![]() ![]() He summoned the bulbous waiter and, acting a lot more drunk, asked, "Where is your vicious red light district? I've gotta check it out!" Jake suddenly felt all alone in the city of Amsterdam, craving a woman's company. She didn't sleep with him for an entire month, and he almost didn't mind the deferring of sex, so much did she make him relish the prolonged foreplay. He remembered his first dinner date with Erin, in a seafood place in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Maybe I should've simply married her-and to hell with the whole Jewish thing. The foggy air outside the restaurant changed color from blue to putty. I should've taken it slower, given her more time to come to grips with my reasons. He began to blame himself for ending it with Erin so abruptly. What he wanted from this nearing Yom Kippur were some real answers. He knew he wasn't aiming his mind in the right direction, but couldn't help it. Have I sinned? Was breaking up with Erin a sin? Or was it a mitzvah? How can I atone if I haven't sinned? Am I a Jew only because I couldn't, wouldn't marry Erin? Jake knew he wasn't thinking straight after the sleepless night he had spent partying and parting with his Russian friends in Nice, the early morning flight, and the beer he had drunk since having arrived in Amsterdam. So it's Yom Kippur, Jake told himself, finishing a second beer. That left him with more than two hours to sort out his many thoughts in anticipation of the annual Day of Atonement. It was four o'clock, and he decided to start fasting at six-thirty. What a beautiful place for a Jew to atone, Jake thought to himself and smiled.Īfter checking into his hotel-boat, Jake went to a cozy, glass-enclosed restaurant on Damrak and gorged on a delightfully unhealthy veal cutlet with thick slabs of fried potatoes. He also gladly noted and later wrote down in his journal that young Dutch women in the afternoon crowd returned his inquisitive looks with a sensual readiness that revealed no fear of a stranger. He observed to himself that the citizens of Amsterdam looked bourgeois, but not at all philistine. As he walked slowly to his hotel-boat anchored on the Amstel, he kept bumping into the signs of an old city culture. Struck Jake right away as extremely livable and free-spirited. ![]()
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