It was another of those sweet, melting Amsterdam summer days. We were sitting on the steps of our squat, the Black and White (named for the ironic, prison-like stripes painted across the front), drinking Leeuw from bottles and heckling the tourist boats as they motored down the canal like transparent sardine cans. The sun was warming the world as if it would never go away.
My housemates were arguing about my hair.

[private]“Blond,” said Margriet, who had an electric-red mohawk herself. “You’ll look just like Billy Idol.” It was the ’80s and everything was different back then – Amsterdam, and underground fashion, and me.
“Exactly the problem,” Raf chuckled, without looking up from the joint he was rolling. “Black, for sure.” His own head was shaved.

Just then I looked down the canal and hallucinated my brother, Brian, walking towards me. And I hadn’t even smoked anything. I blinked. Lots of tourists looked like Brian. A million obedient American squares in button-down shirts and khaki shorts. They all looked the same. That was because they all were the same – thought the same, never questioned or experimented. Every squatter knew that.

The vision reminded me that I was feeling torn about more than my hair. I stared back out at the water. Bigger questions lurked under the surface and one day soon they’d emerge for good and insist that I answer them. Was I going to stay in Amsterdam? When and how would I pay back my parents’ loans? And mainly: What was I going to do?

The thought of Brian galled me. He was in his last year of law school back in the States and working part-time already. He had it so easy. Straight, boring, happy to appease. Soon Mom and Dad would pinch shut the teat and end my travels. And even I knew I couldn’t drink beer in the sun for the rest of my life. I was only 23, and that would probably be a long time.

Another boat glided by. I wondered about the people inside, even though I knew they were just consuming, polluting, tranquilised fools. Then two legs stopped in front of my face. I looked up.
“Hey, bro,” said my brother. “Surprise.”

His hair was even shorter than usual, in a crew-cut – but it was him. His plaid short-sleeved shirt stood out in the capital of all-black-all-the-time. I felt disoriented, giddy. And then I laughed. I didn’t recall ever finding Brian amusing before.

He was gawking. I guessed my piercings were freaking him out. Back then, in his America, nose studs and lip rings would get you beat up. Conscious of the tableau – the striped, commandeered Black and White, its steps draped with punks – I suppressed a grin. He should only know! Margriet made her living as a dominatrix. Raf was known around town as the guy who pried open empty buildings for others to squat. And then there were our other two housemates, Wolf the biker and Cathy the performance artist, who let her own blood on stage and smeared it on audience members to make a point about Western imperialism. Both of them were sleeping with Margriet.

I’d often marvel to myself, aware I’d never have met people like these if I hadn’t run away and joined the metaphorical circus. I’d look at them and think: What can’t you do on this earth? You can do anything. Leap into the ozone. Visit the stars. No limit.

The squatters were staring at Brian. I could feel it.

“No tourists,” Wolf spat, his Teutonic voice so icy I cringed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Brian, poised on a high wire between hostility and brotherhood.
“Unexpected vacay,” he said, plunging his hands in his pockets. “Come on, I’ll buy you brunch at my hotel and we can catch up.”

Hearing the snorts, I suppressed an impulse to run inside and wash and change. If I did, when I got back, the locks probably would have been changed and my magical, suspended life here would be over. I stood up. “Come on in. I’ll get us some coffee.”

The old house’s front room was our bar. It had that sleepy sun-baked-ashtray smell, laid over the eternal stench of beer. I waved Brian toward the exploded Naugahyde sofa and poured us coffee from a pot Margriet had made sometime during the long stretched-out morning, morning in the squat being everything before 5pm.

“Sugar?” I asked him. “Soy milk?”

“Nah. Your buddies aren’t too friendly.”

“I know. Sorry.” I sank down beside him; the sofa gave its customary fart. I sipped my burnt coffee. Brian lifted his to his nose, then set it on a crate.

“So, you here with friends?” I asked. “Where’s Donna?”

He sighed. “We broke it off.”

So. My perfect brother had hit a pothole. They’d already sent out the wedding invitations, too, so everyone would have to know. I felt a swell of schadenfreude.

Raf drifted in and paused in the archway leading to the hall, looking at us – at Brian. My brother stared back.

“Hey,” they said at the same time. Raf nodded and said, “I’m upstairs.”

I panicked, guessing he was summoning me for a humiliating anarchist scolding. Who the hell is that? You don’t let the Man in the house. Poseur, infiltrator, informer. Get out! For the moment, though, he melted away. A relief.

“Whatever,” I said to Brian. “So, you get in this morning?”

“Yesterday.” He looked down at his hands, twisting an unfamiliar silver ring marked with multicoloured stripes. Rainbow stripes! Didn’t he know that meant gay?

Abruptly turning his gaze out the window, Brian muttered, “I met that guy in a bar last night. Just so you know.”

“Huh? You mean Raf?” He didn’t answer, but when I looked at him, he nodded.

Funny. Raf only went to one bar, a gay one, Hell for Leather. It was a running joke in the house.
“Listen, Chris,” Brian said. “I was hoping maybe I could stay a while. Things at home are kind of… But your housemates…”

I had to think. Just for a minute.

So this was Brian. My brother. Black and white stripes turned to all the colours in the rainbow.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s cool, bro. I’ll handle it.”[/private]

Laura Martz makes her living by the written word, but this is her first published piece of fiction. She has seen the inside of more than one 1980s Amsterdam squat.

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