Taking a sauna while smoking a joint. Must be in Amsterdam.
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
7:10 a.m. Tuesday, February 1, 2005
We checked out of the Hotel Winston at 11:00 a.m., took the trolley to Central Station in order to catch our 12:56 train to Paris. The day, as all our days have been, was cold, overcast, and humid with occasional showers and even rarer patches of sun. John was almost finished with The Da Vinci Code. In the train station bookstore, he purchased The Da Vinci Code Decoded. I purchased the latest essay collection by David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I read the first essay. So far, not as brilliant as his work in Me Talk Pretty One Day.
We were booked in first class, When we departed Amsterdam we had the car practically to ourselves. By the time we reached Paris, almost every seat was filled.
When the stewardess came by to check our tickets against our passports, she found a problem with John’s. He was booked as a senior citizen but he would not be 60 for another 2 days. She was unbending. “Two days—it could be one day. It does not matter.” John, of course, was pissed, was muttering under his breath periodically for the rest of the trip. “Happy un-birthday,” I quipped.
We arrived in Paris, at the Gare du Nord train station, at 5:05 p.m., the height of rush hour. We were both tired… train lagged. We were studying one of the wall maps, trying to figure out where we were vs where we needed to go. Also, we were trying to decide whether we should take a cab or buy a 3-day pass & brave the local mass transit. A swarthy young man, in his early 30’s, saw our plight and took us under his wing. He told us to take Line 5 one stop to Gar de l’Est, transfer to Line 7, and go two stops to Cadet (the stop our travel agent, Roberta, had informed us was nearest to our hotel). He then walked briskly across the station floor, beckoning us to follow—a problem for both J. & I—John following some distance behind, calling, “Where are you going?” I turned back occasionally, shrugging. We found the ticket window, purchased our 3-day Metro passes. As we staggered back toward the entrance to Line 5, our self-appointed guide re-appeared, gave us one last once-over, and declared us good to go.
I was paranoid about Parisians. One hears so much about how rude they are. In this case, our first encounter was quite positive. The young man made our negotiation of the Gare du Nord so much easier.
We then had to brave several flights of stairs, some up, mostly down, and what a down it was—I was carrying two 40-lb cases. Both were on rollers but that was no help on the steep, narrow, crowded stairways. As usual, each downward step caused shooting pains up my ankles. Then there was the added pressure of trying to keep out of way of other, more experienced, more hurried commuters.
The trip went quickly. Each time we reached a platform, our train was already waiting for us, and took off soon after our entry. We disembarked at the Cadet station at 6:00 p.m. I asked directions at a nearby news kiosk. I was told some French variant of “two,” and was pointed down the street we were already on. We found our hotel soon after & checked in by 6:30 p.m.
We are only going to be in Paris for two days. As we checked into the hotel, we booked a bus tour of Paris, leaving from the hotel at 8:30 a.m. We napped, woke almost simultaneously at 8:30 p.m., went out to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant, complete with a brusque, impatient French waiter. On the way back, we stopped at a local market, got some booze, some fruit & some water.
I’ve had difficulty sleeping the last 2 nights. The beds in Paris sucked, although they were probably better than those in Amsterdam. It’s reminiscent of the hotel in Rome we stayed at back in ’03—a small floorplan with only one tiny elevator & one narrow staircase. One can only imagine what a bottleneck that would be during the height of the season. It was made even worse by the elevators letting out between floors. In the lobby, one had to descend a half flight to the elevator. From then on it was 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, etc. We had the choice of 2/3 or 3/4—I liked 2/3, as it allowed us to climb (I get shooting pains on any descent), John preferred 3/4 (he finds climbing more painful).
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
10:05 a.m. Monday, January 31, 2005
John is downstairs eating breakfast.
We went to “Getto” last night, to have the “bear” dinner. This turned out to be “Bearcelona Beef Stew.” We ate in the same back room as Thursday night. I was somewhat disappointed not to see very many other bears eating with us. Mostly young pretty straight people. Yawn.
