After he came back from the bathroom a waiter brought over the bottle of wine. The guy asked if one of us wanted to try it, and of course ll made me do it. Like I said, I don't know if wine is meant to be consumed, and like I said I looked like gutter trash, so it must have been pretty funny to see me swirling around a glass of wine, smelling it, tasting it, and saying that it was 'good'. ll was being a total ass to the waiter, and everyone else as well, meaning the woman he ordered from, the waitress, and the host. Totally unacceptable behavior. Then we had to sit there for probably 10 minutes with a bottle of wine in between us. There must have been 100 or 200 people in the place, and I felt like they were all looking at us.
Eventually we got our place, wedged at the end of a table where 3 guys in business suits were already sitting. Horrifying. Throughout the night ll would glance over at them, but thankfully he did not make any attempt to establish contact with them. When it came time to order, ll said 'get anything you want!' Score!! The food was delicious, as expected. I had pumpkin soup followed by tuna tartare. I had no idea what tuna tartare actually was, but I highly recommend it. The conversation was more or less 'normal' for ll standards. He told the story from another night (which I didn't blog about yet - it involved the police and his dog) and also a splendid tale about him getting drunk at his boyfriend's birthday dinner in a D&G suit. He also asked me again if I was dating someone in Amsterdam. The answer was no, as I told him before. He said he didn't believe me, because he had 'spies' around the city. He claimed these 'friends' of his would tell him, "Guess where I saw Randall last night..." The thing is that I never met any of his friends, and I don't know if he even has any, except for his boyfriend and his ex boyfriend, who are both hardly in Amsterdam. And I certainly never saw either of them outside the apartment. Oooooooookay...
At one point during the meal I needed to use the ladies' room to powder my nose, so I excused myself from the table. ll told me to hurry, because he wanted to smoke a cigarette. I went to the bathroom, and as I walked back to the table I saw that he was gone. There was literally no one sitting at the table except the three guys, who probably thought we were trying to skip the bill. Seriously, who does that? I wouldn't leave the table empty if I was eating at Red Lobster. And on top of that, who leaves in the middle of a nice dinner to go smoke a cigarette?? Classy...
I got to the table before him and he thought it would be a good idea to sit down next to me. Jesus. H. Christ. Clearly I was very uncomfortable, and I began to scan the room for someone sympathetic to my plight to lock eyes with me, so I could telepathically convey how mortified I was. He said he wanted to people watch with me. Which would have been just awesome, you know.
Eventually it came time to pay. ll handed me 150 euros and told me that I needed to ask for the bill, in Dutch. I don't know if I made this clear or not, but I don't speak Dutch. I can say hi, which is 'hoi', and thank you. But that's the extent. It's really an unnecessary language. So ll tried to teach me how to say it as if I were a 5 year old child. Chaaaaarming. Then it came for me to actually use it. I did tell the waitress, 'de rekening alstublieft'. Her reply was, "what?". I then said, "Can we have the bill please?"
She said sure and started to walk away. Then ll grabbed her arm and said, "Wait, wait, I don't think she heard you." The waitress was super weirded out. My face immediately turned red, because it was fucking embarrassing and all. I said, "Can we have the bill please?". ll then repeated the Dutch phrase a few times, laughing to himself. The waitress gave an awkward smile and walked away. Probably a bit confused, and a little frightened. Thankfully I was able to just leave the cash on the little... tray thing, so it didn't appear as if I had paid for the meal (the point of that being??). For good measure, ll told another waitress that she had beautiful hair. Beautiful, blond, curly Dutch hair. KILL ME. Although it wasn't a total loss. The tab came out to be 80 some odd euros, to which I didn't add a single dime (although I greatly feared ll would 'expect' something of me later).
I don't know why I accepted, but ll had offered to go and get 'coffee' at a place across the street. He said it had a really cool view, and since it was one of my last times in Amsterdam I thought it would be nice to see. Yes, I was absolutely shocked and embarrassed throughout the dinner, so I'm sure you're wondering why I would agree to this. I suppose it's the fact that I will never see these people ever again. No one will ever recognize me in Amsterdam - I don't know when or even if I'll ever come back. I really had nothing to lose. I have no ounce of dignity left, and plus I was hoping it could make for an interesting story. Plus it was a bar, where that kind of behavior is more or less anticipated.
