Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist (1 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist by Cash Peters. Copyright 2003 by Cash Peters
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Gullible's Travels: The Adventures of a Bad Taste Tourist

by Cash Peters

For Mandy


1 THE BEGOTOKOMUGUBU

A very unhelpful brothel-keeper * I spot an old friend traveling at speed * lunch in Amsterdam's Blue Fug District * a drifter's sorry tale * the Sound of Music tour, and not for the first time * a trip down the Paris sewers, * most definitely for the last time * Mandy makes a suggestion * facts: the scourge of good reporting * somebody else makes the same suggestion as Mandy * back to the brothel


IT BEGAN WITH A HAIRSTYLE.

As a rule, I don't care for books that open that way--cryptically. But on this occasion I have no choice because it's exactly what happened.

August 1999. An overcast morning. I was standing in a cramped office in Amsterdam's red light district trying to persuade a Dutchman called Lars, whose company arranges brothel tours, to take me on a tour of a brothel. A simple enough transaction on the face of it, you might think ("You run tours, I want to go on one of your tours, here's a handful of meaningless colored paper that you Dutch people call money, let's move."), but for some reason Lars didn't get it.

I can't remember now exactly what his answer was, but the gist of it went something like this: No.

"Aw, come on, Lars! Please??"

Unfortunately his English wasn't too good, and my grasp of Dutch is nonexistent. To me everything they say sounds like "Heeeri, hooori, yerdi-oooori, ooori-ooori." So instead I decided to try a fresh approach, adopting a technique that's worked well in the past when dealing with foreigners. I call it Shouting and Pointing.

"HOOKERS!" Jabbing my finger at a poster over his desk: "ME. INTERVIEW. HOOKERS!"

In the picture, four buxom women in garters and low-cut bodices were draped over a leopard-print couch, leering at us like a bunch of mildly inebriated Rockettes; only ... well, their bodices were a little too low-cut for Rockettes. And the one on the far left had a big nose and thyroid eyes, so I doubt she'd have passed the auditions. But they served my purpose.

"TAKE ME TO THE HOOKERS!"

"Heeeri," Lars protested, shaking his head. "Erdi-nyora-yeeri, ooori-ooori."

Which I can only assume is Dutch for "stop shouting."

And I was just wondering what else I could do short of slapping him to get my message across when, at that moment, I was distracted by something red and shiny that shot by the window outside.

A hairstyle.

Short, spiky, a little unkempt, and very, very familiar.

"Mandy?"

Everyone at some point in his life has a Merchant-Ivory moment, and this was mine. Exotic European location; sinewy Victorian alleyway on the Amsterdam waterfront; quite by chance, or perhaps it's Fate, boy meets girl he had a crush on years before but hasn't seen since. Back in those days, she had her own thriving radio production company and he was a floundering reporter in London. But then, as so often happens, the road forked and their lives took different paths. She moved up to be a top commercials director; he moved to Los Angeles and became a floundering reporter there instead. Years went by. Then, one day, she's on a weekend break in Holland; he's trying unsuccessfully to maneuver his way onto a brothel tour, and their paths cross again. (In the movie I think we'll cast Angelina Jolie as Mandy, and Dame Judi Dench can play me, in what will probably be the most challenging role of her career, since I look nothing like her.
In particular, I can't wait to see her grow a brown goatee.)

"MANDY!"

Twenty feet away, a set of worn brakes squealed, little shoes skidded wildly across damp cobbles, and the bicycle convulsed to a halt.

Two seconds to pick me out from the crowd, another two for recognition, then ...

"CAAAAAAAAAAASH! Oh--my--God!"

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THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT AMSTERDAM that makes it perfect for reunions. It's such a restful, civilized, fun place, somewhere you can let it all hang out. Alternatively, you can tuck it back in again and just go for a drink.

Pouting prostitutes in tight skirts that, were they any shorter, might be mistaken for elastic bands, pose in windows like mannequins and tap on the glass at you as you walk by. The bodies of teenage louts, fresh off the ferry from England and already unconscious, lie sprawled in doorways, hugging empty bottles of Jack Daniels. And of course at every turn your nostrils are teased by the tang of "naughty smoke" drifting from coffeehouses. Thanks to soft drug laws that could only have been devised by someone who was high on pot, college students fill their free time not the old-fashioned way with silly studying, but by mellowing out over a big fat joint while marveling at the icy blueness of the sky, or debating the relative merits of Original versus Barbecue Pringles, or musing in total earnest about what a real talent Kenny G is.

In other words, you are free to live, and to do so in ways that please you, not the government. Holland trusts its adults to behave like adults. I think that's why it's Mandy's favorite hideaway. She's a grown-up with grown-up responsibilities, and yet at the same time she's haunted by a young girl's yearning to run away from home. Whenever the job becomes overwhelming or relationships turn onerous--and relationships always turn onerous--she seeks release in Amsterdam, freewheeling alongside canals on a rented bike, crossing back and forth over dinky stone bridges, and drifting down terraces of four-story gabled homes that resemble dolls' houses in their charm, their cuteness, their design, everything but their size--lost in blissful distraction.

"So what brings you here?" she asked as we nabbed the best table in a restaurant with a panoramic view over one of the main canals.

I didn't answer straight away.

And when I didn't, two dazzling peppermint-green eyes locked into mine. "Oh no! Not the museums thing again. You're not back doing that!"

Embarrassed, I raised my menu so I wouldn't have to look at her.

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