Martijn Winkel

Sometimes you need to be somewhere else for a while to come to the realization that you still appreciate something or care about something. At the moment, I miss Rotterdam immensely. A city I thought I had outgrown. After all, I have lived there for over a decade now and the city and I have shared many good days and bad nights. I come from a village, but it always felt like I only really started living once I moved to Rotterdam. And now Rotterdam sometimes feels like a small village again. Funny how things change with time.

I’ve seen clubs and bars come and go, and where I used to go now seems like a bit of past glory. Whatever is still left of the time that I went out every weekend? The Performance Bar was one of my favorites. Having a new themed evening every weekend with wacky performances. Gay bars that sadly did not make it in the end, always in competition with the bigger city, Amsterdam. Some clubs and parties did not even last at all. I remember a club that existed for two nights before it had to close again. Because apparently the owner spent so much money on the opening night, that it could not balance out with the ticket sale. The opening night was also so bombastic that I didn’t quite understand where this budget had suddenly come from. Lavishly costumed dancers, strobe lights and disco balls and LED screens with projections and fireworks. But what exactly do I know about opening clubs? Nothing really.

I was dancing with the owner of that club once at a basement party because I had a slight crush on him. I was so skinny at the time that my head looked like a bobble-head. Sadly, I still have the pictures to prove it. I had a beautifully striking jawline though. But it was a very weird time in my life regardless. On that same night, he embarrassingly told me he had a boyfriend after I finally dared to approach him. His boyfriend was also friends with my ex. I would later see him giving someone a blowjob in a broom closet after I accidentally opened it while looking for the restroom. And that man who was getting the blowjob I later ran into again outside while he was smoking. He was talking about his newborn child and wife. Strange situations you then suddenly find yourself in and don’t think much about at the moment. The morning continued at a record label or in a studio with strangers who were still high, and eventually I fell asleep talking to a friend on the couch who came over to chill. Not my prettiest moments to look back on.

All the nights worn out in club Gay Palace and The Union, which didn’t make it either. This was my safe haven after I came out of the closet years ago. Going out almost every weekend to dance with friends, drink and meet new people. I would stay up and out until the early hours because of public transportation to my parents’ house, where I was still living at the time. The bus didn’t start running again until eight in the morning. So every night that I went out without a place to sleep was a long one. Rotterdam had embraced me like a friend who had waited eighteen years for me until I was old enough to go out. With a cold beer waiting for me at the bar and a shot of tequila. All the men I had met over the years, kissed and let go again. Every time I went out, new adventures unfolded. My love of the night and all its creatures.

Over the years, the city has changed me in more ways than one. At the age of eighteen, I was very insecure and worried way too much about my body. And I desperately wanted to be liked and loved. Later, I became the person who was always up for a party or an after-party, who was still insecure at times. But slowly grew more comfortable. I found happiness in the community that I found and the people I bonded with. With my first overpriced studio behind central station, where 12 square meters, I could barely fit a decent bed. Ideally located to eat Burger King leftovers at the train station after a night out. A Burger King that sadly no longer exists either, things seem to come and go in Rotterdam. My second home in the north and the queer house parties that always ended with a vacuum cleaner in my hands in the early morning. To clean up all the glitter and colorful synthetic wig hairs. The anti-squat apartment that came after that, that time was a true shit show. After that, I returned to the center of the city with my own apartment again. I still miss that house sometimes. I once came here to study in this beautiful big city. Then I ended up staying to grow in more ways than one.

Sometimes I wonder if this is still my city after all these years. The real question is whether I’ve outgrown Rotterdam or not. Then I think about places like Gouda, Delft, or Leiden, and whether I should spend the next decade there. But then Rotterdam tugs at my pant leg like a lost toddler with a gin and tonic in its hand. And then it laughs slyly in the way I sometimes do, beckoning me into the night again. I know what you’re planning, and I know I’ll wake up again with a sigh and a grin on my face. But we can’t keep doing this forever, Rotterdam. It’s time for me to grow up and settle down. Write that book that I always wanted to write. I can’t stay stuck in this endless loop of hangovers.

Sometimes I have a strange fear of becoming permanently sealed to a stool at the bar. That I will be old and can never leave that gay bar anymore. And that I will still be looking for that feeling I had when I was young. When I first entered a gay bar, I felt at home. When I can barely keep my eyes open, slouched over the bar with a glass that never completely empties. While young men whisper not to get too close to me because I’m apparently now an old creep. An old monument from a different era, forever doomed to be alone. They make the immediate assumption that I am a dirty little man. Something I did when I first went to gay bars too. The fear of a future image and all that it could possibly hold. Getting older is hard and painful. The fear of losing your charm and splendor with time. Oh, what if people no longer think that I am beautiful? What if I end up alone?

