Admit it. At some point in time, you’ve wondered about being a drug dealer. Let’s be honest, it seems like a great gig. Dealers work their own hours, make decent coin and are always out mingling. While the illicit dispensing of narcotics run contrary to my ethics as an officer of the court and against something we call the “laws of the land”, we can all submit that a drug dealer gig can’t be beat. Plus dealers are smooth and cool, right? Wrong.
One night in the streets of Amsterdam, a slight misunderstanding with an enterprising individual from this particular trade almost resulted in my friends and I knifed like pigs prepped for a town feast. How did we end up in this sticky situation given that hallucinogens are wonderfully legal in this part of the world?
The series of unfortunate events began one crisp and grey autumn afternoon as Wall Street dude and I merrily disembark out of a choo-choo train from Brussels. To get to our lodgings, we hauled our luggage and boarded one of the trams that run on lines like arteries throughout the city. Amsterdam is much like Coruscant, that busy city from Star Wars. But instead of space ships darting through sky lanes, the city has boats, BMWs and bikes zooming all over, with its riders pedal-pushing around with reckless abandon. It seemed like the Dutch’s favorite hobby was running over hapless tourists with their silver Schwinns.
The series of unfortunate events began one crisp and grey autumn afternoon as Wall Street dude and I merrily disembark out of a choo-choo train from Brussels. To get to our lodgings, we hauled our luggage and boarded one of the trams that run on lines like arteries throughout the city. Amsterdam is much like Coruscant, that busy city from Star Wars. But instead of space ships darting through sky lanes, the city has boats, BMWs and bikes zooming all over, with its riders pedal-pushing around with reckless abandon. It seemed like the Dutch’s favorite hobby was running over hapless tourists with their silver Schwinns.
We checked in to our hotel late but it wasn’t long until I adjusted to the gothic hedonism of the city. Given that consumption of the happy-time biologics is a city-wide obsession, our first stop, quite naturally, was one of the city’s heralded coffee shops. Behold the "Rokerya." Inside, the customers were welcomed by the usual giggling babble and blank stares of fellow patrons. Multi-colored Christmas lights and Tibetan tapestries are flung about. Amidst the dim light, patches of aromatic clouds filled the bohemian sanctuary. We stared at the laminated menu where offerings such as “New York Cheese”, “Hawaiian Haze” and “Afghan” stared us back. We ordered some hash, picked out some complimentary rolling paper and laughed at our pathetic selves as we bumble the sacred act of rolling the magic dust. Fatty preparation was definitely not one of our competitive advantages.
After partaking some of the city’s finest gigglies and a side of a perfectly legal hallucinogenic helping of space cake, an uncanny feeling started to set in. I felt like planet earth was moving in slow motion and that we were descending into a Einstein-Rosen wormhole.
Need. To. Eat.
It started to drizzle. We were back in Amsterdam's dank alleys, like zombie predators in search of the night’s forage. We were surrounded by the scintillating odor of varied options of grubbery and eventually decided to park our wobbly bodies at the next restaurant that crossed our path. A Mexican diner joint was calling us in: "venir aqui". We floated in, ordered and subsequently wolfed down our burrito combos, paid our bill and made a b-line back to the hotel to rest our spinning weary heads.
It started to drizzle. We were back in Amsterdam's dank alleys, like zombie predators in search of the night’s forage. We were surrounded by the scintillating odor of varied options of grubbery and eventually decided to park our wobbly bodies at the next restaurant that crossed our path. A Mexican diner joint was calling us in: "venir aqui". We floated in, ordered and subsequently wolfed down our burrito combos, paid our bill and made a b-line back to the hotel to rest our spinning weary heads.
It was 10 pm. The 2 hour nap marginally diffused our general hazy disposition. Suddenly, our hotel room wasn’t spinning as wildly as 120 minutes prior. We staggered into the alley, rode a tram that took us directly to the erotic core of the city: the Red Light District.
Walking through the streets of the Red Light District, I cannot help but be reminded of that pivotal window washing scene in Deuce Bigalow 2: European Gigolo. But in this city, you will find less man-whores than, err…whores. This place was interesting to say the least. It’s like stepping into the Barbie aisle in Toys R Us, but instead of 12-inch plastic dolls from Mattel, you are surrounded by a cavalcade of life-size beauties, showing off their shining skin and porn-star quality wares behind glass windows. Blondes, brunettes, black, white, asian…it was a buffet of flesh that would make our biblical friends Sodom and Gomorrah proud. Many girls were dancing in the windows of soft red light, enticing the men for a fairly inexpensive rendezvous. According to some local rumor, there’s an 80-year old granny behind one of these windows, and that there’s a waiting list to avail of said GILF’s services. Hey, whatever floats your boat, cabron.
I know everyone likes to watch themselves in the mirror making boom-boom and also enjoys the occasional hardcore digital offerings of realcamsex.com. So why not recreate the high you feel from these activities and watch a real live sex show? Yes, a live sex show in Amsterdam is a surreal piece of entertainment. The Red Light District has 3 major live sex shows theaters and in the name of market research, trooped into 66.6% of them.
