By Sandra
Kay
November 1st, 2002
Look
at these loving, open minded people! |
Amsterdam,
the city of legalized prostitution, hash bars, an openly gay community,
great museums and a tolerance for just about anything, except intolerance.
Yeah, I know you’ve heard it all before, go to Amsterdam, the weeds
legal and cheap. $20.00 kept me baked for a week, but I’m not much of
a smoker. You know they actually have menus in the hash bars? It rocks.
You go in and look at a menu, that generally is rather discreet, and
you choose your devil weed. You can get Northern Lights, pot from Afghanistan,
light brown hash, or dark brown hash (which I don’t recommend unless
you really are a crack addict). The choices usually range from 10 to
20 different sorts of weed or hash. They both are legal but not necessarily
encouraged if that makes any sense. In the instance of “Bulldog”, which
is one of the major chain brown bars (places that sell pot and hash),
you have to go to a dude who’s usually a bit on the intimidating side,
push a button, and the menu lights up. Amsterdam is very strange in
that way. Yes, it’s legal, but you can’t advertise, and being discreet
is A#1 pot smoking etiquette. (i.e. Don’t light up in a live sex show,
which is what I did, and then proceeded to get yelled at over the loud
speaker by a guy that looked like an S&M version of Mr. Clean.
Scary. It seems odd to an American that a city that is so rich with
history and some great museums and nightlife could also be so open about
sex and drugs, at least soft drugs. Although, my boyfriend and I were
offered a fair share of not so soft drugs, which, if you’ve seen Midnight
Run, we thought it better to avoid.
Also not to be missed in
Amsterdam are the Erotica Museum and the Sex Museum. I’m not a nympho
or anything (eh, a little on the slutty side) but they were some of
my favorite places. New York just opened up a US version of a sex art
exhibit but they probably got the idea from Amsterdam. “The Sex Museum,”
the more official of the two, greets you with a satyr, no arms, and
a massive hard-on. You can’t really miss him; it’s a primal thing.
This is the real deal, with the sexual history of the world dating back
2000 years. It makes me feel good to think of some Roman guy (or girl)
grinding a dildo out of limestone 2000 years ago. You can get kicked
out of school for that now. Lust was treated as a sacred gift of the
Gods in Rome, and it was a bigger sin to not accept the gift than refuse
it. (That’s what they said in the Erotic museum anyway. I don’t know,
could be true. Makes you think…but then again, look what happened to
the Romans.) Most of the art at the Sex Museum is from the 18th
and 19th century, along with an amazing amount of popular
culture and kitsch to boot.
It's
the Spliffmobile to the rescue. |
You find your way to The
Sex Museum just by wandering, because if you're stoned, and you don’t
know your way around that city, you're screwed. You’re pretty much
screwed even if you're not wasted. There are canals everywhere and
they all look alike. I always let my boyfriend navigate anyway, it’s
a guy thing.
The Erotic Museum is the
place to go for the kitsch angle. It’s in the middle of the Red Light
District. At the cash register (it only cost us $5.00 for two of us
to get in,) there is a model of a lass on a bicycle. The idea is to
look up her skirt as you pass by. You get the idea, fun stuff. The
guy that sold us the tickets was a grump though, and it sucks when you’re
a tourist and people are grumps, you automatically feel like your dressed
wrong or something.
Inside, this place is 5 floors
of amazing. There is some artwork John Lennon did for Yoko Ono there,
which surprised me. I’m not a huge Beatles fan, but still, that’s pretty
cool. A whole floor dedicated to S&M, wowwie…I vaguely remember
going underneath a mannequin that was pissing in some Lucite over my
head. It’s sort of hard to describe. The other really cool thing they
had were these cheesy phone booths, where you could hear phone sex in
at least five languages. I only know one language, being an American
and all, but the others were still interesting, even if you don’t know
what the hell they’re saying. I mean, how much better than that does
it get?
