I started asking everyone I knew if they knew of any work around and although most were sympathetic and said they would check for me, nothing came my way. Frans ( the owner of the Nes-Cafe ) and I had become very good friends in the three years I had played pool with him and he wanted to give me a job at his place but unfortunately his bartender and our team-mate Joey, who had been working at the bar undocumented for years, had been caught recently and now the bar was under the microscope of the state and he could not risk hiring another undocumented worker. This was depressing to hear as working at a bar-coffeeshop for a cool dude would be a dream job but I understood his position and thanked him anyway. I was burning through what was left of the bankroll I had saved at the BA and has only about a month of rent before I would be out on the street, anxiety was creeping in fast. Lucky for me Frans had not forgotten about me. All coffee-shops had the same dilemma of how to store their supply, the government in all their convoluted wisdom, had a system where a coffee-shop could only have 500 grams of product on hand. This was a problem for a couple of reasons, for one it was not nearly enough to deal with a day’s traffic and made it difficult to keep a steady supply. The other problem was that the owners could not risk keeping the excess at home because if they got caught with it, they would lose their license to operate and with it their business. So most had alternative store houses that were close to the shop. This would become my new gig, I would store the product and bring it when needed. I would also continue to run the pool tournaments, cut tips, roll joints and clean the place up before opening. In exchange he would pay for my rent and keep me supplied with some of the best weed and hash in the world, an offer I couldn’t refuse. We bought a big cabinet to store it in and soon I had over 40 pounds of weed and hash on my boat… life was grand.
Things started to roll along nicely and without much hassle. The summer came and Frank came to stay for a month but he had become only a visitor to Amsterdam with his greater goal of seeing the world so off he went to another remote region. Other than that I spent the summer riding my bike and exploring the surrounding area, even riding out to the sea a few times to soak up the rays. I found myself becoming more and more attached to the cat, she was the sweetest animal I had ever met. I wondered how long I would be able to keep her with my crazy life and what would come of her if we ever parted, an unsettling thought indeed. In early August the gay parade happens in Amsterdam and it is quite a spectacle to see. It is a parade of boats through the canals and it went right by my boat. The first year I did nothing but watch out my window in shock but the tolerant culture of the city wears off on you and by this years parade I was ready to party hard with the gay folks. I invited a bunch of people over for a front row seat to all the craziness. It was a blast, even my straight friends whom I had lured over with the promise of free weed and beer had a great time saying they couldn’t wait for next years party. Summer came to a close and life was becoming fairly mundane by my previous standards. I was loving the job for the bar as it was easy and having 40 pounds of weed and hash was awesome. I was winning more than enough money for food and drink from the pool tournaments I was playing in, my game had never been so good and I was winning just about every one. The pool culture at the Nes was growing by leaps and bounds, when I first came they had only the one team and the tournaments barely got a dozen people but now there were 4 teams and the tourneys were full every time. I like to think I had a small part in making that happen.
As much as I was enjoying life, I would occasionally get pangs of sadness while thinking about what I had left behind. I thought about all the moments I had missed. Besides my step-father, my grandmother who I had grown up across the street from and was very close with, had passed away and not being able to attend her funeral was hard. My brother had gotten married and had two sons in my absence, I now had two nephews in the world that I had never met. I would get reports about friends who had married, had children and were moving on with life. It felt as if I were standing still as the rest of the world kept turning around me. I would think about all the things I had given up to be free, driving a car, riding a motorcycle, and most of all, falling in love with a beautiful woman.I would mitigate the sadness by telling myself that the laws would change soon and this would all be a crazy story that I would tell at parties, and I would complete my return to joy by adding that I was in the greatest city in the world to wait until that day. These thoughts would help fuel my determination, missing the special moments in loved ones lives was hard, but liberty was a cause that trumped all. Obviously my freedom was most important to me but I realized that if I was to truly be free, then everyone has to be free. The words of Martin Luther King Jr. would echo in my head, ‘justice denied to one is justice denied to all’.
Life was rolling along fairly uneventful for a while with not much changing through the fall and into the winter. One day while putzing around the boat I felt a strange sensation begin to arise in my stomach. At first it was just a feeling and I ignored it and continued with my day, but after a few hours it was turning into a pain. I was supposed to play pool that night but called the captain and told him that I should sit this one out. I laid down hoping that it was just some gas and would be gone soon. Unfortunately it only got worse, over the next few hours the pain increased to the point of being unbearable. I was in a panic wondering what was going on? I thought about it being my appendix but I had heard that it was more to the side and this was in the dead center of my stomach. It felt like there were knives tearing it open from within. It came to the point where I was ready to call a taxi to go to the hospital, but not knowing how that would play out with no I.D. and the fact that I had all of Frans’ supply on the boat, made me call him first. When I told him that I was thinking about going to the hospital he immediately told me not to, saying that they would demand an I.D. Instead he told me to hang in there and he would be over soon. For the next half hour as I lay in excruciating pain, I fought the urge to call with each wave. When Frans showed up he had two Percocet’s and a laxative and told me to take them all. The pain pills started to work within 15 minutes and then the laxative shortly thereafter, by the time Frans left the pain had decreased significantly and I was able to fall asleep. The next morning I awoke feeling as if nothing had ever happened, my stomach felt fine and I chalked it up to food poisoning. I felt very grateful to Frans but I had a cynical thought run through my head…had he rushed over to my aid out of genuine concern for me? Or had he thought by me going to the hospital that I would have gotten busted and with it he might have lost his complete supply? I hated that my mind would think like that and it was something that I would never say out loud but it was there and I would always wonder. I called Frans to tell him that I was fine and to thank him by taking him and his lady out for dinner that night, I felt very lucky to have a friend like him.
A Continuing Story About Life On The Run