Club Korsakoff, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Jul 2005)

Urban pathways become so familiar so quickly, and I am threading my way along canals and down alleys through my favorite neighborhood in picturesque Amsterdam, the Jordaan. I’ve whiled away many an afternoon meandering through the junk shops and cafes of this district, scurrying from sudden showers and basking in alternate sunlight, but tonight my mission is different. I’m going out, to be social and around people, not going out to be out in the city but in my own head. Club Korsakoff, I was here last week and I haven’t been going out much really, have been in my own head more than out of it but I am winding down my little sabbatical here, my brief meditation on writing, I am frankly sick of the sound of my own voice echoing in my head and pouring onto my computer telling me stories about myself, in some ways I feel like I’ve been talking nonstop for three weeks except mostly it doesn’t get outside of the closed loop of my mind and the laptop, and I would like to hear someone else’s stories for a change or at least make a new one.

Along the canal and the walkway is narrow, I am piloting a monster of a bicycle alongside the rilling yet doubtlessly filthy water. I haven’t ridden the bike very much, trusting my feet more in the patchworked web of pedestrian, bicycle, tram, and car traffic and the bikes are by far the most terrifying, the Dutch are masters of pedal-powered locomotion and traffic rules are suggestions only, and weak ones at that. There are fewer people out tonight though, and it is about time I added my tributary to the delta of bikes flowing concurrent with the canals. I find the size of this one almost comforting, a heavyweight hunk of metal that is slow to start but once rolling near unstoppable, something that maybe shouldn’t be comforting but is, I like the massiness of it. Right down the last narrow cobblestoned corridor, and I reel to a halt and lock up my banana-colored bike, adjust my skirt and walk through the battered door painted flat black.

Inside I’m immediately engulfed in a cloud of chemical fog and a textured wall of sound, a sensory shock after the quiet of the night outside. I nod to the bouncer with the uncertain smile of one who can’t respond in Dutch if he chooses to question me, I wouldn’t even be able to understand the question. He nods back slightly, stoic, and I’ve passed the gatekeeper and push into the wall of hazy smoke to the bar. It’s not particularly crowded, and that’s a relief, there is room to move and breathe, if you can pretend the thick combination of artificial fog and cigarette smoke is beneficial to breathe. I give my uncertain smile to the bartender, he asks me something and I just point to one of the taps, I don’t even know what it is but with the twin barriers of language and noise I am just going to have to trust him. He turns out to be trustworthy, and I turn and lean my back gently against the bar rail, almost cuddling my drink, a prop to hide behind if necessary, and look around for the first time, I find I prefer to give everyone else a chance to ‘see’ me first if that’s what they want to do before I turn my attention to the constantly mutating social constellation, that way nobody has to get busted checking someone out, giving them the initial two second evaluation.

They are here, the gaggle of younger club kids I met last week, they’ve seen me and they are so happy to see me again, their exotic foreign friend, although I can’t imagine I’m that exotic I’m only an American. They are all younger than me, late teens or twenty-young, and it’s ridiculous probably but I do feel older, wiser, more experienced and cosmopolitan, all this despite my constant self-awareness as really nothing more than a small town girl from rural North Carolina who has somehow managed to stumble her way across the ocean to get here.

We greet each other with exaggerated joy, overdone hugs and a fake kiss on the cheek as if we think for a moment that we’re French and can get away with that without being pretentious. We talk, and laugh, and giggle, half the conversation lost in a swirl of sound and abrupt entrances and exits from the conversation as people hit the dance floor and then return, sweaty and smiling, it doesn’t actually matter if we can understand each other that’s not the point really. I slide into back into my social persona, a bit rusty since I haven’t been doing this regularly for a while, it’s a face that started to fit all too well when I was being aggressively outgoing in Seattle every night of the week. It’s a frivolous place, and it is appropriate to be frivolous people here, and I am smiling and laughing easily, my face mobile and expressive with ironic amusement, every gesture and expression slightly outsized to push through the sound and the dimness and let’s not forget the tequila, there is round after round of tequila and I participate in the first one but then try to demur, the impeccably gothed out girl who seems to be the social alpha won’t let me, she insists, I explain that I rode my bike here this time and I will have to get it back, and what she doesn’t understand is that if I keep drinking like this I will ride it straight into the canal, “We will pull you out,” she laughs back at me, we are friends at least for tonight, for tonight I have been fully embraced as part of their community, a mascot almost.

I didn’t mean to stay this long, but somehow the night has slid away and it is 4am and the music is fading out and the lights are coming up, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, and we spill out of the battered black door and scatter to unlock our bikes. I am privately planning to walk this bike home, I go to say goodbye but it’s not time for goodbyes yet this night isn’t over quite yet, there’s a bakery a few blocks away that will open at 5am and I am dragooned into the joining the cavalcade, I say dragooned but it’s not as if I’m resisting too much I don’t really want to go home yet either if we can keep this groove going a little longer.

I am walking my bike and they are all walking theirs as well, a silent concession to the drunk American gal, over the next few blocks different members of this group of five or so people drop back to talk with me, a rotation almost, and now here we are at the bakery but it’s not open yet, it’s not 5 am quite yet so we drop our bikes or lean them against the wall, not bothering to lock them up we’re the only people out here anyway. We sit down on the sidewalk and never mind the elaborate club outfits, who cares it’s the end of the night and the judgment is over. I lean over and rest my head on Yuri’s shoulder, the goth girl strokes my hair and we are still chatting but slowly, lazily, energy oozing into this odd cuddle puddle on a Dutch sidewalk in the Jordaan.

The light comes on inside and the ovens are firing up, we rouse ourselves and knock on the window, not yet, they need a few minutes to get the croissants going. I don’t stand up yet, Thomas is taking point on this transaction and I am going to lounge here on the sidewalk until my fresh croissant magically appears. It doesn’t take too long, and maybe time is elastic too, I’m not in a hurry or waiting for anything, this night has already been lovely beyond my expectations and anything further is a bonus, extra credit, and there is a warm, flaky, perfect pastry in my hands, butter still moist in the dough as the sun starts struggling up in the east.