Mumbling Bright

The red lights make me dizzy. I tell that to Deiter each morning as I watch him smoke. The smoke also makes me dizzy, but this I keep to myself. We sit together on the canal and never say more than a few words. Deiter seldom talks much. 

I like to listen. But not to people who talk to me. I like to listen to conversations that I’m not in, ones I catch as I’m waiting for a bus or buying a loaf of bread. I hear more that way. Conversations of which I am a part, often make me dizzy. Not quite so dizzy as the red lights but quite light-headed. Mumblings are my favorite thing to overhear. I find them exciting. They are like spoken pre-thoughts, a sort of verbal first draft. When a young boy comes to my window, I know if he is scared from one glance. Maybe he’s never been to the Zeedijk before and he worries he’ll become too excited. I look at him for just a minute and then turn my face back to the red lights. I keep my neck straight and long like a haughty ballerina. I am known for my length and for my stillness. Some girls wear flashy costumes. I wear Deiter’s unbuttoned dress shirt and keep my body frozen mannequin-like. Although looking at the light makes me dizzy, it’s the only way I can clear my head. I find that I must clear my head frequently. 

But these young boys make me laugh. Not “ha ha,” the other laugh. Sometimes they talk to themselves, I hear them stutter, “What would mama think?” or, “I’ll just say ‘Hello’ and tell her I like the lights off. No, no, I should let her talk first…” They don’t know that I can hear them through the glass. And because the red lights make me dizzy and obscures the expression on my face, they can’t tell I am thinking about them. They don’t know I think. The young boys I don’t mind, the not so young boys, think they know every one of us women, like we are a familiar extension of the own body. Around the old men, I must make myself very dizzy to stay still and proud. They grate at my nerves. Some of them want to call me little love names, “Baby, Sweetie…” I smile at them but feel relieved when they leave and take their smells with them. Many of them arrive still smelling of their wives’ perfume. I don’t tell Deiter that when an old man looks at me through the glass and I can see him smirk, I stare at the red lights without a blink until I feel my mind tip. Of course I must look back at the men eventually. I wouldn’t get customers if I didn’t invite them in. Lately Deiter has taken to watching my window. I don’t mind but I wonder why. 

Deiter looked in my window first on my debut night as I stood behind the glass. I posed there, not five minutes before the red lights caused my eyes to water like a faucet. I tried to stand very still and proud but I felt so dizzy and all down my face I felt the tears. When I looked through the glass I saw him, his eyes scrunched up. I thought he looked lost and late. He told me later he was worried that I was crying and about to fall from my perch. He didn’t say anything despite his fear, but he tapped on the glass and walked in slowly. I liked him right away except that he smelled of cigarettes. He told me he’d give me 50 euros for a kiss. I laughed and felt less dizzy from lowering my head away from the light. We sat on the chaise. The seat smelled like roses and mildew. We smoked an herb cig together.

He told me his name was Deiter and that he played as a DJ all around the district. He didn’t look at me when he spoke. I liked that. I could pretend I was listening to him mumble. But he wasn’t at all like a boy on his first visit to this part of town. Deiter always fits in because he never cares where he is. After a while he took one of my hands and leaned in. His breath was warm. He kissed my cheeks first. Then he kissed my lips. He has very full lips. We kissed each other until I knew my dizziness had never reached such heights. Afterwards, he left 60 euros and a phone number.  Ever since that night I have lived with Deiter in a flat off Waterloo Square. We spend the day in bed as we both work at night. We consider ourselves madly in love. But neither of us say as much. We sit on the canal in the morning after our shifts. We dance slowly in our flat and make love on our own chaise. 

But last night I realized that Deiter watched me in my window. I didn’t see him. I just knew. I entertained the usual customers. A tourist from the States paid me 100 euros for a blow. He wanted more but became too nervous. A dour businessman paid me 40 euros for a ten minute thrust in-out.  All the while I knew Deiter stood outside. He wants me to stop, I realized. But he hadn’t said anything. I find he has trouble broaching subjects. I began to feel something might happen with Deiter outside my window watching and thinking and me inside, waiting and fucking. Deiter often makes things happen. He once started a riot at a club in London. I don’t know why but I assume the incident involved love. 

The night’s foot traffic at its peak brought a bouquet of strangers past my glass. I knew Deiter still stood back there somewhere, his eyes on my sign. I straddled a business man when I felt an intuitive dizziness. The man pinched my breast, paid me, and left. I stepped back to my place and looked down at four smiling young men. They peered at me knowingly and I had trouble maintaining my length. I gazed at the red. They walked on but I felt myself swaying. All of the sudden I knew I must look away from the red lights. I turned myself to the glass where I saw Deiter. His face looked lost and late—so familiar. In a moment without sound, I fell forward through the glass. I don’t remember how I became so dizzy. When I opened my eyes, I saw faces but I closed them again to listen to the mumbles. Mumbles all around, a symphony of them!  Whispers and raised voices, and one spoke my name.

They told me I had cuts from the fall. The blood from my wounds made me see red for what it is. They patched me and when I stood at the end of their ministrations, I did not feel myself sway.

The canal always looks dirty in the morning. But my vision has not cleared completely from my fall, so the world looks hazy and clean. I turn to Deiter and let my neck fall to one side, the side closer to him. “Deiter, that cigarette makes me dizzy. Do you know?” He throws the butt in the canal and shrugs.

“Deiter, let’s run away someplace.” He takes my hand very lightly. I squint to make out his reaction. He mumbles an assent and kisses the tip of my nose. Fade to white.

(Written joyously in 2004…)