Postcards From Downtown

Postcards From Downtown - Dayna Kurtz

US post offices are the assholes of the world: all things indigestible go through here. US post offices are the assholes of the world, and constipated at that. There is always a line at the US post office, a large intestine sluggishly snaking from door to windows. It doesn’t matter if you come in early in the morning, or around lunch time, or just before closing time; there is always a line and somehow the line never gets any shorter. For every customer trickling down the line to be called up to one of the triple glass windows, two new customers pour in.

The US post office is a place where defeat and despair reign supreme. Despair starts with the mystical amount of forms you have to fill out – for national mail, international mail, customs forms, first class, priority and express mail forms, receipts, return statements – all with form titles that are designed to not let on their meaning: who can tell the difference between the PS Form 2976 (Customs Declaration CN 22 - Reference Only: Order from MDC using PSN 7530-01-000-9833 (9/2009)) and the PS Form 2976-A (Customs Declaration and Dispatch Note CP 72 - Reference Only: Order from MDC using PSN 7530-01-000-9834 (5/2009))?
I sure as hell can’t. And neither can the dismal looking local postcard senders scuttling to and fro around me. Everyone is trying to catch the eye of any employee, helplessly hoping to find some kind of salvation there. But to no avail.
I have learned to take one copy of every form on display in the racks spread out in the post office, and fill them all out while I stand in line. Every single one of them. Just in case. The employee behind the counter will sigh as they flip through them: ‘Don’t need that one, don’t need this one... I’ll take this one and this one... This’ll do, too, and could you sign this one for me please?’
The timid humiliation that goes with your paper overkill beats the old ‘Looks like you forgot to fill out your Domestic or International Claim’ or ‘I really need a Return Receipt for International Mail on this one’, before being sent back, unforbidding, to the racks without a clue as to what was just said, but still holding your mail. And with the prospect of having to get back in line. Defeated. Capitalist bureaucracy is a thing of beauty.

I have been standing in said line for about two minutes when a large man in a hooded hunter’s jacket and a blue shirt shuffles up behind me. I look back and nod in recognition – I am, indeed, the end of the line. Or the beginning! I think, optimistically. The man has undefined stains of something greasy all over his chest. Oddly enough, he’s wearing a pair of perfectly pressed dress pants, over a dull but clean pair of brown shoes, the laces untied. The guy is so big that he probably hasn’t seen his feet in a while, and I can imagine he gave up on trying to reach his shoes to tie the laces. Why not go for loafers? I wonder vaguely. Then again, I hate loafers. Besides, it’s January. Either way, the untied laces don’t seem to bother the man. For one, his feet look to enormously solid-look to even notice the lack of counterpressure, and besides, the rest of the man has other things to be concerned about. I can hear him humming something behind my back. His hum slowly gets louder, until I can make out what he is saying.

‘Is your pack-age safe to mail? Hee hee! Are you sure you have not packed any haz-ard-ous mat-ee-rials? Mer-cury, fuel, fire-works… Match-es, batteries, explos-iiiii-ves? Hee hee hee! Is your pack-age safe-to-mail?’ He almost sing-songs it, like he’s the announcer next to a shooting gallery in an amusement park. I look at him again. His eyes are magnified, shining soft and helpless through big rimmed, old fashioned glasses like the ones my dad used to wear in the late seventies. He sports a cultivated little beard – not in corresponding seventies style, as you might expect, but something professionals call a Vandyck. The mustache part of Post Office Guy’s Vandyck is completely grey; the goatee is grey with streaks of ginger. His jacket is big enough to protect the world.

As I look away, the man comes up with all kinds of materials that may be hazardous to pack. ‘Hair-spray, perfume, lighters, nail polish… Lip-stick, shoe laces…’ He can probably do this all day, and from the sounds of it, he plans to. I look around me. The other people in line are actively and grimly ignoring the man. They stare at a point right in front of them, clutching their envelopes and pressing their packages tight to their chest. The guy has begun to sway softly on his feet, like an old fashioned airplane propeller about to be swung into action. I can feel his fervor radiating, pulsing, pushing up on me from behind. He is talking louder and louder now – but he doesn’t do anything. He’s just a guy waiting in line at a US post office, like the rest of us.

My eyes wander to the red warning sign on one of the glass counter windows, informing visitors that anyone who attempts an armed robbery of this post office risks a sentence of up to 25 years in prison. The glass windows are bullet resistant. I know this because one of my friends who works at a bank told me. Bank windows and post office windows are bullet resistant.
The friend’s bank was robbed a little while ago. She was behind the counter when a hooded guy walked up and shoved a note under the slot. ‘Gimme 20 + 10’, it said. My friend had to read it twice. At first she thought the man must be a mute, so she looked him in the eyes and asked, ‘What is your bank account number? And can I see your card or ID?’ But the guy didn’t respond. Maybe he is deaf as well, my friend thought, ever ready to help. So she tried again, deliberately and carefully articulating the words this time. But then the guy opened his big coat ever so slightly to reveal a tiny gun. And just like that, she was in the middle of an armed bank robbery.

