Into the Jungle

“And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is." ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

[Fair warning: the following several posts are going to get increasingly “raunchy.” I have not spared much detail in making sure that I keep this record as accurate and honest as possible. Some of the material in the post is certainly "PG-13" or “R-rated” in terms of content, and later ones get increasingly graphic. If you would like the cliff notes version, I’d be happy to share it with you either via email, or when I get back.]

April 12, 2013 (Continued)
The details of meeting up with the group are somewhat boring and insignificant. When I walked in, they were sitting at a large table by the door. I met Andy, and then had the spotlight introduction as everyone rapid fired their names to me along with a million questions about myself.

I took a seat at the end of the table. At Andy’s recommendation, I ordered the special for the night. He said it was a “traditional Dutch meal.” It turned out to be potatoes, carrots, and onions all mashed together—like mashed potatoes—served with sausage. It was spicy but tasted great.

The group was about the same size as in Barcelona. Andy and his girlfriend Jen were our co-guides for the weekend. The group was made up of eight girls—one from England, two from Canada, and five from America—and me. Everyone was very friendly, and I was proud of myself for not being nervous at all in meeting new people.

After we ate and divided up the bill, we set out for the main attraction of the evening: the guided tour of the red light district.

Standing outside Little Quarter, Andy made a series of dramatic hand gestures, saying, “Before we begin, we are all going to reach inside the inner recesses of our minds, take all of our inhibitions, judgments, and beliefs, and crush them on the ground. We are about to see things you won’t believe you are seeing—even as you look straight at them. The world as you know it is about to be shattered, and everything you believed is going to be challenged. Whose ready?!”

We all laughed.

“So actually,” he continued, “our hostel is pretty much right smack dab in the middle of the Red Light District.”

That would have been nice to know in the promotional material.

He went on to explain how the prostitution industry works in Amsterdam. While prostitution is legal, pimping is strictly forbidden (and harshly punished if discovered.) Basically, the women are all private contractors. They will choose the building they wish to work at and sign up for shifts to work a station. In each “office” is a bed, a bathroom, and various toys. The entire office has one large window, allowing potential clients to see the work space, and a glass door. All of the girls stand in the doorway (sometimes with it open, others waiting for a client to approach) but it is up to them if the curtain is drawn on their window or not.  They aren’t allowed to be naked, but they are allowed to be as scantily clad as they wish.

Rates generally run 50 euros for fifteen minutes. Any intimate touching or fondling is an additional fee. There is also an additional fee for kissing, along with any toys or products that are used. The 50 euros only covers traditional sex—oral, anal, or alternative positions cost extra. When a client approaches a prostitute, she will open her door to him (if it wasn’t open already.) They will agree to the terms, and money must be given up front. Once the cash changes hands, she’ll close the door, draw the curtains, and they will do the deed.

The term red-light district comes from the literal red lights that hang over the doors of the prostitution shops. Red light is said to cover any blemishes so it has been used to make the women look more attractive. There however a few blue lights as well. Generally the main light over the door is red, but a small blue light will be seen in the corner of a window. “That means that woman has a little something extra in her package,” Andy explained.

A few of the shops have two women in the doorway. The prices for these shops fluctuate. There is the option to pay for a three-way or for a private lesbian show. Again, the terms would be negotiated on the front end.

“Believe it or not,” Andy explained. “The red light district is one of the safest zip codes in Europe. See that,” he said pointing at the top of a corner building. “That’s a security camera. The whole city is monitored by cameras. The women also have alarms—generally on their wrists or someone by the door. If at any time they feel threatened, they can press the alarm and a siren will blare across the whole city. Not only are the building monitors always watching their girls—usually from across the street—but the other prostitutes will all come out of their shops and defend whichever one is being threatened. The police can be anywhere in the city within 30 seconds. It’s really amazing.”

The only rule to the red-light district is that photography is strictly forbidden. They’re motto is that “they are people, and photographing them would be inhumane.”

“Are you ready to take the plunge?” Andy asked.

Winding around a few corners and through a few alleys, our first stop was not a strip of prostitutes, but a psychedelic mushroom bar. Not only is marijuana legalized in Amsterdam—or rather “decriminalized”—but so are shrooms and LSD. This particular bar had eerie metallic music and flashing strobe lights. Thick fog from a smoke machine billowed out the open windows.

