There was a time I dated a call girl named Leine. She did Yoga and lived in an artist commune in Bushwick. And when we first fell in love, we flew from New York to Helsinki, watched the sun hover over the water at Mattolaituri. It was summer. Ten PM, and the world was still bright with sharp reflections that made us squint.
I had a reasonably expensive coffee (considering the view), and Leine had a fit because I refused to have airplane intercourse. I was always more nervous than she about breaking the law. But the view at Mattolaituri pacified us. And she was so young and so gorgeous and intellectually stimulating that I thought I didn't need even the view. I didn't need to paint. That if life was always this pretty, there'd be no reason for art at all.
The art people don't understand that. The pseudo intellectual scene, and NY literati don't get it. They wear their stupid tortoise shell frames and reference post-modernist texts with novice interpretation, never having been vulnerable or had their insides ripped open to be picked at by pariahs and vultures and women named Rebecca or Leine. I know. The mere notion that a woman can crush a man is always projected as misogynistic and cruel. But I defend the merits of heartache and cruelty. It's human nature to fall in love with a beautiful woman and get utterly destroyed and find the ache romantic. I cannot fathom having visited Helsinki without Leine, for it would be drab and the world would be a clock to merely punch in and out of for healthcare. The art people and their dumb glasses don't understand that there is no such thing as stability. And their establishments and galleries and publishing houses are a giant snooze fest.
And the fellow yelpers, the ones who gave Mattolaituri a bad review on account of it's sub-par ice cream or overly priced beverages, fail to account for the transactional nature of any establishment and its patrons. No, Mattolaituri is not located in some strip mall in some suburb of America where the view consists of overweight parents in their forsaken denims. No. Mattolaituri is allowed to charge more, for they offer prime Helsinki real estate. Those blondes and their tall blond boyfriends I envy, and the breeze and the sunshine. And Leine tells me then, that she knew I was serious and that I would marry her, but that I'd divorce her just as quick. "The divorce is reason to go through with it and not be scared," she said. It was hard to argue anything with her. Her pragmatism was as striking as her broad youthful shoulders, her blonde hair, dimples and strong jaw line. She was nineteen when we met. I was twenty-seven.
I mistakenly thought she saw me as one of her clients, that I wasn't any more special. But she sacrificed so much for me in the end. She loved me. Was loyal. And I repaid her by leaving her for someone who read the Times, a cute redhead I mistakenly deemed as more marriage material.
Mattolaituri is a gem. The call girl, a Saint. And I'm the sucker that hunts diseased squirrels, wondering why I'm always sick. read more