The main concession to “Bearness” was a slide show, projected on the wall opposite me, of photos of naked bearded hairy men, frequently displaying hard ons. Nobody batted an eyelash, or expressed any sort of interest. I was surprised by my own reaction to the slideshow; It wasn’t, “At last… I’ve found my home!,” but “Jeez, do I have to look at this shit? I’m trying to eat.” It occurred to me, the problem with Amsterdam and its sex trade/sexual permissiveness is that Sex has turned into one more consumer item. Instead of “Big Mac,” it’s “MacBlow Job.” Sex is fitted into a tidy, mass produceable package: convenient, uniform, interchangeable, cheap and soulless.
Speaking of which, we visited the Sex Museum yesterday afternoon; three stories of pornography from throughout history and around the world. There was a room full of cheesy black & white snapshots and posed photos from the invention of the camera to the present day—explicit shots of men & women fucking. There was a documentary on a tape loop about the history of stag films. Gay erotica was also represented, including a wall display of Tom of Finland original drawings practically thumb tacked to the wall without any covering. Without repression, this material becomes utterly boring. It seems to need repression to have any charge. Or, at least, some mystery. It amazes me that I’m thinking this, since promoting sexual freedom is my main cause in life.
That’s the problem with the Dark Rooms… it’s too easy. That’s also why I’ve never enjoyed bath houses here in the USA. Maybe “easy” is the wrong word. If it’s so easy, why aren’t I getting laid? It’s that I don’t want to. I feel perversely unerotic, within this bombardment of commercialized erotica. I need conversation with my sex. I need to get to know the other guy, at least a little bit, and feel like they know me, just a little.
I finished Bangkok 8 this morning. I’m reminded of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund fundraising cruise back in ’01, when my reading material for the trip was the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both books are strangely appropriate to their journeys—Rebecca was all about trying to read other people’s minds and change oneself to meet their inaccurately projected wishes. Bangkok 8 is a murder mystery set in the Thai sex/drug trade, a world of moral ambiguity and shifting paradigms. Actually it gives me an idea for how to write a “road” novel—there’s the novel itself, and whatever book(s) the protagonist is reading during the story. Its’ probably been done, though.
Once again, John and I crashed after dinner. I woke up around 10:00 p.m., dressed, drank the second Cannabia and went out, leaving John to watch TV, sleep, or whatever. First, I went to the Argosy, to check out whatever “Bear” action was happening. I was sort of hoping I’d run into BF&H and his two skinny skinhead pals. No such luck.
Then I went to The Cockring, to check out the absinthe thing—I had two shots, €6 each. It tasted like licorish, but had no particular effect. John later pointed out that, back in the old days, they’d kill half a bottle in a sitting.
In the basement dance floor, a male stripper went through his paces, to the appreciation of the packed room. He was Slavic, shaved head, masculine in spite of his shaved and oiled body. On the floor, immediately in front of the stage, a stoned young man danced lazily, facing the audience, seemingly unaware of the performance behind him. At one point, the stripper, in comic annoyance, rested his large semi on top of the other man’s head. The stoner continued to blissfully dance, oblivious to the object of desire laying atop his scalp.
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
6:40 a.m. Thursday, January 27, 2004
The Hotel Winston is very interesting. It was recommended to us by Han Verhooven, based on our criteria that it be near Mister B’s and inexpensive. It’s very artistic—the Hotel version of one of those 70’s psuedo-beatnik coffee shops. Each room had been given to a different artist to design. Ours has four single beds, one being a bunk bed. There is no phone in the room and only one overhead light, over the bed that I claimed. (There’s only one public phone in the hotel, a coin-op pay phone next to the elevators, off the lobby.) There’s a tiny wall-mounted TV in the corner nearest to John’s bed, and no remote for it. The bathroom has no towel rack, nor much of a ledge over the sink to lay out one’s toiletries. I wonder how they expect people to manage it. Yesterday afternoon, after we checked in, I was profoundly miserable. I asked John if he thought we could exchange rooms. He said it was a bit late for that; we’d already unpacked, messed the sheets (the beds have only one cover, a thick pad inside a large white slipcover, not much bigger that the bed itself. Luckily the room’s temperature is just about perfect for my tastes—not too hot, just slightly cool.).
