Going Dutch in the Digital Age

Marram Grass & Dunes After A Bottle of Wine

“It has been how long since you got laid?” asked Armand, incredulous.

“Are you blind? Have you seen this thing on my face? The unruly mountain man scruff, the bristly gray hairs, the dandruff…what would you call it…beardruff? It’s sick. It makes me sick. So you can imagine how sick it must make the ladies.” Leaning forward over the coffee table and twirling a chunk of chin hairs between my forefinger and thumb a wintry blizzard of white flakes intermingled with the plateful of crumbs and cheese.

“It is not so bad. I think you have the the…” snapping his fingers, “…aha, the low self-esteem for beard blues.”

“That’s it, my friend. I will be sad to leave all this…this exquisite life you have here. Music, food, your friends, a good job, skateboarding, the Bodegas, biking everywhere. It’s too rich for my blood. Hell, at this point, anywhere is too rich for me.”

“You are welcome as long as you like. Well, up to next year February. When I begin my Belgian Beer Bicycle Trip. Whoo, that is a mouthful…Of course you are welcome on that as well. But next week, I have, you know, a lady guest coming, so maybe it is good you are leaving Copenhagen after all?”

“Damn, I can’t believe I won’t be biking to Belgium. Europe’s too expensive and I have a schedule to keep.”
“But first, you will meet with the mysterious Nicola and go where again…?”

“Some island off the northern coast of the Netherlands. I didn’t know they had islands, to be honest, but she’s rented a house on one of them for a week.”

“Ah! Alone on an island with a mysterious female photographer…how will you pass the time?” Armand laughed and sipped his Bas-Armagnac.

“Yeah, it sounds like a set up to me. Get me drunk and talking with no way off some island. She’s got to have ties to the Dutch version of the CIA. What are they called?”

“Whatever they are called, don’t use ‘Dutch’, it sounds like ‘Deutsch’, you know…German, and they hate it.”

“Seems like everyone still has some issues with the Germans. Good to know.” I slowly swirled the caramel-colored liquor and took a sip. “I’ve never had this brandy before…it’s amazing.”

“Castelségur Bas-Armagnac Domaine de la Bachère 1975. Very good with Cohibas.”

“A shame to leave indeed. But time to move on. I have a boat to catch.” We lit our cigarillos and stood out on Armand’s balcony overlooking central Copenhagen while thick gray clouds pushed through the dark night like silent ships setting out to sea.

*

Roughly 12 hours and seven hundred kilometers later I was standing at the station in Groningen—a place I had never heard of prior to a few days before—waiting to meet my fixer friend Nicola, who had arranged a week-long stay for us at a cozy bed and breakfast on a small island off the northern coast.

“I didn’t know the Netherlands had islands.”

“I’ve never been there, just as many Dutch people haven’t. They aren’t exactly like Mallorca.” She laughed. She had a great smile, intense blue eyes and a brilliant mane of shiny black hair. I kept coming back to our initial meeting in Tokyo, the mental picture of her I had was like a photostatic mimeograph stuck on the image of our introduction: her mute stare jumping to and fro over my face recording my features like the biometric data collecting machine at Narita airport. She hadn’t spoken to me at all, though to her credit, she was with her American boyfriend—himself an amateur photographer—and we were surrounded by at least five other Tokyo-based photographers from all over the world. As the barkeep I had to fetch drinks like a waterboy at a rodeo and didn’t have the time for idle chitchat. Before I knew it they had downed their drinks and left without saying goodbye, bringing a salty tear to my whisky-soaked eyes.

Like all of us Tokyo ex-pats, we had initially met via the internet’s various interactive photographic websites, uploading our photos with links to blog postings, commenting on and sending messages to one another out into virtual space, and eventually formulating a new take on the age-old long distance friendship technique: pen pals. Given that we were all spread throughout different countries in Asia, Europe and North America, for the most part, we mostly kept track of each other through our various photoblogs and twitter accounts, so it was a rare occurrence to meet face to face, and when it happened, it often turned out differently than whatever may have been expected.

Nicola was one of a long line of confusing trends in my life: smart and attractive women with whom nothing romantic ever transpired. Why that was, or is, was one of the questions rolling around my head as we bussed to the ferry terminal on the northern coast. Because of our bags we sat in across the aisle from one another, and glided in and out of sleep-deprived consciousness behind our sunglasses as we passed pastures of sheep munching the greenest of grasses, but when a woman in a spring skirt puts her legs up and the glint of sun hits that familiar careening calf shape just right, an atavistic urge awakens in the reptile brain and words like friends, platonic, and celibate lose out to words like sharing an apartment with an attractive and available woman on a mostly deserted island. Even if that’s not your intention, even if you’re not really attracted to her, even if it’s not a reality, you—meaning men—can’t help it.

