From: Phileine Says Sorry by Ronald Giphart

translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett

Represented by
The Susijn Agency, 64 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7QH
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HAPPINESS IS A LOADED GUN

Prologue

Now the day finally came when I was really pleased with myself and everything I did It was a warm, late afternoon, about a year ago, the sun was red, I was lying with an auspiciously sweet hunk of a young man on a purple blanket in the park close to my house. We had an overly filled picnic basket with us, a frisbee, some magazines, four or five pounds of books and a little tape player. Far away it was becoming twilight, the wind was rustling the leaves in the park for the first time that day, the hunk looking extremely cute in his Sixties-retro swimming trunks and I was pleased with myself and with us. For me, this is difficult to admit. My guy was doing a test in Viva to find out what kind of woman I was and what kind of relationship we had. It turned out I was a `direct hit'.
Well okay, I reluctantly admit: I really am a direct hit. "Never a dull moment around you," he read out loud about me, while we'd just spent hours doing nothing in a kind of lethargic state of bliss. No, everything between us was hunky-dory, according to Viva. Max sighed and put the magazine away.
"Phileine, there's something I have to tell you."

I don't like it when people say "Phileine, there's something I have to tell you." Here we go again, I think then. Nothing ever stays the same. Everything is ultimately doomed to rot away, it happens every time. Happiness is a loaded gun at your temple, it can go off any moment. Max had to tell me he was going away, that he was going to America to study for a year-and-a-half, maybe longer. It was for a Shakespeare project that only a few foreign students had been admitted to, the `chance-of-a-lifetime' that he couldn't let slip through his fingers. When Max was through talking, his direct hit reverberated across the field.
"A year-and-a-half is a long time," I said hurt, while hundreds of petty, pathetic little thoughts raced through my mind. What would become of us? Would our relationship survive that long? If he loves me, why's he going away? Could I go study in America too? What's the exchange rate of the dollar? Would my life still be my life without Max? Why hadn't he said anything about this before?
More or less reassuringly, Max said: "Don't think it has anything to do with you, my going to America to study."
"No, that's exactly the point, lizard lips."
"You couldn't have stopped me anyway, and I didn't want to worry you needlessly."
"Did you really think about me?" I asked, trying as hard as I could not to sound wronged (I'm bad at that, feeling wronged is my basic attitude to life).
"You're the only thing I've been thinking about lately," Max said slowly, and after he said that he laid his hand on my shoulder and we both had to whimper a bit. He grabbed me and took me in his arms. At that I let the tears flow unashamedly. It would have been a pretty nice scene for a movie, I mean for one of those grainy French jobs: a quiet park at twilight, an hysterically weeping girl and a comforting boy. When I looked up after a while I saw there were tears in Max's eyes too. Right, here I was again with a boy snivelling on my shoulder. The way guys blubber these days.

A couple of months later, at Schiphol passport control, we kept the operatics to a minimum. Although we'd agreed after lengthy negotiations in the weeks before Max left to a status of `committed freedom' (a nice turn of phrase, if I say so myself), when it got down to the wire we still promised to be faithful, and of course we really, truly said we would be honest with each other. If you ask me, it's prodigious nonsense when people promise to be both faithful and honest; after all, if you keep your promise to be faithful, what need is there to be honest? And if there's no need to be honest, why keep your promise to be faithful? But anyway, I'm probably the only one who wonders about things like that.
Max and I let each other go as follows: he held onto my shoulder, my hand slid down his arm, across the palm of his hand, then I stroked his fingers in slow motion until our fingertips were touching. So there we stood: two happy people, arms straight, pushing fingertip to fingertip, and losing each other the whole friggin' time.

