Chapter 1

Excerpt from my autobiography:

REAL to REEL: My Journey from

BACKPACKER to WAR PHOTOGRAPHER to APOCALYPSE NOW

Man is Not the sum of his experiences: He is the sum, of what he has learned, and retained from his experiences.  CG

  Chapter 1

 1943 The Beginning                                                          

My father was Dr. Ir. F.C. Gerretsen and my mother, Berendina Gerretsen-Tammes was his third wife.  My parents wanted to name me Charles Arthur. It was 1943 the middle of WW2: there was a problem when my father tried to register my birth at the city hall in Groningen, a University city in the North of the Netherlands.  A minor bureaucrat told my father, “These are not Christian names. They are not allowed.”

“What about King Charles of England and King Arthur?” said my father, “Were they not Christians?”

 1955 – 1961 My youth

The year was 1955. We lived in Groningen at 83a Parkweg, a lower-middle-class neighborhood.  It was around 6 pm and getting dark. I was 12 years old, a tall and gangly kid and as usual played with my friend and downstairs neighbor Nico, in the meadows behind the long row of three-story apartments.

We jumped ditches, trying not to get our feet wet or land in the mud.  “Arthur, come home, dinner’s ready!” my mother yelled from the second-floor balcony. (many years later I would obtain the name Chas) It was the third time she’d called and by the tone of her voice, I assumed that the food would be on the table and that by stalling I had avoided questions like, “how was school today?” I went to school in Helpman, about 3 km away, and disliked it intensely. I believe this was mutual from the point of view of most of the teachers: I asked too many questions they didn’t know the answers to and I made observations they were not comfortable with. Also, I made their lives miserable by misbehaving.

One of the teachers used to bring every Monday morning a newspaper clipping, which he thought important for our education.  This time it was about a skilled worker in America, who’d lost his arm in an industrial accident. “Listen to this,” he said. “A worker lost his arm because of an accident and now he is suing the company he worked for.  He’s suing the company for a hundred thousand dollars! Just imagine he wants a hundred thousand dollars for his arm! How ridiculous! Don’t you agree?” The class enthusiastically voiced their agreement.

 Disagreeing, I put my finger up into the air.

“Yes, Arthur“

“Sir, isn’t it fair that the man gets compensated for his arm since he’ll never be able to earn again, what he used to earn with two arms?”

“How can you demand money for something God gave you?” The teacher looked around with a smug expression. “Don’t you agree that Arthur again asked a silly question?”  

The class in unison, “Arthur is silly. Ha, ha, ha.” The teachers rarely answered my questions and despite my constantly being ridiculed, I continued with my ‘silly’ or stupid’ questions.

My attention span for regular, institutionalized learning was low. The result, I spent a lot of time in the corner, with my back turned to the class. My report card showed mainly 4, 5 and 6’s. History was the only 7; I liked the stories. (10 was the highest) Finally, the teachers decided that there was no place for me in their school. They got together and told my parents that I belonged in a school for ‘the specially gifted.’

My father, a lecturer in microbiology, at the University of Groningen did not take their word for it and took me to a psychologist: “He’s a normal child, with an average IQ.” I stayed in school.

 But at least one teacher was not finished with me; my birthday is the 22nd of July and school usually ended for summer vacation around the 19th. I’d never had a birthday at school. One had to stand in front of the class and the kids all sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ You were allowed to hand out candy to your classmates and go from class to class, handing out two cigarettes to each teacher. 

My parents requested permission for me to celebrate my birthday on a school day and it was approved.  Imagine, me standing in front of the entire class, not because I was punished for something, but to celebrate my birthday. That night I couldn’t sleep, I tossed and turned, scared to death. With a heavy heart I went to school that morning; I was excited, I was scared, I wished I’d never asked for this special privilege. As usual I bicycled to school; nothing to indicate that this day was going to be special.

The day passed slowly, I could only think of one thing, standing in front of the class and all of them singing “Happy birthday dear…”

Finally, at the end of the day the teacher, a ‘spinster’ in her late forties, said, “Arthur, come here.” I clutched my bag of candy and the pack of cigarettes in my clammy hands and walked somehow, in a daze, to the front of the class room. “Arthur wants to celebrate his birthday today, but his real birthday is on the 22nd. So, since it is not his real birthday, we will not sing for him.” She smiled triumphantly. I started crying, all that tension, all the fear, all the hope.