The hotel serves continental breakfast between 8 and 10 am, I think (but am not sure). There’s a bar/lounge/coffee shop in the lobby, behind the concierge’s desk.
Each floor seems to have a hand-painted (accompanied with a small card naming the artist) Twix candy bar dispensing machine. I guess someone here really likes Twix candy bars.
I wonder how old the candy bars are. I wonder if the machines actually work.
After we checked in, we went to Mister B’s, arriving at about 4:00 p.m.. Han Verhooven came down and greeted us. He said we would have to take the artwork to the frame shop, Exelijst. He called his contact there, (another) Han, asking whether the shop needed the artwork that evening or could wait until today. Today was fine. Han said I should come by Mister B’s today around 10:00 a.m. with the artwork, and we’d figure out how best to take it to Exelijst: tram, taxi, or a friend’s station wagon. We had the choice of leaving the artwork at Mister B’s or taking it back to our hotel. We decided on the latter, since the former would have meant dragging it up a narrow, steep circular staircase to one of the upper floors.
Mister B’s occupies all three floors of an ancient brick building. The bottom floor is the shop/gallery; the upper two are devoted to offices. The retail part is actually about 2 stories high, very tall ceilings.
About 10 feet from the entrance, there is a steep 4-foot-tall broad oak staircase that leads to the main part of the shop, where the clothing is. There’s another staircase on the left, just past the register, descending 4 or 5 feet to a small dungeon where all the sex toys are kept. All the magazines, porn videos and greeting cards are kept on the street level section at the front of the store. The artwork from the previous artist’s show is about to be removed in preparation for my show. It’s not to my taste… all small black and white drawings on leather/SM themes.
While I was standing around, I noticed the magazine section near the front window. I saw in it were most of the copies of True Adult Fantasy #1 that Han had brought from me when I visited the store back in September ’03. They were at the original price of $6.95, and, obviously, they hadn’t sold. In fact, they looked pretty dog-eared. I felt like a fool for dragging the 20 copies apiece of TAF #1 & #2 at the $12.95 and $14.95 prices. But how was I to know? I guess I could have asked how it was selling. Duh.
We returned to the hotel to crash before dinner. John realized, as he reviewed his portable pharmacy, that he’d taken the wrong bottle of pain meds. He wouldn’t have enough to last more than 4 days. Around midnight, he went downstairs, tried calling Josy to get her to ship his pills, then Ariana, finally setting on Stuart. I tried calling Bill to check up on the postcard thing. I got wrong numbers in Amsterdam and Germany before I gave up. Fuck it. If the postcards arrive, they arrive.
I was having problems of my own. I was feeling suicidally depressed. I felt like such a total fucking fool, that I was doing everything wrong. I was angry at John too. While we were stuck in Customs Hell, he was peppering me with annoyed questions: “Why did you do that?” “Why did you make that decision?” “Don’t tell them about that.” “Why did you price the artwork so high?” I didn’t feel adequate to the task of explaining the months of painstaking, grueling groping-in-the-dark research Bill and I had done on the Internet vis á vis Customs and shipping. In many cases, we had to make blind choices based on ambiguous, contradictory and incomplete information. “Why did I decide XYZ?” It made sense at the time.
Yesterday, John confessed that he’d been trying to figure out how to get out of accompanying me to Amsterdam. But my “Be Strong” speech last week had convinced him to go with me after all. He was now glad he had come. How would I have gotten through Customs without him? The irony was, while we were in Customs, I wanted to scream at him, “You’re being so unhelpful!” He’d been continually, gently, telling me to calm down. I was fighting the urge to tell him to calm down.
Mr. B, Amsterdam
I woke John around 7:00 pm. He tried making his SOS phonecalls. Then we went out, ate at the same nearby Chinese restaurant we’d been at on our last trip. We were served by the same queenie, effusive Chinese headwaiter as last time. The food is pretty good, though not as good as Sun’s, our local Chinese restaurant in Highland Park.
