Chapter 91: Old Friends, And New

July 22, 1997, London, England

“Steve Adams, please meet Philip van der Velt. Philip, my friend Steve Adams.”

We shook hands.

“Jiang, this is my friend Sari Onbekend.”

“«Je bent Nederlands»?” Philip said to Sari. (“You’re Dutch?”)

“«Ja, maar onze vrienden spreken geen Nederlands»!” (Yes, but our friends don’t speak Dutch!)

“«Ik spreek een beetje»,” I said. (“I speak a little.”)

“How about we all speak Cantonese?” Jiang said with a smile.

“Sorry,” I replied.

“Sorry,” Philip added. “Shall we sit?”

We all went to a table in the pub, and Philip offered to buy a round of drinks, which he went to get after checking with each of us.

“What does he do?” I asked.

“He’s a broker for a firm here in London. I met him through my dad. What do you do, Sari?”

“I’m a flight attendant for KLM on intercontinental routes. I met Steve on a flight to the US. How did you meet him, if I can ask.”

“Through a mutual friend the last time he was in London.”

“Which was the first part of that trip which resulted in that flight from Amsterdam to Chicago,” I said.

“What do you do, Jiang?”

“I start reading maths at Oxford in about a month.”

Philip returned with our drinks, which for me was sparkling water with lemon, and ale for the other three. We reviewed the chalked menu and then Philip went to put in the order.

“Jiang tells me you run your own company,” Philip said when he returned. “Are you on business this trip?”

“No,” I grinned. “I brought my son to spend a month with his fiancée and then I’m going on to Moscow to meet my other son and his hockey team for some friendly matches against Russian youth hockey teams.”

“You look VERY young to have a son who is engaged!” Philip protested. “You can’t be more than thirty-five, at least from the way you look!”

“Thirty-four,” I grinned. “Albert is eight and Jane is six.”

“Hang on, Mate!” he protested.

“They’ve been close for a couple of years,” I replied. “Her dad is a surgeon who lived at my house while he did a year-long exchange program at the local hospital casualty department. We were here earlier this year for the surgeon’s marriage and at the ceremony my son asked his daughter to marry him. She said yes. Time will tell if it’s real. And by time, I mean ten to twelve years, at least.”

“You did have me worried for a bit. You’re heading to Russia?”

“Yes. A friend of mine who is a former Soviet and Russian military officer invited my son’s ice hockey team to play. Another friend who was a Soviet diplomat and who is now an MP, co-sponsored the trip.”

“I think you just proved my point from before,” Sari said.

“What was that?” Jiang asked.

“We were debating politics,” I said.

“Ah, well, a fun diversion in private, but a sure way to incite a riot in a pub!” Philip said.

“I think I’d like to avoid that,” I replied. “But the short version is that we three, for example, have privileges and options that Sari doesn’t have, or, more crucially in her view, the poor do not have. You’re a broker, Jiang’s dad is a banker, and I’m a businessman. It is a different world. That said, Sari’s dad was an executive in a telecommunications company, so she’s had a bit of advantage as well.”

“Sorry to bring that up,” Sari said. “But it just seemed exactly on point.”

“I know,” I replied. “So, let’s change topics. Which football sides do you support?”

“You mean proper football, right? Not that silly rugby-style game you play where you can throw the ball around at will?”

“Yes!”

“Ajax for me,” Sari said.

“Crystal Palace for me,” Jiang replied.

“Spurs,” Philip said. “Do you follow Premier League?”

I shook my head, “No, but I know some ex-pat Brits who are Spurs fans.”

“Motorsport?” Philip asked.

“NASCAR. I suspect you prefer F1?”

“Indeed. Proper motorsport where you actually have to turn right and left!”

“Two of my boys were at the Grand Prix in Canada this year. They met Jos Verstappen through another friend of mine.”

“Of course they did!” Sari said, but her voice was light, not accusatory.

“What does your business do?” Philip asked.

“We’re an IT firm. We produce software for law firms and medical practices, and provide general computer consulting.”

“In Europe as well?”

“Only for US firms who have offices here. A friend of mine in Moscow has a similarly named firm which handles Europe, though she’s only been in business since January.”

“Separate firms?”

“Yes, with cross-licensing agreements.”

“Funded by private equity?”

“Yes. My initial capital came from my dad and a friend, plus money I’d made selling a software company I ran during High School. When we need funding now, we go through Spurgeon Capital.”

“That’s an excellent firm, though it was a very nasty business with the former principal.”

“It was. His daughter is a family friend.”

A waitress brought our food and we began eating.

“How often do you get to London?” Philip asked.

“It’s working out to be fairly often,” I replied. “Though it’ll probably be a year before I come back. That said, business demands change moment to moment!”

“Let’s exchange details. You never know when our business interests might align.”

“Sounds good.”