HANDY HOUSEHOLD TIPS

So I'm going to gun Max down.
"He's a little late," Four-Eyes says as she shows me Max's room where I can put my bags. He's a little late. He had a very important, all-dressed-up Dress Rehearsal. He's a little late.
He could have friggin' had his lights fucked out for the first time in a long time!
I sigh and walk along behind Miss 20/20 to the living room of Max's house. God Almighty, what a drag. Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz Feldzug Panzer DR 17 Kraftmeister mit vollautomatischen Maschinengewehr, I pray as I survey the shitty little rat-trap. Max wrote that he didn't really live in a studio, a loft, a penthouse or any other kind of hyper-New-York-sounding place out of the rain, but the closest thing to the absolute pitifulness of this living room is the absolute pitifulness of Dutch living rooms. Exhibit A: the big black and white posters of `Paris street scenes' (a boy and girl kissing in front of a sidewalk cafe, a little old lady coming down a long flight of steps), which seem to be just as inevitable in America as they are back home. If there really was something different, I think I'd choke.
A girl is sitting on the couch in the middle of the room, watching TV. She introduces herself as Gulpje Degompelaere. I ask if I've heard right. But her name really is Gulpje Degompelaere, she's Flemish. Her father is sending her to some kind of sophisticated institute here, to get one of those highly coveted business degrees so she can get married and never have to work. Says Gulpje.
I start to sit down across from her, but X-ray Specs starts blathering again. From her gurgling I make out that someone else lives here as well, someone named Leonard, but it seems he's sick in bed and can't have any visitors.
"It started with a cold, but now he's got rigor mortis," Gulpje comments in Flemish, and that seems like a reasonable explanation to me. While the great spectacled bandicoot is trying to find out what we were talking about I decide I like Gulpje. She looks a little bit like... no, I don't want to get into that. That's Lala's department. Lala can't see anyone without immediately going into this hilarious crisis about what famous person he or she looks like. It's a real pain, especially because Lala is always running into people who look a lot like celebrities, but she can never quite remember what that celebrity's name was. The weird thing is, a few months later she suddenly remembers, which produces fascinating conversations like: "You remember that half-baked, pain-in-the-ass of a South African who was standing across from us at Sin de Fuckle and kept bitching about his porno-film-with-a-message?" "Yeah." "He looked just like John McEnroe."
Gulpje can't shake hands because she's soaking her fingers in a bowl of olive oil. I don't think I even want to know why. But Gulpje starts telling me anyway: it seems your nails become longer and healthier if you soak your fingers in olive oil every once in a while. Those are the kinds of things that are handy to know. Another handy household tip, this time one of mine: if your tulips start wilting, stick a pin through them, right under the head. No one knows why it works, but pierced tulips stay upright for days. So at least you get your money's worth.
"It doesn't work with dicks though, I've got to warn you," I say. "I tried it on an old boyfriend of mine once, but it only started bleeding, and after it stopped he couldn't get it up anymore. Even worse: after the bleeding stopped, he never wanted to see me again."
"That's good to know," Gulpje says.
We both think about this for a minute, I mean we both sit there nodding and staring into space, until the Quivering Platypus (whose name, I've discovered, is Jules) starts asking again what we were just talking about in Dutch.
"We're discussing the sexual instrument of the male human being," I say - a very normal thing for two Europeans to talk about when they first meet.
"And how to avoid drooping," Gulpje adds drily.
Gulpje and Phileine: we've barely met, but already we're a team! A gigantic pair of brown peepers is staring at us dubiously. We laugh of course, but actually it wasn't really all that funny.

LIFE, A TOTAL MESS

A kangaroo pops its wad, which in this surrealistic theater means that the bell for the performance has sounded. The big moment has finally arrived. The whole family finds seats in the third row from the front, with me pressed in between Gulpje and The-Herd-of-Swine-Stuck-Together-with-a-Pair-of-Glasses (as we affectionately refer to Jules). There's no curtain on the stage, and a few players, paralyzed by some mysterious illness, are waiting amid the pieces of set. I see Max sitting on a fluorescent skateboard, dressed in a Sixties-retro jacket.
"Hey, there's MAX!" I whisper a bit too loudly, hoping he'll acknowledge us with a barely perceptible nod, but this professional isn't falling for that one. As we wait for the Good Witch from the Wings to clap her players to life, I think back to that strange cosmic empire whose observation vehicle is circling above New York. After our little encounter in the doorway at the deli, of course, I suppose they've selected me as the object of their study. They're following me, and on the basis of my behavior they hope to discover which phase terrestrial life is in at the moment, or something like that. What would they put in their report about the gathering in this theater? Three-hundred fifty creatures have collected in a dark room around a dozen others who remain motionless. Motivation unclear. Further investigation needed.
"Oh my God, it's experimental!" I hear Ruth's mother whisper as three hard-core rappers in one corner of the theater start in on the opening chorus to a heavy beat:

"Yo, check this out!'
"Two households, both alike in dignity, in..."
"Fair!"
"Verona, where we lay our..."
"Scene!"
"From ancient grudge break to new..."
"Mutiny!"
"Where civil..."
"Blood!"
"Makes civil hands unclean."
"Fuck that!"
(And so on...)

