When I first arrived at the new place my first thought was how small the place was. It was no bigger than a college dorm room with a tiny kitchenette in the corner. The toilet and shower were shared by all rooms on the floor and were down the hall. I didn’t have much time to soak it in as I was struck by an immediate second thought of ‘who the hell are all these people here? I expected Nathan (the guy who’s place I was taking over) to be there but was surprised to find two other guys there as well. Nathan smiled at me and told me he had some good news and some bad news. Oh boy, I knew this was too good to be true, so I asked him what the story was. He told me that his two friends from home had just arrived and were there to stay. This was enough to make Nathan change his mind about leaving and told me that they all would be staying at the apartment. The good news was that I could also stay which was a bit of a relief but now I had to get my head around the fact that I would now be living with three dudes in a dorm room. Another bonus was that instead of paying 300 guilders a month, I would now have to pay only 75. Since I was working at a hostel, it was not hard for me to find 2 spare matresses and by the end of the day, we had corformed the place into a sleeping den for four.
Frank had been working a job doing the same thing I did at a rival hostel over in the Red Light. The owner of the place had recently bought a house for employees to live in and Frank jumped on board. Somehow Kurt charmed his way in even though he didn’t work there. I was very envious when I saw their new place in the north of Amsterdam, it was huge with 4 bedrooms and all bigger than the place I would now be sharing with 3 strangers. That aside, it felt great to be back in Amsterdam. It was a nice experience lliving in Heemskerk, especially during the summer but as the summer was winding down, I got out at just the right time. My first night in the new place made two things crystal clear for me, one was that it was going to be a big challenge to my sanity living with these three. They were in their early 20’s and partied as hard as I did when I was that age. The second realization was that I had to find a different place and fast.
With tourist season winding down, it was getting harder to pull people in at work and the wages started to dwindle. I got back to playing in the local pool tourney’s and within a couple of weeks i was playing in 5 per week. Monday at a pool-hall in the east called The Gracht, Tuesday at Hunter’s, Wednesday at a downtown coffee-shop called the Prix D’mi, and the other two on Thursday and Sunday at the Nes. It was the Nes that I was really starting to call my home bar, I was making what felt like solid friendships there. The two guys I had originally met were two of my best, there was Martijn, a Dutch guy a few years my junior who liked to smoke, drink and play pool. Then there was Frans, he was the owner of the place, he was a few years my senior and he also liked to smoke, drink, and play pool, it was inevitable that we would become friends. It wasn’t long before I was winning most of the tournaments and Frans asked me if I would play on his pool team, I said sure and along with Martijn there were two other guys, Marten, a cool Dutch guy who loved pool but wasn’t very good at it and Joey the bartender, an American guy from Providence who was as crazy as he was cool, he also played a wicked game of pool. The five of us would become Nes-1 and go on to have some epic experiences together.
The living situation was getting unbearable, while I did genuinely like the guys and would go out and party with them on occasion, they were at it every night and it was getting hard to get any sleep at all. I had feelers out with everyone I knew about finding a new place and one day a regular from the Hill tells me that he is leaving town and that if it was okay with the landlady, then I could have the room he was renting. I was very intersested and told him to set it up. The place was a nice two bedroom in the Jordan neighborhood, just off the Harlemmerdijk. The landlady was a nice Dutch lady who rented out her husbands rent controlled apartment while they lived in a houseboat 2 blocks away. One of the rooms had a long term tenant in it and I could rent the other for a weekly rate of 75 guilders. I jumped on the opportunity and come the following Monday I was moving into my new place. I felt that I had finally gotten things sorted out, I had a good job, a room of my own, and some quality friends I had built up. It had taken 6 months to do but Amsterdam was now truly my home.
My time in the apartment was nice, I had my own television and radio, there was a fully furnished kitchen that I would share with the other tenant and a big queen sized bed all to myself. I would use it to entertain on occasion and was never too crazy but sometime after about a month, the other tenant ( whom I had only seen once in the whole time I was there ) complained to the landlady that I was too loud and she told me I had to leave. Wow, what a bummer! I stayed calm and thanked her for the time I had and my humility payed off as just before she left she told me that she had a houseboat up the street with 4 apartments in it and one of the tenants is moving out soon and that I could have it. Well it wasn’t a fix for my immediate problem but it was a ray of hope for the future. She told me she would call when it became available and I moved out the next day. Lucky for me I worked at a hotel and being it was now November, we had plenty of empty space for me to stay. The owner being the mean, greedy bitch she was, made me stay in the worst room in the place. It was a condemned room in the back of the building with a smell of mold that was ever present. I had become friends with the cleaning lady as we both loved to smoke the ganja and would go coffee-shop hopping together after work. When she saw the crappy room that I was staying in she offered me a room at her place out in the south-east. I had heard some bad stories about the south-east, how it was the ghetto and not a place to be after dark but as I had also heard those stories about the Red Light and had no problems there, I was not too bothered by that. My real concern was that it was so far away, about an hour bike ride back to the center and seeing that it was getting close to winter, it would be a miserable ride. Having the choice between a mold infested room ar a long bike ride was easy, I took the long bike ride. I moved in right away and it was a very nice place she had. It was three bedrooms with two toilets and a shower. She lived there with her 7 year old daughter who spoke no English at all so talking to her was a series of hand gestures and facial expressions. My friend whose name was Diana was a few years older than me, divorced, and from Suriname. She came when the Dutch offered Surname their independence and offered the entire population a Dutch citizenship if they moved to Holland, half the country came and that was the motivation to build the south-east in the first place. We got along great and had some fun together, she was interested in more than just friendship and in a different life I may have went for it as she was a decent looking woman, but after my previous experiences with romance while on the lam had opened my eyes, I was not going to allow that to happen and told her I wasn’t interested. I had only told Frank and Kurt about my situation and everyone else I told a story of how my grandfather was from here and I was able to get Dutch residence through that. So I could not tell her the true reason I was not interested and she was hurt by my rejection. It would make living there a bit more tense, but the true reason I was going to have to find another place came one night when I returned home to a dark apartment and when I turned on the light was met with a horror I will never forget.
A Continuing Story About Life On The Run