My friend then took one 20 dollar note and one 10 dollar note out of the register; she pushed it under the slot, towards the guy, folded her arms and waited. The guy was so taken aback that he took the money and ran out on the street, with 30 bucks in his pocket. Walked in a customer; ran out wanted for armed robbery, with nothing to show for it but 25 years in jail. All because he didn’t know how to spell out a proper money demand.

My friend shrugged it off: the teller's windows are bullet resistant. I looked it up. Bullet resistant is not quite bullet proof. A regular bullet from a regular pistol will not penetrate the glass – probably. No guarantees there – and nobody seems to consider the possibility of ricocheting bullets, bouncing off the windows and straight into the line, hitting unsuspecting customers standing behind the robber who were never even aimed at. Machine guns or sawed off shotguns are, of course, a different story altogether. They’re harder to hide under your hoodie, though. The double barrel makes for a more conspicuous stroll. The point is, the glass is bullet resistant; but the windows of these bank and post office counters only start from the waist up. The lower half of the counters is made of pressed chipboard that pretty much crumbles under the well aimed kick of a sturdy boot; I don’t think it can withstand a bullet, however ordinary the pistol that shoots it.

What are bank or post office employees instructed to do, in case of a shoot-from-the-hip type robbery? To duck for cover isn’t going to cut it: anything aimed below the glass, like a clumsy warning shot, is likely to penetrate the chipboard. Subsequently, to duck for cover on the floor behind the window is to risk getting shot in the head. Maybe all bank employees are trained to jump up as high as they can in the case of anyone shooting up the place. Procedure: (1) try to make it above glass level. (2) Jump real high, and hope for the best. Maybe the ideal bank employee is a paraplegic who at least won’t feel any shots shredding the bones of his legs behind the board as he reaches for the silent alarm button. Or better still, the ideal employee would be an amputee. No legs at all dangling in harm’s way. No expensive leap training required. All the training involves is the fastest way to screw their chairs up high, above average waist level, and stay put. And hope the robber is not toting a sawed-off shotgun, because then all bets are off.

As I am pondering below-the-waist bank security and the criminal disadvantages of illiteracy, the man behind me is swaying into a verbal frenzy. ‘Lip-stick, twee-eezers, bottled water, bottled soda, teddy bears, toy bunny rabbits… The government, Homeland Security, US Mail… All these paranoid idiots! What else will these idiots consider hazardous material?’ he shouts. ‘Lip-stick, soda water, mah-ga-ziiines… When will Mr. and Mrs. Joe Tax Payer say, We are done with this stupidity? When will they say, We have had enough of these paranoids poking and prodding around in our personal property and our personal privacy? When will they have had enough of the paranoid idiocy of these sub-Neanderthal clowns and jackasses? Hee hee! Is you pack-age safe to mail? Please make sure you do not try to send any haz-ar-dous material… Shoe laces, bunny rabbits, tweezers…’

I consider, Is this guy your average run of the mill all-bark-no-bite type of big city eccentric, or the more troublesome ‘I always giggle before I go postal’ type? Is he about to open his big coat ever so slightly to reveal a sawed off shotgun, then open fire on everyone inside the post office, starting with the post office employees? Should I yell, ‘Jump! For god’s sake, jump as high as you can!’, and hope the employees will follow my lead? But then I think, nah. If this were a man with a gun, he’d be shooting up the place by now. Instead, he’s chatting up the place.

Suddenly, one of the employees, a hefty lady, slides down from her chair behind the glass. She walks up from behind the counter area, into the public area and straight up to the line. Is she going to tell the man to shut up? I hope not. I don’t know what this guy will do if he is told to shut up already, but I am sure it won’t be pretty, gun or no gun. ‘Is there anyone in this line who just needs money orders or stamps? Anyone here, just for stamps or money orders? If you are here only to buy stamps or anybody who just needs a money order, please step out of the line and go to window 8. Window 8, only for stamps and money orders’, the lady says. The man immediately wriggles past me, and starts making his way to window 8. Other people follow in his wake, making sure he gets to the window first. They huddle up behind him. ‘No!’ commands the lady. What now? we all fret. ‘Sir, please make sure the line forms within the rope, and nowhere else.’ Somehow, a little rope has appeared, hammocked between two metal poles. At the beginning of the rope is a sign that says: This Line For Stamps And Money Orders Only. Everybody, including the guy, silently obliges. How could we have missed that sign before?
The employee behind the window asks the guy, who is still swaying on his feet, ‘What can I do for you sir?’
And just like that, the man stops swaying. ‘I will have twenty stamps and a money order for 30 dollars, please,’ he gurgles.
‘– Debit or credit?’ the employee asks.
‘Credit, please’, the man informs the employee, his mustache trembling.
‘– Anything else I can do for you?’
‘No, that is all, thank you. Thank you.’ And off he goes, all smiles, stamps in hand. Off, no doubt, to wrap up some hazardous materials to mail. Lipstick, teddy bears, tweezers… Suddenly I’m pretty sure I forgot to grab an essential form before I got in line. That means I will be stuck for at least another half hour in this US post office – did I mention it’s the asshole of the world?

