at everything. The three of us as well as two guys named John and James were walking down one of the streets in the red light district when two random girls passed by us. They weren’t prostitutes, just two irish girls who were well dressed. As they passed by, one of them said ‘horny little bastards’. Apparently we had all unknowingly been staring at their tits. I found that pretty funny.
Milan , for the 6 hours that we were there, seemed to be a beautiful place. We took the bus to the Piazza del Duomo, where the Milan Cathedral was. I took photos and Clarance roamed around embarrassed by my touristy disposition. We were about to go into this music festival, called ‘parkfest’ or something, but some italians told us it wasn’t worth it. We got a ride home with a friendly italian girl.
Got to Rome this morning, tired as hell from the plane ride, and the one thing I notice is that I can group the men here into three categories.
1. Mario 2. Liugi 3. Don Corleone
