Chapter 12: Motivations

September 24, 1994, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

When the ‘flight or fight’ response kicked in, my knees got weak and my head spun, but I fought my way through it by taking slow, regular breaths until the surge of adrenaline ebbed a bit. Then the flight notion kicked in, and I grabbed Karla’s hand and led her from the hotel, wanting to get her as far away from there as possible. Something VERY odd was going on and I didn’t want to be anywhere NEAR my room.

Without a word, Karla walked with me, head and gaze cast down, as my mind raced. I decided the place to go was Vondelpark. It was public, but we could find a quiet grassy space to talk. I’d either been completely blind or willfully ignorant, OR something had changed between when I said ‘good night’ just before 2:00am and noon. I had NO clue what that might be. I wracked my brain, trying to figure out if I had totally missed the signs, and I was absolutely sure I hadn’t. I hadn’t ignored them; they simply weren’t there.

I glanced over at Karla and saw her eyes were glassy, as if she was about to cry. Whatever had happened was really roiling her, and had led her to make an offer out of the blue. And I was sure it was out of the blue because other than Hans asking about her, I hadn’t even had the first thought of her as anything other than a friend. The girl who had flirted at the dance club hadn’t seemed overly serious, and I didn’t get the idea that any of the girls had felt the ‘vibe’.

We reached Vondelpark and I quickly scouted for a quiet, relatively private place to sit. I saw a spot under some large trees that was grassy and semi-secluded, and led Karla there. I sat down and she did the same, then pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. I moved so I could watch her face and waited. When she didn’t say anything for a few minutes, I decided I’d have to ask.

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head then put it on her knees and started crying. I was torn as to what to do. Should I console her, or wait it out? One way might seem too forward, and the other too cold. The decision was made more difficult because I’d only known her a week and we hadn’t had any deep, philosophical conversations. Nothing we’d done had been remotely intimate - it had felt like hanging out with a friend you liked, but who wasn’t close. And I had, until now, been sure that’s what she had been feeling. But now I had no clue.

I decided to move next to her and sit close, but not put my arm around her. I’d be at an intimate distance, without being forward.

“Karla, whatever it is, you can tell me. I promise, no matter what you say, I’m not going to be angry or hate you or anything like that. We’ll still be friends and we’ll still spend the rest of the day together if you want. And tomorrow, until I have to go to Schiphol to fly to Munich.”

Over the next few minutes, the soft sobs slowed, then ceased. Karla took a couple of deep breaths and let them out.

“I’ve been using you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Using me? How?”

“To get nice dinners and stuff.”

“I did that because I like you,” I said. “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t feel used.”

She was quiet for a moment, “The drink wasn’t an accident. I did that so I could meet you.”

I laughed softly, “Well, that’s a new one for me. But again, so what? I accepted your apology and very much enjoyed the next day at the museums. And I was happy to take you to dinner and spend time with you.”

“But I didn’t do anything for you,” she sighed.

“Sure you did! You gave me great tours of the museums and kept me company. I thought we were becoming friends.”

“But I didn’t...” she sighed.

“Didn’t...” I started to ask, and then it dawned on me.

I put all the pieces together in that instant, and totally understood what was going on. One of her friends, or possibly more than one, had given her grief about ‘leading me on’ or some such thing, assuming I was expecting sex in exchange for all the meals and the time I was spending with her. That was the only thing that made sense of her out-of-the-blue offer to come to my room when we’d met earlier.

“Karla,” I said. “No matter what your friends said, you do NOT owe me anything. I wasn’t taking you out expecting anything other than your company during meals, or you acting as museum guide. You don’t owe me anything at all.”

“But you paid for everything,” she protested. “Even an expensive meal in Gorinchem! And you drove me back to Amsterdam! All because I asked you to!”

“Karla,” I replied gently, “I know I’m repeating myself, but you don’t owe me anything, and you certainly do not owe me what you offered before!”

“But I was nice to you just to get you to do all those things for me!” she said, starting to cry again.

“I don’t believe that at all,” I said with a soft smile. “I believe we’ve become friends, and you’ve been nice to me because you’re a nice person. What did your friends say?”

“That a girl who accepts that much from a guy owes him.”