We finished lunch, and Philip had to hurry back to his office, so he left immediately. Jiang decided to accompany him, leaving Sari and me to walk back towards Mayfair. The lunch conversation had driven home her point, though she and I disagreed on about it being a big problem, and certainly about how much government should intervene to right what she perceived to be wrong.

There wasn’t an easy solution, and I totally understood her point that I was fortunate, but I simply didn’t believe that government was the ultimate solution. To me, it provided a fiction of popular control, but in the end, the ruling class gave itself privileges which it failed to provide for the people they ruled. That was true even in the supposed egalitarian parliaments in Europe. I believed, ultimately, that I was the best guard for my own liberty, not the government.

“What would you like to do this afternoon?” I asked.

“Do you know about Vanessa Beecroft?”

“No. Who is she?”

“An Italian artist. She does art called tableau vivant. Do you know what that is?”

“Beyond knowing it means ‘living picture’ in French, no.”

“She uses actual models. She has a work called ‘Made in Italy’ which is at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on The Mall.”

“That’s close to Trafalgar Square, right?”

“Yes. Would you like to see it?”

“Sure. I assume they have other art on display?”

“Yes. Cinematic art, as well as music, and other things.”

“Then let’s go,” I said.

About an hour later, we were standing in an upstairs gallery at the museum viewing art as I’d never imagined it. It consisted of four female models, naked except for high-heels, standing silently and unmoving. They were beautiful, and I thought about how some of the Rap Session attendees would react to something like this. Of course, that led me to have to fight a chuckle when I realized that Kara and Birgit would easily volunteer for this kind of thing. We observed for about fifteen minutes, then left that gallery room.

“I certainly didn’t expect that,” I said quietly.

“You’re not upset or offended, are you? I didn’t think you had the usual American prudishness.”

“I don’t. I’ve just never seen that kind of art.”

“Performance art isn’t all that different from a movie or a TV show, if you think about it. Or even a photograph. It’s in three dimensions, but it’s still conveying a message. In this case, about the beauty of the human body. Beecroft is also making a statement which she knows will offend a large segment of the public, especially here in the UK, but also the religious conservatives at home and elsewhere in Europe. And especially the United States.”

“I’ve made a point for my entire life that nudity and sex do not go together automatically. We discussed the sauna in my house.”

“True. Shall we see the other exhibits?”

We spent about an hour touring the museum, then returned to the hotel to collect the tickets for the show, whose face value was close to a third of the amount I’d suggested as a maximum to Sir Danny. I stopped in at the concierge desk to ask about a place to eat near the Palace Theatre and he suggested The Coach & Horses at 29 Greek Street, in Soho, not too far from the Palace Theatre.

We headed for the Piccadilly underground for the trip to Leicester Square. We walked around the West End for about an hour before going to the pub for dinner. After dinner, we attended the performance of Les Misérables, which was, without any reservation, the best musical I’d ever seen. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and knew it was something Matthew would absolutely love to see. I’d need to see about an American production that I could take him to.

Sari and I talked about the show the entire way back to Mayfair, and I half-listened to others on the subway who had also seen the show and were equally impressed. Sari and I decided to stop at a pub near the InterContinental for a drink before we finally returned to the suite. I was tired, but that wasn’t surprising given I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. That said, I wasn’t completely beat, either.

“It’s bedtime for me,” I said. “I’m going to use the bathroom, brush my teeth, and get in bed.”

“OK,” she said.

I did as I said and had just climbed into bed when Sari came into the bedroom, wearing a short, black robe, but her eyes told me she was unhappy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What do you think is wrong?”

“Unless you tell me, I have no idea.”

“You expect what every rich, powerful man expects when he buys things for a girl.”

“If you believe THAT, then you’ve seriously misjudged me and I’ve seriously misjudged you as well.”

She stopped short and looked at me quizzically.

“You don’t expect me to go to bed with you?”

“No, I most decidedly do NOT expect you to go to bed with me! I didn’t do those things today because I was expecting sex, I did them because I wanted to, and because we’re friends. In case you hadn’t noticed, I got a suite with two bedrooms!”

“You don’t want to?”

“There’s a very wide gap between things we desire and things we ought to do or have the right to expect. At this point, desire no longer factors into the equation in any way, shape, or form.”

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Something she’d told me about came back to me.

“Airline pilots,” I said simply.

“Yes. But also some of the rich businessmen who offer those kinds of things to flight attendants.”

“I’m not them,” I said flatly. “And anyone who expects sex from another person is going against everything I believe about relationships. And I have to say I’m very glad I detected the issue from your eyes before anything happened. If you wanted to come to my bed simply because of desire, or friendship, or whatever, that would have been fine. But because you felt compelled by me spending money on you? That’s not fine.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Sari said. “I thought about it, and I was pretty sure I wanted to, so I updated my STD test last week, but then, after everything today, I felt I had to. But it’s not as if I DON’T want to. Does that make sense?”