With those few words, “we will not sing for him”, she’d accomplished what no other punishment had been able to do: crying I handed out candy from student to student, from classroom to classroom. No, I did not like school.   

The BB-gun

On my twelfth birthday I received a BB gun - I’d been begging my parents for months - till they finally capitulated. But I had to promise, to never, ever shoot at people or animals. I solemnly promised. For weeks, I shot at paper targets. I became quite good.

But behind our apartment, separated from the building by the gardens of our downstairs neighbors, were the bicycle sheds. On their roofs: sparrows, lots of them, in a row, just like in a shooting gallery. One day, I couldn’t resist - my parents weren’t home – I took my BB gun out on the balcony, I aimed and fired.

The sparrows flew up, but one stayed behind. I could see it lying there on the gravel of the roof. I started crying. I hid the rifle. I went downstairs, around the building into the alley to the bicycle sheds and climbed on the roof. I picked up the dead sparrow, it was still warm. I started crying again. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.” I buried it in the meadow. I never told my parents and never again, shot at animals for fun.

 An avid reader of cowboy books from an early age, I read at least three to four books a week. At night, I would read with a flash light under the blankets. My parents allowed me to go to the movies by myself from the age of ten, but only on Saturday afternoon. I was not permitted to go out at night, but when I turned thirteen, I convinced my parents that I was old enough to go to the movies in the evening.

Friday was the end of the school week and accompanied by my four- and half-year older sister Irene, I went to the movies. We bicycled to town, arguing all the way over which film to see. I wanted a cowboy film in the ‘Beurs’ cinema, in a shady part of town and she wanted to go to a Bergman film in the Luxor cinema on Main street. I got my way because I was going no matter what, and she was responsible for me. Irene was not happy. The following week I was allowed to go by myself.

The cinema and especially American movies opened up a new world: A cowboy with a six-gun low on the hip, the fastest gun in the West! Or a soldier, like Audie Murphy, wiping out a whole company of German soldiers; all by himself! Or a detective! Or a big game hunter! Or rich, everybody in America was rich! These were all the things you could become in America; the possibilities were endless. Little did anybody know that my life would be shaped and driven by those American movies.

My Parents

In 1957, my parents became better off financially. We bought a house in Haren, a suburb of Groningen, and bought a Ford Taunus.

Most of the time, my mother and I did not get along. Like my teachers, she could not handle me. They reacted to what I said; my father, interacted with me. He asked, why I said the things I said. My father, born in 1889, was 25 yrs. older than my mother and 54 years older than me. I never realized that my father was that much older than my mother or that I had such an old father.

When I became thirteen, the stories came out. How my father left his second wife and announced in the newspaper (!) that he was no longer living with his wife, but with my future mother. They married soon after, but it was not a wise move in the year 1937. He’d always hoped to become a Professor but this was not to be realized, not with the scandal of having married three times, in a part of the Netherlands which was still ruled by a strict Christian narrow-mindedness. 

In his spare time, my father would withdraw to his workroom building a radio transceiver; a huge contraption to enable him to talk to ham operators around the world. He invented things, gave them away or was cheated out of payment: he was an idealist not a businessman. He studied different religions and philosophies: he tried Liberal Catholicism and Buddhism, reincarnation, hypnotism and became a follower and co-founder of Krishnamurti in the Netherlands.

On summer weekends, we all would bicycle to our tent-house on the Paterswolde Lake, where he would teach my sister and me sailing in our sailing canoe, which he had built. 

My father always asked why and always wanted a logical answer. It did not make him popular in social circles. He abhorred small talk and could not understand why people avoided him. My friends, girls as well as boys were afraid of him when they first met him; they thought he was severe in appearance and he did not smile much. Some even thought he was a policeman because he asked so many questions; when he’d finished interrogating, he would pick up his newspaper and ignore them.

My mother was the opposite, open, naïve, emotional and not concerned with logical questions or answers. Often, she suffered from splitting headaches and felt depressed. My sister and I were at school and did no longer require her full attention. The Yoga club, the handy-crafts club, the tennis club and the coffee club, they no longer relieved the pressure. She wanted to help people, wanted to feel useful.

My father suggested that she volunteer to work with patients in the general hospital. Four afternoons a week she would go to the hospital to help. One day, she came home in a really good mood – she told me that she’d been introduced to a patient who really needed her, an attempted suicide and how she’d read to her for the past week, brought her flowers and how the woman had improved. “She really needs me,” my mother said.

