Gaite Jansen: Rain, Whiskey, and a Locked Door

Gaite Jansen and the Soaked Coat

Rain hit Amsterdam as if the sky had a personal complaint, ricocheting off the canal and needling the windows of a corner brown café. The interior glowed weak and amber, a light that made saints look shifty. Gaite Jansen was stationed behind the bar, sleeves shoved to her elbows, hair knotted up anyhow, a cloth slung over one shoulder, and a smirk already loaded. She watched water run off my collar, then studied my face. 'You resemble a dog that tangled with a downspout and lost.' I said that matched my mood. No question about whiskey: she poured, pushed it over the gouged wood, and rested on her forearms. 'Drink first. Talk second. Then I will judge whether you have earned a dry towel.' Nearly nobody inside: a couple of old men bickering at a muted football game, one woman in the corner babysitting a beer, rain carrying the conversation. Gaite patrolled the floorboards like proprietor, polishing glassware, squaring coasters, mocking my coat, hair, music. Whenever she came near, soap, cigarette smoke, and a warmer note reached me. Her gaze lingered a beat past polite; mine kept dropping to the small gold chain at her throat and how it jumped when she laughed.

She kept me off balance on purpose, asking whether I intended to drip on every stool or just the nice ones, then sliding a coaster under my glass with exaggerated care. The whiskey was cheap and hot and did its work. She wiped the bar around my elbows, close enough that her wrist brushed mine, and told me I had the posture of a man who owed somebody money. I said I had the posture of a man who had walked too far in bad weather. She tilted her head, unconvinced, and let the silence stretch until I felt it behind my ribs.

The Rule She Sets

By the time my glass was empty, the old men had shuffled out and the woman in the corner had called a cab. Gaite flipped the sign to CLOSED, turned the lock with a click that carried too far, and came back around the bar. 'Now,' she said, 'you get to explain why you came in here soaked through instead of going home.' I told her I liked the look of the place. She snorted. 'Nonsense. You like the look of the bartender.' She lifted my glass, finished the last sip herself, and put it down hard. Her mouth was red from the whiskey and her eyes had that flat, steady quality that makes your stomach drop. 'Here is the rule,' she said, close enough now that her knee touched mine. 'No shyness in my backroom. You get to be honest. If you are not honest, I will send you back into the rain with your dick in your hand and no hard feelings.' I told her honesty was possible. Her smile came slow and sharp. 'Good. I am not in the mood to guess.'

Inside the Backroom With Gaite Jansen

The backroom barely deserved the name: a couch with a split seam, a radiator that clanked, a stack of crates, and a bare bulb throwing shadows up the walls. Gaite pulled the curtain over the little window, turned, and flattened her hand on my chest. 'Coat off. Now.' I fumbled it away; she helped by hauling one sleeve, then the other, and dropping the wet weight on a crate. Her fingers found my belt and she did not hurry. She watched my face while she worked the buckle, as if checking for second thoughts. There were none. She opened my jeans and put her hand inside and I made a noise that was not a word. 'There he is,' she said, quiet and pleased. Then she kissed me hard, whiskey and rain and the small bite of her teeth on my lip. I pushed her shirt up; her skin was warm and damp from the bar, her back arching into my palms. She shoved me onto the couch, climbed over me, and rolled her hips slow, denim on denim, until I was half-mad and breathing through my mouth. 'You are easy,' she said. 'I like easy.'

She got out of her jeans and kicked them behind her; the bare bulb stretched a long shadow from her legs. I pulled her down by the waist and she came willing, one knee on either side of me, her mouth at my ear saying filthy, practical things about what she wanted and how. When she sank down on me she did it in one steady push, hands braced on my chest, breath catching once before she found her rhythm. The radiator clanked. Rain hammered the little window. She rode me like she was settling a score, head down, chain swinging, and every time I tried to slow her she bit my shoulder and told me to keep up. I got a hand between us and she jerked, cursed, and moved faster. 'Do not you dare stop,' she said, and I did not. She came with her forehead against mine and her nails in my chest, a long shudder rolling through her whole body, and I followed right after, holding her hips still and grunting into her throat. Afterward she stayed on top of me, sweaty and heavy and breathing hard, and laughed at the ceiling. 'See?' she said. 'Honest.'

Afterward, Bruises, and Plain Truth

We did not dress right away. She sat with her knees up and the towel around her shoulders and made me tell her the truth about why I had come in, and then she told me the truth about her week: a broken tap, a landlord who would not fix it, a regular who tipped in coins and complained. It was ordinary and dirty and good. She had a bruise on her shin from a crate and could not remember getting it. She stole the whiskey from my breath with another kiss, then pushed me toward the door. 'Go home before the rain stops,' she said. 'If it stops, you will have no excuse to come back.' I told her I would find one. She smiled and flipped the lock open, and the street beyond smelled like wet stone and fry oil.

A Dry Coat and an Open Door

I stepped out, and she stood in the frame with the light behind her and the towel still around her shoulders. 'Hey,' she called, before I had gone ten steps. 'Bring a dry coat next time. And do not be late.' The door shut. The rain kept coming.