“See this place,” Andy said. “The Dutch wouldn’t get caught dead in a bar like that. Since drugs have been decriminalized, the Dutch use of them has almost stopped completely. Now it’s just a tourist industry. If the Dutch smoke…and that’s a big if…they do it at home, and only on special occasions.
But the Bob Marley thing and the real trippy crap…that’s a show for the tourists.”

 As we wandered through town a little bit, Andy pointed out a few porn shops. There was a granny porn shop with very graphic photos covering the windows. There was a gay porn shop, which looked something like a Best Buy with several HD TV screens sampling videos in the windows. There was banana porn, and sadistic porn, teenage porn, etc. All of the naked and aroused images were plastered to the windows, or displayed in clear view for pedestrians passing by.

We soon wandered a little bit outside of town, and stopped on a bridge, where Andy pointed out the largest Buddhist temple in Europe. He also pointed to a green structure across the bridge. It was like a piece of sheet metal, wrapped so that from an areole view it would look like a snail shell. The entire structure was probably about 4 ½ feet tall.

“That’s a public urinal,” Andy explained. “Dudes can go in and relieve themselves, and then get about their days. This bridge is significant actually. During the whole 1960s and 1970s feminist movement, the women in Holland were demanding that if there were public urinals for men there should be public urinals for women. When the government said no, nearly 100 women came and stood on this bridge and at the same time, dropped their pants and let out a huge piss on the bridge. The government gave in and built those silos looking things for women.

“Unfortunately, 1960s and 70s, those silos became great places to shoot up heroine, so they were shut down within a few years.”

We crossed over to another bridge a few blocks down. The city was literally crawling with canals everywhere.

“Now as I told everyone earlier, religion was pretty much outlawed in Amsterdam for like 200 years. During that time, a group started a secret church in one of the houses behind me. Do you see it?”

Sure enough, one of the canal houses had a small cross and little wooden spires on the roof. It was unassuming and decorative, but if you knew it was there, it would be a hidden gem.

“Alright, enough fooling around,” Andy said. “Time to dive into the bush.”

That sounded ominous.

We took a different entrance back into the city, and within minutes we’d found the girls. I have to say, had I not seen it myself, I’m not sure I would have believed it was real. Most of them were clad in a bra and thong. Occasionally, one was topless with either her hair or tassels covering her nipples. Most of them either had their doors open, or would stand behind them with one hand on the nob and the other tapping on the glass to wave customers in.

But they were lined up one after another. The ones who weren’t tapping the glass were usually stroking their body or playing with their hair suggestively. It didn’t take long before we saw a man approach one. Andy stopped us to watch the exchange. The girl opened her door, they talked for about 45 seconds, he handed over a wad of cash, and within less than a second, she pulled him, closed the door and drew the curtain.

“Ridiculous, right?” Andy asked.

We stopped by the Prostitute Information Center (PIC.) Here, women can sign up for the windows they want to work. They also provide day care and a basic health and dental insurance plan that the women can sign up for. Tourists can also come to the PIC to get a 15 minute tour the history of prostitution in Amsterdam. They also do souvenir photos where tourists can “dress” as prostitutes and pose in a fake window for a picture.

Next door to the PIC is the PSS (Prostitute Supply Shop) where they can buy condoms, lube, and toys—as well as snacks and hair accessories—that they may need for their shift.

We walked down one street with women on both sides of the alleyway. “Check this out,” Andy said. He pointed to a tiny, one or two room office between two prostitution windows. “Read the sign above the door.” Klueterschool.”

“It’s a school?” one of the girls asked.

“It’s a kindergarten,” Andy said. “Right here in the heart of the red light district. They just tell the kids that the women are going to the beach or something.”

One of the girls asked if there were any male prostitutes, besides the transvestites with the blue lights. Andy explained that there are numerous sex services where women can call to find men, but they don’t pose in the windows. He explained that the building owners found that men will buy women based on their appearance, but women tend to want more intimacy first.

Our next stop was a brothel. We went inside and wound up and down the stairs of the building. Like the streets outside, all of the lighting was red and women (and their clients) wandered about the hallway in nothing more than tight underwear.