“It does, but it creates a serious concern in my mind, because if you feel at all compelled by the way I treated you today, that’s a serious problem.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Now is as good a time as any,” I replied.

“You don’t think women are attracted to powerful men and use sex to get what they want from them?”

“I’m SURE that’s the case. In fact, I’ve experienced that. Of course, I was clueless when it happened the first time, and only found out years later that I’d been manipulated. Since then I’ve been exceedingly careful. I think this goes back to our earlier conversation. My position, and the fact that I’m reasonably well off, gives me opportunities with women I wouldn’t have if I was in a lower economic class. I met you because of my economic status, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I suppose my question now is what YOU were looking for.”

“Normally I wouldn’t have been interested, but you were intriguing.”

I smiled, “Precisely because I was a reasonably well off, at least somewhat powerful man with an interesting life. Something you would at least diminish, if not take away, if you had the power to do so politically. Philosophically, you’ve created a conundrum - the men to whom you are attracted are the very men who you want to neuter via the political system.”

“Neuter?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

“I chose that word on purpose. Rich, powerful men are sexy, at least to some women, simply because they are rich and powerful. You want to remove that power, and I’m assuming, at least some of their riches, thus making them less interesting and less attractive. Neutered, in a sense.”

“But don’t you think it’s abusive?”

“In situations such as the one we’re talking about, nobody can abuse you without your cooperation. In our current situation, if you sleep with me because you feel compelled to do it, it’s not abuse on my part! Even if I made the assumption that buying the tickets and the meals and the admission to the museum sent the message that I felt entitled to sex, you have the final say in the matter, not me. You have your own room, and that door locks, by the way. So unless you think I was going to force myself on you, YOU are the one who decides, not me.”

“I’m not saying you would do that!” she said quickly.

“Then what are you saying?” I asked gently. “That you’re so weak-willed that a pair of theater tickets and a couple of meals are enough to make you do something you otherwise wouldn’t do? I can have all the power in the world, but all that power doesn’t exceed the power of a single word you can utter. The most powerful word in the world, the one that gives women ALL control, is a simple ‘no’. All civilized people recognize that, and ANY transgression of that simple word is punished severely in the courts.”

“You think I’m weak?”

“I hadn’t thought that until you came into the bedroom,” I said. “But it is a weakness to devalue yourself such that you’ll sell your body for the price of admission to a West End show!”

“What?!” she screeched in outrage.

“Relax,” I pleaded gently. “I’m pointing out the logical conclusion of everything we’ve talked about. If you think that me spending money on you means you have to sleep with me, what is the logical conclusion? It’s a direct trade. It’s just one the government doesn’t ban. Well, it’s legal in Amsterdam, but not here or in the US, except in parts of Nevada. And before you ask, I have NO desire to engage the services of an escort. I went out of the way to let you know I’d booked a suite with two rooms just so you didn’t feel any compulsion or feel I assumed I had some right to be with you. I don’t.”

“No, I guess you don’t.”

“Let me see if I can draw a distinction for you. You believe money and power are best handled by the government. I believe money and power are best handled by the individual. The thing is, both can abuse that power. I want you to think about this, and take as long as you need, but have I in any way abused the somewhat limited power and wealth I have?”

Sari was quiet for a moment and I could see in her eyes that she was thinking hard.

“No, I guess not. You’ve used them to your advantage, but you haven’t abused them.”

“And have I treated you in any way incorrectly? Or behaved improperly?”

“No.”

“So will you admit, at least in THIS instance, it is possible for an individual to have wealth and power and not abuse them?”

“I think I have to.”

I shook my head, “You don’t have to do anything except answer honestly. If you don’t agree, say so.”

“Sorry, what I meant is even if my politics say differently, I can’t find a flaw in your argument.”

I chuckled, “Which doesn’t mean there isn’t one. We just haven’t found it.”

“You actually believe that? That you could be wrong?”

“I’m married and I have daughters,” I teased. “That means I’m ALWAYS wrong!”

Sari laughed, which was what I’d hoped would happen.

“I met them and I know that’s not true.”

“Seriously, though, I only hold my beliefs provisionally - they are always subject to revision, rejection, or in rare cases, confirmation.”

“You think you’re wrong more than you’re right?”

“I’d say it’s more that I’m incomplete or inexact more often than I’m right. Life is a journey, and I certainly haven’t arrived, which means anything could change based on new information.”

“I’m not sure what to do.”

“Then there’s only one thing TO do, and that’s go back to your room.”

“Is that what you want?”

“What we desire has to give way to what’s right, no matter how much we desire it.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“The problem is, given what you’ve said, I’m not sure I can answer that question.”

“Because you think I might act on what you want rather than what I want?”

“It’s certainly possible,” I replied. “I’ve run into this situation before where a young woman felt she owed me sex because of the things I’d done for her, which aren’t all that dissimilar to what you and I did today. I rejected her offer just as I rejected yours.”