*

One of the major factors of the internet-as-matchmaker risk and reward system—apart from sexual predators, Nigerian conmen and Google Ads / NSA tracking keywords in your email—is the eventual payoff in mingling with people from all parts of the globe. Where pre-web the online user’s friend / mating pool was limited to the people they grew up, went to school and worked with, now the potential for creating solid worldwide connections is as easy as uploading a photo on Flickr, posting to a weblog, and commenting on what’s happening right now via Twitter. It can get tedious and the danger of wasting time is very real, but an expatriates’ best friend is the internet.

Be it smoke signals, Morse Code, a handwritten letter or email, the basic system of communication that has always been in place still exists: a sender encodes and transmits information through a medium to a receiver who decodes the information. Yet personal relationships have changed dramatically since the advent of electronic communications: the telegraph, telephone and teletype paved the way for wireless communications of radio and television, which launched computer networks and the internet. Thanks to voice mail, instant messaging systems, and email, now that we can talk to anyone anywhere anytime, we don’t actually have to talk to anyone at all anymore.

What Social Networks do you belong to?

The advent of transistor radios led to closed circuit boomboxes and Sony’s Walkman, and to Apple’s iPod and the open circuit iTouch, which can theoretically connect to any network. The technology for fax machines arguably predates telephones, the industry which developed pagers, mobile (cellular) and satellite phones, global positioning systems, personal computers (from desktop models to mobile tablets), on which one can sign in to personal profile pages on social networking sites like Badoo, Bebo, Douban, Flickster, Flickr, Fotolog, Gaia, Gmail, Habbo, Hi5, Hyves, Last.fm, LiveJournal, Mixi, Netlog, Odnoklassniki, Orkut, Qzone, Skyrock, Sonico, Tagged, Tencent QQ, Vkontakte, Viadeo, WeeWorld, Windows Live, Xanga, and so on. While sites like Classmates, Friends Reunited, Geni, MyHeritage, and MyLife, concentrate on reuniting lost acquaintances, old flames, and searching out the roots of your family tree, other, less specific networking sites, like the obvious big ones: Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook, arguably the first major social networking sites of web 2.0 concentrating on just you, the user, developing your network of friends through sharing like-minded activities, there are too many other specific networks within networks to name them all. AsianAvenue, Blackplanet, and MiGente are three ethnic specific realms of possibility which sprang up during the Silicon Valley boom of the late 90s and have managed to stay relevant, probably because they are free, but also because they have a target audience. The sites boasting (mostly) free love connections like OkCupid and PlentyofFish are beginning to cut into pay-for-play Eharmony, Match, and SpeedDate, which feel their ever-evolving service requires a monthly fee. Alongside demographic specific sites like Jdate, ChristianMingle, Amigos and ManHunt, among myriad others, internet dating sites are one of the only other areas to rival the real reason the internet exists: pornography. And sick of solo Saturday nights hunting through the Craigslist Casual Encounters section for not just the right person, but a real person, many lonely singles willingly pay the price for a chance at virtual human interaction.

But some don’t. It may be that the neo-culture rebels of our time fear for their privacy, or dislike being neatly categorized with names like “user” or merely reject this so-called fad as the next form of television, i.e. the next big waste of time. One can choose not to partake in the online communication revolution—the new civil disobedience—by not having profiles on any number of sites, but then where would you find out about gluten-free Libertarian fund-raising house parties happening right now in your area? Is the internet really here to help us find love? Is one of the Sputnik effects of throwing money into increased research in sending monkeys to the moon the risque AdultFriendFinder? Is this the Baby Boomers’ last chance at love? What will you tell your grandchildren about when they ask what site you met grandma on? How did it all come about?

PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations), circa 1960 from the University of Illinois, was possibly the first social network. The first private system created as a result of increased government spending in science, engineering and computers, it followed ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) as a direct result of the launch of Sputnik. It was spread over thousands of networks and featured first generation forums, message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.¹

So how did CompuServe, developed in the late 1960s by University of Arizona graduates as a way to support in-house processing to Golden United Life Insurance, become the first internet service provider in the late 80s? It did this by first becoming the world’s largest consumer information service, the most popular aspect of which was a financial services group that collected and consolidated financial data for Wall Street.

But before the internet was a twinkle in Wall Street’s golden eye there was Usenet, the precursor to today’s person to person file sharing revolution. The key aspect of Usenet is that there is no central server, and no all-knowing Administrator of Oz who controls whatever information is being shared, in this case articles and their responses posted to specific newsgroups. The small fraction of users with access to this information soon figured out that data, merely specifically coordinated ones and zeroes, is data, be it an article on chopping up variable rate mortgages into low-risk mutual funds, the digitized version of the Disney film Tron, or the indie classic Two Girls, One Cup. The only tricky thing about data, is the same tricky thing as with former porno film-going enthusiasts: size matters.

