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something for him, something he needed done. We would meet at the American Express of-
fice on Dam Square at noon in two days, or at five as a backup to noon.
We kept the peace by focusing on practical concerns, by discussing logistics for meeting in
Amsterdam. Practicality seemed best, given his compulsive search for a physical connection
to the horror or the lingering spirit or the lost souls, or all of the above. It remained amorph-
ous and conceptual to me. The camps were a devilish stain on humanity—yes, already a few
anti-Semitics were swearing that it never happened, which underscored the importance of
proof and remembrance. Oh, it happened, and we're not so concerned that it might happen
again, because it surely will if allowed to happen. The greatest concern now is that those hate-
ful few must bear the shame for eternity.
Still, David seemed driven by a mordant curiosity somehow meant to flesh out a specific
identity. I had mine. It was easy: a skinny young Jew hell-bent for adventure on two wheels.
Nazi death camps? Where (the fuck) was that at?
Nowhere was the obvious answer, and I felt like I'd arrived at last, with or without the
two wheels under me. Well, let it be. David was missing the motorcycle gene. I got along fine
without wallowing in death camp horror.
I felt woefully average without the speed, the feeling, the look, the view, the centrifugal and
centripetal forces gently opposed with me conducting from the podium. This was the World
Youth Symphony Philharmonic—or had been till the music slammed into silence, which was
better than a wreck, but left something to be desired. I practically wobbled through those first
days of no motorcycle like a sailor freshly landed on terra firma, and so will ice skaters after
only an hour at the rink. Coming down off the blades to the shoe-leather express is a ground-
ing experience, a good one in some ways, allaying certain dangers but then removing the great
rewards derived from risk.
On the bright side, optimism prevailed on plenty more hazard where that came from.
David and I met again on the fountain steps in Dam Square among many youth gathered
to share tales from all corners of Europe and North Africa. Many pipes wisped into a single
cloud. We loaded a gram of hash into our pipe and joined the flow, giggling when a cop
stepped carefully over our outstretched legs. It wasn't funny. It was the way things should be,
with public servants serving the public.
We lost ten days in Amsterdam smoking hash subtle enough to assure that it would not
impair. That time was not totally lost but lingers in the mists of amazing good fun. Two clubs
then specialized in loud music in an auditorium with speakers at varying levels, floor to ceil-
ing all the way around for total penetration of the stoned groove. Mattresses all over the floor
let you lie down before you fell down, or you could fall to a softer landing. You could smoke
your own hash or buy it there and lie down and roll over, Beethoven.
Oh, yeah, Chuck Berry sang it a dozen years earlier but emerged from the cloudbank
with a downbeat perfectly tuned to what we felt, what we were. The groove honed more per-
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