I just booked a one-way flight to Amsterdam.

Exactly one year after a slow-moving train brought me there from Bruxelles.

I am excited and nervous and I want to stay but I need to go and and and.

4 January 2010.

I know I’ve mentioned my garden before, but in its tangled thickets, in its riots of color, in its pockets of damp black earth, I still find my most loved places in the world. Near the hill grew a family of pink foxgloves, whose bell-shaped blossoms billowed out like upside-down skirts. I would slip my finger into the cool fold and break through the flesh of its bottom to make fairy rings ‘round my finger. Papa said its pollen was used in medicine— but was also poisonous, a knowledge that distressed my defairied nail-biting self after a day of play outside. I remember nosing the impatiens in search of ripe seeds. Sometimes my sister and I would harvest the pods and pop them in the dark like so many green firecrackers.

I miss lying back into the periwinkles: flattening their milky petals and caring nothing for the dirt and the bugs. Sabrina and I would climb the ivy on the slope toward the fence that bounded my tiny world. For many years a naked line shot through the star-shaped leaves, a quiet monument to the trail we daily made toward the shoulder of land that edged toward the public school. A cherry tree stood there once, rained in the springtime. Now the rise is crowned only by a dry stump, where I sat some evening after my Nana died, watched the sun go to sleep and thought the world was still beautiful. A wisteria tree stooped over the sun-setting hill. Its flowers drooped like the pale bunches of grapes that spilled over the eastern hedge. Its trunk grew straight like a bench on whose smooth bark I would sit and watch my mother weed below. In the shadows above the peonies breathed out their sweet perfume. Black ants crept into the secret lollipop buds until June when they suddenly bloomed like red stains in the dim.

My sister ate a peony once. Me, I’d eat dandelion greens pulled up from the lawn, chewing their bitter leaves as I watched the sky move. And I’d hunt for the dying flowers so I could blow their seeds out like candles, and wish I were grown up.

The top of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I met Alex there— just left of that middle lamppost to be precise. I remember. Perched atop the wide banister, legs dangling carelessly over a nasty drop, the mint-green dome of the Vatican glowing against a peach-colored sunset as hundreds and hundreds of black birds wheel overhead in lazy aerial ballets. The sound of jazz floating from the rooftop terrace of a nearby hotel. Vendors tossing spinning toys into the air, hot pink and fluorescent blue flares competing with the subdued shades of a darkening sky. No photograph can truly capture the arresting and timeless grandeur of the view. My love affair with Italy began on the Spanish Steps.

The lookout from the Sacre-Coeur in Paris, especially at night, when the mosque-like church looms behind you like a pale ghost, and all of Paris is spread before you like a wide blanket of earthbound stars. I lingered there on my birthday with my friends in the early morning when the area was utterly deserted. What an incredible feeling to run up the hundred steps to the summit— to breathe in the sleeping city, its monotonous skyline effortlessly dominated by the elegant Tour Eiffel— and feel as though Paris is wholly yours.

The terrace of Keith’s flat in Amsterdam, with its unique and haunting view toward the Ij and Sint Nicolaaskerk. The panorama is not expansive and is actually more-than-half eclipsed by wings of the building to either side. It’s like peering through a keyhole and catching a fleeting glimpse of some otherworldly beauty, framed by cranes and wholly unimpressive structures that somehow do nothing to diminish the scene’s inexplicable allure. I was never able to cross that platform without stopping for a breathless moment to marvel at the view. Even if I lived there, I don’t think I’d ever be immune to that silent charm, capable of resisting that secret beauty.

I’m disappointed you lack the courage to even see me. You think you’re doing your future wife a favor— in reality you’re doing her an immense disservice and insulting your feelings for each other by insinuating they’re so fragile they’d be gravely shaken by an hour in my presence.

So here is my final letter to you: the last of many drafts and the only one that will reach its addressee.

Today you’re returning the watch I purchased for you years ago in Florence. In exchange I restore to you the umbrella you so carelessly gave me the day we met— up to now the most precious item in my possession. In the words below I also leave you the only truths I know.

