woman of insight, that there are temptations all around this city and it’s always better to put safety first. Especially men like you who haven’t seen much action lately.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. A man who mopes in his mother’s attic and hardly ever leaves the house—unless you’ve been molesting the furniture it seems pretty clear that the only pleasure you’ve had in that area is that which you give yourself.”
I took the condoms and put them in my pocket, claiming they wouldn’t last me the week. The fact of the matter was that this analysis of my love life was sadly right on the money. Aside from the three weeks of whoring in Dublin after the breakdown, my sexual organs had indeed seen very little action. In my teens and well into my twenties I was so terrified by sex that I didn’t dare seize the few offers I got. Globalization was a term I associated mainly with hep C, herpes, and AIDS. If I threw caution to the wind and slept with a woman it was only after double bagging my gear, which not only made it look bigger, but also like it had been given a shot of Tetraquinine. As a result, my sex life was mostly limited to masturbation—until I met Zola. When our relationship ended my mind was so infused with fantasies about the female body that the risk of Hepatitis didn’t even deter me. A seriously drunk hotel manageress, a housewife with a furry animal, and a woman who at first seemed fairly run-of-the-mill but turned out to have an abundance of chest hair—I tried it all. The hibernation that my genitals had been in the last couple years of our relationship caused me to jump back into the saddle, a starved man with his raised meat sword, ready to poke any old potato. The little luck I’d been graced with in the looks department had run out and I had to rely on a different sort of charm. That meant that I attracted all sorts of freaks, women who were so alternative looking or with such unusual tastes and needs that sex became more of a behavioral experiment than an erotic act, which was probably the reason I gave it up after I moved back into the attic.
“But maybe I should go and see what’s on offer in the Red Light District. I’ve heard that these gigolos can deliver orgasms on cue.”
We emptied our cups and went back out to enjoy the lovely weather. I told her what came to mind as we soaked in the surroundings. Like that the house on our right was built by Jacob van Campen, the master of Dutch baroque. That the Royal palace from 1646, which Van Campen designed with Rome in mind, was an exquisite example of the golden age of architecture and paved the way for Wren’s classicism.
“When your mind goes off, Trooper, it’s like a tornado in Tangiers. One doesn’t expect anything and then out of nowhere you whip up something like this.”
“I just read that in a brochure.”
“Yes, but how you remember all this stuff is remarkable. Someone whose only interest seems to be racecar games shouldn’t know these things. I have no idea where you got this from—well, maybe your father. He’s the only man I’ve known who got infected by STDs before ever having actual sex.”
I didn’t dare ask her if she felt that baroque was my Herpes, but she was right: absorbing and storing facts had always been my strong suit. They just seemed to stick like glue to my cortex and would not budge come what may: strong spirits, arsenic, and eating from Teflon pots and pans had absolutely no effect on my brain. I therefore possessed strange and bizarre knowledge about things I had no interest in or use of. I sucked up my surroundings without wanting to, like a vacuum cleaner with asthma. Each hemisphere of my brain was a capsule of non-cohesive and trivial information, a supermarket of information where wide-eyed people strolled the aisles in bewilderment, at a complete loss over what to do with all the merchandise. Knowledge was wasted on me. I was like a rich brat who receives a 1,000 TB computer for Christmas in order to play computer games while the physicist next door has to make do with an unreliable old laptop.
“I’m actually a conservative,” I said, and was about to explain when a stinging sensation stopped me and I was blinded by tears.
“I’m so sorry, Hermann,” Mother said, wiping away my tears. “That was a bit harsh, I’ll admit that. I hit you.”
“Wwwww?”
“Yes, but it was pure instinct. Since when are you a conservative?”
“No, I just meant that I get this huge computer when . . . Was that why you slapped me? It hurts like fuck.”
“I’m sorry, Trooper, I couldn’t help myself. But you’re saying you’re not really a conservative?”
I didn’t answer but charged into the next bar to ask for some ice for my cheek. Mother followed me and offered to buy a very special drink with the money I’d given her earlier.
“It’s fine,” I said. “But I’d rather you didn’t resort to violence whenever I say something you don’t approve of.”
“I know, Trooper. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
We sat quietly by the bar and waited while the bartender checked his selection of specials. On Mother’s top ten list of world wonders, a “special” drink came in third, after Milan Kundera and the Left Green Party. She defined the level of wonder by the alcohol percentage more than anything else, and the intoxicating effect the special had on the consumer. High acidity was a bonus but the main thing was to have the drink saturated with ethanol. The most common moniker known to the outside world is “cocktail,” but she felt that it didn’t do the drink justice because cocktails often seriously lacked the right amount of alcohol and were just a way to sell people overpriced sugar water.
“That’s why it’s necessary to be in direct contact with the bartender while he’s mixing. It’s nice to feel a bit tipsy sometimes even though you don’t need to become drunk each time you have drink.”
Because of Mother’s familiarity with alcoholic beverages and their consumption she found it ridiculous when I showed signs of intoxication. She had even less of an understanding of being “hung over” or downright sick, as I tended to get from drinking. Anything more than a six-pack of beer could send me into an aimless walkabout in the tundras of self-loathing and regret. Mother was different. In her mind a half pint of sherry and some Spätzle und Sauerkraut were the best remedy for the sad syndrome others liked to refer to as a hangover. To her, eggs were served scrambled with olive oil and cognac. Mackerel was food you ate with a shot of rum. Plaice was a side dish with an egg yolk and pickled onion, but only if there was port in the yolk.
“Well, here we have some schnapps,” she said, throwing back a shot of Bols, which was on the house as the bartender had failed to come up with a special. “This is just bad enough to prevent you from drinking too fast and yet it’s good. God is in the tempo, as they say. I don’t understand how you can go on drinking beer like this. Just like Willy—he’d never have a drink before noon and even then he’d always stick to beer. I suppose its like when I went to Sweden and they always had that Mellanöl. Disgusting drink. I can’t say I’ve been hung over very often, but this was like drinking a hangover, it took forever to get a buzz.”
Mother didn’t really get drunk that often despite her considerably diligent intake of strong spirits. She often became what she referred to as “being pompette,” slightly lightheaded. If the pom-petting advanced to another level it was simply due to weariness from travel, and she did not enjoy going from one place to another so she drank to withstand it. But becoming inebriated, as a rule . . . that was over and done with. That sort of behavior flirted with forgetfulness and evoked a sense of loss and longing, for Germany, for instance. She’d learned this at AA meetings. She’d also learned that it was better to drink moderately every day than to sporadically gulp down gallons of liquor and lose all control. So each time I had a drink with her she smirked.
