Category: Travel

It’s a Beautiful Town

We had a great time in New York, mostly because of all our amazing friends there, but the first few days were rough:

I decide to take an afternoon nap while Bryan explores New York. I return to our room, strip down to my skivvies, and climb in bed. Something is amiss. Are the sheets still damp from the wash? I sweep my hands outward to test my theory when I feel something wet soaking through the back of my underwear. I leap up in a panic and see a giant wet spot on the bed just before I tear my underwear off and run to the shower. There I scrub until my skin is gone.

A few hours later, we are in a cab. I am admiring the city lights when I smell vomit. “Bryan,” I say. “I smell vomit.” He sniffs. “I don’t,” he says. I sniff again. “Yeah, it’s pretty distinct. Maybe it’s on my side,” I say. This is when I realize that the vomit is on my seatbelt. The one I’m wearing.

The next morning we are walking along Central Park near the hansome cabs. There are dozens of horses, and all of them are shitting and pissing in the street or in canvas collection tarps attached to their haunches. From the smell, I’d say they’ve been doing this for years, perhaps centuries. The stench of asphalt-baked piss, ammonia, and rotting horse dung is so overpowering that I actually begin to gag in the street. I’m stumbling forward, trying to outpace the stench while doubled over, heaving.

Then we went for lunch.

Muppets XXX

A few days into our Argentina trip, we have dinner at Te Matar Ramirez, a restaurant our guidebook describes as “sensual.” The all-red interior and French slow jams suggest a swanky gay club, but for the copious murals of masturbating women. (Closeted swanky gay club?)

We find our table and order champagne, which arrives with dubious pink straws in the flutes. We remove the straws and are about to toast when Bryan notices the sperm-shaped saltshaker. He picks it up and bumps it repeatedly against the round butter dish. This is the TGI Friday’s of sensuality.

The menu has more photos of women masturbating (methinks you doth protest too much, boys), along with some alarming menu descriptions. Bryan asks whether I would prefer to start with the “I smolder with the mist of your most intimate folds” clams, or the “You watch in ecstasy, I pour out and you slowly sip me” Camembert and pastrami. We decide to skip the appetizers.

There’s a stage in front where the pornographic puppet show is set to begin. “There’s a pornographic puppet show?” I ask Bryan. He nods. I pick up the saltshaker and begin to bump it against my head.

Four actors dressed in black take the stage and begin the show. It is plushly explicit, and though my sexual-pun Spanish is somewhat rusty, the basic plots aren’t tough to follow. A a French maid services a bald puppet; two puppet schoolgirls dally together in googly-eyed rhapsody.

Bryan and I are still preoccupied with the menu descriptions. Our waitress arrives, and I order the “Thrusting my desire deep into the temple of your body” salmon. Bryan has the “She played in me with her lascivious fingers, I caressed myself” grouper. Appetites curbed.

Meanwhile, the puppet masters are really getting into the hot puppet action. My eyes water in embarrassment for them as they moan, stretch their faces into expressions of orgasmic ecstasy, and move rhythmically to the action onstage.

As the actors gyrate in the background, Wonder Woman puppet straddles Buff Guy puppet, and they perform various superhuman acrobatic feats together. I wait patiently for the “Golden Lasso” scene, which never materializes. Wonder Woman without bondage? What’s the story, people? It’s like peanut butter without jelly, Anne Margaret without her tights, Julianne Moore as a blonde.

I suggest that we would enjoy the evening much more if we skipped the cocktails and ordered an entire bottle of champagne each. Perhaps they’d bring the bottles with giant novelty penis straws? Bryan declines on the grounds that it would take an eternity to drink them, and they would almost certainly come with giant novelty penis straws.

We push our food around on our plates, pay the bill, and wait for intermission so we can run for the door. Once outside, we gaze at each other, dumbfounded.

“I-am-so-hot-right-now,” I say. “Do-me-right-here-on-the-street.” We pretend to maul each other for a few seconds, then Bryan suggests that we go somewhere for dessert. Now this is a man who knows how to get laid.

I’m kidding! About the brie.


Bird Sticker

Originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

A few firsts I experienced in Amsterdam:

Small bird stickers on the huge train station windows keep birds from smacking into them.
Raw sausages
Lights go from red to yellow to green.
Bitterballen, a bar snack that tastes like deep-fried gravy with bits of meat.
Soap dispensers that sprayed soap in a fine mist.
Soft and salty licorice.
Brie with a big hole in the middle of the wheel, making for easy slicing.
Sex with a prostitute. (Okay, three prostitutes.)

