My first extended solo cycle took place a few weeks later when I left the city for Naarden, a journey of about ninety minutes, where I was to meet Bastiaan’s parents, Arjan and Edda, for the first time. Bastiaan, who was taking the train from Utrecht after work, had promised to be there early in order to make the introductions, so I felt anxious when I arrived a little ahead of schedule. I had never met a boyfriend’s parents before and wasn’t sure about the etiquette of the situation. Even if I had been talking to the one member of my family who I presumed was still alive—Charles—I doubted that he would have even entertained the idea of such an encounter.
A long road, humped by unhelpful rocks and random potholes, led to the Van den Bergh farm and I found my unsteady cycling further threatened by a pair of dogs who came charging in my direction the moment they caught sight of me, barking loudly and offering no clue as to whether they were excited or enraged by my appearance. Although I generally liked dogs, I had never owned one and their ambiguous greeting, not to mention their determination to scamper around me, led to my falling off once again and landing in an enormous steaming pile of shit the scent and texture of which suggested that it had not long escaped the bowels of some aged incontinent cow. I looked down at my brand-new chinos and the Parallel Lines T-shirt that was my pride and joy and could have wept at the filthy brown streaks smeared across Debbie Harry’s perfect face.
“You fucking fuckers,” I muttered as the dogs came over and, feigning innocence, wagged their tails in acknowledgment of their small victory. The larger of the two cocked his leg and took a piss against my fallen bike, an indignity that I thought was a little much. Up ahead, I heard a voice call out a stream of words and narrowed my eyes to see a woman standing outside the farmhouse, hands on hips, waving toward me. From this distance, I couldn’t make out what she was saying but guessed that this was Bastiaan’s mother and had no choice but to pick myself up and, my attackers in tow, make my way toward her. As I got closer, I noticed her eyes were lingering in faint amusement on my soiled clothes.
“You must be the Irish boy,” she said, nibbling at her lower lip as she sized me up.
“Cyril,” I said, not bothering to extend my filthy hand. “And you must be Mrs. Van den Bergh.”
“Call me Edda,” she said. “You know that you’re covered in cow shit, yes?”
“I do,” I said. “I fell off my bike.”
“What kind of person falls off a bike? Have you been drinking?”
“No. Well, not today anyway. I had a few beers last night but I’m pretty sure they’re—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, interrupting me. “In Holland, even drunk people can cycle without falling off. I’ve been known to fall asleep with my head on my handlebars and still make it home safely. Come inside. Arjan is at the top field but he’ll be down soon.”
“I can’t,” I told her, looking down at my ruined clothes. “Not like this anyway. Maybe I should go home and come back another day?”
“This is a farm, Cyril,” she said with a shrug. “It’s nothing we’re not used to. Come. Follow me.”
We went inside the house and I kicked my boots off at the door, not wanting to cause any unnecessary mess. She took me through the living room and down a narrow corridor that led to a bathroom before opening a nearby cabinet and handing me a towel that felt to the touch as if it had been used, washed, dried and returned to its shelf ten thousand times. “You can take a shower in here,” she said. “Next door is Bastiaan’s old bedroom and he still keeps some clothes in the wardrobe. Change into something when you’re finished.”
“Thank you,” I said, closing the door behind me before turning to my own reflection in the mirror and mouthing the word Fuck with as much quiet intensity as I could muster. I stripped quickly and stepped into the stall—the water pressure was abysmal and the temperature had only two settings, freezing and scalding, but somehow I managed to wash all the crap from my face and hands, dissolving the single bar of soap into nothingness as I scrubbed myself. I turned around at one point to allow the water to cascade down my back and legs and, to my astonishment, could make out the figure of Mrs. Van den Bergh in the bathroom, lifting my soiled clothes from the floor and throwing them over her arm. Before leaving, she turned and stared directly at my naked figure before nodding in satisfaction and exiting the bathroom. Most odd, I thought. When I was finished, I peeped outside to make sure the corridor was empty before darting into the next room and closing the door behind me.
There was something faintly erotic about being alone in Bastiaan’s childhood bedroom and I couldn’t stop myself from lying down on the single bed that had been his for eighteen years before he left for university. I tried to imagine him falling asleep there as a teenager, fantasizing about bare-chested swimmers or floppy-haired Dutch pop stars as he embraced his sexuality instead of running from it. It was in this bed that he had lost his virginity at the age of fifteen to a boy from his local football team when he spent the night there after a cup final match. When he told me that story, a softness in his expression, a dampness in his eyes at the blissful memory, I had been torn between grudging respect and overwhelming jealousy, for I simply couldn’t compare my own early experiences with his. The fact that the boy, Gregor, remained a vague presence in his life still was astonishing to me, for until meeting Bastiaan himself I had never encountered a lover twice.
From the start, Bastiaan spoke freely about his love life. He hadn’t slept with many people, no more than a dozen or so, but most of them had been boys with whom he had gone on to form some type of subsequent relationship, sometimes romantic, sometimes as nothing more than friends. A few still lived in Amsterdam and if they met by chance on the street, they would throw their arms around each other and exchange a kiss while I stood awkwardly by their side, still alarmed to witness such open public displays of affection between two men, always assuming that the people around us, who could not have cared less, might turn on us.
Despite how open he had been with me, for Bastiaan never lied or withheld anything, I found it much more difficult to be honest with him about my past. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of the large number of sexual partners I had had over the years, but I had come to realize that there was something rather tragic about my pathological promiscuity. For, yes, I might have fucked countless boys but when it came to romance I was still a virgin. Slowly, as I grew to love and trust him, I unburdened myself of the story of my once-obsessive love for Julian Woodbead, sparing him some of the more pitiful stories out of fear that I might scare him away, and a month after we started dating, when it was becoming clear that this was no passing fancy on either of our parts, I told him the story of my ridiculous three-hour marriage. Listening in amazement, torn between horror and hilarity, he finally shook his head in disbelief, unable to understand why I would have put myself and Alice through such incredible deceit.
“What’s wrong with you people?” he asked, looking at me as if I was clinically insane. “What’s wrong with Ireland? Are you all just fucking nuts over there, is that it? Don’t you want each other to be happy?”