I Amsterdam by Natalie Robinson

      Bill Reynolds CC




I Amsterdam


Piper has my headphones. I gave mine to them because theirs were broken and then I did not have any. I took some from a shop in the airport, put them brazenly in my bag. I’ve already paid, I told myself. I’ve already given everything up to Piper and honestly I need some of it back. I don’t know if this means I’m losing my mind or reclaiming it. I would like to worry less.
    On the plane I took photographs above the clouds as the sky moved through blue to mauve, to black. I would send these pictures to friends to convince them: I’m getting on with my life. I felt unafraid of flying and observed that this was because I did not care if I lived or died. In a way, I thought, I am already dead. 

I stayed with my friend Ana and her partner Farhad; their apartment was in what Ana calls the ‘onion rings’ of the canals, on a street lined with trees that were full of green parrots.
      I spent the first day talking about how to disappear. That’s not how I understood myself at first but at some point Ana described what I was doing like this: you are talking a lot about how to disappear. In an art exhibit that withheld its own meaning, or was just in Dutch, I stepped behind a curtain and hoped for a second that I might.
     There was a free short story in a brown paper envelope at the gallery exit. The story was titled ‘Vuur’, which translates to ‘Fire.’ I took one. It started with the sentence: the image haunted her. I put it back in the envelope. 
      Later, sat at Ana’s dining room table, we planned out our exit from society. We would take cash, throw our phones away, get on a train, a boat, become untraceable. We could start right here, get easily to Rome, hitchhike from there down the boot of Italy to the tip of Sicily, get on the sea, move south from Algeria. I would dye my hair dark, wear different clothes, choose another name. When I brought this up again the next day, Ana said: I’m not interested in that anymore. 
     I drank port even though I know I shouldn’t, cannot. I threw up all over their futon. The morning after, I dragged myself through the shame-shadowed hangover I know so well. I smoked a cigarette on the balcony and my legs gave out beneath me. I got back into bed. I text my mum in a moment of despair and said more than I wanted to and cried a bit in Ana’s arms. I said I was heartbroken and that it felt like grief. This might have seemed extreme, but it was true. 
      I messaged Piper: ‘Stop it.’ 

At the Science Museum, I ate fries with mayonnaise and watched Chinese children stand in a freezing cold fountain. Ana was outraged at the parents and confused by the children: How can they let them stand in the water like that? Do these kids not feel the freezing cold?! I didn’t know. 
     I’d been certain that what Piper and I had was real. That although we didn’t say the words, I love you was this felt thing: it was this visceral breathtaking gutpunch, this actual soul connection. It was being totally present in my own life; it was bending and stretching time to suit us; it was a delicious kind of fate. That was the hill I had died on. How could I have misread this all so badly?
      I watched a man walking, wearing a protest sign like a tabard. He had written with green Sharpie in English: You are killing us and you are lying. Ana said: that’s very unspecific. I thought: well, at least it’s reusable. 

I started reading a book I had brought with me. It was about cuckholding, being a ‘cuck’, a ‘beta’ and I over-identified with the main character. He seeks power over his powerlessness; he speaks eloquently about it and also gets to the point. He pins down some of my own urgency; he says: “rescue me from the puzzle of the dance.” 1
                                                              
1 Darryl by Jackie Ess (2021)

      I realised I don’t have the energy anymore to show up and entertain people. I sat in silence for an evening, turning pages. I worried that if I stopped trying most of my relationships would just cease to exist. Ana went to bed. 

I watched Farhad and his Mexican friend ‘Z’ work all day on a project proposal, something about science and the pandemic. Ana made pancakes with hand-whipped cream and later, arranged a cheeseboard, Spanish meats, calamari. Then there was Persian pasta - spaghetti boiled and also steamed and always called ‘macaroni’, regardless of the shape.   
     Z held up his calamari and told me that the octopus has disrupted scientific consensus on what constitutes intelligence. Rather than being a social animal the octopus has become, over time, its own self-regulated little system. It has independently thinking tentacles, whatever that means. It plans ahead, he said, carries a little coconut on long journeys to hide from predators. Or more likely, I thought, to get some alone time. This was useful to me because now I can imagine I have my own coconut. Walking with Ana, for example, but I’m in my coconut. I said: calamari is actually squid. 
      I took a long shower with the door open with the curtains to the adjoining bedroom open, willing somebody to watch. 

I was unsure if Ana now hated me for ruining the futon. I watched her make coffee in the morning on their barista-style machine. It was sunny and light filled the rooms. I said pointless things about the day and offered desperate compliments: so bright in here!! So lovely. She replied, affirmative but short. I wondered if I felt more familiar with Darryl from my book. 
     I considered staying in Amsterdam forever. I would like to sit by these expensive long windows, drinking coffee and looking out at the rain. 

