“New Amsterdam it's become much too much

Till I have the possession of everything she touches

Till I step on the brake to get out of her clutches

Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess”

After I got divorced, I propositioned a friend that we fly to Amsterdam and spend some time hanging out in the red-light district. We were both recently single. I suggested that he take one side of the street, and I’d take the other, and we could just go on like that until we ran out of money for prostitutes.

I was joking, but we considered it.

I’m not actually comfortable with sex workers. On one hand I believe prostitution should be legal, it’s safer that way and I’d like to live in a free country, on the other I don’t think it’s something I am interested in participating in. I don’t even like going to strip clubs. Eight years of art school where every single English credit had the word “feminism” in it makes me squeamish as to whether or not sex for money is actually consensual. Try as I might, I’m terrible at objectifying women.

I also used to live in lower Manhattan (New Amsterdam) where there were at least three underground brothels just on my block. I once walked into one where a South American hooker was letting the entire bar take turns with her, as she bent over a bar stool. It was by day a sandwich shop, but she was there every night, usually wearing nothing but a neon green g-string. The situation I walked into, it was very much the last scene from “Requiem for a Dream”. I was just trying to use the ATM, but wow was it weird setting to walk into. It’s not often that you walk into a place to find a naked woman servicing about a dozen construction workers who had spent their day doing 9/11 clean up. I suppose she is a true patriot?

My friend has a similar issue, he also is terrible at objectifying women. For his bachelor party his friends took him to the dirtiest strip club in Baltimore. As he described it, once they paid his way into the back room, a woman basically shoved his nose up her asshole. It was a nice asshole to have one’s nose shoved into, according to him, but instead of letting her continue, he sat her down and began asking her if she wanted to go back to school. He’s a teacher and was trying to help.

In my experience, sex workers hate that shit. They will put up with it as long as you are still tipping, but they aren’t there for a lecture. They are there to make as much money in a few hours as most people make in a week. My friend meant well, but he was doing it wrong.

Bringing it back to Old Amsterdam, you know who is good at objectifying women? Other women.

The first time I was in Amsterdam I was there with a date. We did all the Amsterdam things one does. We saw some art, we drank some drink, we smoked some smoke, and then my date suggested that we fuck every whore in the city. Suffice to say, she was a fun date.

We were walking through the red-light district, admiring the various women for hire. She wanted to have a threesome with one, and she was literally window shopping. If you have never been to Amsterdam before, the prostitutes advertise themselves by sitting in store-front windows wearing nothing but lingerie. To have one, you simply walk in and ask her price.

I wasn’t really down for what my date had in mind. I was young and somewhat bashful. While she and I had attended an orgy together by that point, hiring a Dutch hooker was punching a little high for me.

I was concerned with the financial ramifications, we really didn’t have that much money. European prostitution is much cheaper than American prostitution but paying a woman to go down on your girlfriend while you bang her never comes cheap, regardless of what continent you are on. Instead, we went to a sex show.

The show only cost about $17 each. It was fairly lame though. We sat in a dark theater and watched two actors screw each other on stage. They were both very attractive, but their performance was lacking. She was gorgeous and fit, he was cut and had a cock roughly the same length and width as a tall can of beer. It should have been hot, but they just didn’t seem into it. It was just passionless rutting, and he could barely keep it up.

My date was aghast that neither performer climaxed. They just stopped after a while. I agreed with her. Whenever you fuck, if it looks anything like porn, you are doing it wrong. They looked like porn, just mechanical screwing. Still, you can’t watch two people mate for thirty minutes without getting turned on.

We went back to the hostel we were staying at. Out front, my date and I sat on the side of a canal and smoked a joint the size of a baby’s arm. Unfortunately, it was a Christian hostel, We hadn’t done our homework before booking it, so we were not allowed to share a bed. Instead, we locked ourselves in the bathroom. I fucked her up against the wall in the shower until she came. She returned the favor by going down on me. But she did something unusual.

Usually she would let me finish in her mouth, but then spit it out in the sink. In my experience most people swallow, and then you get them a glass of wine as fast as you possibly can, to wash out the taste. That wasn’t her thing though, she was a spitter. I never really cared, semen tastes gross, so whatever worked for her was good enough for me.

This time, she tried something new. She pulled out at the last second, getting semen all over her face. The entire time she was on her knees, looking up at me with her mouth open, but intentionally missing so that we made a huge mess on her face.

There is something viscerally satisfying about that sex act. The submissive nature of it is like catnip for me, especially because she did it spontaneously without being prompted. I don’t generally date women that can be described as submissive, including her, so it was a rare thing she was doing.

I asked her later why she had. Not in a critical way, she had simply never done anything like that before and I was curious. It’s the one thing you see in pornography that is actually pretty hot in real life. She explained that she just wanted to try it. She explained that as we were already in the shower, it was just going to wash right off. She was caught up in the moment.

More recently she explained to me that I’m just a guy that she feels comfortable with. For instance, I’m the only guy she’s let up her butt. She likes doing things with me that she won’t do with any other guy.

It’s nice to be loved and trusted with those sorts of things.