“Bullshit!” I swore, then immediately felt guilty about it. “Sorry about the swearing, but you just hit something I feel very strongly about. Nobody, and I mean nobody, owes another person sex no matter what. And anyone who thinks that it’s possible to owe someone sex is dead wrong. Even a wife doesn’t ‘owe’ her husband sex. It doesn’t work like that. And, even if it did, I wasn’t party to that transaction! I wasn’t paying for you because I was expecting sex!”

“But why pay for all those things?”

“Because that’s normal in the US,” I chuckled. “Let me guess, you ‘go Dutch’ all the time.”

“You mean each of us pays for ourselves? Yes. Only with couples who are serious does the guy usually pay, and not even always then.”

Her so-called friends had completely misread the situation. Even if Karla’s motives might not have been pure, I liked her and she sure seemed to like me. I didn’t believe for one second that she could pull off that kind of fraud over the course of an entire week without a single slip. I really didn’t care about her motives when it came right down to it. I’d enjoyed our time together and I’d be leaving soon. I certainly wouldn’t mind continuing the friendship, but I wasn’t going to be devastated if I didn’t see her again.

This was not even remotely like the situation with Pippa. If I could find a way to see Pippa again, as she put it, even only to talk, I’d do my best to accomplish that. And it wasn’t the fact we’d had sex. If she had decided to get in the cab and go home after the ice lolly, I still would want to see her again to talk. Pippa and I had connected, and she’d helped me learn about myself and about my relationship with Michelle. And while the previous Sunday had caused a bit of a revelation, it was caused by my own visceral reaction, not the product of a deep conversation with Karla.

“I think there’s a big misunderstanding here,” I said. “Your friends pushed you to do something for all the wrong reasons. They misread the situation completely.”

“You aren’t angry?”

“With you? Not even a little. With your friends? Maybe a bit, but I think they simply misunderstood what was going on, and gave you very bad advice.”

“But what about the drink?” she asked.

“What about it? It was a creative way to get to talk to a guy without having to think up something to say, and it worked. If I’d reacted badly, you could have just apologized and gone back to your friends. When I didn’t react badly, you offered to guide me through the museums to make up for the spilled drink. And most importantly, afterwards, I asked if I could buy you dinner without implying anything by it.”

“You really weren’t expecting anything in return?”

“I really wasn’t. And here’s the thing - if I had been expecting something in return, it was like buying a lottery ticket or betting a number on the roulette wheel. Let’s say I buy you a nice dinner and try to get you to come back to my hotel room. When you say ‘no’, I’ve lost the bet. Maybe I try a second time and get another ‘no’. If I keep asking you out and I keep getting told ‘no’, then I’ve made a series of bad bets and I should move on.

“But I wasn’t expecting it and I wasn’t making that bet. I do know that some guys have that attitude, but so what? You go to bed with who you want to, for the reasons you want to, not with someone who buys you a couple of dinners. Think about how I behaved. I didn’t even try to kiss you, let alone ask you to come back to my hotel room! I didn’t even ask you to dance to slow songs.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to create any problems between us. I’ve enjoyed being with you and didn’t want to mess it up by giving you the wrong impression or by being a jerk. I tried being a jerk last Sunday and it didn’t work very well!”

“You weren’t a jerk,” she said, finally lifting her head from her knees. “You had something bad happen in your past I didn’t know about. It’s OK. And you’re really telling me the truth about what you wanted? Just me being with you?”

I nodded, “Yes. That’s all I expected from you - the ‘pleasure of your company’, as it’s called. If you are still interested, I want to spend the rest of today with you, and tomorrow. Well, on one condition.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“That you be my friend,” I replied.

She smiled, “I will. And after this talk, I almost want to laugh.”

“About?”

“You dragging me from the hotel lobby with a very frightened look in your eyes!”

“I WAS frightened, because I had no idea what was going on, and the only thing that made sense to me was to get away from a place that seemed very dangerous.”

“You didn’t even think about it?” she asked.

I chuckled, “That is NOT a proper question! Any answer I give could get me into trouble. And it’s not clear which answer gets which trouble! But, with the caveat of the specific circumstances, no, I didn’t think about it. I instantly wanted to get us both out of there so we could talk. Does that make sense?”

She nodded, “Yes. I’m sorry I acted the way I did.”

“It’s OK. We got it out in the open and we’re talking.”

