The jam
It was June. The open air monthly jam session from the cute Dutch city of Haarlem was reenacted once again. The power of music united souls again. as it did on the first Saturday of every month.
While some of us were using the art of sound to express ourselves, others were using the art of painting. There were also canvases for fellow visual artists so they could apply their prowess in handling colors and nuances.
At that particular jam session, under the scorching sun and in front of a canvas, I saw her, sitting in her own element. The mastermind behind many shades of red, purple and yellow. I didn’t know what got my interest first. Was it the actual painting or the fact that she was in complete alignment with her creation? Or maybe it was both. The fact of the matter was that I took a weird interest in that young visual artist.
It was as if a compelling force or invisible magnetic energy made me come right next to her to watch closely what she was doing. There comes a time when one girl strikes you in a different way compared to others. And it’s not the beauty, nor the style, nor what she’s doing that drags your attention. Sometimes it’s simply one of those girls that in some way makes you come right at her, spawning an untouchable cosmic message in the depths of your mind saying: “You should check this one out. Trust me, this one is just right for you.” And that was precisely the effect that girl had on me.
I stood there like a creep for a few good seconds right next to her. She didn’t even notice. He painting had a lot of winding lines which seemed to look like some intricate flowers.
I couldn’t sit there all day just staring so I had to say something.
“I like what you’re doing. It’s interesting at the very least.” I told her.
“Thank you.” She said, her eyes still fixated on what she was doing on the canvas.
“What does this represent?” I went on.
“I’m just trying to capture the vibe and the energy of this whole event. I want to put all the glamour and enchantment of it on this canvas. The atmosphere here is beyond surreal. Don’t you think so?”
“Those are true words. I’ve been checking this jam since last year so yeah.”
“It’s beautiful. You seem to tap right into it. I heard some of your sounds. You’re really blending in, especially with that red bandana.” She said smiling, finally looking at me, pointing at my red bandana I was wearing that day.
“I like the fact you like it. I think I will make some other sounds. I dig this groove right now.” I told her while listening to the awesome slow jam made by other people, including a dude on Cello, Jansen on bass and Floris on hang drum.
“Ok, but first, can I have your bandana? I’ll give it back, don’t worry haha.”
And that I did. I offered her my bandana which she put on her head and then I grabbed my guitar to add some notes to the groove. While I was becoming one with mother Earth through sound, the painter girl did so through dancing, all by herself. She began making some circles and moving her hands in a distinct way, following the rhythm of what me and the boys were doing with our instruments. She had that magic in her moves, somehow like a mage or mystic living in tranquil solitude in a hidden forest village, hidden under tree canopies and giant mushrooms. I kept watching her. I couldn’t stop myself.
Soon it began to get darker. I went again to my new cute acquaintance, who was talking with this dude at the moment. They seemed really close. Nevertheless, I still asked her for her number. I had to do it. The same compelling force that pushed me to meet her was acting once again.
She put her details in my phone and then left, together with the dude with whom she was talking with. I was still not sure what was the connection between those two, but she seemed to be fine with us meeting once more.
“Until next time, bandana boy!” She said, as she left, going further and further away from the jam spot. And the music wouldn’t stop for a couple of more hours, making us lose any form of sense of time, just as it was supposed to.
The climbing
A few days passed and I was texting Sally, as she listed herself in my phone. We agreed to meet a few days later. Just the two of us. She came up with the idea of going bouldering, which was a peculiar idea for a first date. But I accepted anyhow. How often would a girl suggest going bouldering as a date? There were the girls who suggested bars, the ones who proposed restaurants for fancy dinners, the more alternative chicks who aimed for art galleries or underground indie concerts and then there was Sally who invited me to go bouldering with her. This initiative in turn increased my interest in the soul of this intricate human being, pushing me further into discovering its secrets.
It’s worth mentioning that at the time I had never done any bouldering of any sort. I met Sally at our meeting point and she was radiating. She gave me a tight hug, which was a big step from her shy and reserved attitude from the day we first met. We were both on bikes.
“I like your bike. Wanna switch bikes? We’ll switch back when we’re through with the bouldering.” She said, her eyes seeking adventure.
“Sure!” I agreed. This girl kept surprising me.
We cycled to the bouldering location. It’s worth mentioning that at the time I had never done bouldering before. And I thought I knew the seemingly obvious rules. But that wasn’t the case apparently. The purpose of the climber was to go up the bouldering wall and touch the upper edge before letting go. For some reason, I thought the aim was to climb all the way and put my feet on the upper edge and stand up on the actual bouldering wall.
I learned the hard way that I wasn’t supposed to be up there. The way down seemed a lot more dangerous and treacherous from that point, activating my anxiety and sense of hesitation. I had no idea how to get back down. Everybody was looking at me as I was in a state of utter confusion. Sally was giggling.
