Famished and exhausted, Neil and I threw our bags into our hotel room and stepped out onto Grass Market in search of nourishment. We found a little place called Café Jacques right across from our hotel. The front façade was bright blue, making it stick out like a sore thumb from the dark stone structures surrounding it.  Neil thought it apt to order a Scottish breakfast consisting of eggs, toast, baked beans, sausage and fresh squeezed orange juice. I wanted to do the same, but the combination of sleep-deprivation, booze and travel anxiety had turned my stomach into a chemistry lab of volatile elements on the verge of combustion. I managed to down a glass of O.J. and a croissant with strawberry jam, but even that seemed to test my body’s limits.

It took about five minutes on a bench dedicated to a man who had died trying to stop a runaway horse in 1907 to realize that we were no longer fit for public consumption so we high tailed it to the hotel room. I was tired. Dog tired. Tired as fuck. Walking dead. Whatever you want to call it, I couldn’t move too much anymore. Still I wasn’t ready to fall asleep. Old Neil crashed hard when his head hit the pillow. I, on the other hand had convinced myself of the fantasy that I would just be able to stay awake. I mean it wouldn’t be the first time I had pulled an all-nighter, right? The hotel had a pool and a sauna. Being that those are two luxuries of which I’ve learned to never waste over the years, I put on some swim shorts and made way to the recreation area. The only other person in the pool area was a member of the custodial staff. I gave him a manly nod, threw my towel on a chair, and fell backwards into the stainless steel lined pool, arms stretched like some kind of burnt out Jesus on the cross.

I could see and hear streetwalkers through the large glass windows that faced Grass Market. “God damn, those are some strong accents,” I thought to myself. I swam for about ten minutes then I spent another ten in the sauna. Shit was nice. Real nice, but I was starting to fade in and out of consciousness so I thought it best to get back to the hotel room. Neil was still fast asleep when I got back. “Fuck it,” I thought. To stay awake would be pure masochism, so I set a timer for two hours and passed out hard.

The sleep was light. I definitely didn’t fall into REM sleep at any point. No matter though, there’s a whole fucking country out there that I’ve never seen. We needed to get after it.

“Neil! Wake up man. We’re in Scotland!”

Neil emerged from his cocoon of pillows and blankets.

“WATER…. I NEED WATER,” he said with a voice of utter desperation.

He got on the phone and called room service.

“Hello? Yeah I am going to need two bottles, no four bottles… wait… make it six. Yeah, the biggest ones you have. How big are they? 1.5 liters? Perfect.”

Room service showed up shortly after the call. We tipped the guy delivering the water a couple pounds, sent him on his way and started chugging.

“Gotta have my water, man,” Neil said.

I had taken about four gulps when I noticed that Neil had completely chugged his first bottle and was already half way done with his second.

“Jesus, dude, you’re like a fucking camel.”

“Yeah, I don’t know man. What can I say?”

Neil clothed up, and gave himself a quick French bath. I threw my camera in my tiny backpack and we hit the streets. My stomach was still feeling all sorts of fucked up. I grabbed a banana at produce stand in the middle of the square outside our hotel. It was the only thing I knew that I could eat that wouldn’t add to my discomfort. Then Neil and I proceeded to get purposefully lost on the hilly streets of Edinburgh.

One of the first things I noticed about our new environment was the surprising lack visible law enforcement. I’m talking not a single cop the entire time we had been there, with the exception of one officer directing traffic at the airport. Blew my goddamned mind. I mean there were people everywhere, vagrants and drunkards all just going merrily about their day. This was foreign to me, unsettling even.

Evening soon fell upon us and we shifted gears from sightseeing to bar crawling. We’d each have a scotch and a local beer or cider at each pub but by the third location I could no longer garner any enjoyment from the drinking so I switched to water. Neil however was still going strong.

Utter exhaustion makes recollecting a few of these hours impossible but my memory of the evening picks back up as Neil and I were walking on West Port. “Let’s check out one of those strip clubs we saw earlier today,” Neil said to me. “Sure,” I replied. A young 20 something Scott in a Red Sox wind breaker and matching fitted cap overheard our exchange and interrupted.

“How’s it going mates? Overheard you saying you were looking for a strip club,” he said in an accent so thick I could barely understand it. “I’ve got these passes for the best club in town. All the girls are choice.”

“Umm, yeah?” I replied.

Neil was on the phone working his real estate dealings so I had to handle the exchange.  Not going to lie.  I was a little uneasy about it. I mean I don’t care if I am in a cozy little city with the smallest of crime statistics. Following a stranger through unfamiliar streets at night to an admittedly seedy stretch of town is a sketchy move by any standard.

Still, the guy was small, the streets were busy and there were two of us. I grabbed Neil’s attention and he looked at me while still talking on his phone.