I really will always love you. You were my life for 8 years and you’re such a reference to who I am … but I’m moving on. It helped to realize that, in many ways, you’re the coward and child. I’m so accustomed to viewing you as the capable adult that I needed a decade to recognize your inexperience, timidity, and narrowmindedness. You’re also generous, intelligent, and well-intentioned— if you had no redeeming qualities, I would’ve given up on you long ago. Am I giving up now? I guess so. I can no longer fight to hold your hand, pull you to your feet, and show you all the glorious things in the world of which you willingly and consistently deprive yourself.

I do not doubt that you are happy. But I know you’re not free, and I’m sure you could be happier. You’re the rare sort of individual who reckons himself content in any circumstance— but in my eyes you’re also half-dead by now, and your spirit is couched in a self-created illusion of complacence.

I hope you someday reconcile your forgotten wishes with your reality. I pray you learn to live and not merely exist. My greatest desire is that you know every joy and beauty in the world— that your soul is one day no longer landlocked and trapped by imagined obligations. I want you to allow yourself some measure of genuine happiness. Happiness is not settling. It does not require you to deny or deceive yourself and others. Happiness is having the courage to pursue pipe dreams until they are no longer fictions— to chase bolts of blue, climb over walls others would deem dead ends, run until you run out of breath, refuse to concede. Happiness rests not in altering your desires to conform to your reality. It is attainable only when you shape your reality to the fantastic forms of your wildest dreams.

Have the audacity to question whether or not you’re truly happy. If the answer is ever anything short of yes, yes, yes, please have the strength to pursue what you really want. Whenever that happens— if ever that happens— you’ll know where to find me.

•

Cheers to never using this tag again …

So what happened with me and Keithy-boy?

You tell me.

I arrived in Amsterdam on a Wednesday morning. He wanted to meet me that evening so I waited for him outside Belushi’s. That gave me quite the feeling of déjà-vu. How unreal to be on Warmoesstraat again, peering into the bar to see if some nameless twenty-something was on his shift. His reflection appeared behind me in the window. I turned around and was immediately stunned by his height. Had he always been that tall? He had 9 or 10 inches on me. The whole reunion was one-sidedly surreal.

We ended up wandering around Rembrandtsplein. I chose a direction, he settled on a number of minutes to walk, and we entered the first bar we encountered. We ended up heading to a few more, as well, rating them all on “Brownness,” “Wildlife,” “Sleep Conduciveness,” “Stability of Glassware,” and other such relevant criteria on a scale of 19.7 marks. Pictograms were occasionally used in lieu of the numerical grading system.

We returned to his flat at 3a.m. and started opening up to each other— “Kind of a deep conversation, isn’t it?” he asked. “I don’t really like talking about these things.” A minute later he nonetheless lowered his walls and answered my queries— about our religious views, our educations, our families, our goals. The conversation dwindled a few hours later and we tucked in for bed. I opened my eyes after a long stretch of silence and saw that he was staring at me, our faces less than 2 inches apart, his features just discernible in the darkness. I held his gaze for 10 brave seconds before facing away from him, confused, cowardly, sleepy, and drunk. He promptly wrapped his arm around me, as though he had been waiting for me to give him a cue, and we fell asleep spooning as I clasped his hand over my heartbeat.

( We rendezvoused again at Belushi’s on his next day off … )

I flew to Amsterdam for him, carrying not much more than the fading memory of January sparks. Why? Because he listens to These New Puritans. Because he can discuss photography, history, politics, music, art, cinema. Because he plays the drums. Because he conceals so much tension beneath a collected and composed demeanor. Because his front teeth are chipped. Because his eyes are clear blue excepting a smudge of brown in the left. Because he loves Camden and lights up every time someone mentions Berlin. Because he hates Winston Churchill. Because he references South Park far too frequently. Because he has a mole on the right side of his neck. Because his invariable greeting for everyone is, “You alright?” Because he plays along with my antics instead of just laughing or patting my head. Because he’s horrendously grumpy in the morning. Because he tucks his cigarette back toward his palm when he smokes. Because he never closes his eyes during love-making. Because he just watches me intently, as though I’m the only person in the world and I just happen to be a goddess. Because he denies me his kiss, and even when I arch up into him and try to capture his mouth, he hovers just a centimeter above so our lips are only grazing each other, and he watches with detached curiosity as I struggle and silently plead, before finally yielding, kissing me desperately, pinning me to the pillow by my wrists.

