Friends and colleagues subjected me yesterday to Team America World Police.

Frustration ensued, as I was not able to sort out my feelings (initially) nor communicate them properly (later):

• about the movie itself, general contempt broken down in five parts:
  1. blank disinterest for the “mission” of this movie in parodying america saves the day and eagleland;
  2. mere annoyance at the use of the acceptable targets and as long as it sounds foreign;
  3. slight irritation at the unfortunate involvement of once acceptable targets;
  4. stronger irritation at the perusal of the hilariously abusive childhood (dude it's really not funny)
  5. stronger annoyance at the feeling of having wasted nearly two hours of my time while in good company;
• about my company:
  • for those who pretend enjoying the movie as “pure entertainment,” frustration at reminder that despite the comfort and friendliness, we do not yet know each other well enough to prevent this type of “failed experiment” from taking place;
  • for those who appear to share my contempt, uncertainty about how much their contempt stems from an inappropriate sensitivity to criticism of the “world guardian.”

All it all, I don't like to be reminded that it takes a lot of time to know people better, especially to attune to their sense of empathy, and to their cultural and moral values.

Strange and unexpected: those are the first two qualifiers that come to my mind for this evening.

For a start, I was not expecting such a successful date. The energiest, pretty and extra-ordinary girl I planned to have dinner with reached me with her life projects. As we went through our groceries, my mind slowly stopped wandering around with recollections of my working day (plenty of good stuff in store for tomorrow!) and eventually focused on the conversation with my host: while our previous encounters had prepared me to a relaxing evening, I found her daring enterprises unexpectedly surprising and inspiring. This, in addition to the discovery of a remote part of Amsterdam which proved to be in reality more welcoming and civilized than what the local urban culture would otherwise suggest, soothed my busy mind and left it open to appreciate the beauty of a well-decorated interior. Such a reception! It really made my day.

As an expression of my gratitude I tried my best to prepare something edible — unfortunately likely a failed attempt, given the polite lack of feedback, but we fed nonetheless — and we had otherwise a pleasant and entertaining conversation, about experiences past and to come.

Meanwhile, rewinding this story a little, as I was initially waiting for my host to pick me up I wandered around one of the busiest areas in the neighbourhood; either the idle atmosphere or out of some desire for entertainment (not knowing yet how agreeable my date would be) instilled in my the idea of a visit to the nearby cinema. She accepted.

And zo was het, a boy and a girl having a good time after a dinner together, in a wonderful mood, and going together to the movies, and planning to enjoy a film and each other's company in the anonymity of obscurity…

As we sat down, I was already thinking: what will I say to people? What will people think of this? What am I doing?

We watched Brüno together.

As we sat up, I was now thinking: what will I say to people? What will people think of this? What have I done?

But then I was not taking myself seriously any more. My company was barely hiding her putting back her brain and her senses together after the exposure to more skin than she was expecting. I was still laughing, of course. Note to self: educate friends, especially females, with the basics before bringing them to the advanced courses. Because that's what Sasha Baron Cohen has made there — and I didn't know before tonigh, I swear! — although I wonder how she understood it; alas we did not take the opportunity to talk about that since she was busy stating and rehearsing her disbelief that anyone could even imagine such a concept… I was happily thinking: honey, there goes your sanity; denial first, we'll see to the rest later. We parted, I laughed again, and I took the metro back to the city.

What a nice movie. What a nice take on all I've ever been thinking personally about culture on the other side of the Atlantic. Would I ever myself have expected to identify so much with the message of a movie whose main character is so exaggeratingly, undoubtedly, painstakingly and obnoxiously “over the top”? Whatever, life is like a box a chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

Still, this day will be difficult to summarize.

Amsterdam is a city of many surprises — not. As I was unlocking my bike, the most derelict shadow of a human being I have ever met in person asked me if I knew my way around the city. His hat, sunglasses and scarf were hiding his face; his heavy winter clothes the rest of his body; except for his hands and his nose. The latter was wearing a piece of stainless steel; the former were spotted with open sores, although they were surprising clean.

Only years of experience in Paris allowed me to detect the slightly rehearsed side of an otherwise brutally honest, straightforward and heartbreaking conversation. He needed help, and his opening line was merely asking for it. Do you know places in Amsterdam where I could get help? City shelters for the homeless were my blind guess. They don't accept non-EU citizens, or you need to pay a small amount of money upfront. A hospital? That's where a friend died of an overdose yesterday. They provided the list of all the shelters, but it doesn't work out. The police? They are friendly and understanding, but they don't provide the most important: some money and/or a trip. I was honestly searching for more ideas. The guy genuinely sounded despaired, and why should he not? Even if his story is rehearsed, his trump card is certainly his honesty and his clarity. Despite the many recognizable scars over his veins and arteries, he was rational, polite and relatively well-mannered; he only needed a few coins either for a dose of whatever drug he's on, or to get into the only shelters that would accept him. And he was tired, visibly so.

“What would Jesus do?” My immediate previous experience had not prepared me for this. But the following scene still plays in my head:

— look, I don't have any cash on my. I usually don't anyways. But it happens I have some free time, and I'm in a good mood.