At this moment, I’m in the bar behind the Main Desk. There’s still a bartender working at 7:45 a.m. I asked him if I could just sit here; it seems to be okay. A few minutes ago, he approached me, said something I didn’t quite understand about “bathroom.” It didn’t seem important. Right now, other than him, I’m alone in the bar.
The hotel’s business card mentions something about live music every night, but I see no sign of a bandstand.
8:51 p.m.
John, Han and I set out for the frame shop, Exeljist, at 10:00 a.m. Han decided the best way would be to walk and take the trolley. Neither John and I told Han of our podiatric difficulty. I carried the 40-lb box of art. We had to change trains twice on the way there and back, taking an hour or more altogether. We chatted along the way, John and Han doing most of it. I would prompt John with questions about his many adventures in Gay life. He grew up in Massachusetts before Stonewall, taught college in Appalachia, had gay adventures in Kuwait and Cuba. He formed one of the first rap bands in Los Angeles, “Age of Consent,” back in 1980. He could write a book.
We passed an antique shop with a lot of glassware in the window. Han insisted on pausing, window shopping, declaring that he collected Art Deco glass from the 20’s.
We arrived at Exeljist, where were introduced to the manager, Hans, and his assistant, a short, middle-aged woman who reminds me of the Costumer character in “The Incredibles.” We unpacked my artwork and set about figuring out what was to be done and how much it would cost me. Hans had given me a bid a couple of months ago totaling E420. After we were done this morning, the total price came out to €520; to save me money, Hans would use existing frames from previous exhibitions for Mister B’s. My “Recycled Erotica” paintings would all have to be trimmed ¼″ on both long sides to fit the existing frames. Several of the drawings I’d matted myself (to save money) would have to be rematted or have my mattes trimmed. Eight entirely new frames would have to be built (I had brought 20 painting with me in total).
I’m somewhat annoyed. If I’d known, I would have mounted my artwork to fit the existing frames. I’d tried communicating this before hand, with no luck. I’d requested information about the existing frame sizes (no reply) , and sent Hans a list of the final matted sizes, with the question, “Is this okay?’ “Don’t worry about it,” was Han’s response.
On the other hand, given framing prices here in LA (where it would have cost $300 to frame one of my pieces), Exeljist was practically giving them to me, when all was said and done. So, I shouldn’t complain, I suppose.
We got back to Mister B’s around 1:00 p.m. John found a message taped to our key. (There is only one key per room. When one leaves, one has to drop it through a short round tube—the “key hole”— mounted in the front desk. The clerk gives it back upon one’s return.) It was from Stuart. He was informing John that it was illegal for him to ship the drugs, and that there was nothing he could do about it. This sent John into a tailspin. He decided his options were (A) to have Stuart try to ship the painmeds to our hotel in Paris, or (B) find a local doctor to prescribe them. We returned to Mister B’s, asked Han if he could recommend a doctor. Han spent 20 minutes on the internet and returned with 2 printouts and the address of a nearby office that will be doing walk-ins tomorrow starting at 8:00 a.m.
When we returned to our room, I was worn out and my feet were killing me. I decided to nap until the maid came (the desk clerk said our maid service would be between noon and 1:00-ish) but the maid never came and I slept until 4:00 p.m. I woke briefly at 2:30 p.m., and had absolutely no desire to do anything; John felt likewise. He went out around the time I gave up trying to sleep to buy a travel alarm. He needs to be sure we awake in time to do tomorrow’s walk-in. He returned at 5:30 p.m., hungry.
I was surprised by my own lassitude. After months of being driven, consumed with getting ready for this show, and all the other shit I’ve had to do, I felt like doing absolutely nothing. I wasn’t depressed, just lazy. Or was I? It occurred to me that I was being immobilized by fear. During our long trip to Exeljist, Han asked me why I’d assigned values to my artwork. If I’d just declared them as samples, I wouldn’t have had to pay anything. They have no value, in any case, until they’re sold. I had no good explanation other than that I was following the rules as I knew them.
