On Warmoesstraat, A Triptych by Antony Osgood

A Hermit-Crab Hiding In the Shape of a Husband

Jennifer wouldn’t understand. I’m safe, and careful. Ain’t I respectful? She knows, I guess, she understands I’m curious, how could she not? What man isn’t curious? I’m not like other married guys I’ve met. I won’t rub that in her face or demean her. She has her own life now. It’s quiet, mild, sedentary. I love her although it’s like waking next to a sedated hysterectomy patient. I’m not like her, ready to retire from sex. Jennifer doesn’t understand how deep my need goes. It’s the difference between snacking between meals and being hungry from fasting. Ain’t I tried to add spice? She prefers beige food, and that’s okay, but I’m hungry for something with tang. She can’t expect me not to breathe or feel. She’d die if she knew. Shouldn’t I be happy? Just when it’s the two of us again, now we’ve time, she turns away in bed, like I repulse her. I’m waking every morning next to a familiar stranger. The legs – man, look at that guy’s legs. Maybe the waiter is hanging about our table because he’s interested. He’s young but some kids like older guys. He kept eye-contact a second too long when he offered us the stroopwafel. His fingers brushed mine when he gave us the menu. It’s hot, knowing Jennifer has no real idea. She’s busy wanting to be a novelist, like a million other women her age. This show might loosen her up. Invite a conversation. Maybe I should start by saying she might enjoy being with another guy. Just the three of us in an anonymous hotel room. Imagine the possibilities, I’ll say. Doesn’t she always look sad after our Fridays? Doesn’t she rush to the en suite to recover? In a way I’m thinking of her. I’ll say to her that maybe doing this will cheer her up. And when in Amsterdam, I’ll say, then leave it hanging. And if she gets mad, I can say it is all a joke, honey. Just a harmless fantasy, babe. Ah, forget about it, honey. It’s the vodka talking, babe, like on the cruise, kiss me honey honey kiss me. Look at that guy’s legs – the muscle tone, skin smooth as gold, his shoulders carrying the sun, his freedom of expression. You can see he loves performing. I bet he thinks of guys while he does the show. The girl he’s fucking ain’t much to look at. The waiter keeps staring at the stage – bored by watching the same show everyday. The guy’s stamina! He must work out. And I’d like to know what supplements he takes. I’m going to get in shape. Look at his definition. Jennifer, let’s try it at least, wouldn’t you enjoy it, I think you would, why not give it a go, I’d like to see you there between us, me and him touching through your body’s warmth, why not at least try, for me, I’ll say. Keep the wine flowing. We’re safe, far away from home. Who would know? We’re not getting any younger. I’m sure she’ll understand. It’s hardly a passing fancy. Haven’t I been good to her? Loved, honoured, all that? Paid down the mortgage. Paid out for the kids. I wouldn’t say she owes me, not in such a callous way. I’m not insensitive. The kids have grown, flown home, my duty’s done. It’s our time now. The clock strikes, my hour is come, it’s now or never. But, look at his butt. She’ll understand. She’ll forgive. Look at the guy’s legs. Ain’t I trying to be understanding? Ain’t I entitled to a little happiness? Ain’t I a good husband by including her?

Jaap Craving Tobacco Whilst Desirous of Holding Hands

I’m worn out from early starts and my body aches from shifting crates of beer, and I need a fag and a little space to think. Kiral should rota on more staff. Bloody tourists – interrupting my break. The stupid Canadian doesn’t see what’s in front of her eyes. Look at her husband. No straight man orders a chocolate vanilla vodka martini. She’s camouflage. She’s his cover. His human shield. This trip will be their fortieth. Maybe their thirtieth? I bet they’ve got kids. All at college, studying law or dentistry. She’s kept her cheap coat on. How can she allow herself such complacency? Why doesn’t she take care of herself? Couldn’t she make an effort to dress well? Couldn’t he, Mr Belly Over Belt? They’ll baulk at a tip, I can tell. God, he’s sweating. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. Tapping into her phone. She’s texting or making notes. She’s like one of those people too busy videoing a gig to enjoy the music. Why does she allow herself to be used like this? She laughed when I offered stroopwafel, shocked, like I was offering a dildo. She caught me staring at her leaning leery husband. Like connecting with a stranger on a tram and realising in that moment you have both shared the same thought, that neither of you should be here, now, packed like sardines in a tin of conformity, both aching to scream. She gave a shrug. I wanted to shake her, shout run! It’s telling how she watches her husband rather than Annemie or Karl. The boss won’t be happy with them sipping at their drinks. That fuck Kiral owes me for opening his poxy bar. I’m owed a break, a fag. I wonder if Annemie will want a beer after work again? If she’s not too tired from the show, a bit of normal might be welcome. I’ll hang about outside her dressing room, offer to walk her to the border of the district, bid goodnight to the pimps and workers that stand silent as border guards inspecting a flood of refugees. You’re one of types types: you belong or you’re gullible. And maybe tonight Annemie will agree to hold hands once we’re out of here, away from people who know her, in the privacy of the street, and we can close our eyes to the neon-blue faces wandering the cobbles. Soon as we’re out of the district I’ll buy Annemie something to eat. We can sit at a table at the border to award lonely tourists marks for lack of style. I won’t smoke. After dessert I will give Annemie my poem, casually slide it across the table, and open up my heart, confess I am no laureate but what I’m feeling matters. Then she’ll see the truth of me. Then she’ll know. I only want what’s best for her. How we think about those we want is never realistic, she says, and said I supposed in a way we’re all post-impressionists when it comes to love’s art. She snorted at the word love. But how can she trust what she hasn’t experienced? How vulnerable, spread-eagled on the stage. How sad, faking love for Euros, pretending heavy breathing for a crowd. That last one was the least authentic orgasm I’ve heard all week. And Karl, he’s such a dick. She deserves better. She’s smiling. It doesn’t ring true. Tonight I’ll suggest we leave Kiral’s, find better jobs, in an art museum maybe. She always says she doesn’t know anything else, she enjoys the work, but I can show her there’s more to life. I need a – Annemie doesn’t like smoking. I mean, she’ll do that, with Karl, night after fucking night, but not smoke? How can doing that be more intimate than holding hands? Look at the husband eating-up Karl with his eyes. And the wife watching her husband. Maybe she sees him after all. What is she doing here, tolerating him? What is she getting out of this? Both of them stare in foreign ways. Both hungry for something else. I need a fag. Not the husband.