*

“Size doesn’t always matter. It’s more about how you use it.” The wind whipped the reedy beachgrass atop the sand dunes behind which we sat, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

“As with most things, it comes down to a question of physiology and taste.”

“You mean if he eats a lot of meat?”

“I don’t literally mean taste, but preference…you know what I mean. I do have a friend who swears by kiwis though. Or his wife does…”

Laughing, we faced the water and blew smoke through red table wine-tinged lips into the wind. Just then it seemed we were all alone on a faraway sanctuary rather than the North Sea protectorate of Schiermonnikoog (Island of the gray monks) surrounded by Denmark to the east, Norway to the north and Britain to the west. The beach ran the length of the island—about nine kilometers—, went a kilometer inland and was portioned off into tourist areas and wildlife sanctuaries where rare birds mated, jellyfish flattened by gravity lolled and razor clams stabbed upward toward the atypical European summer’s blue sky. Stabilized by the invasive Marram grass the dune fields vacillate from behemoth to just large enough to shield two people on the lee side from the prevailing westerly winds circulating throughout the region. Sitting in the slack of two dunes we had talked about photography and travel and what to do when you got home until the first bottle was gone. As with most conversations between men and women who don’t know if they’re attracted to one another, with the next bottle the topic turned to sex, ex-lovers, and some gentle probing for inside information about our opposites.

“Maybe it is odd to say that this place, this beach, reminds me of Phuket.” She took a sip and began rolling another cigarette.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Who am I to say what is odd for you. Deja vu is just chemical reaction. Something about this place, maybe the breeze, maybe the sand and beach, or the way the light refracts off the water, we are on an island.”

Daintily she licked the glue on the paper with her darting tongue and motioned with her eyes, “I was thinking it’s those fat German men down there. Have you been to Phuket?”

“No, I purposely didn’t go, probably because of what you’re about to…”

“The sex trade.” She nodded and lit up. “Those people disgust me. Picking up on teenage girls…”

“And boys…” I added with a mouthful of wine.

“Yes, and boys…” laughing, she went on, “in a secret place with no laws where for a few Euros they can fuck themselves silly and then go home to their fat fraus and get back to being boring German businessmen.”

“It’s like in Good Fellas when Ray Liotta’s character talks about why he has a mistress. It’s because he can’t do what he does with his mistress with his wife, because she’s sacred. It’s a religious thing. All this sex trade is about is religion. The subconscious manifestations of ancient religious rules that have to be kept in order to be clean, to get into heaven, where maybe you can fuck some angels.”

“And money. For the customers sure, maybe it’s religious, but maybe they aren’t attracted to their wives anymore. And what about the people who supply the women? For them it’s all about money. They don’t care about enslaving humans…”

“Hah, because slaves were legal in the bible! We should write a book.”

“Can I ask you a question? Do you watch porn?

“Porn? No, I actually don’t like nor watch porn very much at all. Not that I’m against it, because if that’s your thing, go for it, but it’s more a factor of quality. What ‘films’ I have seen are low-quality digital video set in poorly-lit locations with bad acting and no story. I heard from a friend in the industry that the number of shots between partners meeting for the first time and anal penetration has to be less than five.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s how far gone we are. Even normal sex isn’t enough anymore. It has to be anal penetration (…But with the right kind of people…), or coprophilia, urolagnia, or underage kids, or beastiality. I guess the idea of watching two Mormons procreate probably isn’t a sexy enough image to get you in the mood, but…”

“Those people are scary!”

“Who? Shit eaters or Mormons?”

“Both.”

“Well, they’re not all bad. Some…”

“Which are we talking about again?”

“Both.”

The wine, once having entered our bloodstreams, had done the best it could considering its five-dollar origins. The decision to move from sand beach to a alcohol bar seemed to make itself. We rode our rented bicycles the long mile from the beachhead to our apartment, wobbling all the way in the waning sunlight. I opened another bottle and laid out some goat cheese and a baguette, then we separately rinsed off the sand, sea and sun, changed and were on the road to the island’s lone bar by the time the street lamps had lit, reflecting bright beams of incandescent light from our glossy and expectantly watering eyes.

European beer is like European women, strong and heady stuff, and flirting with either can put an average American into potentially dangerous situations, especially having spent the last six years in East Asia, where mixing subtlety, alcohol and women can be an under-appreciated art form. The bar closed at midnight and we rode back in the dark laughing, cutting wide, wavy figure eights through the thick North Sea air. Much as an inadvertent brush-up while locking the bikes is all it takes to change childlike diversion to adult dramatics, I spent the rest of the very short path to collapsing into sleep onto the twin bed opposite hers visualizing the opening shot of low-budget porn flick starring the two of us. Before the bearded pool boy even got to talk his way into the demure brunette’s poolless house, the warm dark arms of sleep stole me away and damped my desire. Or so I thought.