That’s Entertinment

Between jet lag and three days of 24-hour sun in Iceland, we roll out of bed on our first day in Amsterdam at around 1:30 p.m.

This same afternoon Bryan needs to look at the theater where Adaptive Path is holding its workshop, so we set out together. We are groggy, hungry, cranky, and mildly disoriented. It’s times like this when Bryan decides to be wrong about everything.

We bicker all the way to our destination, where I decide to leave him to his work and have breakfast without him, as I have obviously married an insane person and need some time alone to think about what Jennifer Connolly would do in my situation.

I mope my way over to a quiet table at a restaurant situated on a cobblestone square. I order, open my magazine, and settle in to nurse my wounds over a long, peaceful article about scandal in the world of ornithology.

At just this moment, a guitar player stops in front of me. He begins to strum. I press my lips until they are perfectly horizontal with distaste. He strums louder. I glower at him from under my eyebrows and furrow my forehead. He moves a few steps closer.

He is strumming a Beatles tune. Such a familiar one that it’s difficult to concentrate over the noise. I hold my magazine in front of my face and begin to count backwards from ten.

Then, a singing midget strolls from the square to join him.

You heard me.

This, of course, is a personal insult from the universe delivered with a small white card on which my name is inscribed. It is the perfect storm of busking. As the little person launches into her version of “Crazy Little thing Called Love,” I slouch deeper into my chair and begin to whimper.

By contrast, the couple at the next table gives out a whoop and claps in time, bouncing in their chairs. What is this crazy thing, they wonder? This crazy little thing called love? As it turns out, my psychic powers are not strong enough to cause them to spontaneously combust.

As each song ends, I will it to be the last. Instead, the midget waxes philosophical about love, smoothly transitioning into the next ditty. “Ladies and gentleman, while it’s true that money can’t buy me love, it’s something each and every one of us needs. After all, without love where would we be now?”

My breakfast finally arrives, and I fume over my eggs, as they croon two more Beatles songs, “Eternal Flame,” and several Doobie Brothers classics.

At each new song, the couple next to me whoops anew. They have begun to sing along. I contemplate throwing my knife at them, and decide it would be too risky. I contemplate throwing my fork at them. Finally, things seem to be wrapping up.

“And we thank you, ladies and gentlemen for ‘listenin’ to the music,’ and we ask you, isn’t it a ‘wonderful world’?”

Midway through the song, just as you can hear Louis Armstrong moaning softly from his grave, Bryan arrives. Comforting, sweet, mobile Bryan. “Wow,” he says. “You lucked out.” I sigh heavily, drop my head to his shoulder, and reach for the bill.

Amsterdam Stroll

A couple rides by on their bicycles, his hand on her back, her hand clasping his. At first we think he’s helping her up a small hill, but they continue riding that way for blocks and blocks, holding hands until they’re out of sight.

Squandered Opportunity

When you picture traveling to Europe, do you imagine daydreaming at a small cafe over cappuccinos, cigarettes, and a journal thick with creamy blank pages? Yeah, me too.

Our whole trip was like that. Except we don’t smoke. Californians are annoying that way.

Blue Lagoon


Blue Lagoon

Originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

We just left Iceland, home of crystalline light, inexplicably tasty licorice, and the dreamlike Blue Lagoon. On the day we visited, the water was white-blue and iridescent, like the inside of an abalone shell. It’s warmer than a bathtub, and the steam is a dense fog between you and the people around you.

The salty water makes it easy to float on your back and feel the cool air on your face. It’s so relaxing that you have the urge to drool. Bryan has flying dreams, but I have swimming dreams. Floating there was like living in that perfect hour just before waking, when your brain is set to Happy and you have time to sleep in.

Nice to meet you.

Bryan and I used to be broke. Broke as in, “I should get a job at a restaurant so I can eat this month.” Traveling is important to both of us, and now that we have enough money for food, we’ve made it a priority. So, though we just returned from Argentina, Bryan is giong to Holland for work, and I’m going with him. On the way, we’re having a stopover in Iceland.

So, what I’m saying is, want to get a beer? We’ll be in Reykjavik next weekend (June 2-4), and Amsterdam until June 10. And then it’s possible we won’t ever be back again. What should we see, where should we go, who the hell are you?