So we go to the nearest shop and I get two beers with my debit card. We sit. He tells me his story, not surprising and yet so human. I get an idea:

— I lied earlier. I have these two English pounds in my wallet from a previous trip. Those are the only coins I have. But I have an idea: you tell good stories. So why not making a show of yourself in Amsterdam, telling about your life and the mistakes you've made? Propose to answer questions; challenge tourists to guess what your life looks like, amidst the prejudice of what they think about how drugs work in the Netherlands. And then ask friendly a British visitor to change these pounds for the same denomination in Euros. Given the exchange rate they might accept.

In a way, I fathom it can be difficult emotionally to live isolated from society when one dragged themselves this way out of it. There was not much left in that human to let others identify with him in any way. But he was telling a good story, so how could I not spend a few minutes of my time with him, offer and let him feel honest and sincere attention for a little while? As any decent and moral social person ought to do, as they would expect others to do the same in return?

As this scene was forming in my mind, I was reflecting on my own mess. On the one hand, I socialize with wonderful and passionate women and I have absolutely no first-hand experience of the myriad of feelings they try share with me; yet I persist because the invisible wall that clearly separates us and establishes our mutual trust gives me a slight sense of control that my abysmal relational ignorance would otherwise shatter. On the other hand… Here should come a sentence with "men", but also "invisble wall", "mutual trust", "abysmal relational ignorance" and "myriad of feelings", although in quite a different order that I haven't sorted out yet. Every day, as the sun sets, I am scared. While a beautiful job and an exciting social life get me out of bed happy every morning, they are merely pushing away the nagging call of my hormones: seduce! couple! settle! breed! cherish your elders, so your offspring will cherish you as well!

An isolated life is a battle to fight every day, and I am proud to dominate my biological urges more often than not. If I can, why shouldn't he? Or maybe I was contemplating myself, twenty years down the line?

This world is a jungle: as I was unlocking my bike, I instead closed our conversation saying that I was coming from Rotterdam, and that I didn't know the city enough to answer him. I wonder if I can look at myself in a mirror tomorrow.

Still, this day will be difficult to summarize.

Last sunday my mind decided against the will of my body and despite one night dancing out I was ended up biking from Amsterdam to Marken and back. Fifty kilometers and a few sunburns later, I felt strangely relaxed, surprised again by the merits of exercise on my psychological sanity.

Besides the experience of serotonin, a quite distinct memory lingered after my stride around North Holland: the acute realization, twenty kilometers down the way and after crossing a few bakfietsen full with children, of the psychological imprinting that riding bikes has on most Dutch people, at the same age where I was spending most of my time building lego sets or playing around in a fine dry sand, a shy six hundred kilometers from the equator. I found it interesting to note that while the first memory of a lower water level at one side of a dike than the houses on the other blurs here with those of the first playground, my first memories often bring up the ruins of days long gone by. (And yes, I still recognize what's on that picture, although it has been nearly twenty years…)

There is a lot to recall and to tell about growing up as a third culture kid, especially when the only “consistent social unit” ends up imploding with emotional abuse — although deprivation may suit better the situation here — at the most unfortunate point in time, that is, the narrow window where one should learn models for a social identity. That's a quiet story I usually keep to myself, since demons of the past are best left lurking at the back of one's consciousness, carefully acknowledged regularly during the day so that they can stay reasonably quiet at night.

And yet, I was lucky and I could rejoice when fate, in an ironical twist, kicked me out of my own ignorance onto a world where I had to shed the scales I was given previously and grow my own. It was an unexpected but invaluable opportunity to deconstruct, and then reconstruct — a much-needed second adolescence during which the emotional turmoil proved to be a fertile ground for a new self: while I was fed vodka in nursing bottles by the woman who first handled me as a real person, I would imprint durably — like an inside tatoo overlaid on a fading pattern — the combined effects of friendship, ethanol and melodious rythmic sounds and let them replace gradually my fears of an autonomous identity in society.

Alas, location-based friendships built during the final period of a cosmopolitan education system are due to disintegrate when individuals go on with their personal development, often at very different locations at the surface of the globe. What survives is indeed invaluable — those few friendships that span frontiers, oceans and continents — but their distribution is precisely what prevents them from pushing a missing sense of “geographical belonging” into the unrooted, floating young adult now mostly out of the common flow.

But this is merely a minor concern. While some rawness makes me sensitive, it also makes me more receptive to certain feelings.

Tonight, I watched Shelter.

• Maurice (1987)
• Torch song trilogy (1988)
• Butch camp (1996)
• It's in the water (1997)
• The talented Mr Ripley (1999)
• Borstal boy (2000)
• Happy Feet (2006)

What I saw in Shortbus is that it is all about being human. This movie deals with feelings, hardships, love, sex, relationships, and struggles to find a balance between those.

It strikes me a bit after some searches on the web that many people consider this movie as unusual, off-limits or even pornographic. Nonsense! Shortbus is about real life, the one you can see when you open your eyes and look around you.

My favourite character is Caleb. Maybe because Peter Stickles is gorgeous, or maybe because I identify with the role.

This incredible movie was brought to my curiosity by some pictures of its georgous cast.

Until now Notting Hill was my favourite item at the top of that list where younger people put Cinderella and other happy-ending fairy tales. But after I watched The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert I realized that Notting Hill was lacking a bit of… something. Something fabulous. Something queer. Something about chaos and immorality. Something about me.

And so here comes Ethan Green, and I can toss Notting Hill away from that list.