We took the Metro a couple of stops to collect Ana’s car from a parking garage. It had sat there undriven for two months. It took a while to find because she had forgotten where she’d left it. We walked up and down and I lost hope and then we found it. It was her cousin’s car, borrowed and old, jarring with her outfit and the rest of her life as I saw it. We planned to drive out to the wide flat beach in Haarlem. An overpowering smell of damp and decay hit me when I opened the passenger-side door. The car was full of mould, white blotches ruining the seats.
      We took the train instead. Stood on the platform I dropped my ticket; the wind blew it onto the tracks. I looked down at it. 
     A siren sounded, loud. Ana told me it could be heard through the whole city - weekly or maybe it was monthly. I half-joked that it was signalling a different emergency, another apocalypse. She said no, it was just in remembrance, or a test. 
      In Haarlem, we went through the station barriers pressed together, using Ana’s ticket. An alarm went off and I imagined it heard by the whole town. 
      We walked a long stretch of the beach, the wind blowing at our backs. We walked up and into a national park that was made from land reclaimed from the sea. Miles of shell-scattered dunes. The October sun made the landscape muted. We walked through an RV park, full of cars and trailers but absent of people, like it had been abandoned in a hurry. I was fascinated by the aesthetic and could have stayed longer, but Ana was unbothered, or annoyed with me or sad or just wanted to be back on a trail. I really could not tell. 
     After a while, Ana told me a story about staying with travelling communities in the mountains in Iran, about women making butter from milk so slowly, about wolves coming at night, about men firing guns into the air. 
   I watched blonde twins play on a climbing frame at a restaurant in the middle of the park. I ordered a toasted sandwich called ‘Portobello’, with mushrooms and ‘rode ui’ which I learned was Dutch for ‘red onion.’ I tried to eat consciously, keeping pace with Ana. 
    We walked 5km back into the old town. Somewhere on this walk, I decided that I have to close the door to my feelings for Piper. I had reached that point. But I have said that before. I said it in Auckland, in New York, in Dijon. I have said it and said it. 

Ana said: you have to see the red-light district! Back in the city, behind a large church we saw women in the gaps made by red velvet curtains. I found it hard to look and I felt distressed. I didn’t know any more if we should protest or fight for the right for their bodies for sale, or just keep out of it. I felt dizzy with the politics and with the who am I to tell you you’re contained. Mostly people were looking for the novelty. They took photographs in front of the women: selfies. I watched a man exchange words at the door and enter; I imagined his trousers down around his ankles, not even all the way off. I met one woman’s eyes and she smiled with them. Ana pointed to the floor: this is my favourite sculpture in the city, she laughed: it’s a single breast. 
     We went into the church. It’s €10 in, said the man behind the desk. No! I surprised myself, more aggressive than I’d intended. I tempered my tone: but what if we just want a quiet space? What if we wanted to pray? €10, he said again.

Back at the apartment, we watched a show about poison in kitchenware, in ski coats, in coffee cups, in everything. 
     We watched the rolling news. Everywhere everyone was dying, especially people who weren’t vaccinated. The news seemed to say: look how stupid these people are. Lying and dead. 
     The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded. Farhad told us this when he returned from work at the university. The prize was going to scientists who had found out how we experience ‘touch’ in our nervous system. Farhad told us about the picture he had seen with the announcement. That it was of two people hugging, that it was cute. I Googled and saw two men, side by side, not touching.
     We watched a documentary about Britney Spears. We talked about her mental health, her unfreedoms. I found there was not much to say that had not been said before. Farhad said: Britney shaped our generation. I lost my internet connection and waved my phone in the air. I thought, maybe Piper has messaged and I haven’t received it. 
      I watched Ana cut the stems on her three-day-old lilies, remove some of the wilted flowers. She watered them and hit the books on the shelf, cursed. Farhad answered a work call. Ana told me that normally, the lilies will last for over a week. I never buy them, I replied, because they are toxic for cats. I do not have a cat. What is wrong with me? 