He is so unreadable, so inscrutable, and yet so terribly familiar. I can never quite decide if I know him very well or not at all. And, in the end, I can’t help but feel like the unsuspecting half of some great inside joke, at which everyone but me is laughing. Advice and analyses are appreciated by the brave few who did not stop reading halfway through.

I reckon my last weekend in Amsterdam sums up my entire month.

The run-down in bullet format:

• Woke up early on Saturday morning.
  
• Headed to Belushi’s in the evening to start my penultimate night with a few Jupilers.
  
• Moved the party next door to the Winston Kingdom after all my friends finished their shifts at the bar.
  
• Got riotously drunk.
  
• Fell through a trap door and down a flight of stairs into the cellar. Bruised horrendously all over the right side of my body to the extent that I still cannot sit or walk without pain.
  
• Exacerbated injuries by tackling Luke from across the street and crashing us both into 3 dozen bicycles. Was forced to apologize to owners by singing and dancing in the middle of Warmoesstraat.
  
• Accidentally ingested 3 doses of strong LSD around 2a.m.
  
• Oops.
  
• Phoned Alex in Australia to his immense confusion as he has not heard my voice since January.
  
• Was kindasorta felt up by some Israeli guy.
  
• Had to restrain bar owner Neil from murdering said Israeli guy when I recounted the incident to him on the verge of tears.
  
• Ended up going home with Keith around 4a.m.
  
• Had the most phenomenal physical experience of my life. Sex with him is already an incredible and borderline religious experience for me. Combine that with the peak of LSD and—
  
• Was violently and repeatedly sick in his toilet.
  
• Did not sleep at all and was quite literally tortured by far-off sounds from the Roots World Music Festival.
  
• Realized around 11a.m. that it was Sunday and I needed to finish packing. Kissed Keith on his forehead, thanked him for babysitting me, and found my way to the tram.
  
• Had hourslong conversation on Skype with a friend in the States.
  
• Recorded said conversation for posterity.
  
• Decided against sleep. Figured I would stay up as long as physically possible so as to make the best of every second of my last weekend in Amsterdam.
  
• Showered and headed to Belushi’s for my last night.
  
• Got riotously drunk. Again.
  
• Spread the love. Swore on various objects and graves that I would be back for good in 2010. Promised Luke I would send him a lengthy e-mail within the week about “shimmering cobblestones” and everything else I love about Amsterdam.
  
• Had an opportune run-in with the man who set me up with Keith in January. Reminisced with him and shook his hand.
  
• Started to feel like a Ringwraith around 3a.m. Firmly began to believe that sleep was a myth. Refused to turn in because I was adamant about getting Keith alone to say “goodbye” to him.
  
• Ended up staying out until 4a.m. My last moment with Keith literally consisted of no more than me waving with a very confused and insulted expression.
  
• Hailed a taxi home because I was too distraught and exhausted to even contemplate the 50-minute walk from the Red Light District to the ‘ghetto’ where I live.
  
• Was unable to sleep because my taxi reservation fell through and I needed to find some way to get to the airport.
  
• Ended up enlisting an army of stateside help to find, call, and book a taxi service, since my internet was wonky and refused to load websites, and I had run out of credit on my mobile.
  
• Stumbled to bed, not even bothering to remove my coat, around 7:30a.m.
  
• Woke up at 9:30a.m. to drive to Schiphol.
  
• Boarded plane for 8 hour flight. Fell asleep like it was my profession. Woke solely and instinctively for food.
  
• Opened my eyes some time later to realize I was in the United States.
  
• Let out a slew of swears to compete with the general applause as the plane touched down in New York City.

I hope you’ve all been well. I know I’ve been more-or-less missing. I have a stable internet connection now and am gradually catching up with your lives.

Expect at least 2 more entries about Amsterdam: a painfully detailed rundown of everything that’s happened with Keith and a pathetically elegiac homage to everything I love and miss about that silly city …

I rearranged my courses and now plan to graduate in December with a fairly useless Bachelor’s. I want to move to Europe for good sometime in the Spring. I no longer see the worth in waiting.

