Amsterdam Red Light Tour

A Gorgeous Dutch Whore Shows Me the News and Outs of Amsterdam's Historic Red Light District

Jacqueline is almost a parody of a Dutch beauty: tremendously tree tall legs, blond as the day is long, twinkling star eyes, and cream colored skin that looks poured out of a pitcher. With her smart leather jacket and stylish scarf she looks like she could be a successful lawyer or advertising executive on her day off. She is not, in fact, a successful lawyer or advertising executive. She is a sex worker. Mostly retires, studying sex work and workers but still with her finger (or some other appropriate body part) in the pie. She is giving me a guided tour of the Red Light District in historic Amsterdam. I ask her if she ever worked in the windows. She tells me that a friend of hers who studies sex work and workers insisted that four of her colleagues go and stand in a window to see what it was really like, rather than just studying the subject theoretically. So her friend rented four windows and invited Jacqueline to inhabit one for a few hours.

"I was just dressed in jeans and a top, not sexy at all, but as soon as I got in the window, all these men started looking in, smiling. Then this beautiful boy, I mean really he was a beautiful boy, well he was 22, but so beautiful, he nods at me like he wants to come in. So I open the door and this beautiful boy asks me 'How much?' And I was shocked - all these gorgeous women with practically no clothes on, in sexy lingerie and he wants me - I felt so powerful and pretty, you know, I couldn't believe it, but I felt absolutely great. I waited for Jacqueline to finish the story, but she was off on the next subject.

"Wait a minute," I said, "what happened? Did you have sex with the guy?"

She looked at me like I was crazy, "of course, he was a beautiful boy, it was fantastic. He gave me his number afterwards, but I never called him. But I didn't like the window because you have to have only 15 minutes for dates, I like to take my time, talk, get to know the person a little. I have an hour minimum. I nod. I understand. As a customer I feel the same way. She lead me through the ancient streets, the buildings tall like the people, exquisite Olde World craftsmanship. It was like a dream. Or a movie. Or a dream of a movie. Or a movie of a dream. Jacqueline took me to the Prostitution Information Center. It had recently been renovated, so now it has a quaint gift shoppy feel to it, selling little sex knick knacks and sex tour guides, and hooker-friendly literature and paraphernalia. It's now about 10pm so it's closed, but Jacqueline tells me she worked her for five years. It was a great job. She answered the questions of nervous, horny and/or curious tourists, as well as industrious humans looking to get started in the sex business. We turn around and she points out, twenty yards away, right across the street, a stunning church hundreds of years old, so exquisitely wrought you can really imagine God might want to hang out there. And just down the lane there is a daycare center for children.

She said that many Americans are chocked by this juxtaposition of schoolhouse of youngsters, children, the sacred and the profane, the den of sin and the house of worship. In Holland, she explains, religion and whoring are in many ways normalized, so sex workers are not quite the vile, re-viled spat-upon eyesore that they are all over the world. As I look at the red lights shining in the windows and eyed the whores standing behind them: enticing, bored, smoking, talking on mobile phones, the looked like office workers suddenly to me. Office workers in garters, thongs and bikinis, but office workers nonetheless. And then I looked at the ancient church, with its high spires reaching up to heaven, and I thought, that it did make sense - if you believe in God and sin you can come down to the Red Light District, hire a hooker, indulge in sin, go five steps straight across the street, pray to God, "I'm sorry I sinned, I'll never do it again, see you next week." All the tourists - suddenly I am aware of them - Portuguese, Japanese, Argentinean, Italian, Russian, Australian, English, Guatemalan, and of course the omnipresent American. Old and wrinkled, young and pink, fresh-faced and pock-marked, too-tightly wound business geeks and too-loosely wound drinking yahoos. Couples, single packs of women with exactly the same haircuts, herds of guys blacks capping and gawking. I understand it intellectually, but it's different when it's right there in your face, flowing by in and endless stream of testosterone and curiosity: humans come from all over the world to this spot to have sex with prostitutes. I ask Jacqueline if she thinks a man can make a living having sex with women here in Amsterdam. She says that all the men she knows work primarily with men, even though a surprising number of them claim to be heterosexual. They get the odd female or couple, but for a man looking to get paid the big bucks to fuck, it will not be heterosexually. I ask her if she thinks it's for lack of demand.