The Hell of it was, upon reflection, I realized I did know about the sample scam. I’d been referred to ask advice of Axel Moeler (www.artbyaxel.com), another American gay erotic artist who had recently had a show at Mister B’s. Axel had told me, among other things, that he’d imported his artwork as samples.
Fuck! I feel like such a moron. Every time I think of it, I wince in agony. It is very difficult not to punish myself in some way. My semi-paralysis rises partially out of dread that I’ll commit another blunder that will be glaringly obvious as soon as I make it, but not one instant before—or worse, was foreseeable, but I’d ignored the signs.
Plus, my feet fucking hurt. They throbbed in waves of ache and pain as I lay on my cot, until I drifted in and out of sleep. Go to a museum? Take a casual walk around town? Go visit or revisit various possible venues for TAF? Knowing that my feet will soon be in pain? When we set out for dinner at 5:30 p.m., my feet were okay (John was now in pain), but I could still fell twinges in my ankle joints each time I stepped over uneven pavement (or cobblestones, a frequent occurrence in Amsterdam). On our previous trip to Amsterdam in September ’03, John’s physical maladies , chief among which was the neuropathy in his feet, greatly complicated our ability to play tourist. Now, a year and a half later, John has improved. His new pain management specialist has given him drugs that actually help. On the other hand, my feet and ankles have deteriorated to the point where he and I are pretty much on par.
For the first time found myself almost sympathizing with the Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson characters in the movie, “Lost in Translation.” Previously, I’d had contempt for their ennui while visiting Japan. “Poor babies… they’re stuck in one of the coolest places on Earth with nothing but time on their hands. How sad for them.” Yet now, I had no desire to move from my hotel room, unpleasant as it was. I await the moments when boredom, guilt or shame overcome my fear and inertia.
At dinner (Getto, a hip bistro recommended by Han), I confided in John of my mental state and my theory as to its cause. He upbraided me. In the postcards he’s writing, he’s been telling everyone how impressed he is at how smoothly everything is going and how proud he is of me for putting all this together. Here I am, he cajoled, focusing on one mistake I’d made. (But such a costly mistake.)
Maybe he’s right. Perhaps I fear the self-flagellation I’ll inflict as much as the mistakes themselves. Last week I’d been reading a special issue of Tricycle (a Buddhist magazine) on the theme of “Pain.” The Buddhist concept is that pain is separate from suffering. Suffering arises from our resistance to pain and the narrative we tell ourselves about it, the meaning we attach to it. The theory is, if one relaxes into pain and stops the story, the pain divorces from suffering and becomes tolerable. I suppose that same principal could apply to making mistakes.
During dinner, both John and I were amused at how we seemed to be switching our habitual roles: here I was negative and lazy, John upbeat and energetic.
Two more days of taking antibiotics, of no booze. Why is that a problem? I’m having difficulty staying awake, not falling asleep.
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
10:20 p.m., Wednesday, January 26, 2005
The flight to Amsterdam went very smoothly. Everything was on time. The seats on the LAX–O’Hare flight were cramped, but nobody was sitting between us, which was surprising as the flight was full. The Chicago–Amsterdam leg was even better. The light over my seat was out, but there was a vacant row caticorner, across the aisle, which had four inches more leg room. I actually got about four of five hours of sleep.
We arrived in Amsterdam at 9:05 am (midnight L.A. time… there’s a nine hour time difference). At this point, things got dicey. It ended up taking us three hours to get through Customs. The problem was, I needed to get the artwork declared, either as a temporary import or as a normal import. If temporary, I would have to put down a deposit for the 6% VAT (value added tax), and take a photograph of each item for sale. If normal, I would have to pay the entire VAT up front. Since I foolishly declared the value of my artwork as being $11,000 (one can dream) the VAT came to about €600. The Customs officials ended up sending us to the Cargo building, two bus stops away, traveling to the left from the airport.
The weather in Amsterdam was sunny and brisk—hats and gloves just barely not necessary. This was good, because neither of us had thought to remove them from our luggage before we set out. I left the big box of art and my suitcase with the matted sketches in it (as well as my hat and gloves) in Customs. They made us drag our other suitcases pointlessly with us on our quest.