Here’s a story. I was one of those overachieving Harvard-bound kids, yet I found myself a Senior in high school with no idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I only had the vague but compelling urge to travel and experience the world before I committed 4 years and thousands of dollars to an irrelevant degree.

So I laid low during those frantic Fall months when my peers lived and breathed the college application process. I helped many in my graduating class revise their personal statements without ever penning my own. Only in February did counselors realize a top student had seemingly no plans to attend university. My parents were promptly phoned. I told them I wanted to work and travel for a semester before gunning for Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale. They obviously refused. A few well-meaning teachers cornered me over the course of the next week to offer random advice and anecdotes to my presumably lost 17-year-old self. I understood the wisdom of my parents and professors— but I understood myself better.

Some morning in June my parents walked into my room with a list of 3 schools. I chose at random. I assume they applied in my name without my knowledge— isn’t that illegal?— and I soon became an official student of a school I had never seen.

So that’s the story of how-I-ended-up-here.

I have no qualms about my upcoming expatriation. I’m finishing my last term and graduating a week shy of turning 21. Then a few months’ of working like a dog will pay for a one-way flight and a month or so of rent and food. Nowadays it’s just a matter of saving money and selecting a city.

I’m slowly wrapping my head around what will soon be my new reality. I’m going to be a “former New Yorker.”

What will I miss about that magnificent city? Madame X hanging across from Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes at the Met. The buzz of opera-goers emptying into Lincoln Center after a late performance of La Bohème. Couples wheeling their children by the Lake at Central Park. Noontime jazz by the bleachers at Washington Square Park. The feeling of history and timelessness that creeps up the arches and stairwells of the New York Public Library. The smell and sound and rhythm of the subway. Nick.

Nick most of all.

I know I’m not going to return to New York for a long time. I need to be on my own for a few years. I need to find a new home somewhere on a new continent before I can return here and make any real sense of my childhood.

It’s not nearly as reckless as it seems.

I’m in Amsterdam, after a long flight made bearable by copious amounts of free alcohol and a wide selection of films. I had a mind-numbingly boring layover in Detroit— yes, I know that’s in the opposite direction— during which I amused myself by using motorized walkways as treadmills. The plane got in to the Netherlands an hour early, so I wandered around Schiphol Airport until my flatmate Monika arrived.

Monika is a crazy old lady with red hair who drives a mint green minivan, which she uses to roadtrip to France and Spain. She speaks 5 languages fluently and has lived all over Europe in random countries like Hungary, where she organized concerts for local gypsy music. My flat is red and orange and cluttered with interesting photographs and ethnic instruments. One room is devoted to her stained glass hobby— she created all the doors and most of the lamps here. She invited me to some strange festival that is essentially the Dutch equivalent of the Burning Man Project in the United States. She also wants to show me the countryside on the weekend. She’s very young at heart.

It’s is a 50-minute walk to my usual haunts by the Red Light District, but all is well, as I finally seem to be able to find my way home whether tripping, stoned, or drunk.

Keith and I have seen each other. Saving those details for another entry.

Amsterdam has won me over yet again with its effortless charm. The sun here does not set until 10 in the evening, and only after hourlong sunsets. Every day has been warm, breezy, and bright, with sunshine peeking through the slowly-moving windmills on my way home. Yet the city is perhaps even lovelier in the rain. On the evening of my arrival I wandered around the empty Centrum with Keith, and the cobblestones were glossy and dark as the watery reflection of streetlamps shimmered in the canals.

I have only been here for 6 days, but I already feel the date of my departure looming. I’m determined to enjoy every second of whatever time I have here. Most especially every second with him.

I was wandering around the Financial District with the madman’s hope of sighting you somewhere in the crowd.

I had woken that morning from 4 hours of restless sleep. I was on the downtown 1 before I even knew where I was going. I dawdled outside your office building without a clue what I would say when you emerged from its revolving door.

I waited for an hour before giving up. I was not even sure I wanted to see you. I miss you so much, but we have many desires that must be tempered by logic, so I wandered up to the Duane Reade we browsed when we were last together. You had been half-seriously searching for a going-away gift to see me off to Europe.

I did not expect you to be in the queue at Chipotle’s.

Hope is a very separate thing from expectation.

