Andrew
Gentle Buddhist and raunchy wannabe skinhead; goes weak at the knees
(but strong elsewhere) at the sight of muscles and a no. 1 crop.
John
Ageing Scrabble queen who pretends he's really only 50-something
(mainly because he really is only 50-something). As he likes both
twinks and bears, nobody is safe.
Jean
The scourge of the South, all flashing teeth and flaring nostrils.
Fancies anything she can see, which, as she refuses to wear her
glasses, isn't much. Thinks she can drink (till the morning after).
Honor
The Cleopatra of Putney (but behaves more like Patsy - "Let's open
another bottle, darling!") Given a choice between makeup and breakfast,
guess which wins.
Faced with three flights of near-vertical stairs at the Hotel Unique, Jean feels faint and needs oxygen; Honor feels fine and needs another gin. Andrew and John gallantly refuse to carry the women's bags (or the women) upstairs.
A quick wash and it's off to eat. Now where else would you eat in Amsterdam but a genuine Dutch restaurant? And there is one - the Blue Hollander - and it's very good. Jean is advised not to have a starter: good advice since a meal for four would feed an average third-world country. John is fantasising about the beautiful sexy young man on the next table until Andrew points out that both the young men at that table are rent-boys, with an older American. And Andrew has all the money and refuses to lend any to John for paying for a rent-boy, however gorgeous he is. John points out viciously that it would have been different if one of the rent-boys had been a skinhead and Andrew had been interested - he'd have spent money so fast that we'd have to wash up for weeks simply to get home. The women refuse to believe that the American can possibly be with two rent-boys, and we all wonder if there's anywhere that does rent-girls ...
After a few drinks it's off to bed. John leads the first pitch and with pitons and karabiners and a fixed rope makes it possible for the others to follow up the stairs. Andrew whines because he's not allowed to go to the Spijker for a late-night sleaze, so has to content himself with leaning perilously far out of the window so that he can see their illuminated sign shining on the exiting (exciting?) skinheads and leathermen. Andrew is so tired that he can only be roused to ecstasy twice in ten minutes. You should try him when he's not tired!
Friday is kultur day. Honor and Jean look at Van Goghs (Van Gogh's what - his ear?) Andrew and John take the train to Haarlem and look at Frans Hals, who doesn't look back because he's been dead for 300 years. On the way back in the train, John rests his hand on Andrew's knee, to the disgust of the woman sitting opposite. Perhaps she would rather have John's hand resting on her knee. Andrew whispers to John, "She either thinks that you really are my father, or she thinks I'm your rent-boy." John unwisely answers, "Well, if the cap fits, wear it!" and gets his hand slapped in response. Andrew then points out that actually John is his rent-boy, as Andrew has paid for the trip.
The gay nude beach at Zandvoort gets a miss this time, as it's f***ing freezing on the beach (it would also be freezing f***ing on the beach). But we return with nicely sand-blasted ankles. In Haarlem, Andrew has to be forcibly restrained from following a muscular skinhead who is going in the wrong direction (i.e. not towards our hotel room).
After pizza the women are steered in the direction of a bar where the mere mention of a man would lead to castration. The men fall into the Spijker (literally, there are dark steps down at the entrance). Bars with backrooms do very badly from us, as we tend to get stuck in the backroom and don't drink much. John tries out the echo from the plywood walls of the backroom as he comes. Everyone else leaves, hastily.
Andrew and John get to bed at 2 a.m. At 3 a.m. the women arrive at the top of the stairs. Honor knocks on the men's door. John answers the door wearing only a towel (I've never seen a door wearing only a towel ...) Honor, gleefully waving a cup full of tonic water, declaims, "Gin and tonic, anyone?" John looks doubtfully at Andrew, who by this time has opened one eye, and asks, "Do you want a gin and tonic?" The answer is a grunt which, in the absence of a grunt dictionary, John takes to mean no. Honor is steered carefully over the top of the stairwell, despite the fact that she's so drunk that she'd probably float if she fell down the stairs anyway.
In the morning the men are finishing a hearty breakfast when the women stagger down, all smeared makeup and dark glasses. Neither of them remembers knocking on our door last night. However, Jean is convinced (between periods of rushing off to be violently ill) that she carried two cups of tonic water up three flights of precipitous stairs. I just wish I'd been able to watch ...
The Rijksmuseum is - well - the Rijksmuseum. If you haven't been there, you should go. And don't forget to look at the outside of the building, too. Despite the attractions of the paintings, John kept being distracted by the sight of several gorgeous American men, and had to be told firmly why he was in the museum. Sulk.
The women wanted to find a sex shop which sold "attachments for ladies" (delicacy forbids me from being more explicit). However, Honor's knowledge of anatomy is as poor as her geography, and it took some time to explain to her exactly why the particular device she had in mind is anatomically impossible. But we cruised the sex shops anyway, to the great annoyance of the proprietors when we didn't buy anything.
As we were all tired, we tried the restaurants local to the hotel, and were fortunate to find a Chinese/Indonesian place that served what turned out to be an excellent and vast reistafel (a bowl of rice with 18 interesting and tasty dishes, not including the waiter). After this we were too full to move far, and forwent the pleasures of the city centre fleshpots for more local diversions. The women decided on Camp Cafe (next door to the hotel), the men back to the Spijker.
Now there's nothing wrong with Irishmen. But a drunk, foul-mouthed, persistent octopus of an Irishman in a backroom is a menace. At one point he almost started a fight, he was so annoying. By avoiding him, John and Andrew managed (separately) to have a very good time. Back in the bar, as we were leaving, Andrew said, "Come on, I'll introduce you to Tom, who's very nice." (He was!) As Andrew was busy getting his coat, I introduced myself to Tom: "Hi, I'm John, Andrew's boyfriend." Well, if looks could kill ... ! Although Andrew had told Tom that his boyfriend was also in the bar, Tom evidently hadn't grasped this (though he'd grasped most other parts of Andrew by that time), and he clearly had plans for the rest of the evening that didn't involve John as well as Andrew.
On Sunday the Hotel Unique serves a cooked breakfast, with champagne. This is not as extravagant as it sounds, as only about a third of the guests are in a fit state to eat breakfast at all on Sunday morning. And where do men go on a Sunday afternoon in Amsterdam? Why, to the Thermos day sauna of course. In Amsterdam it's almost possible to live in the day and night Thermos saunas; the only snag is that every twelve hours or so you have to leave one to go to the other. However, this does mean that the places are spotlessly clean (at least to begin with).
The sight of 300 or so men, many of them extremely handsome, wandering around dressed only in large erections (aren't Dutchmen big?), some covered approximately with a small towel, is worth the entrance fee (about 10 pounds) alone. Anyone who thinks that gay saunas are only for ugly losers will be re-educated in Amsterdam. A very good time was had by all (the very good time's name was, of course, Andrew). John really couldn't think why Andrew had to keep having showers.
Down in the bar John was (not really) surprised to find Andrew deep in conversation (yes, that was all he was doing) with a hunky German. This same hunky German was "met" by Andrew last year in the same sauna; one wonders if he's been living there ever since ...
And the Australian "Neighbours" star who has been presenting UK breakfast TV for a while is just as handsome with his clothes off as on. Andrew thinks that he was one of the good times in the backroom, but couldn't detect any trace of Australian accent. As all he said was, "Ooooh, aaaaaah, OOOOOH, AAAAAAAAAGH!" this isn't really surprising. Of course (to avoid libel actions) it probably wasn't him at all, but a close likeness.
Verdict on the weekend - WONDERFUL!
John L. Dawson
1997
Please email me at: JLD1@cam.ac.uk if you have any comments.