It's hard to pinpoint the audience's mood after this opening, because two actors in another corner of the theater start in right away on a loud, screaming fight with two others. Knives are pulled, karate kicks dished out, graffiti sprayed on walls and actors referred to as sons of bitches at an incredible rate. I've seen this same play performed by my mother's theater group (and subsidized by the - conspicuously absent - taxpayers), but compared with what's going on here, that one seemed like it was set in the dining room of a rest home (a strikingly fitting comparison, come to think of it, considering the average age of the actors).
Yes, experimental is the right word for this New-York version of rOmEO-n-jULieT: dozens of skaters go whooshing back and forth, computer screens waver, printers rattle, a few actors are visibly sending each other electronic mail on a giant screen, members of the cast are being buzzed, others pull out their cell phones, two cyberbabes are engaged in swordplay using overgrown black dildos (the winner's dildo spouts white gunk), and the space ship hovering over the city lacks the cognitive capacity needed to place this behavior (What's going on? What's going on? Space invaders calling Earth! What's happening here? Why don't we understand this?).
I look at it this way: if we hadn't sent Columbus out to discover India, we'd have the right to reject an original approach. Things being what they are, however, we should keep our big mouths shut and patiently wait to see what will happen on stage. After fifteen minutes of this raucous theater of attrition, the cast of characters begins to firm up: everyone is playing everyone, all at the same time, everyone attacks, everyone defends. Okay, this may look like a total mess, but I take the liberty of anticipating the director's explanation for this mish-mash: life is a total mess as well.
Granted, it's not hard to guess which of the students are taking turns playing the title roles: rOmEO-n-jULieT are consistently dressed like Adam & Eve before the fall. That's convenient! After a while, the audience realizes that the actors who take off their clothes get to be rOmEO-n-jULieT for a few minutes. But they really should have let us in on this a bit earlier: on the fact that they were all going to be nude. Now I understand why they were acting so excited at Max's party. Probable cause: nerves, fear of rejection, and an all-pervasive realisation of the infantilism on earth
Max is pretty, naked, the prettiest. Some of his colleagues wear their nudity uneasily, or way overdo it ("look at me standing here in my bare butt"), but Max is purely and uninhibitedly nude. That's why I love him so. All right, when he started taking off his breeches I was a bit overcome, because of course you're always afraid your boyfriend will suddenly turn out to have a pot-gut or smell like rotten artichokes, or that he'll suddenly have this startling erection. A strange moment. Max leaped sprightly out of his boxer shorts, and while he started saying his lines I thought: three-hundred and fifty people are looking at my boyfriend's cock. And what a cock!
I'm not the only one who's amazed by all these unexpected breasts and jiggly-rolls. The first time a rOmEO stripped down to his dick, a wave of disbelief rolled through the audience. Look, a dick! A dick! Ruth's mother, the one I first heard whisper "Oh my God, it's experimental", sighed deeply when she saw this dick, and when the first jULieT went down for a few bench presses with her legs open wide, she whispered loudly: "Oh my God, it's perverse."
I like it when respectable ladies say "Oh my God, it's perverse." Because then I think: perversity is a matter of topography, ma'am, don't tell me you've never been every bit as perverse, in other places and at other times, that you haven't been just as thrilled by the dick that came to quench the fire in your burning housewife's cunt, that you haven't whispered language every bit as filthy in your husband's ear, hoping it would get your rocks off, that you haven't at least fantasized about submission, rape, crews of well-hung stevedores, women, power, helplessness, the possibility of strutting your stuff as a hooker, that you haven't at least once had the feeling that you lost control and did things you maybe wouldn't have done if you hadn't been so whacked out on horniness, don't tell me that.
While the creatures in the dark part of the room grimace and sigh with meaning, the other creatures take turns removing their clothing and shouting at each other continually. Hate rages here, but love rages louder. The hypothesis raised, to the effect that this might be a form of playful entertainment, must be rejected due to the facial expressions of the older creatures in attendance. The one - singularly attractive - creature we have been observing all day appears only to look at one other creature. She, too, seems concerned. What could this mean?
I'm starting to feel a little uneasy, and I think I'm not the only one. The act is coming up in which rOmEO-n-jULieT let us hear their silver-sweet lovers' tongues - in the original Shakespeare version, that is. Here in New York they transform it into a bio-probe in which all the players are allowed to join in. Suddenly all the men have very experimentally become rOmEO, and all the women very experimentally jULieT, including Max and his Abominable Opposite. They're standing right up close to each other, ten feet in front of me now, panting into each other's mouths, holding each other tight in a very convincingly romantic fashion, and I see Joanne's fingers leaving scratch-marks on my lover's back. Am I watching this? I ask myself. But I watch anyway. At the point where we see Max and Joanne slipping each other the tongue like a couple of cows chewing their cuds, I feel Gulpje's hand on my knee.
"I got you, I got you," she whispers, like it's a joke, but actually it's not really all that funny.

