Istanbul (East Side)

The barrier separating West and East of Istanbul — the European and Asian continents — was the Bosphorous Strait. Crossing it in a cab with my girlfriend, I’d only a few minutes earlier realized that I’d left my laptop plug back at the previous Airbnb.

“Do you wanna go back and get it?” she asked me.

“Nah,” I waved it off. “We’ll get it tomorrow.”

The sunlight was pure. And I wasn’t hungover.

“Let’s not dollygag,” I told the window beside my chin and face. “We’re here for only a short while. And in the daytime hours all the stars are still out there making faces at the Earth. Blinking. I know all about it. I know that the Universe has a sick and timeless sense of humor. What’s with the synchronous aspects and properties of your flotsam?”

“Jetsam,” the Universe replied, silently.

“I’m a woman,” my girlfriend said.

“So what?”

“Get your shit together,” said the taxi driver in a florid Turkish.

“The sun is sweltering up there. And all you can think about is yourself.”

I was going to realize that it didn’t matter. East versus West. We’d get to the Airbnb, up to the second floor in an apartment on the fourth floor. (Following me?) There was a view of the Marmara Sea. I didn’t know it was called that until after I looked it up on the internet.

The sliding glass door was ajar. In the trillions of cells that made up the glass, there were microscopic poop cells from when somebody previously had opened it without washing their hands. Or maybe they had washed their hands!

“Is this an appropriate conversation to have when we just got here?”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t think so.”

It was a Monday. You know how Mondays go.

We settled in. It was quaint, quiet and serene. Then we went into the bedroom after the sun went down and 35 mosquitoes escaped from the floor, windows, ceiling, bedroom linens, the centerpiece in the living room, underneath the table in the downstairs kitchen, the refrigerator, the cabinets in the kitchen, my armpits, and Han’s — sorry, my girlfriend’s — crotch.

“Baby,” she said, “make it stop.”

We were up until 5 am. Or at least I was. She slept. I sat awake with my cell phone’s flashlight on. Waiting. To murder those sonsabitches.

Tuesday was a lot better!

We rode the public transportation back to Sisli (on the West side) after I’d stopped at the ATM. And oh yes, I bought my girlfriend breakfast at a nearby cafe. There were desserts in the window adjacent our table. Cakes, rich. Chocolate. Vanilla. Sasparilla.

“What’s that mean?” My girlfriend was born in China.

“It’s a fancy word for toe jam.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Just eat your sausage. Need your strength. Gonna be a long day.”

My girlfriend was wearing a banana-colored track jacket. The zipper was white. Her hair was long, brown, black. Thick. She had skinny thighs. And for whatever reason, she liked me. She liked traveling with me. That was strange, I felt.

I paid. We enjoyed another round of Turkish coffee. Then left.

For the subway, er, the rail line that ran along the coast up to one of the four bridges that crossed the Bosphorous Strait.

Ah, let’s make this quick.

Forty five minutes, just about. On the rail line. (The public transportation in Istanbul is Ace. A city of 15 million peeps. Peeps? What? More beer, please.)

Beautiful, the skyline. No matter the vantage point. East. West. Didn’t matter. The sun was beautiful. The people looked at us. Some said polite things in whatever little English they knew. I held onto her. She stared out through the window. Little kids blew big bubbles throughout the dimensions that connected other Universes with ours. The bubbles exploded and infinite additional Universes were created.

We got to our stop. Transferred to the Metro line. Went about four stops, north. Went up to the level of the street and walked about twenty minutes to a flower shop. The previous Airbnb host had left my laptop plug there.

I walked in. Sunflowers, petunias, lilies, cumquats, walnuts, braided roses with stray cats strutting to D Major harps being played by shadows in the walls.

“Hello?” I wailed, harmlessly.

Nobody responded.

The flowers bloomed. My mind felt at peace with the world. Istanbul. Beautiful. A little windy. Though not as hot as when we’d first arrived. About 80. That’s about 22ish — Celsius.

“HELLO?”

A guy came out from a back room just as we were about to leave. I held the bag in my hands, lifted it, showed him, he smiled in a vest and thick reading glasses, a strand of toilet paper grabbing at his ankles.

There was a nearby restaurant. We went there and had something to eat. My girlfriend’s hair was blowing in the wind. I told her that she was beautiful. And that I was lucky.

“Wheelie?” She responded.

“Wheelie,” I told her. She smacked my hand. Lightly.

I had a salad with chicken. She had some cookies. A latte.

I drank my tea after the meal.

“What a beautiful place,” I told her.

“Why do you keep telling me things?” She asked with her brilliant brown eyes.

“How else am I supposed to talk to you?”

“Can’t you just talk?”

“What do you mean?”

“Yes, you’re right. It’s beautiful here.”

“I wanna take you to Bali.”

“Okay.” She smiled.

“See,” I said, “I can talk. I don’t have to just talk at you.”

“I know.”

“Sugar.”

“What?”

“Which side do you like better?”

“West,” she responded right away.

“Why?”

“It’s older. The buildings. I like it.”

“Yeah, the East side. Let’s go see more of it.”

And we did that. Walking around a Hipster neighborhood after retracing our steps to the Metro and rail line, once more.

It was hot. The sun was penetrating our orifices and taints and my ballsack. We sat down. I started asking her a few questions and got sharp, wily responses. Hmm, I thought. I better shut my mouth. These be fightin’ words. If I say the wrong thing…

I said nothing.

She got up to go to the bathroom. Came back. We had our tea.

I waited.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

We walked out to the streets of the East Side. Found a place. Had dinner. We ordered something we couldn’t read in Turkish. It ended up being some kind of baked potato with chosen toppings — sausage, peas, melted cheese?, corn, and I don’t know what else, it tasted so damn good. Warmed the belly.

We finished. She was still hungry. I could see it in her face…

The next few days, we explored the nearby water, somewhat. Had dinner and lunch at local restaurants and cafes. I got my beer at the grocery store. And I worked all day out on a balcony/terrace overlooking the Marmara Sea with boats passing by, and ferries, and trees planted all in a row, like a fairy tale or some shit I didn’t even know about or understand. But it was all there. Right in front of my face.

Like a dream. But reality.

What?

“Babe,” I told my girlfriend after she’d come out from her China slave labor cave — teaching English in Mandarin to kids, brats, online — “I really like this view.”

“I know, baby. I do too.”

We both stared at the fading red-orange sun miles away in the distance over the West side of Istanbul, from the East.

“What did it matter?”

“What do you mean?” She wanted to know.

I finished this bottle of beer, writing to you.