We waited around in the Cargo building for a half hour before they decided we were in the wrong place and sent us to another building, three further bus stops to the left. We reached the vicinity of the second address, a desolate building in a vast treeless area. We asked directions from a couple workers in a warehouse in front, and were sent around the corner to another building. (Luckily, English is commonly spoke in the Netherlands; otherwise the experience going through Customs would have been truly miserable.)
A man on the ground floor directed us up a steep flight of stairs to a large informal office where six youngish Aryan men and women worked in closely spaced desks. We were taken in hand by a somewhat officious young man who asked to speak with Han Verhooven, my contact at Mister B’s. He spent at least 15 minutes on the phone, finally handing it back to me. Someone besides Han told me the situation: Mister B’s would pay the 6% VAT up front, since the other position was clearly impossible. We would work it out between us later. But he would have to talk to the owner of Mister B’s first and get it okayed; this would take a few minutes; he’d call us back.
Eventually he did, and the officious young man typed out the declaration, sending us back to the airport to get our luggage out of storage. By the time my art out of storage it was 12:30 pm. We were both famished and cranky. We had a quick lunch at a Burger King in the airport lobby. We found a taxi van, driven by an elderly man. John and I decided it would be best to drop the art off at Mister B’s first, then check into our hotel. However, when we got to our street, we found our path blocked by two cement posts next to a short pole with a red traffic light on top. The driver apologized, saying he could take us no further—but our address was only two blocks down the street, on the right. We set out. I was carrying the box of artwork. I’d had it professionally boxed the week before we left. It was about 4′ × 3′8″, weighed about 40 lbs. I was glad I’d tied a lattice of rope around it to act as a handle in carrying it.
We passed our hotel, the Hotel Winston, about halfway to Mister B’s. We decided to check in before going further.
The following is a journal excerpt from my January 2005 trip to Amsterdam for the mounting and opening of my one man art exhibition at Mr. B’s. I will post a new section of the ten-part story each week. Enjoy.
9:50 a.m. Tuesday, January 25, 2005
I’m writing this in the boarding lounge at LAX, waiting for the departure of our 11:00 am flight to Amsterdam. We’re going to help set up the opening of my one-man exhibition at Mister B’s, a leather-fetish boutique in the Warmoesstraat, the Gay Ghetto/red light district of that fabled metropolis. John, my spouse of 19 years, is accompanying me, giving me support.
Josy and Cindy, our lesbian friends and partners in “Spades” (our favorite card game) were scheduled to arrive at our house at 8:00 a.m. Cindy was to drop Josy off; Josy would then drive John and I to the airport in John’s RAV 4, drop us off at LAX, and return to our house to house sit and take care of Amy, our 14-year-old German Shepherd mutt, during the 9 days of our absence. But 8:00 a.m. came and went, followed by 8:05, then 8:10 and 8:15. We were starting to lose our serenity. We tried calling Josy and Cindy at their home line (no cell phone for them); no reply.
Finally, at 8:20, we decided we’d have to leave, Josy or no. We’d have to pay airport parking for the 9 days; tough shit, that’s life. Just as we were stepping out the door, Cindy and Josy drove up. “Traffic was horrible,” Josy sighed as she pried her herself out of their Nissan Sentra. John and I were greatly relieved to see them, but apprehensive about the trip to the airport. If traffic sucked that horribly, would we make it in time? Would my Amsterdam Exhibition be scuttled before it began by horrible traffic? The suspense!
Late starting out though we were, I took the time to say one last goodbye to Amy. I reassured her that I would return soon. Since Sunday night, I have repeatedly told Amy I’ll be leaving, but I’d be back soon. Josy had called me Sunday night, imploring me to talk to Amy, to tell her that I’d only be gone for 9 days. “Humor me,” she said. “Last time” (She was referring to our Fall ’03 trip to Europe, when we’d vanished out of Amy’s life for 2 weeks. Josy had been the house sitter then as well.) “she was so depressed the final few days you were gone.” Josy is afraid Amy will get so depressed that she’ll die while we’re overseas and Josy won’t know how to deal with it. John thinks Josy is being overly dramatic. I don’t know. Amy seems to lose more mobility with each passing week. It’s an open question (like so many things in life) what her condition will be upon our return.
