Amsterdam

I drop exhausted on the hotel bed smelling like fresh lavender on a summer evening in Provence.

It feels like holiday. The red lights of the city dancing in my mind are the ultimate proof for it.

I touch my forehead and I shout to my husband in an annoyed tone: “I don’t feel anything!”  I wait for something to happen… Nothing, niks, nada, rien de rien. Frustration pulls me to one side of the bed. I hardly have the time to think: « What a waste! » that I start to laugh. Hard and harder until tears well up in my eyes. I cannot stop. It feels good, it feels relieving and rewarding.

A wise voice in me explains it to me that we have to stop. “It could end badly”. We cannot stop.

I am rolling on the floor and I find it so liberating. I do not care. I am laughing. We are both in bed now. Naked. I know what’s coming next. I smirk. Loud happy waves of laughter gush out of my pelvis. We are having sex. My back turns hot, my feet burn, my fingers are on fire, my arms are numb. We are giggling: we are so naughty! We burst into an incontrollable access of laughter, violent, scary.

We make an agreement: we are going to sleep. My head rests on the pillow. It feels like being at the movies. I write books in my head. Best sellers. I am reading out loud the captions of the pictures I see marching in front of my eyes. “Am I really talking? Am I asleep?”

I open my eyes just to check the contours of the room. I tell it to myself that I need not forget to write about this tomorrow morning. I hear myself ask my husband to activate the recorder from his phone: my-first-trip-ever-audio-selfie.

I want to sleep. I want this to end. It doesn’t. My thoughts keep bouncing into each other. Dark, hidden, emerging from under a thick dusty Persian rug. The giggle of the kids pops to my mind. “What am I doing here? Oh, the kids are safe. Are they?”

I kick my husband and ask: “Where are we?” “In the hotel room”, he mumbles.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes”

“Are you OK?”

“No, I am not”.

“What do you feel?”

“Panic!”

“It’s alright, it goes away in the morning”, he reassures me. “

What time is it?” I ask impatiently.

“11.20”.

“Impossible! I thought it was almost morning!” Disappointment, panic, guilt. I ask my husband to lock the door of the room. I want to make sure that nothing will happen. “I am such a bad mother. We are bad parents. We are going to be in a newspaper tomorrow. How do you explain this to the kids”, I wonder. I see our picture at the CNN news: irresponsible parents found high in a hotel room in Amsterdam after not having checked out on time. “I am so sorry, I’m not going to do this ever again! I swear!” I want to sleep.

“Shhhhhht!”

I cannot move. Somebody removed my hands. I don’t care. Oh yes, I do. Nobody is just taking my arms away!

“Hey, you, come back!”

I am thirsty. I stand up with a jerk and grab frantically the bottle of water. I check the time: 03:06am. I swing to the bathroom. “Is this ever going to stop?” I ask my husband in a revolted tone.

“Yes, in the morning” he reassures me.

“Sure?”

“Yes. Nothing bad is going to happen. We are safe. Just don’t fight it!”

I smell the morning light. I open my eyes widely in revelation: I had a smoke, a cake, a tequila shot, great sex, red eyes and headache. I am now a grown-up, right?