I don’t know why, I often said things without thinking, “you need her more than she needs you.”

 Instantly her good mood was gone. “Why are you always so cynical and negative?”

I desperately wanted her to understand what I meant.

“But you don’t do it for them, you do it for yourself.” I said, “Everything we do, we do for ourselves, for our survival, mental and physical. We don’t do things if we think they make us feel bad. Not if we’re normal anyway.”

“I’m not normal? You are just selfish. I do it because she needs me, and it makes me feel good to do things for others. I don’t need a thank you. Just helping them is enough.”

 I did not doubt that it made her feel good, that’s why she continued doing charity work; I just wanted her to understand, why I thought, people did things. It was not directed against her, I thought it was because she was bored and told her so.

“You’re just selfish and negative.” She repeated, close to crying she went into the kitchen and started rattling pots and pans. A couple of days later, my mother came home in a daze, she looked shocked.

“What’s wrong?” my father asked.

My Mother started crying, “After all I’ve done for her, she left without even saying thank you.”

As usual I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, “I don’t understand,” I said, “last week you said that you did it all for her, you didn’t want a thank you.”

My mother started wailing like a hurt animal. I’d done it again.

 Internaat Ter Apel

My parents were desperate. I was fourteen, disobedient and would not study. How was I to get an education? They had already warned me before, that if my school grades and behavior did not improve, they would send me to the ‘Inernaat in Ter Apel’: A boarding school for misbehaving ‘rich’ kids.

I was not a rich kid; my father’s previous wives had made sure of that. The ‘Internaat in Ter Apel’ was considered one of the toughest boarding schools in the Netherlands, run by an ex Major from the Dutch army, a short, barrel-chested, bigoted man. The Internaat, in the small town of Ter Apel, was 55 km from home and I soon discovered that I kind of liked it. There was discipline, a forced study period and there were assistant-teachers, to help you with your homework.

At home there was little discipline. My father was an intellectual, all my childhood he talked and reasoned with me: he explained why what I had done was wrong. I understood what he said, I understood why it was wrong, but 10 minutes later I’d forgotten it. There was hardly ever any consequence to my bad behavior. I was a kid and reacted better to discipline than to reasoning. 

My grades improved impressively. I had no friends and there was only one timid, introverted boy my own age, the rest were 16 to 19 years old. My life at the Internaat was regulated, like in the military. Breakfast at 07:00 hrs., school at 08:00hrs, return to the Internaat for lunch, back to school, back to the Internaat for dinner, free time till 19:00hrs, study till lights out at 22:00hrs.

 One evening, I was in bed with a cold, an assistant-teacher came into my room, sat on the side of my bed and asked, “How are you feeling?” He started rubbing my neck, shoulders and chest. I tried to pull the blanket up. “Don’t do that, I don’t like it,” I said, “You make me feel like I am a girl.”

“Don’t ever say that. Ever.” But he stopped and left. The following evening, he returned and again started touching me.

The next day, I telephoned my father. My father contacted the director and it came out that this assistant teacher had touched the other 14-year- old the same way and maybe others too but everybody stayed silent. We were newbies; we had not learned the rules yet. A couple of days later there was an announcement by the director that this assistant-teacher had left, “But not because of the reason you all think.”

Little did I know, that I had made an enemy, because of me the Internaat had been given a bad reputation. The director took revenge a couple of weeks later.

The oldest boy of the boarding school wanted to fight me for informing on him. I’d told his girlfriend that she was not the only one he was going out with. The director gave his permission for the fight, a tall skinny fourteen-year-old against the 19 yrs. old soccer star, boxing champion and best athlete of the Internaat.

 All 55 or so students of the Internaat were told to gather in the courtyard for the event.

“Put your fists up,” said the director to me. And it was over.

With three quick jabs the 19-year-old had punched my teeth through my lips and given me a bloody nose. I was bleeding like a pig.

The director patted the ‘winner’ on the back. “Well done.” The athlete’s side-kick, a 17-year-old, whose father was an ambassador somewhere, was smiling and dancing around his hero, “You taught him! You taught him!”

 There were more consequences; a few days later this same little 17 yrs. old, picked a fight with the other 14-year-old boy. One fist in the stomach and as the boy doubled over, a hard knee under the chin and a little victory dance, hands clasped above his head. The ‘sportsmen’ were really the only two nasty ones, the others were all normal: they didn’t want, or were afraid to get involved. A week later the swelling was down. I left at the end of the year; my parents could no longer afford the fees.