You were with a co-worker, so it’s impossible to know whether you were unwilling or merely unable to meet me outside. I’m still not even sure you recognized me—

You were wearing the same clothing you wore the day we first met. I stood there like an idiot in open-mouthed shock. Sue me for being speechless when I have not seen you since September. I have not heard from you since February.

You turned. Our eyes locked. I ran away. I smoked a nervous cigarette across the street and must have missed your escape. Somehow I ended up distractedly browsing shoes in Union Square an hour later. What was the use of seeing you? It just needlessly confirmed how much I love you. I will always be fascinated by every stupid thing you say. I will never tire of looking at your face— not because it’s attractive or beautiful but because it’s yours.

I want to see you again on Monday. Am I a creep by now? Am I the psycho pseudo-ex? Am I really so greedy for wanting to hear your voice?

I could care less nowadays whether or not we have a go at a real relationship. I will hide my feelings for the rest of my life if it means we can be together in some way. It’s a fair trade-off. He concealed his love for 6 years because he thought his feelings would inconvenience me. Is it my turn now? I even drafted a letter that retracted my confession and listed an array of justifications for why I erroneously thought I was in love.

Just writing the words made me physically nauseous.

Is it worth it to hurt you? I’m not sure. I don’t have the nerve to stab you in the heart by calling you Nii-san again. What if you hated me after that? Then we would part ways without you even knowing I love you. At least you do not doubt me now …

I’ve learned now that the scariest thing in the world is not knowing whether or not you are alright. The scariest thing in the world is not being able to reach you no matter what I do.

So here is the long story.

I returned to the Bronx on Valentine’s Day to be with my family since my grandfather had just passed away. Nick had already made plans with his ex Talia, but everyone reassured me that nothing would happen since he and I had essentially said we were together.

Found out today that they fooled around. They would have had sex had she not refused. Alright. Fair play. I guess my expectations had been too high.

Everything was nonetheless going swimmingly. So I thought. His friends adored me and we got on more than well. We were so compatible and so close. We lived together from mid-February on and never argued. We just had nothing to fight about. We butted heads but only in the best of ways. Should that perfection have been a warning sign?

His birthday rolled around in the beginning of April. I planned a ridiculous 3-hour scavenger hunt around campus, with each subsequent clue hidden in a place that had a special memory for us. He loved the gift that waited for him at the end. Later that week we were wandering around lower Manhattan when he stopped dead in his tracks in front of Webster Hall. The name of his favorite band was conspicuously displayed on the marquee and I promptly unveiled a pair of tickets. He was so happy.

Turns out that entire week he had been trying to win back his ex Andrea. The girl who cheated on Zach to be with him, cheated on him to be with Hannah, cheated on Hannah to be with him again, and cheated on him a last time to be with some douche whose name I do not even know. I guess that is the idiocy of love. We keep clinging to thorns because we remember the rose’s shortlived beauty.

The lies continued. I begged him to be honest with me, even if he could only tell me that he missed her and was thinking of her. I begged him to do anything he could to not keep me in the dark again. He defaulted on every promise.

He was fired a few weeks ago. He officially moved in with me since he could no longer afford his flat and literally had nowhere else to go. It goes without saying that I, too, am a lovestruck idiot who chooses masochism over logic at every step.

I wish I could tell you everything he did right these past few years. How he was the only person I ever really considered my friend— the only person in whom I confided, the only person who was by my side when my life imploded. I wish I could tell you anything that would convince you to not write him off as the typical user.

I want to write him off.

I know him so well. I know the reasons for everything he does. It’s so absurd. We would have been so great together.

Excuse the imminent deluge of self-pity, but who did I maim in a past life to justify the garbage I’ve been dealing with since February? First Grandpa, then grandma, then him, now Nick.

Speaking of him? Every phone call and e-mail goes unanswered. He is sticking to his guns. Good on him. My attempts to pretend he never existed are going spectacularly well, but my few slip-ups are disastrous. For example, a few nights ago I got woefully drunk and cried about him for hours despite my continuing inability to pronounce his name. I feel sorry for my flatmates, because I know they could hear my 5a.m. sobbing and wailing through the walls.

Three weeks until Amsterdam. That’s my mantra now.