One of the staff members came to my wall and asked me if I needed a ladder. I refused. I could hear that young lady talking to Sally.
“Your friend seems scared. Do you think he’s gonna be alright?” The staff lady said.
“He’ll find his way down. He’s ok.” Sally said, almost laughing.
“Sally, I’m not ok. I don’t know how to come down.” I told her, feeling nervous.
“You can do it, Danny! Don’t be such a pussy!” She yelled, making some people nearby giggle.
I guess I had no choice. I eventually found a way to get down. From that moment one I became fully aware of how bouldering was supposed to be done.
In one of our climbing breaks I remembered that dude that Sally was hanging out with when I met her at the jam session. I had to riddle the mystery with that guy.
“Sally, uhmm, who was that guy you were hanging out with at the jam session? Was it your boyfriend?” I asked her casually. That question made her laugh quite hard.
“Oh no! Not at all, haha! That is my gay friend. We’ve been hanging out for quite a while and he realized he was gay around 2 years ago. He still has trouble dating other gay dudes and he asks me for advice. He’s still shy and clumsy when it comes to dating.” Sally told me, still laughing.
The news about that guy put my soul at ease.
“Oh, now I know. I hope I didn’t interrupt you guys when I came talking to you from time to time.” I said.
“Oh, not at all. As a matter of fact, we were talking about you at some point. He was the one who insisted that I should give you my number. I was a bit hesitating at first. It turned out it was the right thing to do.” She was staring into my eyes expressively as she delivered that final sentence.
Meanwhile, I was still doubting if our whole interaction was real at all. After all that lonesome time I was still processing the situation of a girl showing such interest in me.
After we had our fun with climbing we looked for pizza in the city. Despite the numerous attempts from Sally’s side to eat something at her place, I couldn’t shift my aim from getting that pizza. One does not simply cease the pursuit of pizza. It was the perfect reward after an almost perfect first date with Sally. It seemed that something was really on its way.
The movie and the pancakes
A few days after the climbing episode Sally and I took a casual stroll through a park and then watched a movie at hers, where beers and joints were the main course.
The next thing I knew was that no sooner had the movie ended than the two of us started doing it like rabbits in Sally’s dark bedroom. Ah, the miracle! It had been more than a year since my last shag. I had totally forgotten how the whole thing felt like. Sally made sure the magic of it was fully recalled in all my being.
The best part was that she didn’t mind getting freaky. She would sometimes recreate obscure animal sounds or do acts such as licking my face or clenching her whole buddy around mine and roll us altogether on the mattress. Holy sweet mother of creation, she was giving all she had. I thought I was the naughty one. But I wasn’t. I was a virgin once again. She was something else. She had so much vitality. She was wild. She was a dream. The whole life was squeezed out of my feeble body that night of fantasy. I was entering fairy land.
We fell asleep naked in a soft cuddle, both bearing juvenile smiles. I woke up and the light of dawn was slowly making its way in. I was still in fairy land. Sally was still there. The fantasy had to continue. I began kissing her and she was woken up almost instantly. She smiled. She didn’t mind. She began doing the same to me. Another rabbit act began almost instantly, but with less weird stuff involved this time.
“Such a good way to wake up.” Sally said, holding me.
“How about we keep on sleeping so we could keep on waking up today like this?” I told her.
“Maybe. Hihi.” She said as she was dozing off. We both resumed our sleep.
The next time I woke up it was just me in the bedroom. Sally’s clock on the wall told me it was past noon. I walked into her living room and my eyes were granted with a view that confirmed fairy land didn’t go away just yet. Sally was wearing a yellow summer and an apron, casually revealing her gracious thighs. She was preparing some pancakes.
“Just in time, sleepy boy.” She said with a grin.
“I’m never late, nor early. I arrive precisely when I mean too!” I told her one of my favorite cinema dialogue lines to impress her. And it worked.
We had our pancakes together and I took my time to observe the details of her home. She had a huge Persian rug tying the whole room together and there were paintings and plants that could be from almost any point of her little apartment. Sally’s home had personality. It was the kind place well suited for someone to retreat into oneself.
“Soooo, Danny. Counseling time. What’s your story?” Sally enquired as I was looking at one of the paintings on the wall, still munching on my pancake.
“Well, I lived in Bucharest for the most part. I left Romania in 2015 to come to the Netherlands for college. I did a bit of travelling here and there and here I am. Not much to tell, really.” I told her casually.
“What?! You’ve been in the Netherlands since 2015? And we haven’t met ONCE? How is that even possible?!”
“Well, deep down I really wanted to meet you, even though I didn’t know it. It just so happened that we had to meet much much later for some reason.”
“Arghh! Imagine what could’ve been!”
“Better later than never, baby!”
I also asked her about her story and oh boy, she had more to say than I did. She was a product of globalization. Her daddy was from Pakistan and her mother was from Latvia. Her daddy got somehow a scholarship to go to university in Riga and that’s where the parents met. A few years after little Sally was born the whole family moved to the Netherlands.
