first impressions

My first impression of John, the Canadian, was that he was a junkie —
at least central casting’s idea of a junkie: gaunt; with stringy, uncombed hair; a patchy beard; disheveled; and there was a strange shakiness about him.

I first spotted him at the bar, on the ground floor of the Crown Hotel, in the heart of Amsterdam's red-light district. On that night, I’d arrived from Germany without a plan, cluelessly unaware that Holland was celebrating their Queen Beatrice's birthday. Amsterdam was jumping and I was lucky to get a bunk, in a room full of bunks, filled with dudes there for Queen B's party.

The next morning, most of those dudes were leaving the Crown and the city. Not me, I was eager to experience Amsterdam with fewer distractions and stoned youngsters. Perhaps, so too was John, since there he was, hanging out again at the bar.

He looked just as strung out as he had the night before but already my impression of him was changing. On that quiet morning I heard him speaking English, and I could see the bartender laughing and seemingly enjoying his company.

That night, I wound up sitting next to John at the bar and he quickly obliterated all of my assumptions about him.

He was no junkie. He was a differently-abled guy. He had tremors and his arms shook unless they rested on something or his hands gripped something. He also required a wheelchair — a hell of a challenge thirty-
some years ago, in narrow Dutch buildings like the Crown, and on the cobblestones in the streets. I wondered, who’s hair and beard wouldn’t look rough if they battled tremors as John did? And how often was John’s shakiness chalked up to drugs?

The truth about John was that he was brave. I thought that my travels on the down-low were adventuresome — John was doing the same in a wheelchair. Another truth about John was that he was smart and funny.

One night, he got up from his bar stool to pee. Since his wheelchair wouldn't fit in the narrow bar, he had to make his way by gripping a rail on the wall, supporting his weight with his arms.

After a few awkward lurches, he lost his grip, fell, and hit the floor with a mighty thud. I jumped off of my stool and lunged to help him shouting, “Dude, are you alright?”

John just laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. You know, I’m acquainted with a variety of surfaces. This old floor isn’t so bad. It’s got some flex to it, it’s nothing compared to concrete or gravel.”

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Now, he and I are cracking up as I lifted him off the floor and helped him the rest of the way down the bar to his wheelchair and the bathroom. Other bar flies looked at us with alarm. Perhaps they were making their own assumptions — “How sweet, look at the punk helping the junkie”.

One day John and I went out exploring, traveling by foot and wheelchair. Miles from the Crown, one of the front wheels rattled off John’s piece-of-shit chair. We looked around for some wire, a metal rod — anything that might help us get the chair rolling again. Nothing was at hand.

So I tipped John back in the chair, wheelie-style, and pushed him back to the Crown. Back at the bar, we settled into our drinks and John turned to me and said, “I know what you did for me.” I tried to brush this aside — “It’s nothing, dude.”

John wasn’t having it, he went on, “Your shoulders gotta be killing you from bouncing me over the cobbles all that way. You know, I can’t do much physically, but I can do this” — and he put a hand on my shoulder. He gripped tightly enough to calm his tremor. He kneaded my shoulders with a hand and an arm strengthened by the use of his wheelchair. His eyes moistened.

I looked down at the bar, in part to lessen the intimacy of this moment. In part to melt into the shoulder relief I really did need.

After about a week I decided to leave Holland for Belgium and I sought out John at the bar for a final round and to exchange addresses. The bartender produced scraps of paper and pens and I watched John’s extraordinary effort to write out his address. It was a battle between his tremor and legibility, and legibility won. In fact, his hand writing was beautiful.

Months later I was home in Minneapolis and I wrote to John the Canadian, mailing the letter to Ottawa. Some weeks later John wrote back. There on the envelope was his beautiful hand writing. And his hand writing was beautiful throughout the letter, which was several pages long and filled with the sensitivity and humor that I’d come to know from him in Amsterdam.

Writing that letter must of been like running a marathon for John. This was certainly not something one would expect from a gaunt, disheveled junkie.

How foolish I was to have had such a first impression of John the Canadian.

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