"God no," she says, "I used to get women coming in all the time at the Prostitution Information Center wanting to know where the beautiful men were for them. They were pissed off when I told them they were out of luck. 'It's not fair, what about us!' they would say. So I think many women would pay for a beautiful man to have sex, but there is the issue of safety, and really women are different. I don't think they just want quick sex no [?]. The want to talk a little, be comfortable, relax. My friend wants to open a spa where it's women only - the customers that is - and you can have a steam, a sauna, a massage, a facial, a mudwrap, and if you want, there would be the men there to have sex with." She smiles adorably and adds, "sounds good to me." Yes, I thought, that would be a way for a man to earn a living having sex with women.

I ask her if there is a problem with violence with prostitutes. She shakes her head vehemently. She says there is virtually no violence in the windows. It just doesn't happen. If there is a dispute, you call the police and they sort things out. She says there is violence sometimes on the streets, with the illegals - women who don't have their papers, who are immigrants and working outside the law. I tell her that because it's all illegal in America there is almost always the threat of violence, and of course the most threat of violence is on the street, where the poorest, most cash-strapped sex workers ply their trade. I explain that the result of prostitution being illegal is that it is run by gangsters and crooked policeman, and so many of my sex worker sisters are beaten and raped and robbed, often by the police themselves. I ask her if there is much trafficking and sexual slavery.

I tell her that because of the illegal underground nature of the business in the US, it is a fertile breeding ground for sexual slavery. We both shake our heads, having a shared moment of silence for our sisters who are abused and forced to submit as slaves, trapped in a secret nightmare. Then we move on, to the main red light artery, which even on a Sunday night is buzzing with hump-happy tourists and thrill seekers, wholesome and shady alike. It's we walk past the woman Jacqueline explains that each sector has their own specific ethnicity - not by design, but because that's how they want it. Black women, many from Africa, occupy the least pricey sections. Then the transsexuals, some more female looking that the hardest of the biological women. Then the blonds with the spectacular bodies in the most expensive area. The transsexuals make the most money, they have a specialty, and they are in high demand. Apparently it's hot to be a chick with a dick these days. Who knew? We pass a group of five frumpy English tourist women, clearly at least half-drunk. The women are standing in front of a window where an exquisite brunette sex worker stands in a blue bra and matching blue hot pants. The tourist women are pointing at the prostitute and cackling way too loud like vile caricatures of evil witches, laughing laughs devoid of mirth, venom pouring out of them, like the woman behind the glass is not human.

It's so hideous I want to go over and scream at them, lecture them about respect and humanity and dignity. Jacqueline shakes her head: "Disgusting isn't it? You see that all the time down here. People are uncomfortable with their own sexuality so they mock the women. Sad." The sex worker herself looks utterly bored by the whole thing. I wonder if she feels their scorn in her heart. I wonder if beneath her bullet proof glassed in whore beauty she feels their scorn in her whore heart. I'm reminded of an interview I did with a window worker. She said she felt like she was in a zoo, only she was watching all the animals go by. We move on to the Trumpet, a tine little street that keeps getting smaller and smaller until there's barely room for two people to pass. It feels illicit in there, dark and narrow, like something forbidden fun and naughty could happen at any moment. When we get through, Jacqueline tells me the story of an old man who died while having sex with a sex worker. The police were worried about what to say to his wife. So they called her and gently told her that her husband had died while he was shopping. In outrage she replied, "what was he doing shopping? He was supposed to be out having sex with a prostitute!" We pause to look down a canal, and my Amsterdamaholism rears it's ancient but utterly modern head: lights shimmer off the water, the old buildings sigh majestically and I am filled with awe and wonder at the beauty of the world, at peace with myself and the universe. Jacqueline, in all her tall Dutch beauty gives a little sigh: "I like showing people around here, it helps me fall in love with Amsterdam all over again."