I’m exaggerating a bit for this story, but you get my point. Maybe it’s because I cheat on Amsterdam more often these days? I promise to make it up to you again, Rotterdam. But for now, I’m having an affair with Amsterdam. There happens to be a very nice guy living there that I have some plans with for now. But where will it lead?


There are many different things that fascinate me in life. Because no matter how cliché it sounds, life is actually pretty fascinating when you think about it. The fact that the universe is infinite and still expanding. The somewhat sad fact that I can only read a limited number of books in my entire lifetime on planet Earth. Slowly falling in love with someone and being completely helpless to stop this, no matter how hard you try. It’s like watching yourself slowly end up in a crash through the lens of a camera. While you’re shouting ‘watch out!’ from the other side, but he can’t hear you. A train crash that causes you to explode into a hundred scattered pieces. A morbid scene, but love is violent too. And love is beautiful, even though it sometimes ends quite tragically. And when I finally explode into a hundred pieces, I hope to fall back together as a new person. Someone he values as a beautiful and loving memory. Or perhaps someone he can really fall in love with. Does he love me?

Over the years, it changes and shapes itself differently. Every time you experience it, you learn more about it. And yet, it always stays a bit the same, falling in love. How small your world suddenly seems because everything now revolves around the person you’ve fallen for. How everyday things no longer seem as important because he opened a window in the dark space where you were. After you’ve been blinded by the sudden burst of sharp sunlight, he asks if you want to come outside. He reaches out his hand to you; you only need to respond with your hand, and he pulls you out into the light. Everything is always more beautiful than it was before because he’s now with you. He shows you how wonderful everything can possibly be. How do you push everything aside just to sit in his presence? You leave work earlier, take days off, and set your friends aside just to be with him. His presence that you crave like fresh air after a dark underground tunnel.

Falling in love is also the moment in which my self-worth is measured by the speed at which someone replies to my messages. And the feeling that this longing gives, only to shake it off afterward, as if a spider crawled across your back. Because you’re not eighteen anymore, and all this sudden doubt is complete nonsense. Still, you can wait half a day for a message and laugh stupidly at a little screen because he finally sent something back. Luckily, he hasn’t completely forgotten about me after all. But does he care about me as much as I care about him? People around you can tell because you’re constantly smiling at that silly little screen. During work hours, you daydream, and your colleagues ask if you’re in love. Then you blush and are honest about it, or maybe not completely. You don’t want to confirm it yet because he hasn’t confirmed it for you either. The constant and endless desire for more. For confirmation.

You knew you’d end up here again, and yet you let it happen again. And you thought you couldn’t fall in love with people anymore? You’re addicted to him, and because of that addiction, you keep crawling back to what you so desperately need and crave. His presence, his scent, and his voice. His body too, but you don’t want to be too openly superficial. But honestly, yes, his divine body too. And all the things I can do with that body, and he can do with that body. But at the same time, he never promised you anything, and you know there are others. You’re half in and half out. You’re here, but not completely.

I stand outside the playing field, and he is my quarterback in rugby terms. By the way, don’t ask me what the role of a quarterback is; that’s as far as my rugby knowledge goes. I didn’t need to look into it because, in the end, he didn’t play rugby anyway. I try to give him a place in my mind and create distance, but he’s already in the middle of the playing field. Like a burning beacon of nauseating hope. All the endings in this little story turn out badly. All routes out of this maze lead to closed doors, and he keeps walking further away from me. And I just can’t get him out of my head because I’m in love.

I lost my warmly cooked tofu brain while trying to decipher and dismantle these feelings. And I can feel myself getting dumber by the minute. Like a zombie, I live day by day with small bits of attention from him. The rest of my daily life has all become irrelevant. It’s not interesting enough to keep my focus for more than ten minutes. Because everything revolves around him and what he does. Does he ever think of me too? Probably not the way I think of him. I’ve become a kind of caricature of myself, drunk on love. With one foot in reality and the other permanently in dreamland.

I know that it can’t go in a positive or fixed direction, and yet I stay in it. One day, he will disappear from my life as if he was sitting next to me on the train the whole journey. This is his station, and he has to get off, but I’m still far from reaching my own destination. But what if I get off the train with him here too? Or am I not allowed to come with him? Please tell me I can come home with him just this once more. I promise I’ll make him a nice breakfast in the morning, and then I’ll leave his life for good. And then we’ll nod sweetly at each other during the farewell, knowing that it’s the right thing. I stay strong because this hurts more than I want to admit, but my eyes become blurry from the tears filling my eyes, forming small swimming pools. Maybe I’ll see him again at another time, next year, or in another life? The painful part after the farewell, where I still hang on to hope, longing. The nauseating hope that I will soon believe in less and less day by day.

