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The Green Light District

Two-way Traffic of the Night

By Gerard DiLeoPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
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The Green Light District
Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash

I left with a song in my heart and a hop in my walk. I laughed because there really was a red light. Even funnier, they all accepted American Express. I had no idea how many dollars 179 Dutch Guilders would end up being, since this was years before the Euro, but when you’re not thinking with your brain, exchange rates go out the window.

I loved women. It was that simple. They are magical, as much to do with my real world as fairies or leprechauns. They’re sinuous, sultry, and sumptuous; a bespoke instruction set for my neurotransmitters. Love being with them. Love coming back to them. Love them when they love me back. Or not.

When I got back to my hostel I rifled through my pockets, because the ladies stuffed them with all kinds of coupons and leaflets, apparently for some of the “business partners” around town. My room had three sets of bunkbeds. It was before midnight, and I found myself alone in the room. I flicked all of the propaganda and come-on bait onto my bottom bunk, where they landed in a disheveled pile. I checked a chest under my bed to make sure nothing had been stolen—all was good.

I sat on my bunk mattress and began looking through possibilities for tomorrow night. There were offers for threesomes, foursomes, mixed swinging, the pleasuring of multiple bodily regions, and the inverted helicopter ride—whatever that was, although I suspected from the picture it involved some bizarre machinations on exotic machines. Perhaps I should just have shuffled them and picked one.

One card stood out in its simplicity: instead of splashy, vulgar cartoons in primary colors, it only had one color—green. The side facing up was plain, all a matte green without any writing. Turning it over simply revealed a phone number. 0906-28-something-5-something-4-something. Nothing else.

Why would this interest me? It could be anything, from a shoeshine to a buffet. However, it came with the rest of the literature planted on me, and every one of those, without exception, was an enticement for illicit debauchery, drug dens, alternate orifices, and even the inverted helicopter ride.

I was still pretty stoned, so who knew the rationale underlying my decision to throw everything but the green card atop the upper bunk for its occupant to consider upon his or her return? To be truthful, I didn’t know whether some of the boarders here were his or her, but after what I did tonight, I was hardly qualified to judge anyone. I fell asleep and only half-awoke to the several mid-nighttime episodes of stumbling into the room; at one point, someone stretched a leg over me and climbed onto the top bunk, followed by a rainstorm of leaflets, brochures, and other invitations to mortal sin.

The next morning I woke up about 10 AM. I rubbed my eyes and swept the room to find myself all alone again. All of the paper on the floor had been removed. “Where did it all go? Where do all of the people go?” I asked myself.

I pulled on my jeans and felt in my pocket for my wallet. I checked the guilder situation and found a forgotten green card I must have stuffed into a credit card slot. I vaguely remembered. I made my way out of the room and used the bathroom in the hall, and then I walked to the concierge desk. Behind it was a crusty, middle-aged woman who didn't smile, even though I told her I would be staying the night again.

“Oh, so you had a good time, yea?” she said. Still no smile. It was a rhetorical question.

“It was nice,” I reported. I pulled out my wallet to pay for that night in advance and, again, there was the green card. The woman’s eyes popped open.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, but it wasn’t asked very confidently, like there were something in all this that was best tiptoed around.

“Oh, this,” I said, pulling it out. I showed it to her.

“Did you call the number?” she asked. One of her eyelids quivered, a tic triggered by the green card.

“No, should I?” I asked with one eyebrow raised to answer her quiver.

“Not if you want to stay here tonight,” she answered sharply. She slammed the register book, snatched my guilders, and abruptly turned her back to me.

“What’s the deal with the green card?” I asked. It was a sincere inquiry with no hints of bravado or intent. She ignored the question, only calling out away from me.

“Don’t come back here if you do,” she said. It was not a sincere answer.

I walked slowly out of the door with my wallet, backpack, and green card. I mumbled the numbers to myself, wondering. I did it again and again, until I had the number etched into the green section of my brain. Then I saw the public phone on a street corner.

It wasn’t a toll free number, now or—as I was to discover—later.

An androgynous voice answered, so I didn’t know whether to say yes or no, ma’am or sir. I was given an address.

There are some times in your life when you are driven to take a chance. They are magic moments when they work out; regrettable when they don’t. But they're never forgettable, and that’s what makes life on Earth extraordinary. For this adventure, I weighed the risks and decided to give the green card the green light. After all, this was a civilized country: they legislate safe sex. How bad could it get?

I gave the cabbie the address. “Are you sure, American?” he asked.

“You speak English?”

“Of course. How are we going to get business done in this world speaking Dutch? Has to be English.”

“I’m sure about the address,” I answered, “take me there, please.”

“Good for my cousin,” he muttered under his breath.