Little Shop Of Horrors I – Everything Is Free

Everything Is Free – Gillian Welsh

I can’t believe I am getting all this excitement on a Tuesday morning, and for only two bucks. Sure, the sign at the entrance of New York's Museum of Natural History states you can buy an adult ticket for the grown-up rate of sixteen dollars; but my friend Victor from Amsterdam and his girl Tara (they’re in New York after spending Thanksgiving together with her family in New Jersey) have inside information. They have taken me here to see the Cape York meteorite. It is 4.5 billion years old; so heavy that its supports go through the floor, straight down to the solid rock beneath the building; and best of all, you’re allowed to touch it. Or, as Victor happily suggests, lick it. So off we go, to the museum, to go lick a meteorite.

Tara used to live in the city for years, and, with her being a Jersey girl and all, she knows things that your average NYC newbie doesn’t.
For instance, that the entrance fee for the Museum of Natural History is not mandatory. It is a suggested fee, as the small print on the sign informs the more perceptive visitor. If you wish to make a smaller donation, all you have to do is make your wish known at the cash register. So we decide to get in for less. Or rather, Victor and Tara decide, and I scurry after them with glowing cheeks and that immediate mixture of envy, embarrassment and girl-crush I tend to get whenever there’s a take charge woman around who isn’t afraid to ask for things that are perfectly legal – albeit unorthodox, and, in the long run, quite possibly devastating for (in this case) the museum’s very existence. We can’t just walk in and not pay, I shriek. What if everybody decides not to pay the full amount? What if nobody would pay for anything anymore ever again? What if the museum goes broke and we’re totally to blame? What if the cashier spits in our faces for disrespecting a trillion years of natural history? What if the line behind us turns into a stampeding vigilante, looking for literal payback? Show me a random cluster of people and I'll show you an angry mob waiting to happen.

I struggle to sugarcoat my hesitation with morality, so I don’t have to consider the fact that, for all my exterior boldness, I am a coward at heart. Especially when it comes to buying things. I am one of those people who will pay full price for anything, no questions asked. I never bargain for discounts, even when stuff is clearly damaged or broken. I don’t have any particular ideology to back up my just-pay-and-get-it-over-with mentality, nor any deeply rooted childhood trauma type of explanation. I am generally not afraid to earn the scorn or contempt of strangers. I’m not easily embarrassed; I seldom back away from any opportunity to make a fool of myself in public. I just can’t get myself to go up to a vendor and say, ‘Hey, what do you say I take this junk off your hands for half?’ Just thinking about it makes my ears burn. I’d rather shoot myself in the kneecap; I can’t believe Tara and Victor would have the bravado to just go ahead and barter, without so much as blinking.
It’s simple, Tara figures. She’s an underpaid artist who likes to sniff some culture every once in a while. If she had the money, she’d pay. But she doesn’t, so what’s a poor girl to do? Just because people can’t afford the financial hemorrhage it takes to witness the Cape York meteorite, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to see it. Or does it?
I got nothing. My friends shrug the shrug of the brave and free, pick up their pace, and trot, heads up high and backs straight, to the nearest cash register – with me whimpering in their wakes. Tara tells the lady behind the counter we would like to pay less than the suggested fee. The lady merely asks us how much we are willing to donate; when Tara puts six bucks for the three of us on the counter top, she takes them and asks if we would like a floor plan. We take one and off we go – full speed ahead to the meteorite!

For about two minutes, I am light-headed with angst. I feel like I have committed some kind of cultural crime, an educational burglary. I am swindling my way back to the origin of man! But after a diorama or two the sensation wears off, and makes way for giddy, glorious curiosity to see the miracles of life this museum has on offer. I promise myself that, next time, I’ll pay double. For now, I plan to absorb it all. So here I am: watching Victor as he's about to lick the Cape York meteorite at two bucks a pop. Good times!

Little Shop Of Horrors II – Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict

Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict – Pink Floyd

The ancient lady holds the antlers up in one furrowed hand, and shakes them over her head like a trophy for the gnarly. 'See, this isn’t a tree – although it sure looks like a tree, don’t you agree? It looks like bark covered in moss. But it’s really bone, growing straight out of the moose’s skull. And sometimes when the moose fights with another moose, the antlers on his head break off. Just like that!' She makes a remarkably nimble cleaving gesture with both hands. Rip! Fretful field trip faces stare up at her from hip-height, hanging onto her every word, breathless. Twenty-something pairs of eyes gleam with excitement – including mine. Shredded antlers! Hostile moose whose furry mouths froth in agony, their skulls torn up and glistening - nature is not a happy place.