The Bank Messenger

The first time I was mentioned in a newspaper article was in May 1958. I was home from the Internaat for the weekend. It was a Saturday morning and I’d bicycled into town to see which movies would be playing that week-end. The Beurs cinema (my favorite) had been my last stop and I was on my way home when I heard, “Help, help! Thief!” An elderly man was waving his arms and pointed in the direction of a man riding away on a moped, peddling like crazy to get the little bicycle engine started.

I stood on my bike paddles and set off in pursuit. He looked over his shoulder, saw that he was being pursued, dumped the moped and started running, his long rain coat trailing him. ‘The thief’ did not run very fast and ran with a strange gait; he didn’t lift his knees and with both arms he was holding something tight against his stomach.

I heard something behind me and was overtaken by an older boy; we gained on the thief. For a moment the ‘thief’ disappeared behind a delivery van but when he reappeared, he somehow ran faster than before but still in this strange manner. We lost him around the next street corner. Together, we bicycled back to the old man, now standing next to the abandoned moped, who explained, that he was a bank messenger: carrying money from bank to bank and that he’d been robbed.

 We waited for the police, told them what had happened and gave our particulars.

I went home to tell my parents about the excitement of the morning. The next day, the police called and asked for permission to interview me. I bicycled to the police station. I was introduced to two plain-clothed policemen. After a few compliments about my ‘bravery’ from the older detective, I was led into a small room with a window. It was explained that I could see through the window but from the other side it was a mirror; “like in the movies,” I said.

A man in his early forties was led into the room behind the glass. It was a strange feeling that I could see him and he couldn’t see me. He looked around and his eyes finally rested on the mirror.

“I never saw his face,” I said, “but he ran funny.” I explained what I meant. We went to the courtyard of the police station; I stayed inside and looked on from behind a window. The man was told to run to the other side.

“I don’t think it’s him,” I said. “He runs normal.” He was asked to run again. “I don’t think it’s him.” I never heard from the police again.

The newspaper printed the whole story; of our chase and of the couple who had found the leather attaché bag with sixty thousand guilders. (today +/- US $275.000,-) The thief had thrown the bag under the delivery van when we had momentarily lost sight of him. The van had driven off and a couple walking along noticed the bag lying in the street. You can imagine their surprise when they opened it. Our names were withheld by the police in case of retribution. I was disappointed; I would have liked to have seen my name in the newspaper.

A reward was offered. The bulk went to the couple who found the money, next the nineteen-year-old student and last but not least, me. I was a hero to my family for at least a week.

I don’t know what the other boy or the bank messenger had said to the police, but the man was convicted. Five years later a small article in the local paper announced that the actual perpetrator of the attack on the bank messenger in 1958 had been caught and that the innocent man who had spent the past 5 years in prison, had been released.

  Worst time of my life

On my return from the Internaat, I was enrolled in the high school (Heymans Lyceum) in Groningen, almost immediately my grades went south and a month later I was again given a choice: stay in school and learn or go to sea. After an initial trial period I would be sent to Seaman’s School with the possibility to become, a Captain on one of my uncles’ ships.

 I chose the sea and the most miserable time of my life, on the 1200-ton coastal freighter M.V. David. My passport was taken from me, on orders of my uncle, and I was forced to stay with the ship for three months. I was allowed two shore visits with my two fellow deckhands, a 32-year-old ex-con from Holland and a 36-year-old ex-con from Belgium. They showed me the seedier side of the port of Gdansk, Poland: two sailors fucking each other in the toilet and a fight with broken bottles and lots of blood.

I don’t think that this was the type of education my parents had in mind when they ‘allowed’ me to go to sea. Three months of seasickness, occasionally interrupted by short violent fights between the two other deckhands and a lesson in seamanship.

Out of Southampton, on our way to St. Malo, we ran into a force 9 storm. For two days we motored into huge waves and howling winds, barely making headway. I was at the helm when, because of seasickness, fatigue and lack of experience, I allowed the ship to go slightly off-course; the captain yelled and pushed me away. He took over the wheel and fought to get back into the waves. Still trembling he told me that if we had not been able to get back on course we would have capsized. Then he said, “You are the worst seaman I have ever laid eyes on. Get off my bridge.” I didn’t care. Exhausted and happy to be relieved of helm duty I went down below, where it smelled of diesel and vomit, and threw up for the umpteenth time.