Vague forms in the darkness. The sounds of breath, legs moving beneath ruffling sheets, the far off lapping of waves. Toes touching the ground and the creak of floorboards. A hand reaching under a sheet, manicured nails on skin, thighs mounting thighs, the elastic snap of panties, hair tickling eyelashes, deep breaths, lips to ear, “You awake?”

“I am now.”

“You talk in your sleep.”

“Do I? What did I say?”

“Something like what’s happening now.”

“Well, dreams do come true, don’t they?”

“I guess it depends on the dream.”

“You talk too much.”

“So do you.”

Nervous laughs hanging clumsily on the end of lips just inches away from other lips end in muffled breaths pressed and bunched like wadded cotton as hands begin to instinctually investigate newfound territory, fumbling their way south over straps and skin, entering the peaks and valleys of pleasure and pain like blindfolded conquistadors. The vague rolling motion emanates wavelike as concentric circles pulse from the inside out, starting in the nervous system by sending electromagnetic signals to the heart to pump blood to dilated arteries, engorging lips and nipples, sensitized by nerve endings to the lightest touch, until the tumescent phallus assumes its totalitarian stance and nothing—not whispered sweet nothings nor subtle caresses—will quiet the raging storm but revolutionary emancipation, ejaculative emission, spontaneous orgasm, and unconscious elation. The waves subside and blood flow decreases, the drumming of the heart slows as the automatic reverberations die off. The soft palm of the hand brushes off the chest as it leaves to rest on the sheets. The vague forms ebb and darkness descends bleeding into one another’s obscured edges until there is nothing.

Awakening to the aroma of coffee, the chirping of birds in the sunlight, opening your eyes is easier said than done. It’s nothing at all to denounce alcohol and tobacco for the devils they feel like the morning after, but where the devil truly resides is inside. Rolling over the wet spot in the bed the dim outlines of memories came flooding back like waves lapping at the edges of the beach, hinting at the profound depths of the unknown welling before me. Pulling back the covers I noticed the wet spot not only staining the sheets, but also my boxer-briefs. Blurry shrouds of dreamlike imagery floated through my brain like Medusa jellyfish in the murky sea, their stinging Aurelian tendrils enfolding me. Looking over at the diminutive form pressed into Nicola’s empty bed I wondered, was it real? Or did I imagine everything? I headed into the bathroom and did my best to shower the night off. My head pounding from dehydration as I drip-dried in the warm sunlight, I stared out the window toward the dunes in the distance beyond which flocks of gulls glided effortlessly above a large container ship heading south to the English Channel. Maybe that was the ship that would take me from the old world to the new, already on its way to meet me in Le Havre. I knew the next 48 hours were going to be a nonstop torrent of ferries, buses and trains winding their way through three countries in an exhaustive attempt to make it on time. I couldn’t wonder about the possibilities of tomorrow or the what ifs of the day after, nor the presumptions of what had taken place the night before, whatever it was or wasn’t. I would leave that for my Trans-Atlantic crossing. For now an Irish coffee and omelets with Nicola would have to do.

Addendum *

With internet progenitor AOL‘s recent acquisition of The Huffington Post, founder Arianna Huffington herself assures us that we, the users, will now be more able to have more access to local news than less, despite all signs pointing to just another big media consolidation coup for the onetime Time Warner partner. In one sense we, the users, want more—more access to more potential friends with more information about more cool things to do in our area. Why wouldn’t we? In the Internet parlance of WYSIWYG, the bigger the network the better, so why not let anyone own websites, radio, newspapers and television stations?

In the United States at least, it is increasingly happening that fewer and fewer large corporations and conglomerates are concentrating ownership of more and more aspects of media than ever before. The governmental regulatory organization in place to act in the interest of “public convenience, interest or necessity” according to the Communications Act of 1934 is the FCC, which under George W. Bush’s tenure as president allowed for the first time ever the ownership of television station and newspaper within the same market.

What this means is that when you watch KTLA, the Los Angeles area CW (joint venture of CBS and Time Warner) affiliate and the first commercially licensed television station in the western United States, and read the Los Angeles Times (or other local papers the Daily Pilot and the News Press) the chance that you are basically getting the same syndicated “news” copied from Google aggregator by overworked reporters in understaffed workplaces is high. This deregulation, which was supposed to foster greater competition between media entities, merely actions further consolidation, resulting in buyouts of local media outlets (mostly radio stations), and higher unemployment. There’s something for you to post on MySpace (a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation).

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_{1 PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community by David R. Woolley}

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 at 02:52. It is filed under Europe and tagged with All Content © Manny Santiago, Europe, Groningen, Love in the Modern Age, Nocturnal Emissions, Schier island, Schiermonnikoog, Social Networking, The Netherlands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.