Amsterdam

This town's become too small. All the canals have been magically pressed together, so that it seems as though I keep crossing and recrossing the same narrow bridge all day long. People are talking, they're getting to know my story. Every day, a little more falls into place. The TRUEBOY saga unfolds over half pints of Heineken, cheeseplates and Drum tobacco...at damp SnelTram stations and dusty, brightly lit grocery stores. Women in fancy hats wink at me from under fluorescent awnings. When I'm walking the streets I keep my eyes on my hands and try to look bored. I work too hard at it so of course I fail.

Immediate, automatic failure.

Of course the publicity hasn't been entirely involuntary.

I've willingly posed for a few pictures. I've held a drunken audience or two.

But the craziest thing was the zine put together by some alcoholic needleheads.

The entire thing is made up of my insane rants that night in the detox bin.

Those leeches saved all the bits of brown paper bag and seagull adorned toiletpaper that I scrawled upon. They copied down the shit I wrote on the wall, glorifying (among others) Sterling, Raymi, Anti and Jamie.

My ordeal with Fitz is in there too--how he hacked into my shit like a frat boy in a sorority girl's panty drawer...

My half blacked out memories of making speeches and writing furiously apparently had some truth to them after all.

The four page Xerox staple job is a hot commodity in the cafes. Apparently, the baby-faced cop was instrumental in transcribing my bullshit. He placed a high end voice recorder at the edge of the cell.

"Listen to the American cleaning out her head!" you can hear him say in Dutch, in the background.

The kids come up to me in the English bookstore.

"This is some next level writing," they say to me. "You guys have invented a new form of art."

"That's correct, Sir! Buy me a steak and chicken dinner and I'll tell you all about it. The epic tale of Tony Pierce...the poetic pop culture stylings of Jim Treacher...it's all there...just a click a way..."

I'm making my own copies of the zine, in case any of you are interested...