Monday was spent taking care of business: packing, attempting periodic naps as I went through periods of weakness, dizziness, and hot flashes. I had started coming down with a sore throat on Saturday. I went to see Dr. Albert as a walk-in patient after his office opened at 9:00 am Monday morning. I didn’t see Dr. Albert, but another MD who was actually quite attractive: 40ish, black hair with gray flecks, copious arm hair. He took one look down my throat and said I had strep. He prescribed antibiotics, twice daily, no alcohol for 5 days. Shit. Dairy’s OK though. He asked me if I had a fever. I said, “No,” but almost immediately started to feel feverish, started to sweat. “Am I making you nervous?” he asked jokingly. He asked if there were any other colds in my household. I told him about my “spouse” spending all day Sunday sick in front of the TV. Eventually I ran out of excuses to refer to John in non-gender specific terms and had to call him a “he.” At this point I did become nervous, about the Doctor’s reaction. But he didn’t bat an eyelash.
I called my podiatrist’s office and got him to refill my anti-inflammatory and pain killer prescriptions. I have gimpy feet: plantar fasciitis, arthritic cartilage loss in the ankle joint, and bone spurs on the navicular and talus bones which snag the tendons and limit my mobility. If I’m standing or walking for more than 30 minutes at a time, I start to feel it. This makes playing tourist somewhat problematic.
I called Paper Chase, the printing company that is doing the postcards of 6 of my erotic images, to see if the job was ready to be picked up. Sofia, my contact person, said, no, they’d be ready Wednesday. I said that was a problem, since I wanted to take them with me when I left for Europe today. Sofia reiterated her point that the fault was mine: If I’d replied to the email of the proofs they’d emailed me in a timely manner instead of 4 days late, I’d already have the postcards. I repeated my assertion that I had deleted their first email because there was nothing in the sender line to indicate that it was from Paper Chase. When, 4 days later, I requested they resend the email of the proofs, the subject line said “Proof”; the sender line said “CSR.” Sofia was completely unapologetic. “If you’d opened it, you’d have seen it was from us.” I countered, “The only reason I opened your re-sent email was that I expected it that day. Otherwise, I’d have assumed, as I did the first time, that it was another spam for Viagra or Vioxx.” Again she was unswayed.
I asked her if they would FedEx it to the gallery in Amsterdam. “Sure, if you have a FedEx account.” I said I thought they should pay for it. She didn’t agree. I told her I envied them being in the position of not caring whether or not they had repeat customers, and hung up on her.
I called my assistant, Bill, and discussed the matter with him. We decided we should ask Paper Chase to FedEx me 100 copies of each postcard. It took me until 5:00 pm to get over my pissed-offness enough to call them back. I asked Sofia if they could ship not the entire order, but 100 of each card, and I’d pick up the remainder upon my return. She said they would. Then I called Bill, asked him to check up on them on Wednesday, make sure they were really doing it.
When the shit with the email of the proofs had gone down last week, I did an image capture of my email inbox screen, to demonstrate the fact that nowhere in the address line of their email was there any indication that it was from Paper Chase. My intention had been to get them to agree to give me some sort of price break. However, given Sofia’s chronic intractability, that result seems unlikely. Plus, I’d called every work day since last Monday, leaving messages for her to call me. She hadn’t returned a single one. Why should I do Sofia the favor of giving her feedback she obviously didn’t want? A friend of mine, Leslie, responded to my griping that sometimes small businesses can’t handle everything that’s required of them. I said, if Paper Chase is small they sure put up a slick front. Their office is really sharp looking. Everything is white, black and chrome, with all the slick mags and brochures spread out over the brushed aluminum coffee table. When on hold (a maddeningly frequent experience as I waited to leave repeated messages for Sofia), I listened over and over and over to the same professionally recorded message, about how much Paper Chase appreciates my business and how interested they are in finding innovative solutions. I would roll my eyes and think, “Boy are these wankers deluded.”