I woke up late or woke up and avoided facing the day for some time. When I walked into the living room, I said self-effacingly to Farhad: good afternoon. He shouted: Is it afternoon already?! His project deadline loomed. It was 11.37. Ana was working from home. She pointed to her AirPods and said: I’m in a meeting. 
     I walked to the Museuemplein because I felt that I was expected to do something touristy and also to leave the apartment. If nobody was looking I would have read on the sofa all day, under covers. Sometimes it’s good to have witnesses to your life. 
     I took myself to Moco - Amsterdam’s Museum of Contemporary Art, of street art, of mainly Bansky. There was an installation of lights and mirrors like something from a funfair or bad dream. I took a picture of myself in amongst the colours and posted it on my Instagram. I wrote: digital disorientation. 
      I walked through the gallery too quickly for the price I’d paid for the ticket. I looped around again and sent some pictures to a friend: I’m in an art museum. 
      I stood for a long time in front of this text: Sex: if you want it badly that’s how you’ll get it. I read the information card to the left: it told me I wasn’t entitled to another person just because I wanted them. I thought about Piper and wondered if it was still mutual, if really it ever had been. 
     In the gift shop I slipped a pen into my pocket. On the side of it in yellow print were the words: take the risk or lose the chance. I felt calm and justified and ironic. 
     In the gardens it was raining hard. I stopped for a moment by a sculpture of a small boy eating a rabbit. The caption read: did you think this was a toy? I wondered if it meant the boy or the rabbit or both. Rabbit, probably. I supposed I did and then I didn’t. It was creepy but it was intended to be and so then it lost its impact: it had tried too hard. Maybe that was the point. It was difficult to tell what was art. I took a picture of a small sign that said: ‘do not touch.’

I found a cafe with robust umbrellas and outdoor seating. I ordered an Americano. It arrived with a complimentary Biscoff biscuit and a small plastic creamer. 
     I thought about the last time I was in Amsterdam, almost two years ago. I was applying for jobs here, was ready to relocate, or was pretending to be. My trip was a reconnaissance mission, or I was pretending it was: where to live? Where to brunch? I imagined otherwise for a weekend. I remembered smoking half a joint in a coffeeshop full of men and trying hard to navigate back to my Airbnb. When I got there, I lay on the bed with the great world spinning around me until I’d finally passed out. I was trying to get over Piper. How many trips like this will it take? 
     The rain banged down around me as if the whole fucking sky was falling. I wasn’t dressed appropriately. I was wearing an oversized hoodie over black leggings and appeared to have spilled something down the front of me. I thought of my friend Rachel’s anecdote about a colleague who’d suffered a psychotic break. How it started. She said: he turned up at work with stuff spilled all down his clothes. 

I had hoped these few days away would change something profoundly for me. That on return I’d feel refreshed, have renewed perspective. That this would feel like a weight lifted, like clouds parted etc. That the space Piper takes up in my psyche would shrink a little at least. But instead it just allowed me to see this more clearly: the mess behind me and ahead of me still. At what point does your personality become a disorder?

I walked back to Ana’s, thought I could find my way without Maps; I imagined a trail of breadcrumbs. I missed her street, walked too far and had to double back, used the pin-drop after all. Despite the rain, I stopped and stood and listened to the green parrots. I couldn’t see them but they were loud. Ana had told me how she had heard that they shouldn’t really be here, had escaped captivity somehow, a long time ago. I had heard a similar story about parrots in San Francisco. Parrots prone to escape-artistry. Living in exile, camouflaged amidst parrot-coloured leaves. 

Ana was in another meeting. I lay down on the sofa and tried to read the rest of the short story. I read it in fragments entered into Google Translate. I skipped most of the middle. It ended with the sentence: inside stops disappearing. What did that mean? I didn’t totally understand. It read like a cheap fortune. Maybe that was the point. 

On the Metro on my way to the airport I watched my reflection flash in and out of focus. I thought: I have been trying to appear to myself in the world. They say: wherever you go, there you are. But this ‘they’ are nobody in particular, this ‘wherever’ is nowhere specific and this ‘you’ is free-floating, unreal. Is it possible to step outside of cliché by living authentically? I want to reassociate with the here and now.  
      At Amsterdam Zuid I bought a Kitkat and a Coke with my remaining money. The man at the kiosk laughed and said something I heard as: sugarproof! I smiled back and he explained to me how to recycle my bottle. He explained this to me so sincerely. 

On the plane I felt ambivalent as I watched the oxygen mask drop in demonstration. I thought: show me the person who survived because they paid attention to the safety spiel. 

I walked up and down the parking lot, pressing my key fob, listening for the unlock, looking for the orange flare. I lost hope and then I found it. I turned the engine on, listened to it purr. 
      I drove into a city lit up red: the buildings lining the Liffey, the Samuel Beckett Bridge, red reflecting off the water. For what, I wondered. For stop it. For I love you. I Googled: it was for Fire Safety Week. Fire / Vuur. 
     In my post-box was a postcard from Rachel. It was a snowy scene despite her holiday being in the sun. She had written: no picture-taking is allowed here so you might have to visit yourself. I laughed and felt something like relief flood my senses, or perhaps it was friendship.
      I opened the door to my apartment, holding my phone to light the space in front of me. I stepped into the room. 


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Natalie Robinson is a writer currently based by the sea in Dublin, Ireland. You can read more of her work on Instagram @natalierobinsonpoetry