Behind the lady two life-size adult moose specimens loom, frozen in mid-battle inside a colorful diorama. Their antlers look unscathed, but you can tell it’s pure luck that their strange and instantaneous death happened when the clash was still at an early stage, so their antlers and heads were still in one piece when they were handed over to the taxidermist.
The moose's new half-dome home at the Museum of Natural History is like a snow globe for giants; I half expect a pair of monstrous hands to pick it up and shake it, for the bored amusement of watching the moose battle it out in a blizzard. A minute or two ago, I stumbled into this group of kids, as the lady was telling them that a grown moose can weigh up to 1,580 pounds – about twenty times the weight of an average eleven year old. Now I am trying to act casual and inconspicuous. Look at me, intently studying the pastel backdrop that makes for the combating moose’s perpetual arena, hands behind my back for fear of breaking anything invaluable. Inside, I am in turmoil. Is there any way for death and destruction not to ensue in this scenario?

'Ooh, now, don’t you worry', the title holder for Best Antler Storytelling In The World croons, to everyone’s relief. 'For the moose, losing an antler is just like losing a baby tooth. A new piece will grow back over time.' She holds the piece of defeated animal up one more time and slowly turns it left to right for everyone to see. 'Now', she concludes, 'Who wants to touch it?' Forty-something tiny hands swarm out from behind tiny backs, and up, reaching as high as they can, elbows fluttering, cheeks glowing. The smaller kids nearly get trampled in all this antler mayhem, but they don’t budge and they don’t care about their trodden toes. This is not the time to be delicate. Touching a real live bone from a real dead animal! Who doesn’t want a chance to do that?

New York's Museum of Natural History is pretty much the most magical place on earth, especially on a Tuesday morning. Kids swarm across the Hall of North American Mammals where Grizzly bears look ready to jump out of their private, seemingly endless dioramas to wreck dusty havoc. Families trip over each other to look four-million-year-old Lucy in the eye while storybook grandmothers and grandfathers disguised as museum guides tell the flocks about the history of all things, extinct or living. The museum is one of those rare, non-Disneyfied ones where the air is still a bit musty, and it hints of formaldehyde; the quarters and hallways hold endless secrets to discover in low lights and high ceilings. Mounted ferrets, mangy with age, their fierce poses dim from years of being overlooked; dinosaurs towering across mammoth halls, full-sized fossils strewn about; passages of native Indian totems rising like carved hydraulic platforms.

How poor and disappointing is a visit to the museum shop in conclusion of this incredible celebration of never-ending mortality that grabbed you by the throat, scratching, teeth saliving, from all floors. Ears tingling with excitement, nose filled with the smell of a billion years of evolution, you suddenly find yourself in the overly lit, exceedingly dust-free and horridly eco looking Museum Shop. Biodegradable Great White sharks the size of your hand don’t even remotely resemble the mega jaws you saw dangling off a ceiling earlier. You can build-your-own-origami-Cro-Magnon. A My First Excavating Set contains an undersized toothbrush and a tiny recyclable shovel, neatly fitted in with a miniature smiling dinosaur compressed in sand. The chewy models assure parents at first glance that the only excitement they will ever risk to evoke is the feeling of hurt wholesome pride as their kids toss them. Lame! The stuffed moose and bears are unexpectedly cuddly here, and fluffy, stripped of all fierceness and fang.
It's just not right. The entire museum is designed to show you that evolution is an incredible force, thrusting and thumping ruthlessly throughout the ages; that all nature – big or small – is honed to survive, eat, fuck, kill, die, and then do it all again. The museum shop tells you bears are cute. They like honey.

How did a museum with the world's largest collection of vertebrate fossils (nearly one million specimens) end up with such a sterile shop filled with fake, odorless crap? Sure, they have actual astronaut food (you can buy a freeze dried ice cream sandwich in a sealed bag), but that is fake, odorless crap to begin with. Has the evolution of political correctness got the better of the world’s natural history, too?

Little Shop Of Horrors III – Little Shop Of Horrors

Little Shop Of Horrors – Theme Song Little Shop Of Horrors

All is not lost. Two blocks away from the Museum of Natural History you can find the shop that should have been the museum’s, and it would have been, if only the museum had been run by Tim Burton or David Cronenberg. Maxilla and Mandible, Ltd. was founded in 1983 by a former Museum of Natural History night watchman – or so the story goes. I picture him, a visionary, slowly but surely tunneling his way out of the museum (spoon-style) in the dark of night, over a period of years, burrowing right to the basement of the store. His pockets would be filled, at first, with trinkets found in the museum’s dust bowled depot, no longer on display, slowly eaten away by the toothless mouth of oblivion. Later on, I imagine, he would start to get more reckless and free small stuffed mammals from their sectioned up niches in some of the dimmer halls; he would carefully tuck them under his wide coat and walk to the nearest exit unnoticed. The specimens would not be missed until the day some watchful boy or girl would point at a dust-free outline of little paws on the floor behind the glass. The kid would tug at a grownup sleeve and ask, 'Mom, where does the armadillo go when it has to pee?'

