Fornicating memories

Music can bring back memories.
Sometimes of a period in life, other times of a specific occurrence.

I was working on the docks in Amsterdam doing rather hard and dirty work. My pulmonologist says I now have a scar on my lungs from that period.

In those days I was paid in cash at the end of the week; in a brown paper envelope with my name written in ink on the outside.

We had been living in the flat of my girlfriend’s mother for a couple of weeks. Now, as the mother was coming back from her holidays, we needed a place to live.

In the east of Amsterdam there is a building near the Zoo called the Hollandse Schouwburg (Holland’s Theatre).
Originally the Schouwburg was a Dutch theatre, but in 1941 the Nazi occupiers used it as an assembly point for the deportation of Jews.
Nowadays it is a monument with an eternal flame in memory of the deported Amsterdam Jews.

Right behind the Schouwburg in the adjacent street there was a courtyard that could only be reached through an alley.
In the courtyard there was a large building owned by a carpenter. He had his workshop on the ground floor.

The other floors had been converted into rooms separated by walls made of hardboard. That is where we went to live when my girlfriend’s mother came back from her holidays.

The room was small and the carpenter had used hardboard (again) to separate the room into three even smaller areas. One of these areas was an alcove big enough for a three-quarter bed.

Our neighbours were a young couple. Their alcove and our alcove were next to each other, just separated by hardboard.
The young couple were not too keen on us listening to their sexual activity. 

They solved the problem by playing a record of the Mamas and the Papas during their lovemaking.

Since that time, the music of the Mamas and the Papas reminds me of fornication.