We went on to tell ourselves funny foibles from our childhoods and soon enough another rabbit act ensued. It was the third one in less than 24 hours. Among other things, we both shared a yearning for one of the oldest human endeavors.
It was that day when another romantic odyssey found its way willowing across my soul. The birds were chirping and the ladybugs were paragliding.
The picnic on the beach
It was official. Sally and I became one of those weird, eccentric couples which drew attention on themselves from time to time. But we didn’t mind. I had my own madness and Sally had her own. And both our mad sides were getting along perfectly fine.
Sally was somehow a female version of my good buddy Jeff. She had a similar sense of spontaneity and she wanted to be outdoors almost all the time. She didn’t mind other people’s opinions whatsoever. She also enjoyed the company of pets, especially cats. And I was a cat person myself. We would pet every single cat we would stumble upon. No cat would be left unpetted by these two weirdos.
We lived quite close to each other and we would call each other randomly to see if we could both hang out. She loved my cramped show box of a room and she soon marked it as her own territory by hanging a pair of her lingerie on of my walls. I couldn’t get mad on her. Her constant questioning of social conformity was one of her main charms.
When I wasn’t busy working or doing an online course for an English teaching certificate, Sally and I were up to all sorts of things, mostly outside, since the Dutch summer was unexpectedly bright and warm that year.
That one day with Sally that made by far the greatest impression on our time together was when we went together to the Hague. I took my chance to invite Sally since I had to renew my passport. And she was delighted to join.
Everything went well at the embassy but soon after I nearly got squashed by a van while walking on a narrow street. Sally pulled me out of the truck’s way, while screaming “WATCH OUT!”. If it wasn’t for her, it would’ve been the end on me. She had basically just saved my life.
Sally’s heroism didn’t end there. She even picked a fight with the stupid idiot who drove that van like a maniac, asking him why he’d been driving like such an asshole on a small, quiet road, without even honking when he’d seen me. But the moron driver wasn’t too capable of reasoning and cut her off, telling her that he was on a hurry or something.
But Sally was still fuming. I told her he wasn’t worth the time and effort for arguments, especially since she had to deal with an utter troglodyte. Anyway, her whole reaction and sense of justice made me admire her even more. What I had just witnessed was a top scene of female badassery.
We soon forgot about that little incident as we were on our way to the beach. One does not simply go to the Hague without checking good old Scheveningen beach, especially on a burning day of July.
And there we were, admiring the wonders of North Sea. The whole atmosphere was like a fun fare. Rollerblades, cocktails, ice cream cones, kite surfers and cheeky seagulls trying to steal people’s snacks dominated the scene. Sally took out this thin blanket out of her backpack and put it on the sand so we could sit on it. She was prepared.
We began having a picnic like little kids. We acted like little kids in public and like perverts behind closed doors. It was beautiful. The more I was hanging out with Sally the more I was falling for her. And she gave the same signal. It was the finest interaction I’d ever had with a female character at the time.
At the same time I was thinking about what was coming next. What about my attempt of going to Asia to become an English teacher, as I’d been planning for months? Was it still the right thing to do? Could I take her with me? Should I just throw away the whole opportunity? Was a brief interaction with someone that I’d barely known enough to make me alter my entire long term plans?
There were many answers that I couldn’t find. Maybe I was just losing my mind. I was simply crazy about that girl and I couldn’t help it. I didn’t expect things to go like this. I thought it would just be a bit of fun. Sally probably had a darker side that didn’t come to surface yet and that was bound to appear at some point. But for the moment being, as I stood on her lap, getting fed with grapes as the breeze was blowing on my face, I simply couldn’t see it.
My deliberating process ended suddenly when Sally stood up and began walking towards the waves, all by herself. She paused where the water was reaching her ankles. She took her clothes out and went for a swim in her underwear. She did a full dip. Even during summer, the cold North Sea waters were not warm enough for someone born and raised in the Romanian south like I was. But for someone with roots in Latvia this wasn’t a problem.
I watched her blending in with the Atlantic. When she came back to me, she gave the impression of someone walking straight out of the ancient Greek mythology. She took my hand and put a small shell in it.
“This is a little part of me.” She told me. “This tiny thing is for you so you can remember the two of us. A little piece of my heart will always stay in this.”
“Thanks, baby. I’ll keep this safe. It will stay in my wallet as long as it can, until I lose my wallet or get robbed of it.” I told her. I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m horny now.” She said as she held me tight.
“Can’t you be horny 2 hours later?” I was only half serious as I said that.
“I think I can hold it.”
“I’m gonna make you suffer tonight, my dear!”
“Make me suffer.” And then she licked my whole face. Just like that. No warning.
Sally then grabbed a part of me, sending me into the miracle of love. The fairyland kept on going. I was in trouble.