Well, it went to Maxilla and Mandible, where it curled up and is now hanging from the ceiling behind the counter. Next to it, a glassy-eyed ferret can’t seem to decide whether it wants to jump the armadillo or make a run for it. The shop shows a wildly random reverence to anything to do with nature’s remnants. Stacked on racks from floor to high ceiling are baskets filled with dog’s teeth, emu toenails, and minerals; collections of beetles and butterflies hang off the wall; plastic dinosaurs lie next to fossilized shark teeth, a cast of a baboon’s head, snake vertebrae, a pile of chicken feet that contract and relax as you pull and release the tendons still sticking out; posters display the evolution of nature and the anatomy of man; an entire freeze dried mouse in a glass cube ogles the black capuchin monkey with the white face that is wondering how the hell it got here; a camel skull (in two separate parts) sits next to the shrunken human head – unfortunately, says the guy behind the counter, the head isn’t real. It’s a prop from an eighties horror movie. Rumor has it, he says, they used to have a real head on display, back in the day when the shop had just opened – until someone bought it. At Maxilla and Mandible, everything around you is the real deal, unless the price tag specifically says it isn’t.

New customers ring the doorbell, a man with a little girl. As they walk in, the man points out the assortment of 3 million year old shrimp fossils, and a bear’s head. The girl carefully pats the bear on the head, then lets her fingers glide oh so cautiously along each of its fangs, before she crouches and starts rummaging through a basket on the floor, filled with miscellaneous dinosaur bones.
A thick-set guy has come in with them. He waltzes straight up to the counter where he stops, leans over and stares at the shopkeeper for a full minute. Then he booms, 'YOU HAVE… YOU… YOU… YOU HAVE A…' He sways lightly on his feet as if the act of thrusting the words out is throwing him off balance. The shopkeeper is polishing the glass cube in which the mouse stands on its hind legs, paws in front of its chest like a tiny boxer. 'HAVE A VERY NICE DAY!' the guy spits out. He turns on his heels and pushes out to the street again. The shopkeeper shrugs as he watches the door fall shut behind the guy.
'Look, Yayla, it’s Marcel from Friends', the man in the shop says. 'You see the little monkey up there?' But the girl is fully engulfed in the vials that hold lightning captured by sand. 'When the lightning strikes the sand, it gets so hot that the sand that’s hit by the lightning bolt melts and then solidifies around it. So what you get is a little hollow tube in the shape of the lightning', the shopkeeper explains. He turns back to me. 'Ever since I was a little boy and my dad took me here, I dreamed I would one day work in this place', he says as he holds the freeze dried mouse up to the light, a trophy for life and death eternal.

I end up buying seeds to grow my own carnivorous plant (it will get rid of any fly problem I might have in my apartment, promises the bag. I am thinking, if my scientist sweetheart can spur this thing on a bit, it might get rid of any rodent problem the city might have, too) and a little silver bracelet with stringed together ceramic dentures from the nineteen forties the owner of the shop managed to pull from a dentist’s practice (although it makes for animated dialogue with the shopkeeper, it turns out to be somewhat of a conversation stopper outside the shop. 'Aww, what a cute little bracel… Ewwww! Are those real teeth?')

Maxilla and Mandible is a Natural History Museum shop the way a Natural History Museum shop should be. Like nature (and history), it is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who realize that everything in existence has a beginning and an end – and it could have an afterlife in your very own window-sill.

The Piano Has Been Drinking

The Piano Has Been Drinking – Tom Waits

'So whaddya think about the war?' the guy sitting on my right suddenly comes out of left field. It’s ten fifteen on a Tuesday night, in a wine bar around the corner from where we live. The place is about as empty as the dark side of the moon. That’s unusual, even for a school night. It might have something to do with the New York Yankees making it to the World Series for the first time in nine years, and this being one of the rare bars in our neighborhood without any flat or other screens. (‘World Series’ being the rather megalomaniac definition for what is in fact an all-American event in baseball.)
The man sitting next to me is drunk, very drunk. He is the type of guy who, when abroad, will stubbornly stick to English; should the local bartender/hotel manager/masseuse not understand what he wants, he will just repeat himself in a louder voice, confident that the key to conquering any language barrier is merely a matter of volume. We have been talking politics – or rather, the guy has been giving me his two cents on the current state of affairs that is threatening the American Way. He has been saying things like, 'Goddam Democrats are gonna kill this country!', and, 'I’m not paying no goddam health insurance for no goddam slackers!' He is the type of guy who would mistrust a sunset. 'Too goddam red, if you ask me.' For the past fifteen minutes, however, he has been gazing infinitely into space; I figured he had forgotten we were talking. But no.

