It Doesn’t Matter Which Road You Take #7

Episode Seven: Holland

Van Gogh, a Nazi Rally and The Clapper

We disembark in Amsterdam and find this exit from the train station is the best way to enter a city. The doors open up into a huge brick courtyard. To the left is a huge building. It looks like an Orthodox Church, standing watch over the canal. Ahead, a bridge, curving over the canal and then leading casually toward the shops and houses. The heart of the city is just up ahead.

From our vantage point, it looks like the three million people have already arrived, and we wonder where we will be staying tonight. To my right is a guy offering to sketch my head for some Dutch money and to my left is the largest gathering of Hippie men and women I have ever seen. They are picking through each other’s dreadlocks and rearranging their multi-colored smocks and the one who appears to be the head of the group is actually laying on the sidewalk eating grapes. Across the canal is a man juggling sticks of fire. I wonder if I have enough film for this city.

We make our way to the hostel and act like we do not notice there are a million and a half people just outside the door. We act shocked that there is not a room available and ponder what to do next. He asks us if we have made any reservations and we nod our heads side to side, the international sign that we are idiots. He comes around the desk and heads out the door, motioning us to follow him. Is he headed to an alley to beat us up and steal our bags? Is he about to set the partying crowd loose on us for being so incompetent? Like infants, we follow.

He takes us to this weird little shop. At first, I am thinking it is some sort of travel agency due to the amount of postcards showing island destinations. Then again, a good number of postcards have pictures of S&M rituals or strange sexual positions, so I am not sure what it is they sell here. Chris says the postcards are very educational because he did not know you could pierce every part of the human anatomy.

The room is as big as a walk-in closet and consists of many phones against the wall. There are a fair amount of bongs for sale and our customer service representative is sitting on a tall stool. She is very skinny and is wearing a dark brown, skin-tight outfit, which shows off her attributes. I would find her attractive if her face did not have the look of someone who has been chain-smoking since the womb.

She gives us a once over, and says to the man, “Ze kunnen een van myn kamers huren.”

He tells us to follow her, and we are surprisingly able to keep up with this stick-woman, even with our fourteen hundred pound backpacks strapped to our persons. She takes us to an apartment that is next door to a police station. This in itself offers us some hope. We climb an amazing amount of stairs that are so narrow we literally have to put one foot in front of the other. The door opens to what could very well be the coolest apartment in all of Amsterdam.

The decorations are not much and the items strewn about lack a sense of taste. However, the wooden floors, large open space and the three giant windows that open into the street are more than enough to make us happy. She tells us we can stay for one night and that she wants us to pay her in advance. She charges us what the hostel is charging. In her broken English, she informs us that we are to sleep in the bedroom off to the side, as she will be renting the upstairs and downstairs to other travelers. We are happy to not only find a bed to sleep in, but to have such a cool place to hang out. She waltzes her skin-tight, brown-clad, chain-smoking body out of there and we are free to settle in.

Chris is not too happy that we have to share a bed. It is a big bed, but that does not make him any happier. I do not think I am that bad of a bed partner and this makes me feel unloved. He suggests that perhaps I would like to sleep out on the couch. I suggest he bite me. Plus, I am afraid that the skinny lady might come back, see me on the couch and make me do what some of those postcards were advertising.

We are excited to have a bathroom and take showers like real people. I have the great notion of washing my clothes in the tub and then hanging them out to dry. We make ourselves pretty and then head out on the town. The Queen is having a birthday party and we want to show her we care.

Our apartment is one block over from the Red-Light District. We did not know this until we found ourselves suddenly window shopping for vibrators and inflatable women. The stores look like regular stores, but when you get to the window displays, it is just a giant mound of devices, all with the same thing in mind, to make you say Oooohhh!

The next block over we notice a lot of people milling around and what looks like tourist groups stopping and staring. We are heading towards them when a man, who wants to know if I want to see two women make love to each other, approaches me. I think I say something like, huh? He points to a club with pictures of naked people painted on the side and asks if I would like to see people having sex. I tell him I really had not planned on it and he counters with the proposition of my wanting to possibly watch a woman have sex with a dog. Chris has gotten far enough ahead that I am able to pretend that I am interested and want to see if my friend will come. Without looking back I catch up to Chris and scurry ahead.

We reach the droves of tourists and realize we are in the heart of the famous Red-Light District. What this consists of is streets of windows, much like those cute boulevards one strolls to do one’s holiday shopping, except the displays consist of women in lingerie or bikinis offering to fulfill your sexual urges. I find this fascinating as hell.

We walk up and down the streets, not being able take in all that we are seeing. At one point I go the wrong direction and find where they keep the, shall we say, less desirables. Walking down a darkened alley, I realize it is a dead end. At the same time, I hear a woman’s voice telling me to come visit her. What I see ahead is a toothless, aged face, reflected in a mirror that has been rigged above her window and angled toward the open end of the alley. I mumble a no thank you and back out of the alley. She shouts at me to come back and I walk a little faster. I know for a fact that her door is not locked and you never know if she was a sprinter in her earlier years.

We stay within the groups of tourists and this makes us feel safer. After a while Chris is tired of this but I am thinking this is probably better than a day spent at Mr. Hefner’s mansion. We make a lucky turn and find ourselves in what I can only call the best of the best. The girls we are seeing are amazing, and it’s not just them, I can also appreciate the time they have spent putting together their window displays.

We pass a huge window that shows a living room decorated with old Victorian furniture. There is a woman on the phone, one reading on the couch and a third idly passing the time watching people walk by. All three are in classy lingerie. They are beautiful enough to be professional models and the entire scene looks like a photo shoot for another one of Victoria’s dirtier little secrets.

On the next block, we see the women we have heard about, the college girls, who do this for the extra money. There is a group of men hooting and hollering in front of one of the windows and we see a girl in her mid-twenties, stunning to look at and gyrating to a dance beat. The girl next door, just as pretty, decides she cannot hold herself still any longer and walks over to join her friend, moving to the rhythm. They are both wearing bikinis, and after some more dancing, decide to engage in some erotic lesbian dance moves. The crowds of men cheer them on.

I hear a woman a few doors down explain to a prospective customer that it only costs thirty American dollars to spend some time with her. Both of us swear we have been to high school with some of these girls. I tell Chris I think it is time we left.

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