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December, 2018.

I was in Amsterdam on some European Vacation vibes. I’d been pretty overworked at the record company and as the holidays started to roll around, I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another Christmas in New York with all the clueless, wide-eyed, overweight tourists and their determination to create as much sidewalk congestion as possible. My sister was throwing together a holiday celebration at her new crib in LA, but I wasn’t about to do another corny-ass palm-tree ‘Christmas in the sand’, either. I kind of just wanted to run away from the holidays that year. I mean, it wasn’t really on some Grinch shit, I was just tired. So, I had decided to spend my Christmas kicking back in Amsterdam eating mushrooms, and avoiding all the western Christmas nonsense.

Pretty quickly upon my arrival in Amsterdam, I started seeing this Polish baddie, Oola. A day shy of Christmas Eve, she invited me to a club event where she was getting paid an absurd amount of money to walk around with some big blue tequila bottles - you know the kind where you slap the top of the bottle and it rings like a bell when the bottle is empty? Those. All Oola had to do was walk around with the bottle for a bit and post a few pictures on her ‘Gram (@OolaLa.AMST) and ka-ching. 

I hung back in the club’s VIP lounge for most of the night. At one point, the club promoter slipped me a couple of mushroom caps. I ate like four and kept it moving. As the event died down, Oola and I got invited to this late-night Christmas party that the promoter was throwing. We were intrigued, and the psychedelics were kicking in, so we accepted the invite. You already know the place was filled to the brim with some fake ass suckas; everyone on some performative “we gotta work together” bullshit, praising me to whoever was passing by but finishing with “I can’t afford your services right now, but we should definitely work together sometime.” Annoying. Anyway, as it got later, shit started getting a little freaky, like on some Eyes Wide Shut type of noise - you know, venetian masks and ritualistic sex sessions and shit. Wasn’t my vibe. Plus, I was tripping dick. I had to find my girl so we could dip.

After seeing some wild shit that not even holy water could absolve me from, I stepped outside for some fresh air. I hoped none of those masked-up deviants had linked up with Oola, but I needed a break from searching. As I stood on the stoop outside of the party, I suddenly heard the soothing sounds of a flute ring out from an unclear distance. I immediately thought of Kenny G, and it set me off. 

Everyone in the industry knew Kenny G was basically the biggest scumbag in smooth jazz. My mind turned to my sister, who Kenny had hooked up with some years back. He dated her for five weeks, ghosted her, then sent her a $1900 invoice for “The Pleasure of His Flute-Accompanied Lovemaking.” So yeah, I had beef with Kenny G. Knowing of Kenny G’s love for both European tourism and anonymous group sex, I took a deep breath in and decided to follow this enchanting sound thinking it may be Kenny. I was ready to kick his ass.  

After a few circular strolls around the block with indomitable determination, I found the source of the flute sounds. It was an Andre 3000 sighting! A real Christmas miracle. There had been a growing mystique around 3000 and his potential whereabouts, and there he was, in plain sight. I was bugging. Of course, I’m a fan, who isn't?

I approached Andre and he lifted his head up slowly to face me. I asked if it was really him, or if I was just straight up hallucinating. 

“We all hallucinating, big dog.” He said to me, “What you see is what you’re meant to.”

His response seemed appropriate. Still, I had a ton of questions: When is the new album dropping? You need some help with it? When did you become the Pied Piper? 

Everything outta Andre’s mouth was like a  riddle. He thought he was master Shifu or something. Andre had always been fascinating but he was talking like a shaman at this point - dispelling legitimate if not difficult to decipher wisdom between flute riffs. I let him rattle off his more random thoughts until, ultimately, I felt compelled to ask Three Stacks a more personal question. 

“What brings you out here, 3000?” I asked. 

“I am a specter of the most divine order, a flame flickering in the wind, representing the planet of St. Owner. I fly, and I land where I’m needed…” he said. Or you know, it was some shit like that.

“Don’t you have a family to be with? Like, kids? I mean, it’s Christmas and you out here playing flute outside a sex party.”

He laughed for the first and only time during our chance encounter. Said his girl and his kids were staying in a hotel down the block, and he just went outside for a stroll and some “flute time”. Made sense. He asked if I was spending the holidays alone, and scoffed at my response. I told him about coming out to Amsterdam to avoid New York, then I told him about my sister’s get together in LA, and the whole Kenny G mixup, and he seemed to make a connection. Said my anger toward Kenny was misplaced. Said I had it all twisted. I told him I didn’t know what he meant. 

“Damn.” He said. “Silly mortals haven’t a clue.”

Thinking I may be hallucinating the whole encounter, I asked for his number. Just as his mouth opened to speak, I heard Oola calling my name in the distance. I quickly turned around to respond, and when I turned back to Andre, he had disappeared like Batman. Mad rude. Still, I felt I’d been, in some way, blessed.

Snow started to fall as Oola ran out to meet me and told me all about her experience watching the masked deviants get down as she peaked on mushrooms. I took her hand and we started to walk back toward the party, ready to call a car. I started rambling on about what just happened with Andre. Oola listened carefully to what I was saying but she clearly wasn’t buying any of it. I could tell. She kissed me on the cheek, and got into a rideshare she had ordered for herself while I was telling her my Andre story. Nice girl. Never would have worked. 

I pulled my phone out to order a car of my own when I looked up and saw an obviously hammered man waving to me. It was Kenny G - stumbling out of the sex party. I approached him with some anger, but almost immediately made the decision to squash our beef after he apologized for “that whole ordeal with my sister”. He said he was back in therapy and working on himself. I decided to believe him. He told me he was weirdly happy to see me. Kenny knew he was gonna be all alone for Christmas, so he flew his private plane out to Amsterdam to spend the holidays “away from everyone”. Sounded sad when he said it. We shared a cigar on the stoop and I listened to him tell me about how he had the “biggest flute in music” as I booked an overnight flight to LA from my phone. 

Made it to my sister’s just in time for Christmas dinner. Roast chicken, yams with the extra syrup, fish and grits, and all that pimp shit. 

A solid holiday, after all. 

Aight, stay up. 

- ‘Cisco.