I woke up the morning of Christmas Eve on the hardwood floor of my Boscolo Carlo presidential, covered in cold, rank piss. There was a pounding noise shaking the room. I ditched my pants and opened the door to find the general manager standing with 2 brutes. He was holding a copy of my bill in his hand, telling me in shaky English that my card had been over-extended, that I was no longer welcome at their establishment. In Paris, or London, or anywhere in the states…anywhere but Eastern Europe, I could have made one call and been graciously accommodated. Problem with Prague, it was my first visit – no one knew of or gave a shit about who John Durban was. They didn’t know of my worldly status or of my worldly friends. To them, I was just a broke deadbeat who had recently pissed his pants.
I managed to negotiate 30 minutes for a shower and change of clothes, all the while trying to piece the pieces of the previous night into coherence. I’ve always found the shower to be an excellent avenue for thought and recollection, and right on cue, as those warm and resurrecting streams of water hit my face and ran over my scalp, everything came back. We were at Girl’s house the night before, somewhere just outside the city, having dinner with her family. They were serving Goulash of some sort – I think that’s what she called it in translation. I remember trying to eat it and my face being so numb from the cocaine – we had picked up an uncut key on the way over – that I couldn’t chew. I put a bite in my mouth and let it sit for what could have been either two minutes or two hours. Everyone was speaking Czech and fiercely arguing, I think insulted by my being there, some American boy who was fucking the life out of their overnight famous Czech princess, and I could see it in their eyes and feel it in their tones, not needing to speak their language to know what the conversation was all about. The family was well off, and they had found success through hard work and study and dedication. Her and I were the opposite epitome of that belief. This was a conservative family of doctors and lawyers and the thought of her jet setting, posing nude and shaking up with the John Durban’s of the world didn’t exactly ease their collective heart. In spite of my charm and devilishly good looks, there is a breed that sees through me, all of me…this was the breed. Looking back, I have no idea what we were doing there. The whole experience was grotesque. Maybe she wanted to smear her success in their faces, I don’t know. On several occasions, Girl’s father had to step between her and her two brothers because they were threatening physical harm to me or to her or to both of us, I don’t know. What I did know was that if they did touch her, or me, I was going to stab their eyes with my Goulash knife…not because I cared for her or because I felt the need to defend her, but more because I liked the idea of it, of chivalry, of masquerading as a guy who defends the honor of a girl whose name I should have known but didn’t.