 I did not leave my bunk till we were safely docked in St Malo and I was released from my ‘prison’ the next day.  It was the fourth of December 1960 and I was home for St. Nicolas. The lesson learned: I did not like working in the winter months on a coastal freighter in the North Sea.

 My New Pet

 From the age of 13 I’d had two friends, Roy a boy from Indonesia, a couple of years older than me and Dries, my age, tall and dark-blond; people often assumed we were brothers. We hung out, exchanged comic books, ‘Lucky Luke’ our favorite. Both my friends were very good at drawing and the schoolbags of many students were embellished by their illustrations of alien monsters. They wanted to go to America and become animators. We were going to go together. We were the three musketeers.

I loved to talk and discus my ideas with anybody in our circle, most of them girls. Once a girl asked how many children I wanted, “I only want children if I can afford them.”

“What do you mean? Everybody can afford children.”

“I want to be rich enough to be able to send them to a boarding school if I don’t like them,” I said, “I don’t want my life ruined by a kid I don’t like.”

“You’re selfish and anti-social. How can the country continue if you don’t have children?” Her last words were, “You’re so cynical.” She would no longer talk to me.

My friend Roy brought me a present: a small Boa Constrictor. Recently he’d come back from Suriname, South America, where he had spent part of his military service and he’d brought back a little Boa. The mother snake had given birth to a dozen baby Boas. The returning servicemen had organized a lottery and the lucky ones won a baby Boa to take home as a souvenir. They’d just put them in their uniform pockets and unnoticed by the authorities, carried them back to the Netherlands. There were now a dozen Boa Constrictors slithering their way through homes, cages or garbage cans, where some had been deposited. Roy’s mother would not allow the snake into her house, so he gave it to me.

It was about a meter long and about 15 mm in diameter. When I picked it up, it lovingly wrapped itself around my hand and wrist. Roy also brought some weed.

I thanked him for his thoughtful gifts and after he’d left took the baby Boa upstairs to my bedroom. I gave it a saucer of milk. It wouldn’t drink so I stuck its head in it. Milk bubbles came out of its nostrils; maybe baby Boas didn’t like milk? But they liked water; I filled the bathtub half full and deposited my new slithery friend into the water. It was fast; it tried to climb the side of the tub. Maybe too cold? I added some hot water. By now I had started to think of the snake as a ‘she.’ No, I still don’t think she liked it.

I heard the front door close and my mother’s voice. “Anybody home?” I answered her. I took the Boa out of the bath tub, put her into my pocket and went downstairs to show her to my mother.

“Mom, guess what I have in my pocket?”

My mother saw something move. “Not a mouse I hope.” She didn’t like mice; during the war they’d been a pest. She had told me that she would catch them, pick them up by their tail and throw them over the balcony railing; they would land in the neighbor’s garden below, shake themselves and run off. “Your father would tell me, ‘They’ll be back tomorrow.’ But I couldn’t kill them, and your father couldn’t either.”

The baby Boa poked its head out of my pocket. “A lizard?” said my mother.

I pulled the Boa out and offered her to my mom.

“It won’t bite will it?”

 I explained that they strangled their prey and that the mother of this one had been 3 1/2 meters long. “It is cute” said my mother and hesitantly allowed the snake to wrap itself around her arm. “Makes a nice bracelet.”

After lunch, my parents usually took a short nap. My father would take his nap in the master bedroom, but he snored, so my mother would use my bed. This particular day was no different; except that about ten minutes after fallen asleep - she felt something slide up between her legs. She screamed.  The little Boa would usually wrap itself around the warm radiator of the central heating but this time it had found something cozier - my mother’s groin. After the first heart stopping moment, she’d realized that it was my pet.

No longer tired, she went downstairs to make some tea. Her friend Mrs. Ali Feenstra, was coming over at three. I’d taken the Boa downstairs and put it on the radiator behind the long sofa which stood in front of the picture window. A Philodendron, hung by hooks from the ceiling over the sofa and covered nearly the whole corner. It was like a jungle plant.

 Smoking Marijuana

I had told my mother, that I’d been given a couple of joints; we had talked before about me smoking marijuana. She knew I smoked a little whenever somebody gave me a joint but that I could take it or leave it. She’d asked me several times what it was like. I told her that it made me sleepy but people reacted differently. Some people would start laughing uncontrollably. She didn’t think it would affect her.

