It doesn’t feel right. I itch all over. I have been waiting for years for an issue filled with beautiful men in uniform, and now our publisher is merging Norden and Norden+ into something I can only describe as a cross between Linda and an IKEA catalogue.
It doesn’t feel right at all, such a double issue. Instead of my column appearing twice, it now appears once in a combined edition. And I have been waiting for a proper special with horny boys in uniform. Or a special with butch dykes on motorcycles, because as a pansexual I am not particularly critical. No, instead of something uplifting—no pun intended—we get a double issue. I threatened to resign, but I was laughed at.
It’s all because of that Max Groen, who works at Mr. B. Van der Kamp always refers to him as “my brother.” That tells you everything. If you can’t get along with me, but you can with “brother Max Groen,” then something is fundamentally wrong with the collaboration. After all, I have known our publisher since he wrote his first pieces for the school newspaper under the pseudonym Mother Know-It-All. I should be the confidant here, but it turns out Van der Kamp only consulted brother Groen about his deranged plan to merge Norden and Norden+ into one oversized publication—and of course he said, all syrupy: “It’s your magazine, Hans, you should follow your heart.”
Well, if we start talking to our publisher like that, we’ll all soon be standing outside Albert Heijn selling street papers.
You can’t just throw fine, horny boys in leather, with a rolled-up dishcloth behind the zipper of their Mr. B trousers, into a bucket of drag queens without warning. That cannot end well. We used to have real writers here, like Tio Lelieveld, and he understood these things. He knew immediately that the two Norden concepts could never be merged. If Tio ever bought a regular Norden, he would immediately post on our senior citizens’ Facebook that he had done so “under heavy pressure” from his drag friends.
I told Van der Kamp exactly that, but he wouldn’t listen.
“Oh,” he said, while vacuuming ash from his keyboard with that noisy Chinese device of his, “I think it’s mainly the more feminine leathermen who struggle to appear in a magazine alongside drag performers…”
I was furious. “Tio not masculine enough? If his many admirers had a womb behind their rectum, we’d now be dealing with orphanages full of little Tios.”
“My brother sees it differently. He thinks I should follow my own feelings,” Van der Kamp added, just to make sure.
I felt the top button of my army shirt tightening. I wanted to say something truly vile, but I never do that with a crooked tie, so instead I walked out and slammed the front door shut with deafening force.
When I got home, Broomstick was already behind the stove. She must have been making an effort, because her worn wig hung in damp strands around her sweaty forehead.
“We’re having something experimental tonight,” she said, with smeared make-up and a loving expression.
“For fuck’s sake, not that as well! Is it the Day of Hopeless Experiments here too?” I snapped the laptop shut. “Sorry, but I’m taking the dog out.”
“But we don’t have a dog,” Broomstick said, rushing out of the kitchen with spatula and ladle still in hand.
“I mean the dog in myself!”
For the second time that day, I slammed the door far too hard and marched off towards café Capteyn.
The first thing the bartender said, after finishing his flirtations with some girls with Botox lips, was: “Your tie is crooked.”
“Since when are you a member of BLUF? Pour me a triple vodka, topped with two fingers of Sprite.” Some bartenders can tell from the order how serious the situation is, and he returned within seconds. I think he may have asked me what BLUF meant, but I’m not sure I answered.
I remember nothing of the rest of the evening, except that I ran into photographer Jan van Breda, who tried to cheer me up by suggesting that all leathermen are essentially drag performers anyway, but that did little to improve my mood.
The first clear image I have is from the following morning. I was looking at Broomstick, already engaged in her morning exercises—a familiar but irritating sight. Why do skeletons insist on doing gymnastics?
“I had to gather all the neighbours to drag you from the front door to the lift,” she said, cheerfully as always. That was the first piece of missing information I would have preferred not to receive. One thought did occur to me: how on earth had I even reached the front door?
“Those two sweet bartenders—you know, the bald one and the fat one—carried you home,” said Broomstick, who has the unpleasant habit of reading minds.
More information I did not need. I suddenly realised I might not have paid. I searched my pockets for my wallet, but it was nowhere to be found.
“It’s probably on the toilet at Capteyn. I’ve told you so many times not to keep it in your back pocket,” Broomstick said.
What a mess. And the double issue hasn’t even been published yet.
Madame Boissevin
Part of the Madame Boissevin archive →