Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
next few months. We traded addresses and phone numbers, and he was off on my Lightning
Rocket. I like to think that that's how it was in those days, though it may have been only sheer,
dumb luck. I was dumb—tired and dumb. And lucky. And maybe it was.
A bigger surprise came in Gary's first letter some weeks later, saying that the motorcycle
was about the most fun he'd ever had, all four hours of it the next morning, till a car turned
in front of him from the wrong lane and he crashed into it broadside and went flying over the
top but didn't get hurt, but the motorcycle looked like a steel pretzel. In the letter was a check
for fifty bucks and a continuing pledge to pay the rest as soon as he could.
That's the thing about riding every day; if you don't get creamed in the first week or two,
you probably won't, because you gain the second nature, a certain knowing that they will try
to kill you given the chance. Gary was unseasoned, without road wits.
Meanwhile, back at Schwabbing, Dolph offered to show us a great place to eat and celeb-
rate. We said we'd meet him once we ditched our stuff, but he tagged along. We wondered why
but figured it out. Dolph was born too soon. He was one of us, technically too old to trust but
he compensated with gregarious charm. He explained that he liked hanging out with Amer-
ican tourists, because they taught him about the world. Back at the Neumann Center at three
forty-five, the desk
frau
said she had no rooms. “You said to come back after three and . . .”
She pounded the table with her fist. “I said come back exACTly at three! No room for you.”
Dolph laughed, “Fucking Germans.” Not to worry—he knew a place, though he cautioned:
do not ask the man who would rent us the room anything about Nazis. The man greeted
Dolph with an emotionless hug. He appeared to be early to mid-sixties and a very apparent
colonel. In a bathrobe with no visible clothing under it, smoking a turquoise cigarette with a
gold filter in a pearl holder that he held between thumb and forefinger, palm up, he seemed the
essence of gentlemanly bestiality. “Are you . . .” He puffed his cigarette, exhaling as he scanned
David and me. “. . . a couple?”
“Yeah. A couple o' knuckleheads,” I said, quickly giving David a knuckle rub on the head.
This behavior indicated removal from manhood—and removal from genteel bestiality; it
dashed hopes for nostalgic reminiscence of the Third Reich while ass fucking. Which, when
you think about it, was a seasoned move on my part.
We got the key to the room at the top of the stairs with a warning to be quiet and leave the
key on the table in the hall.
Dolph took us to a place for bratwurst and sauerkraut and much beer, again deferring to
David's check list. Dinner was superb. David said, “Gee, it's a good thing Germans don't fart.”
Dolph laughed, leaned over for an oompa pa and ordered another round, saying we'd have to
leave if they started with the polkas, because he couldn't take anymore polkas.
he next day David took a bus to Bremen, where he would either book a tour or go
alone to Bergen-Belsen, where his grandparents died. I headed to Amsterdam without asking
what he would gain by staring at some Godforsaken ruins and ovens. Apparently it would do