“You want to try?”

She thought for a moment. “I’m going to ask Ali, if she dares, I’ll do it too.”

The front doorbell rang. I let Mrs. Feenstra in and traded a few insincere compliments. I did not particularly like her, I thought her stuck up and that she was using my mother. But my mother saw her as a friend, her only friend.

I’d been reading in my bedroom when she called me to come down. “We are ready to try it.”

I gave my mom the joint and lit it for her. She took a drag and coughed; she normally didn’t smoke. She handed the joint to Mrs.Feenstra. The joint went back and forth a few times till my mother announced, “I knew it; it doesn’t do anything to me.” She started giggling.

 Mrs. Feenstra also announced, “I don’t feel anything either,” and giggled.

They were still giggling and telling each other that they didn’t feel a thing, when I noticed my baby Boa hanging gracefully from the Philodendron, just above Mrs. Feenstra’s head. I looked at my mother and motioned with my head to alert her to the presence of my pet, so not to frighten Mrs. Feenstra.

 Not aware of my attempt to warn her, my mother looked up and said, “Ali there is a snake above your head.” She giggled. Ali thought that very funny and looked up.

Fear distorted her face as she jumped up and ran screaming from the room, out of the house and would not answer my mother’s phone calls for over a month. My mother kept insisting that marijuana had no effect on her.  When I left for Sweden, my father gave the snake to the Nijmegen Zoo. They had received several already.

Sex education

Two of the many pieces of advice my mother gave me regarding sex, were: ‘Try to put yourself in her place.’ and, ‘you will lose respect for her and she’ll lose respect for you’. I have to admit, this probably saved me from getting married against my will at an early age.

My mother once caught me in bed with a girl, (the daughter of a policeman!) and my mother, apart from her initial surprise, absorbed it much better than the petrified girl, who wanted to escape down the drain pipe from my first-floor balcony. That evening, having calmed down, she had dinner with my family as if nothing had happened.

At the beginning of the summer, I wanted to hitchhike to Sweden and earn some money. The hourly wages were much higher in Sweden than anywhere else in Europe. Students from Germany, Austria and Holland went there to spend their vacation, earning money and getting to know the Swedish girls, who at that time had the reputation of being the easiest in Europe. Years later I heard from some American acquaintances, who had travelled through Europe, that Dutch girls had been much easier. (?)

I asked both of my friends to come with me but neither of them wanted to leave Holland. Before I left, Dries, told me that he could no longer be my friend because his girlfriend had said that I was a capitalist, while they were communists.

Stockholm 1960

 Many of us foreign ‘students’ working in Stockholm, slept in abandoned buildings, scheduled to be torn down.  I worked for a short while as a dishwasher, then as a window cleaner. For two and a half months I bicycled from job to job through the streets of Stockholm, a heavy ladder, which I could extend up to three stories, on my shoulder.

With my earnings I’d bought a used Vespa motor scooter, illegal to ride for a 17-year-old, but I was tall and looked older than my age.

I’d made a friend who studied architecture and owned a small apartment in downtown Stockholm - his parents had bought it for him. Before I returned to Holland, he’d asked me if I would house-sit his apartment during next year’s summer vacation while he went home to the other side of Sweden.

 Stockholm 1961

My second time in Stockholm, I spoke a little Swedish; I had an apartment (house sitting) and transport. (I’d left the scooter in storage.) One sunny Saturday I’d gone to the public swimming pool, in the hope of meeting a girl.

Hope springs eternal - I’d been looking for weeks - when I saw this girl, long blond hair, a great figure in a small white bikini, lying on her stomach. I couldn’t see her face.  I spread my towel next to hers, laid down and nervously (I’ve always been nervous around girls I ‘m attracted to) asked her in English if she wanted a cigarette.

Slowly she turned her face towards me. I became more nervous. “You’re an American?”

I saw my chance slip away; she wanted me to be an American.  “Yes.”

“From where? “ 

“Texas.” My infatuation with American cinema, had given me an American accent and my addiction to cowboy movies the name of the state of Texas

That night I took her to the movie ‘Sherrifen’, ‘High Noon’. The titles rolled, she took my hand and placed it on her right breast. I do not remember anything of the movie.   After the movie I asked her over for a drink to my apartment, she accepted. I felt alive and nervous.  We raced home on my scooter; her arms wrapped tight around my waist. We had a few drinks and talked: she was twenty-one and studied medicine. I lied and told her I was twenty and on a holiday.

