6 february 2005

Last nite I ate pasta with eight international students at the house of Emile, our straightedge vegan group leader. He snuck tofu into the tomato sauce to fool the adamant carnivore from Peru, who turned down a dish at the introduction party when he found out there was no meat in it. Emile lives in a small flat in one of Amsterdam’s “bad” neighborhoods. We ate at folding chairs around a card table surrounded by books in six languages and hundreds of cds, under a Che Guevara banner. Emile also runs track and plays Nintendo.

The way people piece themselves together is so fucking fantastic.

Emile keeps a guest book. When he said, “This is my guest book,” I squinted with confusion at the idea of an individual unaffiliated with a hotel or museum doing this, and he thought perhaps he had chosen the wrong English words. But his guest book is splendid. His flat has hosted dozens of guests over the years – travelers, friends, animal rights activists, touring hardcore bands, randomly encountered wayward youths. They all sign the book, in Dutch or English or their own languages, and draw pictures and scrawl phrases like “vegan power”. It’s six years of who has slept on the sofa. And it’s so surprising at first, and then it seems so obvious. Why do people find it so hard to open up their homes? (Sidebar: does anyone else remember studying the guest / host relationship as a theme in the Odyssey?)

Filip taught us Swedish drinking games, which went over well with the three Spanish guys who are so young, dumb, and etc. that it’s hard to have any sort of conversation with them. Regina asked Emile to put on some music, and he asked her what kind. Your favorite, she said. He sat very still. That would scare you away, he said.

Around midnight we rallied for the closing party, charmingly themed “Heaven and Hell.” The theme idea is supposed to inspire costume-wearing, but a costume party is a stupid idea when the partygoers are international students who mostly arrived three days earlier with two suitcases each. Furthermore “Heaven and Hell” is a lame theme. It just doesn’t afford many options, particularly when language barriers make wordplay inaccessible. “Shit!” said one girl the first day when the party announcement was made. “I packed all my costumes except my angel and devil ones.”

Last term the theme was "Stoplight": red means I’m taken, yellow means approachable, green means jump me. Emile observed, “It might as well have been called 'Girls Wear Red, Boys Wear Green.'”

Overall the party was predictable but fun. When it ended at four I hitched a bike ride to my old residence for the tail end of Laura’s going away party. Sometime in the early morning I fell asleep on the couch of my old lounge, covered by a large abandoned towel. I am admitting this because I think it will make you laugh. I don’t care if you laugh with pity or joy or damn, been there. It was a really good time.