Best Flop Ever

"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."
— Bill Gates

The past, present, and future walked into a bar… It was tense.

Caitlyn laughed when she thought about this joke while entering the Princess on Saturday night, 26th of April 1986.

Much, much later she would reminisce about its incredible truth and significance that night, both for her personally and in history.

Tjernobyl's catastrophe, the biggest nuclear disaster went down that twilight.

But the cramped bar in the center of Amsterdam was only famous for its good atmosphere, open 24 hours and accessible even when you were a female on your own. Just a fun place to be, a brown pub, one of many back then.

It was already two in the morning and she was searching for a place to stay the rest of the night before she returned by train to her home town.

That evening she had been eating delicious food in a quaint little restaurant, dancing in the famous club of Baghwan, the Indian Guru, and walking the small streets of the Dutch capital.

A little lost like all the other souls occupying the night.

WHEN SHE OPENED the door of the Princess, little did she know that act would alter her life forever.

Buzz, murmur, and whispers.

Packed shoulder to shoulder were at least fifteen people holding drinks, laughing, talking, nodding, and enjoying themselves by the looks of their rosy cheeks and heated faces.

"Yes, I will get us another drink, hold on...".
"So I said to him, I said, what moron are you to think that I would fall for something like that..."
"No, she is not my mother, dude...she is my date...".

The twenty-five-year-old had to rub shoulders, pinch and push bodies to get to the back of the pub where she found a toilet. After she used it and bought a coke at the counter there was a place to sit in the farthest corner. A wooden bench with a square table.

Pffff. She sighed with relief. That's when she decided to close her eyes and rest for awhile.

"Oh, My God."

A man's voice woke her up. Apparently he had spilled his beer at the table where he sat in front of her, looking at her with big eyes, looking and liking what he saw.

Caitlyn smiled. "Never mind, you can clean it up with a napkin at the counter."

She looked at her watch, she had been sleeping for more than an hour.

"Can I get you something to drink?", he asked with a friendly, soft tone.

"Sure, a black coffee, please, I have been napping."

While he went to the barkeeper she looked around. The bar was less crowded, only four men stood next to the window talking and drinking their beers. And a couple sitting at the other end of the pub, holding hands.

"Here you go, I am Chris by the way". He placed the coffee mug in front of her. Sipped his beer.

"Caitlyn". She watched him. Nice looking, 40-ish, chubby but not fat, brown hair, friendly eyes.

He sat next to her on the wooden bench. Shoulder to shoulder, cozy!

That's when things became sort of hazy.

They talked for hours on end, feeling comfortable in eachother's company, very relaxing. What about she could not say. Life, work, the usual probably.

It was 6 o'clock in no time when she realized she had to go.

He volunteered to walk her to the station.

For about 15 minutes they waited, sitting high up on a brick wall in the center of Central Station. She remembered her feet moving next to his feet. They were as small as hers.

They talked about a future while looking at an old couple in front of them. They sighed about what could have been. Then they said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek.

In a hurry, Caitlyn ran to the train, boarded, and traveled home.

She went to sleep immediately.

THE FOLLOWING DAYS Caitlyn puffed and pondered, hissed and huffed, and was very much under the influence of the meet-up with Chris. Was she in love? She wondered.

The next week, she went back to the pub. She thought she saw him but didn't dare to approach him, so she left a note at the counter, figuring he was a regular. The week thereafter she saw him sitting on a wall in the middle of her city, looking at her, smiling, but she was so overwhelmed she walked right past him.

Then she saw an ad in the paper she thought could be from him. She answered and left her telephone number. Weeks later she received an empty call in the middle of the night. She spoke for hours on the phone, never receiving an answer. But she knew it was Chris.

So, after months she should have forgotten all about him, but she didn't. It got worse and she decided to write poems on the event that held her clutched in his arms.

Within weeks she found a publisher and published a couple of poetry booklets.

Years later, if she had to explain what made her write in the first place, she would tell the story of Chris, and how that never came to be.

But Caitlyn found her career in writing and felt very fortunate about it.

"This," her hand trembling with age during an outdoor interview, pointing, "is the pub known as the Princess. Now a vegan restaurant. Here my writing started. Here the success began. I have to thank Chris for being the one who got away!"

WC: 942