One of the theaters, the popular, tourist-friendly, Casa de Rosso, was a dark theatre that somehow reminded me of the lecture hall we had at my grade school but with plush, velvet-covered, cushioned seating, cupholders for Heinekens, and equally stinky floors. The show lasted around 2 hours. The spectacle of flesh was divided into 5 mini-segments of erotic adventures, which included but was not limited to: a pretty blonde couple doing the do on a revolving stage, a leathered Lolita having her way with a banana, a black dude and his mamba pummeling his lady-friend. I’ve seen “torohan” before in the dingy back-alleys of Cubao in my early years but this was prettier (I think the lack of the stench of jeepney fumes from fellow patrons was a bit refreshing). Also, I was surprised how “mechanical” the whole production was. We actually caught the later show (as they had 3 shows per night), and it was the same sexual thespians performing exactly the same moves, pumps, contortions, licks, lifts, from the earlier episode. Who knew they had standard operating procedures for sex shows? This is Dutch precision at its finest.
By the way, cameras or other forms of photography are not allowed in these lovely live sex establishments. When one hapless tourist douche from California tried to snap a shot using his Nokia, the aforementioned performing Black Mamba called him out in front of the whole audience, shouting “no cameras!”, while ferociously pumping like a Rottweiler in heat.
Dawn broke over Amsterdam. Wall Street Dude and I resolved to inject some form of culture into the proceedings and do a free walking tour of the inner areas of Amsterdam. We walked pass cobbled streets, the Dam Square, old city houses, churches and museums. The Van Gogh Museum was underwhelming. Trudging further, we stepped inside Anne Frank’s house. If you didn't get even a little choked up emphatic at Anne Frank’s house, then my friend, you have no soul.
After the perfunctory boat cruise along the canals, the afternoon called for Heinekens. Naturally, some amount of drinking followed. It was happy hour in this glorious city and we kick-started the festivities by drinking at some neighborhood bar with some fair-haired cougars who just got off work. The bar was blasting 80’s music. It was 5 pm and the locals were gyrating, ass-grabbing, and dry-humping like they were in Seaside Heights. And who knew the Dutch appreciated the magical rocking riffs of Journey?
Thereafter, slightly crunk, Wall Street Dude and I decided to crash a random bar crawl organized by the same folks doing the free walking tours. But we soon realized that almost all the participants of said bar crawl were tweens. Chilling with a horde of Miley Cyrus-listening 17-year olds who were drinking like fishes was not a good hang. To support our growing love for A'dam, we decided to just support one of the local coffee house businesses by partaking more baked goodies and then launched into our final full frontal assault into the Red Light District.
We met with two other friends who were seemingly as semi-baked. We wandered the streets a while, as we try to lure our brains out of some hazy doldrums. The numbability factor had slowly increased over the past hours rendering us misfits almost unintelligible and immobile. With our eyes half open and heads bobbing around, we tried our best to fight the midnight hour. We wandered around with no direction. Each turn of a dark corner amazes slightly more than the last. And then...there was nothing, no one in sight. It appeared we had taken a wrong turn. The street was completely devoid of people. The fog, which I thought was imaginary, had surfaced everywhere and inspired the iron street lamps to exude a delicate glow, producing a smoky dream-like state.
Within minutes, a random character in a leather jacket showed up like a figure out of John Carpenter’s “The Fog”. He looked like one of those bearded Armenian cab drivers in NYC. He offered cocaine..(or coke...or Charlie). He was a dealer. And he wasn’t kidding. One of our crew, “Dreadlocks” signaled to this enterprising broker of hallucinogens that he was interested in his merchandise (Dreadlocks was an idiot...he was just pretty much playing and pretty much broke). “Here...try”, our dealer friend offered. Dreadlocks snorted a helping and half-heartedly complimented the flavor of shady Armenian’s magic white powder.
“Now pay me”, Mr. Dealer whispered.
We staggered slightly back and collectively expressed our thanks and disinterest over his powdery wares. “Pay me now”. He then reached for his pocket and exposed a 12-inch slicer. Shit. Suddenly time stopped. Remember that part of the X-Men movie when Professor Xavier, using his heightened senses, stopped time in a noisy museum so he can teach a couple of kids a lesson? It was almost like the same scene here. Time stopped (my own mutant powers are unleashed when I come close to deathly sticky situations). At that point, I could see everything frozen in space-time: the glowing streetlamp, the vague graffiti, the shine on the dealer's blade and how he was menacingly pointing the knife towards our direction. Then I thought. Fuck. This. Shit. I turn my head to Wall Street Dude and signal “Let’s run”. World turned to fast-forward as we high-tailed out of there. We ran as fast as we can through the streets of Amsterdam. We sought sweet refuge in a bar nine blocks down.
“Two Heinekens please”.
Hours of drinking, walking, smoking and partying around Amsterdam, plus that incident that almost cut short our young, virile lives, produced this happy fatigue in both our bodies and minds. I hold up my green bottle of brew to Wall Street dude and just chuckle.
We lurch back at our bar stools, pull out our digital cameras, and relive the memories of this most awesome of all awesome Eurotrips, with memories that I will never forget, but barely remember.