It had started to rain cats and dogs. At 01:30 in the morning I offered to call her a taxi since it was out of the question for me to give her a ride home on my scooter.

 “If you don’t mind,” she said, “can I stay here?”

 “Eh… What? Yah... Sure,” I had hoped, but not planned that far ahead and the thought of ‘where will I sleep’ flashed through my mind. The apartment had two chairs, one table and one bed. “Can I use your phone?” she called her mother and told her that she was staying with a friend. She started to undress. With all the lights on! I’d been to bed with girls before, but we’d make out, lose our clothes one by one and always, always, under the blankets, or in the dark. I’d never seen a girl naked before.

I hid in the kitchenette. I peeked around the corner, mesmerized and petrified by this beautiful creature, who now was down to a pair of white panties. My eyes darted around the apartment.  I had trouble breathing. I withdrew back into the kitchenette.

“Are you coming?”

I still hesitated but finally with a deep breath I gathered all my courage and with trembling fingers, turned out the lights in the kitchenette, in the little hallway, on the bedside table - all the lights. Now the room was almost dark, there was still some light coming from the outside. She was already in bed; I could see her looking at me. I turned my back to her, undressed down to my underpants and slipped between the covers. We started to make out. I lost my underpants.

Because of my mother’s advice for half the night I told this stunningly beautiful girl, the same thing I had told my other girlfriends: “If we do it, you will lose respect for me and I’ll lose respect for you.” Finally, exhausted, she gave up and we fell asleep, spooning.

In the early morning, still half asleep, a hand touched my bare stomach and slowly moved down. She whispered,” I’m so glad that we didn’t do anything, I still have my self-respect.”

 The sweet, liquid hypocrisy of that statement made me forget all my mother had told me.

She kept seeing me twice a week for a month, each time she brought me two hard-boiled eggs - I still wonder why. But one day she announced that her Negro boyfriend, was coming back and that she had to end it. She told me he was beautiful, that she was very much in love with him and that he was one of the very few Africans in Sweden. Women would continue to surprise and enthrall me my entire life.

 To Australia

As soon as I turned 18, I did my driving test. I desperately wanted to immigrate to America and become a cowboy. My mother asked me, that if I ever became a cowboy, please not to come home in boots and a Stetson hat. She would die of shame, her son a cow-boy. My father just listened and watched. I contacted the US embassy. In 1961 there was a two-year waiting list for Dutch people. Two years!

A couple of days later an acquaintance of my mother suggested that I contact the Australian embassy; they had friends who’d immigrated to Australia and not only that, the Australian government paid for their trip and gave them money to settle once they arrived. I was disappointed because I really wanted to go to America. Australia was just not the same. For one thing, they didn’t speak American and I really wondered; did they have cowboys? But I wanted to leave. I’d already been to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, England and Sweden and I’d seen nothing which enticed me to go live in any of those countries. There were girls everywhere, no? I applied, passed the medical, was accepted and within 2 months was on my way to Australia.

On November the 15th, 1961, my parents and my sister drove me to Hoek van Holland, near Rotterdam, where I was to embark on the ‘MS Oranje’.  I’d been given the choice to go by plane, which would take four days, or take a luxurious passenger ship. Even though I did not have fond memories of the sea, I chose the passenger ship. It was not a hard decision: four and a half weeks on a passenger liner with swimming pool, restaurants, a cinema, dancing – all free - and lots of other immigrants - hopefully some girls. We would make stops at Southampton, England; Fort Lauderdale, USA; Panama City, Papeete, Tahiti and Auckland, New Zealand. I would disembark in Sydney, Australia.

The ‘Oranje’ was beautiful; but more important: very, very big compared to a rusty 1200-ton coastal vessel.  “…she has stabilizers,” I was told. “You won’t get seasick on the MS Oranje.”  They didn’t know what they were talking about.

There was a festive atmosphere, people were exited, a little tearful, but full of good cheer and good wishes. My mother cried, my father looked solemn and I still wonder if my sister looked a little relieved; I would no longer be there to hurt my mother and be a disappointment to my father.

Confetti was thrown, people hugged and kissed; last call, the visitors left the ship; once more, the heavy sound of the ship’s horn. People crying, waving and walking along the ship’s railing, trying to keep abreast with their loved ones ashore. Then it was over. We were on our way.

What do you think? Which part of my life would you like to read about? Comment down below.