She smiled, “I know what I want to do today.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, we should have some lunch, then we’ll walk around the park for the afternoon and talk.”

“That sounds good.”

“Then tonight, if you’re OK with it, dinner, drinks, and dancing?”

“Yes, I’m OK with that. And if you want to pay for yourself, I’ll understand.”

“I really only have enough money to go out once a week, and that’s on Fridays with my friends. I study and don’t work, so I have limited funds. Mostly I only have the usual government stipend for students. My parents aren’t able to contribute much.”

“Which is why you’ve enjoyed this week, and why you felt you were using me.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Do you like spending time with me?”

“Yes.”

“And I like spending time with you. So there you go, problem solved. And it’s my treat, and you do NOT owe me anything for it except to be my friend and enjoy yourself.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Shall we get some lunch from the falafel stand?”

“Yes, but I could do without the «frieten»,” I said. “Even with my morning exercise and all this walking, I’m not getting enough exercise to eat that many potatoes!”

I stood up, and extended my hand, Karla took it and I helped her up. We walked hand-in-hand to the falafel stand and I bought our sandwiches and drinks. We went back to the grassy area and sat down to eat. I thought about the situation, and realized there were some interesting parallels with Samantha. The money I’d spent on Karla was, in effect, pocket money to me, and I hadn’t even thought twice about spending it. For Karla, on the other hand, it was a significant amount. Samantha had run into plenty of situations like that in her life.

I thought back to the previous night, when Karla had been paying, and it dawned on me that she’d had only had three drinks, and an inexpensive meal. I didn’t pay close attention to her friends, but now that I thought about it, I had the feeling that their situations weren’t all that different. My mind went to Karla’s friend, Mina, who had flirted with me. She’d said one thing that I hadn’t thought anything of, but which had a different connotation now. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but, in effect, she’d said she knew how to properly treat a guy who did nice things for her.

If I had to guess, it was Mina who had said something to Karla, but I wasn’t about to ask. Mina had commented about all the nice dinners and implied she was jealous, but it had been in a light-hearted way and I hadn’t read anything into it more than just normal flirtation. Mina had, during each of our three dances, made some indirect comment about sex, but each one could be viewed as silly or teasing. I’d seen it before when girls flirted.

Everything had been fine when I’d left the group of friends around 2:00am, so whatever was said, was said after that. Karla seemed to be doing OK, and I certainly wasn’t upset with her. In fact, her scheme, if I wanted to call it that, had led me to several very nice restaurants and a new experience - Indonesian food. She’d asked me to have dinner the second night, and then I’d asked if we’d have dinner every night. In the end, I was doing what I wanted to do, even if her motives weren’t pure.

And what about my motives? I felt I had a good handle on them, and that I’d kept everything on the straight and narrow, minus not disclosing I was married immediately after she’d spilled her drink on me and offered to be my guide. That was the only thing that didn’t quite fit. She said she knew I was married, and yet had, in effect, asked me out. And she’d held my hand. What was I missing?

I let the thoughts stew while I ate, trying to piece together what I knew about her and about what had happened. I didn’t think I’d stuck out like a sore thumb at the bar. I was dressed similarly to the other guys my age who weren’t in business suits, and other than being a couple of inches shorter than average, my German-Dutch-Irish-English ancestry was close enough that I looked a lot like everyone else.

I did have the impression that a lot of people in the bar were regulars, so perhaps Karla and her friends had simply noticed a new face. I didn’t think she’d heard me speak English to the bartender, but it was possible one of her friends had. I’d paid cash for my drink, so none of them had seen me use my American Express card. There were others drinking whisky of various sorts, so that too, was not out of the ordinary.

All of that said, there was nothing other than some kind of attraction and she’d devised spilling her drink to get my attention. And another piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit hit me - she’d offered to buy me a drink, and drinks were not cheap, certainly on her budget. I’d let her, and I wondered if that meant she had to forego one later. She had to have seen my ring before she had done that, and she didn’t know why I was in the Netherlands at that point.

Many things about the situation didn’t make sense, unless she, or perhaps her friends, had assumed I was at the bar to pick up a girl. But even that didn’t help explain things, because Karla had never once implied sex to get my attention. That said, if she’d assumed I would think that way, it would make sense. I was going in circles and I was going to drive myself nuts if I didn’t stop.