'WHAT! DO! YOU! THINK! ABOUT! THE! WAR!' the guy says again, thundering this time. He spills his beer as he hoists himself up from the bar stool to turn and look at me, making an effort to redistribute his weight and keep his balance. What war? I think. Ask any Dutch person to talk about ‘the war’, and they’ll either dish out a heroic resistance saga involving their grandfather in World War Two (which, as far as the Dutch are concerned, can be neatly summed up as five days of bicycle-throwing before being run over by German efficiency) or mutter a vague unpleasantry about the Dutch contribution to the war in former Yugoslavia (which, as far as the Dutch are concerned, can be neatly summed up as a pretty dark day for military bureaucracy).
Our mandatory military service was discarded in 1997; every soldier deployed in international crises after Yugoslavia has been a professional combatant who voluntarily joined the army. Unless Prince Woof from Belgium decides it is time to reclaim The Netherlands, no 19-year old Dutch boy will ever be drafted again.

My nation’s war history is a puny one, compared to that of the US. No less than 47 wars have been declared by the US since the British settlers fought out the American Revolutionary War or War of Independence among themselves. Only 2 of those 47 wars involved a foreign nation trespassing on what was considered US soil: the War of 1812 against the British Empire, and the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Save for a first excursion into Korea in 1871, the other 25 wars of the 18th century were all civil: from the actual Civil War to the whole lot of wars against Native Americans. However, not a single one of the 19 wars the US has been part of since the beginning of the 20th century has been settled on American soil. That’s 110 years of fighting in other people’s countries, for other people’s freedom.

'You know, our boys in Ahf-gha-ni-stahn?' the man clarifies. What do I think about that? I tell the man I really don’t know anything about war. 'Dam right you don’t', he says. 'If it weren’t for us, you’d all still be talkin’ goddam German.' Although I am sure it has been a while since anyone actually said this to anyone, out loud, I still want to assure the man that Europe, The Netherlands, and myself for that matter, are very grateful indeed for the Americans saving us from the linguistic claws of Nazi Germany. I married a Canadian for Christ sake! I want to tell him. How’s that for gratitude! But the man has slouched back onto his stool, and is staring pensively into his beer. 'My nephew’s there right now', he says finally. 'Fightin’ for goddam peace.'
With 19 independent wars over the past 100 years, all battled out on foreign territory, the US spits out a war veteran pretty much every five years – that’s not taking into account that most wars go on for years, needing fresh soldiers to fuel every new tour of duty. The list is endless. This guy’s grandfather might have fought in World War Two; his dad could have been in Korea, an uncle or two in Vietnam; he looks like he could have been drafted for the Contra-War in El Salvador in the early ‘80s. His younger brother might have been sent out to play a part in the Gulf War; his son may have fought in Somalia or Yugoslavia, and now his nephew is being alternately bored and terrified to death in the War On Terror. Somehow the 'My grandpa used to hide his pigs from the Germans' I had in mind as a counter seems to fall short, as would a light-hearted 'Well, whaddya know! Us Dutch sent some boys to Afghanistan, too!'

I think about how hard it must be to deal with, to grow up in a country whose war veterans stay 19 forever, what with them being yearly renewed. How do you memorialize war when war is ongoing, and how do you commemorate dead soldiers that keep on dying? Then again, America has its own peculiar way of paying respect to fatalities of war: to honor the victims of 911 they built a war ship forged from steel salvaged from the ashes of the World Trade Center. 'On September 2001, our nation’s enemies brought their fight to New York… The USS New York will now bring the fight to our nation’s enemies well into the future', the website promises happily. I tell the man this. I am not even sure what I mean by all of it, but he definitely takes it the wrong way. 'Goddam!' He shouts, his voice wobbly. 'Goddam! If you don’t like it here, why don’t you just go back to your own goddam country!' He slams his drink on the bar. Tom Waits without the poetry.
What does that have to do with anything? I want to say to him. And, Yeah mister, that’ll really hold up in six-year-old court. But all that I can muster is a rather lame 'Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say.'
The man throws me a look, the startled, helpless look of a drunk who nodded off smoking and is just now waking up to find his hair is on fire. 'I––I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean to be rude', he says, his bloodshot eyes slowly filling with water. It’s time to go home.