But until he reaches his train station, we will sit in blissful ignorance for a little longer. Our hands gently against each other as we stare out the window, watching the meadows rush by. Because we are in love, and everything feels right now. No, let me correct that, because I’m in love. I hear the sirens slowly getting closer, but I keep staring stoically out the window as if nothing is wrong, and I don’t hear anything. At least he doesn’t seem to hear them. The train can’t stop anymore to give this beautiful fairy tale a happy ending.

Let’s marry the thought that we will always lose this game. I once won small Pokémon figurines from the baker in the village where I’m from. The win came so unexpectedly that, strangely, it didn’t feel like winning. Just like in elementary school in fifth grade when I won a golden pencil for my story during Dutch class with my teacher, mister Hans. Everyone had to write a story, and the two best writers would win a silver or a golden pencil as a prize. The golden pencil was a gold-painted pencil, but a prize is a prize. And yet, in that moment, I felt very uncomfortable. I had to come to the front of the class to receive it and then read the story aloud for a class full of kids who thought I was strange. That golden pencil suddenly brought unnecessary attention that I wasn’t waiting for. Especially back then, I preferred to stay invisible in my own little world.

Sometimes, I still step in and out of different portals to escape reality. Not because I can’t handle reality, on the contrary. My handsome giant just calls those realities a mere interpretation. A level where we don’t agree, unfortunately. Those sides are slowly starting to show themselves now too. Where we don’t always seem to agree. My current reality with him in it is what I enjoy most. But if I stay in it too long, I don’t want to leave him anymore. And as soon as the inevitable goodbye approaches, it becomes harder and harder to say goodbye to him. Because I enjoy being with him so much, and it feels so nice. Who would ever want to leave a perfectly safe bubble together?

If you want me, then tell me. It feels like my heart has been shot out of a catapult, and I have no control over my feelings anymore. I truly can’t calm them down, and it’s driving me crazy. A passionate obsession, but is it mutual? I see my heart flying further out of sight. It’s almost a speck on the horizon now. It seems so crazy now that we’ve just met, and now I’m already on the other side of your wall. Your door is locked, and I can’t get outside anymore. Trapped in your beautiful castle. Can I pull the plug before I fall too deep?

He is noticing it more and more quickly when the moment comes for me to try to say goodbye, and then he points it out. ‘You don’t seem to be fully present,’ he says. That’s true, I’m trying to gather the strength to say goodbye to him. Because every time I do this, I’m not sure when I’ll see him again. Not because I think every time might be the last time, but more because there’s another week and a half before the next possible time we meet. I have to wait, and I hate waiting. But I know I’m being a bit unnecessarily dramatic now. It’s a kind of addiction, being together at this moment.

I let out a deep sigh and gave him one last hug. Without any effort, he picks me up so that my legs are flailing in the air. I try to do it back, but I grab him in the wrong spot on his hips, which just ends up hurting him. Oops, I’m sorry. After that, we walk together to his front door, and I give him a kiss in the doorway. I walk down the stairs and give him one last wink. I start to move at a faster pace until I reach the street outside. There’s a crack in the small window of the front door that I haven’t noticed before. I hesitate whether I should tell him this, because maybe someone tried to break in, or maybe someone just bumped into it really hard.

I open the door and start to sprint. I turn around and look up to see if he is waving me off at the window. Strange, he always waves, but now he doesn’t appear at the window at all. I don’t dwell on it too long and run straight ahead toward the subway. Because of lingering too long without saying goodbye, I would either just make it on time or arrive too late for the next train. And then I miss my connection to Rotterdam and get home even later. It would all have been much easier if we had not lived so far apart. But ‘all the good things come from far away’ as they always say. By ‘they’ I mean my parents. They’re full of fun knowledge and sweet anecdotes. Just like him, actually, though the anecdotes he shares are often a bit more explicit.

I am sending him a message saying I’ve made it home, and I tell him that I really enjoyed being together again. It’s probably a habit I’ve learned because my parents raised me to thank people for things. He says he enjoyed it too, and we immediately start talking about other things. Our conversation never seems to end, and we keep sharing everything with each other. From silly videos that probably no one else finds as funny as we do, to music that we’ll someday dance to together. Usually, he comes up with difficult words that I have to look up, and he corrects my grammar. I smile at my phone, which lights up my face in the dark bedroom. After chatting way too late into the night, I fall asleep contentedly.

And as soon as I wake up, I immediately grab my phone. The icon for a new chat message is already in the notification list. I skip over work, friends, and family to go straight to the conversation with him. My sweet new addiction. He was the last one to reply because he always falls asleep just a little later than I do. And so, the conversation continues again.

I’m in love.