Five days, five nights

Five days of everything in excess... yes, it's carnival again. The south closes down for two days, spends Ash Wednesday hungover and depressed, and work only really takes off again next week. I wasn't planning to this, but circumstances changed and I let fate walk me though this. The first four days were a doddle, but I'm only now recovering from the fifth night. I'm on a self-prescribed detox adventure now, and I really need it.

So here goes.

Day 1: Friday [cue 24-style clock ticking]

I leave work at four, and pick up a mate who's gone to a job interview in the area. Turns out the place has been entirely broken up and I can't seem to get where I need to be. I arrive horrendously late, we drive back to mine where I discover the magnetic strip of my debit card's had it. Unpleasant surprise #1.

We leg into town, and drink a lot of Hoegaarden at an Australian pub full of undies, lingerie and condoms filled with an unknown white substance hanging from the ceiling. My friend's never seen anything like it before, and I'm left thinking: this is the nation that produced Aussiebum and Speedo.

After that, he decides to head home, and I grab Burger King (I never do that) and hit home.

There, get bored and decide to dip my toe into the gay side of carnival. Not impressive at all. Everyone's in drag, everyone looks awful and I get bored.

To boot, a snowstorm passes (unpleasant surprise #2) and it's incredibly cold, wet and windy out. On my way home, I find a bike with a flat (I really needed a bike and didn't feel like paying for one) and I decide to shorten the suffering by cycling my way home in it.

Day 2: Saturday [more 24-style clock ticking]

Having no debit card means walking to the central station miles away to buy a ticket so my original plan to escape carnival and go to Amsterdam, in the carnival-free north, has to be abandoned. Besides, the schedule back is lousy.

I spend the day fixing the bike and am really pleased with it.

Instead, I decide to wear something outrageous and go for it. I haven't done this in years, and remembering the last night not something I expected much of.

Instead, it was a blast.

One thing I'd forgotten about carnival is how sex-driven it all is. In the gay scene, this is obviously... worse. And it involves dressing up, with fairies and angels being obvious favourites this year.

In the end, I must have shopped around a little inspecting around five guys, made my choice and taken him home. My memory is a little hazy, but fun times.

Day 3: Sunday [tick-tock]

Saturday Night Boy decides to leave early, so I change the sheets and head back to bed. Decide this would be the obligatory carnival sex, but determined to check out the Sunday night action for once.

I did not expect the hormone level to have risen further. I don't think I have been chatted up or fondled so much in one evening, ever. A bar tender tries to have a go and this means free beer. I spot a friend from long ago at another place, and let my inner smile go. Another one. He didn't recognise me, and I didn't feel like talking to him.

Somewhere during the night, I fall off the stage and hurt my knee. The music was pretty good though, not the standard carnival fodder. At closing time, I head back on my newly fixed pride and joy.

The bar tender slips me his number on a beer mat. I toss it.

Day 4: Monday [no commercial break yet]

I first watch the Natalee Holloway breakthrough on TV before bravely venturing into the world of wine.

By now I'm really into it. Monday night is a sort of turbo-charged copy of Sunday night, but even better. And yes, I guess there must have been some desperation popping up in some guys because the horny and hotness meter was off the scales.

I've lost count of the number of attractive guys I kissed that night, but in each and every case the other guy took the initiative. I wasn't planning on anything, and enjoying myself thoroughly this way.

I try to cut down on the drinking by limiting myself to beer but fail miserably.

One more incident stands out: on my way to the bathroom, a cute young guy with a Phantom of the Opera mask decides he needs to kiss and grope me. So we do this, against the bathroom door which sweeps backwards, with people wanting to leave the bathroom as well. LOL. He is out there with a bunch of female friends, some of which find it amazing to watch and others who don't want to see it. So they all leave pretty quickly, which was a bit of a disappointment.

I sorta get kicked out at closing time and discover my coordination is shot. I feel stupid, because I think I've only had four beers. I fall off my bike at one point, slowly sliding into a lamp post and hurt my knee some more (injury #2). At home I forget my flat mate's home, somehow stumble in and throw up loudly into the bog before passing out.

Those four beers turned out to be twelve, and a bottle of wine.

Day 5: Monday [tick-tock tick-tock boom!]

On Monday I feel like shit, clean house and bog, do a lot of laundry and generally do everything to avoid my flat mate.

But I was determined to take this thing to the end, but forgot Ash Wednesday is not a public holiday in Holland. Everything closes early, so I went a little earlier, and found the music was shit, and everyone was basically exhausted. I felt fine, danced a bit, drank a little, but a lot less then the previous night, before leaving at closing time.

An attractive boy looks at me on the way out, but I had decided to lay off on that sort of thing.

I talk to some people, as closing time is the only moment without loud music, and then step outside, on my way to my new best friend.

I hear a voice behind me.

"You got any plans for the rest of the night?"

It's him. Yikes! This is gutsy, and way past direct.