White Wedding

White Wedding – Billy Idol

'Ahem… Uhhhh… Well… Yeah… I guess… I mean, yes… I do. I do.' His dandelion mustache trembling, the boy strings the words together much in the manner his prospected spouse used to take her birth control pills: irregular, absentminded and strangely convinced that, if you just make sure to finish the strip at some point, all will be well. His fiancee is clutching the wedding bouquet her mother purchased from one of the smooth operators standing day in, day out, at the base of the steps outside the New York City Marriage Bureau, selling (and, on bad catch days, reselling) posies for fifteen bucks.
The will-be groom's suit itches. Any sudden movement might urge his imminent stepfather in law to seize him by the collar of his borrowed attire lest he make a run for it. So instead of scratching, he studies his immobile feet, cemented in the floor of the Marriage Bureau like a Mafioso about to sleep with the fishes.

The registrar wipes his brow, simultaneously glancing at his watch. He is sweating profusely; little streams of wet salt trickle down his chest and settle, for now, in the basin of his belly button. Somehow the conditioned air in the Marriage Bureau never seems to reach the little white alcove that is impersonating a small town wedding chapel. Just off the spacious main entrance hall, its dimmed lights, white curtains, candelabras and all the near-intimacy in the world can't hide the fact that The New York City Marriage Bureau churns out a fresh Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So roughly every 10 minutes. That's 42 wedding albums a day (210 a week; 10,920 a year) filled with pictures featuring the alcove and the outside steps and the Bureau's brick walls.
The registrar finds some relief in the triple mint gum he has been chewing since he directed his first ceremony of today. People never comment on the drudgery his jaws deliver with the vows uniting them till death do them part, he ponders. Couples getting married at the Marriage Bureau tend to be quite modest when it comes to expectations on the part of his performance. The registrar's main concern is not with them, but with the precious minutes leaking from each ceremony like the brackish drops that ooze from his pores. He looks out the alcove and into the Bureau lobby, at the next couple already waiting to be served; a blissful looking middle aged duo surrounded by boisterous friends, number 17 today. Better wrap things up.

My sweetheart and I are sitting in front of one of the computers in the center of Marriage Bureau entrance hall that are poking each other in the ribs like a huddle of wired bridesmaids bracing themselves for any incoming bouquets. We are applying for a marriage license, and vaguely consider the possibility of getting married right here, at the Bureau; all it takes is a 24 hour wait and an appointment. It's cheap (a total sum of $ 60: $ 35 to apply for a marriage license, another $ 25 for a ceremony, performed by an appointed official), quick, and painless – we remind ourselves that romance is dead, anyway. After we get a number to have our application certified and bonafide by one of the Office of the City Clerks, we take a quick look around.
If marriage is an institution, the New York City Marriage Bureau is its undisputed headquarters. From the first line you stumble into upon entering the neo renaissance hall (to state your affairs); via the line for the computers (to apply for your license); down to waiting your turn for the City Clerks (to complete your application), and the final queue for the actual institutionalization; along the way, everyone’s love story is minced in the meat grinder of bureaucracy. This morning, there is a hive of shotgun, tourist and drunken monkey weddings to be performed, already buzzing around the entrance hall, and peeping into the make-believe wedding chapel; as morning grinds to afternoon, they slowly make way for the low budgeters, third timers, and elopers who'll start bustling in around lunch time.

For a city where the pursuit of individual happiness reigns supreme, a whopping average of 182 marriages are performed every day, adding up to a solid 66,483 mutual 'I do's in 2007 alone. Promising enough, the state of New York can boast the country's third lowest divorce rates (with 8.1% in 2008, only in New Jersey and North Dakota do couples stick together better). We decide that romance isn't dead, after all. Not only is it very much alive; it is calling out our number. Next! (We decide to get married somewhere – anywhere! - else in the city, where there are bound to be fewer strangers, no lines and only one bride around. Well, anywhere but the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn.)

'By the power invested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife,' the registrar brings the ceremony to a close. He slams his folder shut. The groom's wistful upper lip jumps to attention. He may kiss his bride. Should he use his tongue? Or just give her a quick peck? How does one go about these things? His girl looks at him, blushing. She tilts her head, expecting once more. Where does he put his hands? He should have thought this through! Too late now. He closes his eyes and lunges. The mother of the bride, too, shuts her eyes, in reluctant anticipation: the inevitable clatter of teeth will make for a clanking first toast to their happy ever after.

Dear Doctor

Dear Doctor – The Rolling Stones

Instant nausea. Sweating. God, can I sweat. My mouth is watering. I need to throw up, there's no way around it. Only thing is: I am afraid to even blink, let alone heave. Standing between me and a purifying round of projectile vomiting is the metal instrument that, from the feel of it, is trying to stab my frontal lobe to shreds by way of my right ear. The doctor at the other end of the stick is trying hard – sweat on his brow, too – to scrape a full summer's worth of caked ear wax out of my head. His assistant, a worrisome twenty-something, is holding up an awkward looking, '80s desk lamp to my right lobe, her eyes shut tight against the bright light. Or maybe she's trying to shield her innocence against the clotty mess the doctor is hauling out of my ear with grim resolve – brains and all, if necessary. I press my nails into my palms and sit quiet as a mouse – well, I am squealing like a piglet getting a shave, obviously, but without so much as a whisker twitching.

