amsterdam

The sharp taste of white wine is still on my tongue, at least when I think about Amsterdam.  But not in the way I intially thought it would be.  After walking through Skinny Alley, a narrow passageway lined with prostitutes on both sides who were hidden behind curtains (some exposed by a thin glass window), I thought I would hate Amsterdam with its infamous Red Light District and the smell of marijuana drifting around street corners.  I don't know much, but I know I will remember their faces long after they forget mine, their beautiful eyes lined with thick black and fake eyelashes.  I am sure the Australian guys I'm traveling with will remember the girls' exposed bodies long after they forget their blank and sometimes seductive looks.  Such is the nature of prostitution.

Amsterdam, however, is much more than red lights and legalized sex for money exchanges.  It holds a deep history for those with the time to explore it, like the house Anne Frank was hidden in for two years and a Van Gogh museum that tourists wait several hours in line to see.

On every block, one will also notice the Heineken signs boldly proclaiming the enormous Heineken brewery where I spent much of my afternoon.  My short stay in the city didn't allow for a dip into rich history, but I did emerge with something else.

We crowded around the woman who had just filled all our glasses with the golden Heineken liquid, topped with an inch of pure white foam.  "Women generally don't like beer because they don't know how to drink it," she said, smiling.  "They sip at the foam, not realizing that the foam provides the bitterness of the taste."  The sweetness comes from the honey-like liquid underneath. 

Like life, this brewery contained within it an intricate process of development.  Beer wasn't just something that could be thrown together the night before a party.  I entered the factory intrigued and left with conviction.  It is true that the only cross I saw marked a cathedral known for sailors who used to come repenting after having slept with a bunch of random girls during their travels.  Despite the seemingly secular nature of the city, though, I still wondered: Why do people, why did I, automatically associate drinking with drugs and prostitution?  Maybe the easy answer is that they often go together.  They don't have to.  And the fact that Christians often throw them in the same trash pile makes me so angry.

Beer brings people together.  And yes, indulgence ruins intimacy as friends stumble around trying to find a cab home, looking out for number one, but what happens before that is magic.  I'm not talking about the "buzz" because I don't drink to get drunk (in the states I don't drink at all--I'm not of age).  Rather, there's something inherent in beer that awakens the lover, the dreamer, the fighter in all of us.  For however many gulps it takes people to finish, they can believe that life is good.  For a break of time, the world and its ugliness is forgotten.  Childlike dreams come back in the commeraderie.  Lips are loosened toward honesty and real aspirations.  This is not some philosophic or concrete truth, although perhaps it could be explained with the chemistry of the brain.  I'm not concerned with this or giving it a name--it's part of the mystery of being human.  Alcohol also reminds us of how human we actually are, for our bodies can only take so much before control is lost.

I'm not undermining that some drink just to experience this loss of control: they are lazy, life has left them less than satisfied and they crave the rocking pleasure.  The magic still touches them, though not as long as it touches me as I watch them.  It tastes as sweet as the ginger Dutch pancake I ate around two in the afternoon, and the bittersweet taste of Heineken's reminds me that Amsterdam is more than cheap thrills and hazy morals.  No, the city I just described is what lies between the foam and the carbonated gold.  One cannot leave Amsterdam without tasting the bitterness of women who make a living by selling their bodies.  Where are the fathers of this world?  Do their daughters remember what it was like to be called princess by a man of dignity?  Or were they not fortunate enough to live a life like mine?  I wanted to know their stories, where they've been.  A silent melancholy grabbed onto my shoulders through those lanes.  These women experienced real reduction: men mocked on.  And as my mind dwelt here, the bitter bubbles of beer threatened to overwhelm my tastebuds.

But the gold lay just under, in the sun that shone through the canals and the brewery and the beauty,
and the tensions between the bitter and the sweet, waiting, inviting people to come see.