***

After the commercials, while the CBS orchestra is winding down its intermezzo, Letterman explains who I am again and calls my name out loud. The big moment has arrived, my claim to fame. But a shock wave of noise and clapping keeps me pinned in the wings. I'm always startled by huge applauses, especially when they're for me. I stand there waiting, stunned, until Biff ejaculates me out into the bright lights. David Letterman comes walking over to me and, while the overwhelming applause rolls on, whispers in my ear: "You're looking great. Just be yourself, and call me Dave."
After I've shaken hands with Salman Rushdie, Dave (Dave wants me to call him Dave) looks at me blissfully.
"You're from Holland, from Amsterdam, right?" Dave asks.
"Yep!" I shout enthusiastically.
"That's what I thought! A girl as sexy as you could only come from Amsterdam, Holland!' he says, first gaping at my scanty outfit, then winking into the camera. The audience laughs conspiratorially. Then, glossing it over, he says to me: "But all kidding aside, Amsterdam is a great place. I really love that town."
Maybe my timing is off, but all this jabbering about Amsterdam is starting to make me feel sick .
"A city with a thousand drug shops and fifteen thousand prostitutes within two square miles: that's bound to be David Letterman's kind of place," I say to Salman Rushdie.
Dave's band leader, Paul Shaeffer, shouts "Heeeeyyyy" into his microphone, while Dave stares into the lens with exaggerated innocence. My remark brings down the house for the first time, and to tell you the truth, that doesn't make me feel any better. If you ask me: there's too much clapping in this world. A nice applause at the right moment can be beautiful, it makes you shiver, but sincere clapping has been totally devalued by television. When a bald cancer patient comes limping up from the back of the high-school auditorium to receive her hard-earned diploma from the principal, then it's time to clap, in my view, high time. All other ovations are suspect and, worst of all, superfluous.
When the audience has had their clap (Rushdie has meanwhile whispered to me that I should call him Salman), Dave asks me to tell the people what happened last night at The Joseph Papp. Salman and David listen hyperinterestedly as I explain that my boyfriend Max was playing rOMeO in a play by Shakespeare ("that guy who runs the deli down on Second Avenue," Dave clarifies for the sake of the Wednesday-night viewers) and that he was on the point of making love to his leading lady, the girlfriend of the breakfast weatherman on CBS.
"Do you mean to tell me that, on stage, your boyfriend was actually going to make love to his leading lady, the girlfriend of the breakfast weatherman on CBS?" Dave asks for clarity's sake. Even Salman (Salman says I should call him Salman) looks concerned.
"Yes, he was about to fuck her," I say with even greater clarity.
I guess I must have said something wrong, because I've rarely heard so many people shriek so loudly about an innocent little word like 'fuck'. Hilarity reigns. I mean: grown-up people actually go into mass hysterics over a dirty word. Jesus, what time do they broadcast this show? Eleven-thirty!
David gets up and walks over to the cameras.
"I'm sorry," he says, shrugging a few times. "I'm sorry. She doesn't know any better. She's from Holland, from Amsterdam."
Once he's sitting next to me again, he says: "By the way, has anyone told you that you can't say things like that on the air?"
"You mean things like 'fuck'?" I ask, all sweet-and-innocent (at least I'm being myself). Once again, five hundred Americans, under the direction of Paul Shaeffer, shriek their lungs out while Dave puts his face in his hands and shakes his head. Salman is nodding at me and looking friendlier by the minute. After a couple of seconds I shout that it's pretty damn hypocritical that I have to watch what I say when, during my brief visit to New York, everyone I've met has repeatedly used the words 'fuck', 'fuck you' and 'fuck this'. The word has probably been used more often in the last few days than it has been put into actual practice, I shout, and this comment produces another rousing applause.
Dave shakes his head in desperation. He sighs: "All right, we're going to pause for a brief commercial break, and when we come back I will have explained to this lovely young lady from Holland - she's Dutch, that's why - the kinds of things you can and cannot say on American national television. Bye-bye!"
This last exclamation is the signal for the mongoloid masses to raise another wildly happy cheer. True happiness is in store for them: their families at home get to watch commercials!