The bar was just across the street and was actually a really amazing place. I went to the restroom as soon as we got there, and ll went to procure us some 'coffee'. I told him that they probably weren't serving coffee at 11 at night, but he didn't believe me. On the wall across from the restrooms were some really hilarious XXX themed coloring book pages. One of the funnier ones involved a microphone and the X-Factor, but I'll leave that to your imagination.
When I got back from the restroom, surprisingly... no coffee in sight! But ll had ordered 3 beers in their place. Yes, 3. I maybe drank 2 glasses of wine from that bottle and he most certainly had some before we even left the apartment. So on top of a 33 euro bottle of wine, he managed to put away 1.5 beers before I had even had half of one. Erykah Badu came on and he stood up and tried to dance to it. So bad. So so so bad. He looked like someone with a massive head/neck tick trying to balance on a surfboard during an earthquake.
ll went to have a cigarette at one point, and managed to talk to some guy who also smoking, who thought ll was hitting on him. In all likelihood he was. ll brought him back to where we were sitting. He put up with about 5 minutes of ranting before he asked to use one of our phones because his was dead, and then he left. I really don't blame him. ll then ordered a rum and coke and a carbonated water. He poured the coke and rum in a glass and then said the bottle was for me, but I was already drinking the water. So he splashed some rum in the water - yummy. Totally confused, but I guess that's what happens when someone gets shitfaced. He then suggested we go to Lellebell, the tranny bar he took me to on my first night. It would have made my time in Amsterdam come full circle, to start and end my time at a tranny bar. As appealing as that sounded, I would have preferred to chew my own fingernails off. Before we left he said, "I think I'm gonna throw up".
When we came down to the lobby he started yelling something about people with AIDS go this way, and people with cancer go that way. He was really yelling at this point, being belligerent and stumbling about. I was just trying to get out of the door because there were people about. The security guard looked very, very concerned. He put my hands on my shoulders to stop me and make me look, but I was not having it. I did look into the eyes of the guard as a cry for help, but he didn't get out of his chair. Sad. Once we made it through the front doors, he said, "Doesn't it look like a hospital?"
I told him to point me in the direction of home and I took off on my bike as fast as I possibly could have, after shaking hands with him. He went in the other direction. I have no clue where he intended on going, and I didn't care. Of course as I scrambled home I laughed the entire way. What a night.... However, I knew it probably wasn't over. I was sure that ll would check to make sure I made it home, so I went straight to bed and tried to go to sleep. He arrived about 5 minutes after I had gotten into bed. Before I could fall asleep, as I expected, he came and opened my door. He called my name a few times and I pretended to wake up.
He asked, "Did you see anyone put anything in my pocket?" (Also, not sure if I've mentioned before, he gives himself a slight English accent when he gets toasted. He's never lived in England, I'm sure he just picked it up from television like the rest of us Americans).
I wonder to myself, what the fuck kind of question is that? Why now? When I'm sleeping?
"I found 2,000 euros in 10 euro bills in my jacket."
At this point I can't help but laugh. He looked really concerned about the whole thing, but I don't know what the problem was. If I found 2,000 euros in my jacket I would be fucking celebrating, not investigating where it came from. He was also completely wrecked, so I'm sure he miscounted. I'm really surprised he was even able to ride his bicycle back home at all.
"I only got 150 from the ATM... I don't know where it came from. I checked my jacket -- there's no drugs, no drugs"
"Where did you go after I left?"
He didn't answer the question, and continued to wonder out loud where the money came from. He wasn't even looking at me, he was staring at the wall. It was almost like he was having a conversation to himself, I just happened to be there. Throughout the conversation I'm whispering, and he's using a normal speaking voice. He keeps telling me to "shhh", though. Eventually he said, "It's ok, go to sleep booboo."
Yes... go to sleep booboo, go to sleep.
The next morning he gave me 100 euros of my deposit back in 10 euro bills.
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