Originally emailed June 23 and June 30. Enhanced August 6.
Alright. I've been in Iran long enough to make some summary judgments. First of all, they are very interested in keeping up appearances. they are all poor, but they all act like they're not, even though everyone knows everyone else has to be poor since there are no jobs here. Thousands of educated, competent engineers, and taxi driver is the most secure job they can get. Mack's uncle Ali has been working for the last four months and has not been paid, and if he complains about not being paid, he gets told to quit if he doesn't like it. If you have a job you can borrow money, if you don't, you can't. So he keeps working for free. It's sad to see how hard he works and know that he gets nothing for it. his is the same story as a lot of people, I gather. Also, in their attempt to keep up appearances, they leave the plastic on things... from car seats to cell phone screens (BRETT!) to computer chairs at every internet cafe we've been to. Like the plastic makes it look so new they haven't even had time to open it. Mack and I call this type of behavior "boughaz," named in honor of the ghetto ferry we took to morocco last year that left four hours later than it was supposed to and seemed like it hadn't had a heyday in 30 years.
Iran Air, the main airline here, has great commuter flights (they give you an Iranian Creme Saver before take off... they love sweets here!), but its international ones are boughaz. Our plane hade a board room in the front of it, complete with board table and spiral staircase to an upstairs lounge (at least I'm imagining it's a lounge since i didn't get to go up there and it makes it more exotic if it was in fact a lounge), but it also hadn't been updated since the 70s and people SMOKED in the back of the plane NEAR THE OXYGEN TANKS and babies stood in the aisle when WE WERE LANDING! That is boughaz. I felt like i was on one of those indiana jones planes where there are caged chickens around you and feathers are flying all over the place. Mack was convinced the emergency door we sat next to had an air leak so we had to sleep in shifts, which was a silly propostion in the first place. sleeping would have been a dream come true considering all the people leaving Western civilization and heading back to Persian had to get one last actual toilet use in before landing. 400 people must have gone in and out of that bathroom. They also like silk flowers and plastic fruits here, which is totally boughaz, but then they have these incerdible gardens with real roses and palm trees and grass that they spend the entire day watering... not boughaz. We've decided, after our wedding party last night, that Iran is suffering from an identity crisis unseen anywhere else on the planet. When we were in Chefchaouen last summer, the Muslim townspeople didn't drink beer or carouse with women because it was forbidden by their religion, but they didn't make it illegal for people who visit their town. Part of its attraction and the reason I would visit there over and over again was the acceptance of other ways of life and how peacefully and wonderfully (as in full of wonder for other lifestyles) they integrated. Not the case here. In Shahin Shar, which is a pretty small, very conservative town where we've spent most of our days, the identity crisis is really felt. Here we are in this place where women must cloak themselves from head to toe, but then the preferred type of dance for both men and women has you moving like a stripper, with shoulder shaking, and hence boob shaking, a must. It's like extreme no sexy to extreme sexy, and how people can coexist in both spheres and keep all the right times and right places straight in their heads has proved too hard for me. I get looked at everywhere I go because I am white looking, regardless of whether I'm walking with my head down or slow motion running because I am playing with Laila (turns out any display of fun is frowned upon when in public, but as soon as you step behind a 10-foot brick wall into your own yard, you should be having the time of your life). They love their families deeply and spend all their time with each other, but they don't have the emotional intensity that i'm used to in my family and which i credit for the deep love i have for them. Cousins often marry here, which makes Kentucky and iran a little similar, because the families know each other and can stay close. It's different, and some of it's weird and some of it's beautiful, but the overall feeling I am taking from small town Iran is one of sympathy. It's boiling with potential that is stifled because of its religious government, where forbidden is illegal and where people are scared to be human.
Off to Amsterdam...
About two minutes off the train at Central Station in my Amberdam and I was once again ready to move here. Coming from a place so conservative and where I was so watched and so guarded made it even sweeter... although I just looked over at Mack's computer and he's looking at gayromeo.com followed by gaydar.nl and I'm wondering if freedom really is so great for our relationship. Hee hee. We've been here about four days, and I've been spending roughly 10 hours out of my hotel room and 14 hours in it. Retoxing is what we're calling it. Trash tv (and by trash I'm not talking about the porn that comes on but episodes of Real World and Larry King Live), french fries with mayonnaise (don't knock it till you try it), short-sleeved t-shirts and beer. The first day we were here we dropped our luggage off at our hotel and went to have a Guiness at the Irish pub around the corner. Mack brought out his magic tricks and won over a couple of British mates named James and Ryan who then amused us until 2 p.m. (we started drinking at 9 a.m.) when we went to check in all the way at our hotel.