We next cut through an alleyway that was the narrowest alley in Europe. If I walked straight ahead, my shoulders would touch either side of it. There were prostitute shops in the alley, so shuffling sideways, and passing traffic the opposite direction was required. Andy said it was a lot less sketchy than it used to be since they shaved about an inch off the one side.

Along a few of the streets, we noticed that a number of the women were talking on their cell phones.

“They aren’t even trying to get business,” one of the girls said.

“Either that or they are booking business for later tonight,” another one said.

“Either way,” I said, “don’t most people get in trouble for talking on the phone at work?”

Andy pointed out a site to go see a live sex show. It consisted of six, 10 minute acts that just repeated one after the other. That was an optional event for the next night, but tonight, our tour did include a 2 minute token for a peep show.

“Regardless of what you believe,” Andy said, “I’m going to encourage you to give it a try. It is a cultural experience, and it’ll make a great story for the grandkids someday.”

Andy gave us the tokens and told the girls to double up in their booths. “You’re going to have to be the lone creepy dude,” he told me as he gave me mine. I stepped into a booth and locked the door.

Inserting my token to the machine, the lights went out and the curtain in front of me lifted up to reveal a window. On the other side was rotating mattress. On the mattress was a woman wearing thick rimmed glasses, high heeled boots and a white maternity belt. Nothing else. She rotated about every fifteen seconds between fondling her breasts, fingering her genitals, and spanking herself.

As Pope Benedict said, “The problem with pornography isn’t that it reveals too much, but that it reveals too little.” As I watched the show, I thought to myself What does this woman think about at night? Does she have kids to feed? Groceries to buy? Laundry to do? Is she proud of this and beaming with self-confidence or is it just a paycheck for her? Was this her only option or her best option?

When the two minutes was up, the lights flashed on and the window went dark. The small little curtain closed, and a line outside my door started knocking. As I exited, there was a reminder that if you liked what you saw, you could reserve a private booth and they would bring that girl to do the same thing for you for ten minutes. You’d still be hidden behind a glass window, but as she did her show, you’d be allowed to masturbate.

Outside, Andy pointed out the Bull Dog, a coffee shop he had frequented when he first started putting this trip together. Coffee shops in Amsterdam do not sell caffeinated beverages, but have menus of various marijuana products that they will prepare in a bong for you to smoke in the shop.

“So I was sitting outside at The Bull Dog this one time making some notes and there’s this big commotion across the street,” Andy explained. “Pretty soon, these two guys come tumbling out of a bar really going at it. All of a sudden, the one makes a direct hit to the back of the other guy’s skull and he goes down hard. The guy looks at his body shriveled on the ground. He kicks him once, and he doesn’t move. The guy then kicks him like five or six times, until his body tumbles into the canal. I have no idea what happened to him.

“Now I bring that story up because even though Amsterdam is safe, a lot of tourists disappear from here every year. They don’t disappear because it's dangerous. They disappear because they dive into the drugs, do stupid stuff they shouldn’t have, piss somebody off, and, well wind up in a really bad situation. So Amsterdam is safe, it is fun, but don’t do stupid stuff just because it’s legal.”

At that point, we went back to the hostel. Andy and Jen were staying across town, so they told us to be ready at 10am the next morning. We said we would be, and headed into the bar. The girls went to get drinks, but I decided to call it a night.

Back in my room, a few people were asleep but most of the bunks were empty. I ducked into the bathroom and took a long, disinfecting shower. When I got out, I discovered there was in fact a locker under my bunk and I stowed my things in there. I slept with my wallet and iPod in the pockets of my pajama pants.

Before going to bed, I journalled like crazy about what I had just seen. I honestly didn’t believe it. It felt like somewhere between Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague and Amsterdam Centraal station, I had left planet Earth. I’d certainly left my comfort zone.

The Wi-Fi in the room was great so I fired off a few emails, Facebook posts, and even texted a bit with some friends. I tried to go to sleep a few times, but the screaming and various smells from outside kept waking me up. I decided not to let it bother me. When I woke up, I’d add a few more details to my journal, fire off a few more emails, and try to get back to sleep.

The last time I remember waking up was about 1am. From that point on, I was in the safety of my dreams.