“What’s your cousin have to do with it?”

“Never mind,” he said. And that was that.

The door was green. There was a green light, too. Green light district? Hardly. It was the only green door on the street. I paid the fare and stepped out. On the door was a sign that read,

LAAT ALLE HOOP VAREN WIE HIER BINNENKOMT

Not English. Hardly a way of doing business with the world. I knew a little Dutch, so I got the words “abandon” and “enter here,” and that was enough for me. I was ready to engage reckless abandon; I was ready to enter the green light district.

I rapped the door with my fist, three times with firm, metered strikes. From behind the door I heard what must have been a very small dog going ballistisch. There fell on a creaky floor footsteps in syncopation with the yelps. Several locking mechanisms, chains, and deadbolts disengaged loudly, as if in warning. The heavy metal door creaked open arthritically.

“You come of your own free will?” the same--hidden--androgynous voice asked.

“Yessiree, that’s me. So, where’s the dog?” I noticed whatever had been barking was no longer doing it.

“There’s no dog,” the voice said. “Not any more. Come in.”

The door had been opened only a crack for our conversation. I pushed the door and it swung open all the way, painfully and with a lack of commitment, as if it could slam shut again suddenly whether I was caught in it or not. I entered. The door closed, assisted by a hinge pin-spring torque device. I was alone.

“Excuse me?” I asked loudly.

It was a small square room with another door opposite the entrance. The walls were brown but the second door was green, also. Above it was an unlit light, with green ceramic around it. I waited. After a moment, the green light above the interior green door lit and began blinking. I supposed that was my cue.

I walked to it and turned the knob slowly. As I crossed the threshold into a dark hallway, the light in the anteroom went out, presumably via some automatic infrared energy-saving switch. Everything was black now. I stepped forward a couple of steps and the door closed behind me. It didn’t slam, threateningly, but gently engaged its doorjamb as if in welcome.

Now I thought, interesting. What happens now? Would I be caressed by some mystery woman.

Then it occurred to me I was in the dark, so it might just as well be some mystery man. Or some mystery tranny. I never could tell what gender my recruiter was.

Suddenly, the cloth imbued with ether was pressed to my face and a scuffle ensued—half of it from me. The sounds of the commotion began to echo in my mind in a trebly feedback and I could taste the ether—not because it was shoved into my mouth, but because I had inhaled enough of it to diffuse into my bloodstream back out to my tastebuds.

I had been out but hadn’t lost my sense of time; I knew I had been out for at least six hours, perhaps as long as a whole day. I awoke into a heavy fog in the bathtub of the hallway men’s room back at my hostel. I was weak, in severe pain, and my throat was sore. My vision was overcast by a blue hue and the room spun. I closed my eyes again and passed out without noticing the medicated patches on my arms and legs. I could still taste the ether.

Back home now, after the years, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I can’t help but consider the irony. Or perhaps it's guilt. I reconsidered my epochs of debauchery.

I had loved the women. It had been so simple. They were magical, as much to do with the real world as fairies or leprechauns. They were sinuous, sultry, and sumptuous, a bespoke instruction set for my neurotransmitters. Every touch had burned into my sensorium. Every smell. I loved being with them. Loved them even when they didn’t love me back.

I had been a sucker for the false interest and empty kindness from any stripper who asked me to buy her a drink. They had seemed happy to be with me. Now I knew I was only me suspending my disbelief--all part of the game. They probably hated me, the same way they felt for the men who had guided them into their line of work ever since childhood, perhaps from infancy. Their attention and my money were a two-way street, separated by a median of ill will and beguiling, but delayed-release, venom. The women of the night in Amsterdam were the same, certainly.

I sit in my recliner several hours a day and think. How dared I take something away with me from their bodies? A sniff, a feel, a penetration? Their integrity, shame, and scruples came away with me too. My sense of self was forever shaped by a cast of an inverted woman, a reverse mold of self-setting plaster poured into the hole where a whole woman once was. Draped over my brain like a homunculus vampire. I no longer had to guess how I would like such a thing done to me. I knew. I knew.

I knew, because of all the time I’ve had to think about it in my recliner. Because of how someone took something from my body which could never be given back. So I knew how it felt. I was in no position to resent it. Going forward, I would have a lot more time to think about it—at least eight hours a day, three times a week, for the rest of my life, here on my recliner in a dialysis clinic.

I hope the cabbie's cousin got his kidney. Maybe one day I'll get mine.

Short Story
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About the Creator

Gerard DiLeo

Retired, not tired. In Life Phase II: Living and writing from a decommissioned Catholic church in Hull, MA. Phase I: was New Orleans (and everything that entails).

https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/

email: [email protected]

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