A Wife Conducting Research

He says let’s go in this cafe,and I say it’s a little dim for a cafe isn’t it, and too smokey, so Richard says for goodness sake Jennifer, it’s just a little haze, relax a little, live a little, a little of what you fancy won’t kill you, so I say, it’s you that fancies this seedy place, admit it, and I’ve had enough of you belittlingme, but whoosh, right over his head. He’s barely able to read the room more than a book, and he’s not bent a spine since seventh grade. He looks at me as if my pages are blank. But I’m writing myself every day. God knows I’ve tried to keep hold of him these last thirty-years, until a decade ago one morning – it was a Monday and the sky was grey – I saw only ashes in my hands. Kept a brave face for the sake of the kids. But the boys have all left, coming home only at the end of each semester to raid the refrigerator. Richard has become someone I don’t recognise over the crunch of soft breakfast cereal. His sordid keening bores me more than excites me. His one-tone begging for darker things. He hasn’t said it, and maybe he doesn’t know it himself, but I see this vacation is our nadir, my decision time. But you know what he’s like: genetically unable to listen. It’s my anniversary, too. Just when I’m about to walk out of this place and leave him to it, it strikes me this all counts as research. Even the things that hurt. Be authentic, the girls in the writing group say. Write what you know. I say I know him. They say make it about him and you then. I ask who’d read such cliched trash? And they say it isn’t the reading that matters in a writing group, more the writing your own story. Making sense of things. Even a marriage? And they nodded, each lost in memories, mumbled uh-huh. He thinks I’m stupid, blind and needy, which I think is called projection. This trip then will be a culmination. The final chapter, our resolution. Even in a thriller, amid the debris, someone has to survive. I won’t be destroyed. I’ll show the girls the draft when I get home. Richard’s got that edacious sheen on his forehead, wetting his top lip, like it’s the third Friday of every month, when he expects me to, the day that makes me think of Topol singing Tradition! from Fiddler on the Roof. So as soon as he settles himself at the table, squinting into the darkness, I say to him okay then, but drink up, let’s get out of here quick and head to someplace more refined, but suddenly he can’t remember how to drink fast, which is a first. I’m half a glass of chilled white in, it’s too dry to be perfect, half a cheap glass in when the stage lights pulse into life – truly, I didn’t even see the stage – and there! oh my days, a dead-eyed sex show, a muscular boy on a pneumatic girl, then she grabs the back of his head, slaps him, turns him over – uh-huh – and she takes control – why wouldn’t she? – and it’s as if we’re in an Amsterdam-themed park, decorated with platitudes. And the waiter – cute, in that unconscious way kids have, but young, too young but superior, not knowing yet what his life might become – he must be the age of our youngest, he comes up to our table just as the girl is peeing on the guy, and the waiter asks with perfect timing – my mouth wide as his on stage – how doesn’t he gag? – whether I fancy stroopwafel. With cream and cherries! I mean, Freud anyone? And when I say to the waiter I see the asparagus appears to be good about these parts, but whoosh, over the heads of the both of them. The girls in the writing group always ask about character motivation. So how can my husband think to embarrass me so? Why not up and leave? Robert has always been my anchor, I’ve told the whole town, the girls at the writing group, but now I do believe he’s riveted. A marriage is inertia. If you think of a situation as a prison then you are trapped, but framing it as research gives you a little mental wriggle room. It’s like there’s this item you loved forty-years ago that you still buy in the hope it features even a little of the original recipe. What on earth will he suggest back at the hotel? I am not doing – there’s no way – my new veneers, and my hip isn’t what it was. I’m a visitor in my own marriage, which has become a circus, and I’m watching him fall from the high wire. I know I should roll out the safety net, but choice is choice. Choice is telling. He’s dull as a tarnished lock. Easily picked apart. It’s just like the time he was drunk on the cruise and he’d been talking to that couple from – was it Norway? someplace cold – they were both opticians, I remember, and saw him coming, and he said, when he scuttled us back to the cabin, his fingers shaking at my buttons giddy with desire not for my body, not me, but ideas, that I should – well, I’m glad he passed out. Just look at him, how ugly Robert has become, a light-sweat swooning goon, a little desperate tourist gazing longingly at the show. He’s like as soft-shell hermit crab invading another home. What’s his motivation, the girls will ask? Don’t they get it? Robert is readable as a bone-clean sentence on a page. He wants me to be the guy on stage. Wait until I tell the girls back at The Winnipeg Episcopal Church.

Antony Osgood

Image: wikicommons – Moyan Brenn from Italy – Warmoesstraat street in Amsterdam showing flags and pedestrians walking.