Out of 30,085 (give or take) practicing physicians in New York City (says NYC.com) I have dug up one right around the corner from our place, on West 97th Street. Or rather, I have found two: one general practitioner and one gastroenterologist sharing a practice. It's open for consultation, all day long, the lady on the phone reassures me. In a long, healthy family tradition I have waited to see a doctor until my loved ones couldn't stand my pseudo-brave litanies ('Really, I'm feeling much better – Don't touch it!! What, are you crazy?!') any longer. Last straw is the moment I whine out loud on how our apartment seems drenched in stale French cheese for three continuing weeks now – and my sweetheart delicately (and from a considerable distance) points out that really, I am the only one actually smelling Camembert where ever I turn to the right and maybe, just maybe, is it possible that the smell is coming from inside my own head? There is no further denying: I am suffering from a bad case of cheese-ear and it's not going to heal on its own. To the doctor's it is.

The doctor's office is fitted with four rows of tepid smelling patients, some moaning softly, some explaining in assiduous Spanish why they really, seriously should see the doctor right now. Either of them. The desk ladies are in perfect control of everything, except of the incessant tears streaming down the face of one of them, a tremendous ruin of a woman. In between the friendly and firmly directing of patients back to their seats and the copying of identity cards, nameless rivers are leaking from her crushed face. Every time the phone rings, she resolutely addresses herself in Spanish, snorts and answers in a tone that is just a bit too bold, 'Doctor X and Y's office, how can I help you!' She listens, answers in Spanish and sometimes in English, hangs up the phone and buries her crumpled face in her plump hands once more.

Then she looks up, sighs, and calls out my name. Do I have insurance? Of course I do, I nod confidently as I flash my Dutch Achmea World Health Insurance Card. The desk lady and I both stare hopefully at the plastic card for a bit, as if, any second, it can transform into an exotic doctor who will magically heal my cheese-ear and whisk her away from her tear stained life, to a place where everything is good and beautiful and well insured. No such luck. The lady sighs again, then smiles and says: 'Do you have anything else on you?' Not yet, I start valiantly, but you see, as soon as I am registered as a legal partner I will be added onto my sweetheart's insurance. So I do not have any actual health insurance in the US, at this moment? Well… I can't just be tucked away into the line of 46.3 million Americans without any kind of health insurance (says the U.S. Census Bureau, statistics 2008), can I? 'You know what, dear', the lady solves any upcoming am-to, am-not insured debate, 'what if I make a copy of your ID and enter that into our system for now, and you can go see the doctor for 110 dollars. Once you are insured, you will be reimbursed for the money.' And so it is done.

So here I am, in a pretty bad state. Without puking, or moving, for I am sure this doctor will not hesitate to yank my sense of humor out through my ear, for all the world to see. His private office forces itself upon the corners of my eyes: a row of peculiarly put up – for every single one is askew at the exact same angle – paintings (crying Gypsy boy, ocean panorama, still life with fruit), dust flecks on the carefully slanted frames. Stacks of papers on the desk, the floor, the window sills, the bookcase, the relentlessly patched up upholstered chair.
On a wash table coated with a determined grease film, a glass jar filled with surgical instruments. No two minutes ago the doctor, using his pen, pulled the metal stick that is now jammed down my ear from that same jar. On a coffee table next to the door are a couple of happy family pictures: the doctor, his arms around two successful looking young men; a little girl on a swing. Not a glove in sight. Or a professional examination lamp, for that matter – hence the assistant. Next to me lies the full scale model ear the doctor used to explain what he had in store for me. 'Ay theenk you hab ay sure-o-money infection, si, and plus a regular eer infection, tambien', he declares after a whiff of my ear. 'Forst, I wheel take out dee eer wax, and after, wee will see. I know dat aroma, ha ha! Dat aroma ees classico!' We both laugh.

That was ten minutes ago. As it is, the doctor is using one leg to brace himself against the examination table; his free hand freeze-fixes my head as he is rummaging around my most inner thoughts. Suddenly, with a horribly smacking plorp sound, he pulls back his arm. He almost trips, grabs his perplexed assistant by the head to steady himself, lets out a breath of relief and says, 'Bueno! Dat ies part one!' Another ten minutes and one woozy ear flush session later, I am back in the lobby, clutching a prescription for antibiotics and one for eardrops – to cure both my regular ear infection and my additional Pseudomonas infection – and a check-up appointment in ten days. I leave behind my inner beauty in a metal dish: a pestilent, pungent nugget in stark yellow and clotted red. Nice.