“What’s up? No not you Chris, I’m talking to Matt.”

“Guy has a good deal on a strip club.”

“Let’s go.”

Neil was more concerned about his phone call than the particulars of our deluge into creeper-ville so I turned to the guy and told him to lead the way, all the while gripping my pepper spray in my coat pocket with the safety off.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Neil bought us both pepper spray before we left. When he first threw the prescription bottle sized canister at me in the hotel room hours earlier I was put a bit off balance. Frankly, I had never thought we would need something like that on our trip and the Buddhist in me took the smuggling of such a device into the U.K. as a bad Karma move. That said I’d be lying if I told you it didn’t give me some sense of security in that very moment.

Important note: I am not really a fan of strip clubs these days. When I was 18 and getting in with a fake I.D. to see an older woman I had a crush on compete in an amateur night it was pretty fucking awesome. If I have a friend that works at a club and they explicitly invite me, I go because, why the hell not? But now that I am older, the only times I can really enjoy myself in a strip club are when it is with a large, mixed gender group of friends or it is some kind of burlesque show. (I’m looking at you, Crazy Russian.) Any other scenario just rubs me the wrong way…pun intended.

We walked a couple of blocks, ending up in front of one of about five or six strip clubs located at the intersection of West Port, Lauriston Street, Bread Street, and East Fountainbridge. The seedy Scott escorted us to a club whose name I will leave out of this story, for I have no intention of besmirching the reputation of any specific establishment. We flashed our IDs and stepped into the red neon lit club.

CUE INSTANT CULTURE SHOCK.

Word to the wise: there is nothing more strange or unsettling than a Scottish strip club if you’re an American. It’s a completely different experience than an American club. Sure, the drinks are expensive, there are jocks shouting, business men leering and creepy dudes lurking in the corners just like any American establishment, but the real disconnect happens when it comes to the exchange of money. Back in the good old U-S-of-A we have one dollar [[BILLS]], ergo, when a performer gets on stage to dance, the viewer has the privilege of quite literally showering the dancer in money without blowing their whole paycheck by the end of the first song. In the U.K. however, one British pound is a coin made of nickel and brass, ergo throwing one on stage would amount to a degrading round of tiddlywinks. The only real way the dancers made money was through £5 lap dances.

The resulting atmosphere could most aptly be compared to that of an African savannah watering hole in the midst of a drought with the employees playing the roles of the lions and crocodiles, and the customers serving as the heard of thirsty prey.

The whole room reeked of desperation and discomfort. Literally no one looked like they were having fun. I most certainly wasn’t. Dancers sat on benches lined against the wall with faces caked with makeup that did little to hide the their looks of insecurity. Every man had either a look of disdain or was ogling so hard you’d think they were looking at their first Playboy while in the throws of puberty.

“Can we get out of here?” I said. “This is literally just making me feel sad and uncomfortable.”

“Sure, just let me finish my beer,” he said.

Neil pounded his nearly full Budweiser bottle and we made a B-line for the door. We stepped outside and both lit a cigarette.

“That can’t be what all strip clubs are like here,” he said. “Let’s go into one more just to be certain.”

“…Fine,” I said.

We walked into another club. Surprise surprise, it was exactly the same.

We left the second club.

“I’m done man,” I said.

“Alright buddy, let’s get back to the hotel.”

When we made it back, Neil ordered some room service and I got on my computer. Grietje was flying into Edinburgh from Germany the next day so we needed to get a loose plan together as far as when and where we would be meeting. We also needed to coordinate with a fella named John Wilson who would be letting us sleep at his flat for the remainder of our stay in Edinburgh. He was literally a friend of a friend of a friend. Grietje made the initial contact with John back when Neil and I were still states side. Her friend had crashed on his couch at some point and referred us to him. It was nuts. We didn’t know the guy at all, but there he was, inviting us to live with him for almost a week.

The traveler community is a rare and beautiful thing. I first got a taste of it when I hopped freight trains in my early twenties. In every city there are at least a few people who know what it’s like to be on the road and in need of a place to rest your head. As such, they make their homes available with the philosophy that one-day the favor will be returned by either you or someone else of the same ilk. This is the kind of shit that reaffirms my faith in humanity. It’s also far cheaper and is damn near guaranteed to result in an experience far truer to that of someone who lives in a city.

While we were out, John had messaged me with his address and a rough schedule of his day. There was a work party he would be attending in the afternoon. He said we were welcome to meet him there and get a key or wait until afterward. We chose the latter. I didn’t really want to just grab a dude’s key and walk into his place unescorted. It just didn’t seem polite or proper.

I got into bed and turned the T.V. on. 2012, the John Cusack movie where the world goes to shit was about two thirds of the way through on network television. “What a fucking day,” I thought to myself, then I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the destruction of humanity lull me to sleep.