Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction by Steven Martin

Author:Steven Martin [Martin, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Self-Help, Biography & Autobiography, Substance Abuse & Addictions, Drug Dependence
ISBN: 0345517830
Publisher: Villard
Published: 2012-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

In 2003, I was one of a handful of people interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal Europe for a story—the premise of which was “Is there anything left to collect in Asia?” Another collector of opium antiques was quoted in the article, a Dutchman named Armand Hoorde who lived in Amsterdam. He was also a collector of “Chinese erotica,” painted and sculpted images that were essentially very early pornography. He claimed in the article to have been attracted to antique opium-smoking paraphernalia because of the drug’s historical associations with prostitution in China. I remember reading that comment and thinking about how journalists often latch onto some quote because of its color, not because it is relevant to the interview as a whole. Over the next few years I heard bits and pieces about Hoorde. He was said to be very wealthy, but he didn’t make annual trips to Asia like Helmut P. Instead, he relied on Parisian antiques dealers to bring pieces to him. Other collectors who had glimpsed Hoorde’s collection had pronounced it magnificent.

Not long after I began joining Roxanna for regular sessions, I was contacted by Hoorde, who said he would be traveling to Thailand with his family and wanted to meet me. I was glad for the chance to get to know him. When he arrived I made my way across town to meet him at his posh hotel. “Armie,” as he insisted I call him, was pushing sixty but a full head of hair made him look much younger. He was warm and boyishly enthusiastic, and we hit it off right away. Hoorde was traveling with his wife, who I later learned was descended from Javanese nobility, and their stunningly beautiful twentysomething daughter, Pearl.

Although I had for years been freely sharing photographic images of my collection via email to most anybody who was interested, I almost never invited anyone to come to my apartment to view my collection in person—a result of collector’s paranoia combined with embarrassment at my having capitulated in the war against Bangkok’s dust. Hoorde pleaded to see my collection, and because I had a good feeling about him, I brought him up to have a look. The visit went well. He asked good questions and professed abundant envy—the quickest way to a collector’s heart. Later I took him to a nearby coffee shop, the old-fashioned kind of which there were once dozens in Chinatown: Occupying the ground floor of a shophouse, it had ceiling fans, marble-top tables, and highly sweetened coffee strained through a bag that looked like a sock.

Hoorde had some propositions for me. He asked if I would consider collecting for him, purchasing pieces in Bangkok and then reselling them to him. He promised top dollar. He also told me about an exhibition that he was working to arrange at a museum in Rotterdam. He said he needed help writing the exhibition catalog, intimating that if I agreed to this, an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe would be part of the deal, timed so that I could be on hand for the opening of his show.

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