***

For the first time during my speech, I pause for more than a moment MORE THAN A MOMENT?. The crowd is friendly as can be, and encouragement comes my way from all corners of the auditorium.
"Come on, Dutchy!" someone shouts, as though I'm a tennis player who has to be screamed over a momentary dip. Other people start rooting for me too, including Mama Ruth, who's standing next to Reginald, of all people.
"I've come to the conclusion that I am not a nice person," I finally slam across the net. "Even worse: I'm a spiteful bitch. It bothers me to ascertain this. I suspect that I've learned my behavior by watching those around me. To be honest, I wasn't impressed by the world as I found it. Because wherever you look you see assertiveness, competitiveness, hypocritical haggling, aggression and the will to power. Everywhere people cut in line, sneer, bite backs, collude, you can't get any lower. I've put up with it for a long time, but a festivity like the one this evening makes me realize that things could be different..."
I take a sip of water.
"I've climbed up onto this podium to perform a deed, to act at last. At first I'd thought about having Max come up here and insistently declaring my love for him in front of all of you. And although I suppose you people would think that was fantastic, we’d discover in hindsight that it was less than honest. For a brief moment, of course, it would have been a droll, extremely campy scene, an idyllic little tableau that would have made you all sigh deeply: Max and I, establishing our reconciliation on stage in front of a gala audience. But it would be misleading, because tomorrow morning the two of us would be bickering again, I make no bones about that. I truly believe that Max and I will be reconciled some day, but not with all of you around, because you people won't be around when it goes wrong either. And whether we'll be together five years from now, I wouldn't dare to venture a guess."
For a moment there, an `ahh' is heard from a few corners.
“No, I had another intention when I climbed onto this podium. What I intended to do here this evening affects us all. Because, ultimately, the question is: why is life such a bitch? That was the question that foisted itself on me this evening. If life itself is already hard enough, due to incurable illnesses and other inconveniences, why do we make it so much harder? I mean: why do we constantly wait in ambush for our loved ones and colleagues? Why do we always have to compete, take the wind out of each other's sails, why do we always have to win? Why do we behave so badly behind the wheel? Why do we behave so childishly in general? Why can we only think in terms of pecking orders, top tens, cliques, smash hits, heroes, Nobel Prizes, hypes, best sellers, ratings? Are we really so incapable of being straightforward, do we always have to hide behind cynicism, irony, satire, sarcasm?"
I spread my arms, without even thinking about it.
"There are five thousand of us here this evening; that's one-millionth of the world's population. That's not much, but it's a start. We can get the ball rolling. I would like to enter a plea for a friendlier society. I'd like to call for more tolerance, less pushiness, less hurry, less noise and more consideration for each other. Try to imagine what would happen if the spirit flowing here this evening in the Palladium would spread to other towns and villages. Then the world could be a better place, I'm convinced of that. The spirit of freedom combined with care for others, the spirit of exuberance linked with resignation to our inevitable decay. May these ideas spread like a drop of wine in the sea!"
For a moment I'm at a loss for words. Someone in the audience begins to clap, and another person enthusiastically shouts: "Yeeehaww!" This gesture of support empties out into a huge, rolling applause. When the clapping dies down, I look out into the auditorium with a sigh.
"Thank you for your support, truly, it's wonderful to note that you feel the same way I do. I'd like to conclude by telling you..."
I let the auditorium fall silent.
"By telling all of you that what I've just been propagating was in fact only a way to get around what I've really been trying to say the whole time..."
I sigh and search for words. After a period of long contemplation and the repeated pursing of the little muscles around my lips, I finally succeed - albeit rather spastically - in saying: "What I really want to say is that I'm sorry for having been so nasty and cynical the last few days. That I'm sorry and I take it all back."
I gulp audibly.
"I'd like to offer my apologies. To say excuse me. Excuse me, Max. Excuse me, people," I whisper, and then louder - perhaps too loudly now - I add: "Excuse me for being alive."

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