"I guess I don't" [Translation: I guess I do now]

"We're heading to a friend's place. Wanna join up?"

I sure do. Most of us know each other vaguely, from around, and this was the kind of ad hoc party I always liked. After getting the entire group together, which takes ages, we drive a silly four blocks to find the friend's place.

We talk, laugh, even do some of the most disgusting shots with the boy on my lap, almost the entire night. At about five-thirty, most of the group decides to leave and he presses me: "stay behind". I just nod.

"Do you have to work tomorrow?" he asks, when everyone's left.

I don't... I am such a slut.

Before the door slams shut our mouths meet.

This is what anyone would do, right?

Imagine living in a Caribbean backwater of the great (ahum) Dutch nation. Imagine being comfortably well-off, young, bored with school and a developing addiction to blackjack or something. Imagine boatloads of rich, blonde and generally OK-looking American tourists reaching the shores of your Happy Island every day.

Imagine those tourists emerging themselves in the laid-back attitude to drugs, drink and sex that prevails in such a place. You would take advantage of that, wouldn't you?

So you pick up one of those tourists girls, do shots with her and get her wasted. Tell her where she can obtain cocaine. Then take her out to the waterfront to have the full sex on the beach experience (imagine sand in places where you didn't know you had places). You find out her family's loaded but unfortunately you don't discover her family has a hotline to the Bush White House.

You have some vaguely defined form of sex with the girl, and she ends up convulsing in spasms during the experience. She passes out and becomes non-responsive, or, in your own words, she suddenly didn't work any more, like an ancient television set.

So you hide the body in the bushes, run to a pay phone and call a "buddy" with a boat. He takes the body, says he'll dump it somewhere in the sea and tells you to go home.

Once home, you establish your alibi on the internet and go to sleep.

This is normal behaviour, right? Anybody would do this. I always end up having to dispose of bodies after sex, and let me tell you, it's a damn sight harder out here, with no ocean nearby.

So tell us the full story, Joran. You ghb'd her, and some coke dealers on the island made sure she sleeps with the fishes, right?

Seven million people - that's almost half the country - watched this "confession" on TV last night.

Why would...

...a guy grab you by the waist, drag you off the dancefloor, walk over to the bar, grab two Tequila shots, do the shots with you, and then ignore you altogether?

What's the fucking point of that?

I've been wondering for two days now and I still don't get it. Any ideas?

And why would said guy bite into the lemon before taking the shot?

TV3 does porn???

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Come on baby, so we can dance this groove...

Even a socialist backwater can produce sexy lounge tunes. Here are Sweden's Plej, with "You".

Four Hookups and a Funeral

Just joking. Relax, I'm not that bad. Just couldn't resist this title. But what a crazy day it was.

My mom had decided to go to the funeral after all, and so we decided to travel together.

Waking up early, getting into my formal dress, I discovered it was pouring outside. This always seems to happen at funerals: curtains of rain, and shivering under an umbrella as the casket is lowered into its final resting place. I was thinking of Guns 'n Roses' November Rain, without Slash, that is.

And the rain kept on coming: driving towards Amsterdam, it got so bad I had to slow down sometimes as vision declined. Then, finally, we got lost in the posh suburb that surrounds the cemetery as the roads were broken up and cars were directed onto bike paths. We arrived a few minutes late, but it turned out my cousin and his new Russian girlfriend had run out of petrol, much to his father's anger. LOL. He then got lost as well, and in the end couldn't find a place to park.

And it kept on pouring. We were shepherded into the chamber for the ceremony, where eulogies were held that made me reach for the sick bag. I mean, the deceased wasn't a saint, so why do we posthumously have to pretend it was the case? I know a funeral is no place to be truthful or critical, but in these speeches an unrealistic fantasy creature was sketched that in no way resembled reality.

So after the ceremony, the casket was carried outside, into the pouring rain and dropped into the family slot beneath the beautiful pines. It really is an amazing spot.

Afterwards, we all met up for drinks at a quaint old restaurant near a dune, a place I have fond memories of. My sleazy Swiss relatives, friends of my grandma and a nasty old queen who used to go to school with my uncle were all there. The old homo was definitely checking me out. Gross.

We left rather early, pleading distance. My mom dropped me of at my place, and I went back to casual clothing. Then prepared myself for a night on the town. I was in predator mode, which usually means I'll do something stupid.

Getting tanked on wine, cocktails and the occasional brewski, bored by the club, the music and all those guys I have seen too many times before, even though there was some cool eye contact with the boy I have been eyeing for weeks, I moved in on a cute Indian exchange student, and we spent the night together.

No, he wasn't as good as Barbie.

PS. I have decided not to get my tongue pierced. For now. Reason? Too scary.

Primary Colours, a European view

Barack Obama's the greatest political talent in the USA today.

Now watch them nominate Hillary.

Come on, you old soldier. You can win this thing.

I don't like plastic, not even in flip-flops.