Christi R. Suzanne

I sat in a hash house in Amsterdam. The acquaintances I sat with weren't much company. Some long gray haired guy sat down next to me. He was missing one of his front teeth. He had his own hash, but I didn't smoke or eat any of the brownies or shakes they made there. He flicked his eyes at me and tilted his head pretending to be demure. I was sober, and a little too sober for this kind of thing. Besides I’d never had a man flirt with me like I’d seen girls flirt with other men. I didn’t even flirt like that— or I hoped I didn’t. None-the-less, I turned to him and asked where he was from. He told me Australia. I told him I hadn't met anyone from Australia. He went on to tell me how he spent days in the bush looking for opossums. Then I asked, "What do you do with opossums?"

"I make sex toys." Pronouncing the “ex” in sex like the first vowel sound in egg.

I thought I misunderstood him with his thick Australian accent. Maybe he said he made saints toys or snakes toys. He went on to explain, "You know like hand cuffs, vibrators, what ever you want. I use the opossum's skin."

"Oh," I said. I didn't think I wanted to be talking to this skinny, dirty, missing his front tooth old man—especially not about sex toys.

"You're beautiful, a beautiful woman," he said.

Ew. Was he hitting on me? I felt so naive and stupid. "How long do you stay out in the bush?" That was the only question that came to mind. I tried to take the focus off of me. I didn't mean for it to sound sexual or like a proposition, honestly.

"A loooong time." He drew the word long out emphasizing his missing tooth. I could see the saliva sliding in between where his missing tooth, gums, and the surrounding teeth met, and his tongue, protruding out of his mouth with the l sound at the beginning of long. It looked liked an opossum's tail.

He stared at me with his small blue eyes. I blinked them away.

"What kind of sex toys do you like?" he asked.

I avoided the question.

"It's really hard to sell these things lately. Do you have some money to invest? Something like ten thousand American dollars?"

"I don't have that kind of money," I said.

"What's your sex fantasy? I'll do it—anything. Pay me whatever you have. You're a gorgeous woman."

I had met my first Austrailian entrepreneur.