Well, we apparently asked them to move our reservation up a day later than we expected so when we checked in they only had one room left and it was roughly the size of my bathroom. Oh, it had a bed, tv, shower, toilet and sink in it, but it was still the size of my bathroom. Mack let me have the bed while he laid on the floor, and when we started to wake up at around 11 p.m. from our naps, our hangovers put us right back to bed. The room was stiflingly hot, so we had to sleep with our door open, which was fine for us but which probably puzzled all the people stepping off the elevator and looking in at our pathetic selves. So the next day...
We've been pretty low key since then. I've been trying to stay out late enough to see the nakeds in the red light district just because they're an interesting breed to observe, but it doesn't get dark here until no kidding 11:30 p.m. so by then I'm absorbed in some really great episode of the Wayan Brothers show that I've never watched before and don't feel like going out. Mack's ventured out a couple times and brought back reports of people with darker skin whispering "cocaine" as he walks by. I have yet to verify this account, but I tend to walk around in a self-amusing daze and don't really notice stuff directed toward me if I'm not interested in it. (update: The red light distict is, it turns out, one of the most beautiful parts of Amsterdam at night. The women are sort of sectioned off by race -- Asians, then blacks, then whites, and cover lots of blocks -- and there is one stretch that has red lit windows on the left and the back of a church on the right, and the sex being sold makes that passageway so beautifully lit. And there's also the added bonus of "good" versus "evil" laid out in front of you. Evil is more interesting, in my opinion. There are also a ton of boats in the canals of the district at night. It's like floating bachelor pads and the boys just cruise through the canals drinking beer and looking at all the women in the windows. Some of the little passages are only one person wide with two lanes of sideways traffic going through them. You can taste the animal hunger in the air, but luckily these are men and not animals, so most have some self control or friends to control them. Plus, if they want to satisfy themselves, they have hundreds of girls ready and willing. They have all kinds of girls there... fat, thin, every race on earth, big boobs, no boobs, long hair, short hair, old, young, majorly stripperesque and girl next doorish. And the coolest thing, the canals aren't gated off, so if you step too far back to gawk you get a punishing plunge to deal with. That, and there were no cops pushing you with billy clubs or accusing you of being guilty for satisfying your curiosity.)
We've seen a lot of awesome things this time around... went to the Van Gogh Museum, and the Riljksmuseum (it has rembrandt paintings), which were incredible;
I loved this downspout!
Went to Madame Tousseau's Wax Museum where I joked with Gandhi and the buddhist guy I can't remember what we call him,,, Dalai Lama,,, had dinner with George Clooney, compared prisms with Isaac Newton and, alas, discovered that Mack is the vitruvian man, much to my dismay and to his inflated ego;
Went to the Amsterdam Zoo yesterday, which was really beautiful and had lots of animals that, believe it or not, didn't look depressed to be at the zoo. They use a lot of water barricades around their exhibits so it's like you're right up on the animals. The grounds were really pretty and we stumbled across a bonus aquarium which was really cool;
Went to the Heinken experience for 10 Euro, which basically paid for the three beers we got along the tour. It was pretty cool, and it was the best Heineken I've ever tasted in my life.
We've been walking everywhere and have pretty much covered every square inch of the city's center by foot twice. I told Mack this morning that vacation has been long enough, we either need to move here or go home and move to LA. His response was, it's better that vacation was too long than too short, which is true so I shut up after that. I think we're going to try to go to a jazz club tonight or tomorrow so Mack can get his music fix, but it remains to be seen if I stay awake that long. (update: I did stay awake that long, and it ended up being an awesome night. First we went to a sports bar to watch the Brazil v. Someone World Cup game and there were these awesome (and hot) Brazilian drummers making a sound so dynamic everyone was bobbing their heads in the air.
Football has a ton of followers there. People lined up outside the patio where we sat and watched from the streets.
After the game we walked down to the jazz club and were the first ones there. It started to fill up quickly though, so we ended up with the best seats in the house. We got to meet the leader guy, a sax player named Akos Laki, and his apprentice, a guy named Rex from New Orleans. It was cool to see a New Orleanian performing in Amsterdam, but also kind of sad to see just how displaced New Orleans' musicians had become from Katrina, etc. I generally don't like jazz, except for like Louis Armstrong and Etta James kind, but I had a really good time watching them play. I'm sure the few beers I'd had added to my fascination, but whatever.
It was a great night, until we had to ride our bikes home and I completely had no idea where things were in the dark. I could remember if it was daylight, but night in Amsterdam looks completely different.
I guess since ít's the weekend I'll live it up and retox some more. I'm just so glad I don't have to do anything all I want to do is nothing. Vacation.
Hope everyone is doing well and not cooking in the hot pre-July weather. Love and hugs!
In the words of Vincent Vega, the guy who saved John Travolta from being a has-been: "It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different."
Examples?
The bikes made to carry an entire family and their groceries.
The conversation hearts brought to your table after dinner with Dutch on them.
The light poles in Shahin Shar that are made to look like illuminated trees.
The headscarves that mannequins and drawings of women wear in Iran at bathrooms, prayer rooms and other women-only entrances. 
The toilets that are different every place you go.
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