And then it happens, that,
oh shit, I-had-no-idea-feeling, and the pot is kicking in big time.
Paranoid, I’m in some parallel universe. And I’m looking at these narrow
winding stairs, and as I’m going up, and up and up… and I’m looking
at these European women’s giant asses and thinking of that Queen song
“Fat-Bottomed Girls.” It’s German women, and they’re all giggling like
schoolgirls, and I’m staring at their butts and wondering if I’m going
to have an ass like that some day.
Sandra
partakes in the local delicacies. |
We go in this room and it’s
totally set up with Disney-like characters; it feels like kindergarten
all over again, and it feels good. Nap time, remember that? You even
get to sit on plastic toadstools, and watch Disney-like porno films.
Ours was animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except getting nasty.
These things are FUNNY. I totally want to have them in my video collection,
and I don’t collect porn or anything. Just to give you an example,
I remember Dopey or Grumpy or one of the elves diving head first into
Snow White’s vagina (love that word,) and like swimming up inside her,
and then some of the other elves start to follow him in - “come on
in, water’s fine.” The best part was one of the elves stayed behind
so he could play with her clit. He was using it like a punching bag
and the sound effects were great. I know a lot of you are probably
thinking I’m making this up, or I hallucinated it or something, but
it’s the truth, and my next mission in life is to track down that porno
on the Internet. So my boyfriend and I are in hysterics, and all these
middle aged German women are laughing with us, they were great. They
were wearing really bad jogging suits if memory serves me, and I had
this great epiphany. I don’t think I ever feel so connected to people
as when I laugh with them, and we don’t even speak the same language.
Too bad Arafat and Sharon couldn’t get baked in Amsterdam and watch
Snow White-ish animated pornos, I think it would be a good bonding
experience for them. I bet you Disney would sue though. I just want
to see Cheney wasted, I don’t know why. Maybe I just don’t want to
believe he’s as evil a dude as he seems like he is.
So, the rest of the day was
pretty much a blur, literally. I didn’t know it at the time, but Space
Cake stays in your system 3 to 4 hours after you eat it. It’s pretty
funny, there are carts that sell Space Cake at Vondel Park during the
summer, and they warn mommies not to feed the kidlets cake they bought
from the vendors unless they know what they are getting. Although Amsterdam
is extremely open-minded, they’re also extremely organized and cultured
community, and drugs laws are strictly enforced for the under-age.
The legal driving and pot smoking age is 18. They figure, if you’re
going to drink and smoke pot, and possibly even ingest hallucinogens,
some of which are also legal there, you damn well better know what you're
getting into before you get behind the wheel of a car that can kill
somebody.
The biggest news stories
when we were there back in November was still about September 11th,
and how the Dutch for the most part supported our war in Afghanistan,
but we damn well better not use it as an excuse to go after Iraq or
anyone else, and here we are, sitting here in November, more than a
year later, and what are we talking about? Okay, so that’s the national
news. But the other raging debate was whether the prostitutes in the
Red Light District should be allowed to have pillows in their john rooms.
The hookers wanted to have pillows for comfort reasons, and I’m sure
you could find other creative uses for them. The government was saying
no, because they thought that the pillows could be used to smother them,
and they would be putting themselves in danger. Now I’m thinking, could
you imagine that conversation happening here in the US? George Dubbya
saying, “You know ladies, I’m just thinking about you and your safety.”
So, we left, toured some
other parts of Europe, and came back to Amsterdam to fly out again.
This time, we stayed sober (mostly) and enjoyed the Van Gogh museum,
which is really amazing. So, all the Lonely Planet guides and Rough
Guides are right: you won’t exactly remember your first time in Amsterdam,
but good times are never exactly remembered, sometimes they even get
better. There is a big world out there, and not everyone thinks alike.
Tolerance, people, can’t we all learn to just get along? I bet if you
smoked a joint you would.
Check
this out: Erotic Traveler - Amsterdam Sex Museum
What
do you think America? Leave
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