If you had asked for my opinion of Amsterdam’s Red Light District (Dutch: Rosse Buurt) before my travels I would have said something along the lines of “Prostitution, the world’s oldest trade, is not going away anytime soon, so if a country can find a way to keep it safe, destigmatized, and regulated by making it legal, way to go”. Mind you, I don’t condone prostitution but I like the idea of it being decriminalized even though I’m fully aware that legal is not synonymous with moral.
Well, I’ve now been to Amsterdam’s Red Light District and my eyes are wide open. Sad to say, despite all the attempted regulations, there is nothing new under the sun.
This used to be the port on the Amstel River where the ships would off-load and the sailors would come and find prostitutes before going into the church (De Oude Kerk) to pay their penances, our guide rambles. In fact it got to a point, where the clergy would just meet the sailors as they got off the ships, he continued. It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m with a group of curious tourists on the free Sandeman Tour. Our tour guide had previously explained that we were going to walk through the Red Light District to the Oude Kerk and we must not take any pictures. As we walked through the one narrow street, I saw two or three scantily clad bored women on their cellphones in the windows on either side of me. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and these women work independently sort of like businesswomen, he continued in an animated way. Though the rent for the room is expensive, a girl can easily make it up in a matter of hours. Sometimes, they make over €1000. Everything is regulated, they get tested for venereal diseases every few months, and there are police around to protect them from unruly clients. It all sounded so wonderful to me and I said jokingly to N’ku imagine if you can’t claim unemployment or welfare because there’s a job as a prostitute available that you refuse to try out for?
That was my first foray into the Red Light District and had I no reason to go there again, my views may not have been changed. My second trip was down that same street a couple days later during an attempt to recreate the path to the Oude Kerk. It was late afternoon and quiet and I felt uneasy walking down the alley by myself. I just wanted to look at my polished toenails in my wedge heel sandals hitting the uneven pavement one after the other but I glanced at the windows in defiance of myself just once. My core was disturbed as my eyes met the furtive glance of what seemed to be a teenaged Eastern European girl whose countenance was sad and hesitant. I couldn’t shake it off and when I returned home I remarked to N’ku that something wasn’t right in the Red Light District.
Yet, I was still curious enough to want to see the area at night in all its action. As luck would have it, such an opportunity befell us. I guess at this point I should back up as now two stories intertwine. Remember those two Ghanaian men N’ku and I met at Vondelpark earlier in our trip? The cute multi-ethnic (Ghana, America, Suriname) guy with the long manicured locs who couldn’t keep his hands off me and well, the other dude? Well, N’ku had been communicating with them and they really wanted to see us again and show us real Amsterdam by taking us out to a nightclub that we would appreciate (African music) rather than the tourist nonsense around us (their sentiment). So it’s about 10 pm on Friday and this old lady here is comfortable in bed blogging when N’ku calls out from the other room they want to meet up at 2 am. I’m thinking, in what world?! Though I was quite comfortable not seeing “real Amsterdam” I did not want to be the party pooper so I agreed to meeting up at midnight with the thought that I would at least still be somewhat awake.
They met us in the busy Leidseplein Square just steps from our apartment, the other dude wearing a muscle T-shirt fully displaying his beady chest hair and muscular arms and the cute loced one in slick trainers with his playful bad boy attitude pumped to go. So, you ready. The car is parked around the corner, he says swinging and clapping his hands with a gleam in his eyes after finally getting his hands back on me after all these days. I could tell he appreciated the skinny jeans I had squeezed myself into while I wondered what had possessed me to get back into the heeled wedge sandals I had worn all day. I smiled but was was beyond fatigued to giggle like I had the first day we met. I also was clueless as to what the plans were but that was not for long. Apparently, the sizzling hot club was not in tourist Amsterdam. Hmmm! N’ku’s eyes tell me well it’s up to you and mine reply are you out of your mind? Not discouraged, she then verbalizes to the guys, it’s up to her and nods over in my direction to which I also verbalize a resounding NO dashing all hopes around. Ah-ah! True, I did not involve myself in the communications leading up to this encounter but in what world did anybody think that I was going to hop into a car with complete strangers in the middle of the night, in a foreign country whose language I did not speak to let them drive me 20 minutes to who knows where? So what if they were Ghanaian? So what if slick sneakers was really cute, had great locs, was really digging me and I felt safe enough to be out at night with the both of them? Mtcheeew!!! Principles, man! Principles! Oh and fine, for the record I’ll admit it. I appreciated slick sneakers’ attention well enough. There! Moving on!
So of course the clubbing didn’t happen. Instead, the guys, initially but only briefly sulky, decide to show us on foot parts of tourist Amsterdam we may not yet have seen. Bless their souls for I know they don’t like tourist Amsterdam and I don’t think they are accustomed to walking long distances so I can only imagine they were laid up in bed the next day as they might have anticipated but for very different reasons…and wondering how possible?
Anyhow, playful slick sneakers, who had grown up in Amsterdam and therefore was very familiar with what Rosse Buurt had to offer, let’s just say, let his intelligent empathic side speak albeit in spurts while leading us up and down those streets with red-neon framed windows for the next few hours. Oh the things we learnt.
Foremost, legalization of prostitution (in 2000) has done nothing to remove the stigma associated with the trade. No respectable Amsterdam girl would come and stand in those windows just like that, slick sneakers exclaims, while giving us a not-so-sexy pose. The girls in those windows who are Dutch are from elsewhere in the country. Slick sneakers tells us about a girl he saw in one of those windows when “accompanying” a friend one day who he later met at a party. He remembered her and he was fairly sure she recognized him but neither spoke about it. He jokingly tells us that he got for free more than the 20 minute fuck and blow others paid €50 for. Yes, classy!
The legal age to be a prostitute is now 21 up from 18 which explains why the girls all look so young. But interspersed are much older women who have been at it for decades…and men. Yes, men. But these are not men as men for the pleasure of women or even for other men, but rather men as women solely for the enjoyment of men. Not to say that none of these women or men-women would refuse a man-woman couple who would like to engage in some kind of threesome, but the reality is that the clientele is male be they young or old, foreign or Dutch.
The first time we walked through the alleys of men, we did not believe they were men for some were very pretty, so we walked through a couple more times, just to be sure. But after we see a few bulky packages and physiques, we become believers. At one point, the playful side of slick sneakers returned and he had us waiting outside a curtain drawn window in the men section for the action inside to be over and for the client to walk out and the prostitute to reclaim his/her pose. I didn’t like that but hey, I’m as curious as the next person. The client did come out making a 180 turn to walk away from us while zipping himself back up, and I’m shocked. Why am I shocked when I know what sort of business is going on here at 2 am? We ended up leaving our post because the prostitute is hiding from us but I don’t see why that would be the case.
Of course there are pimps, why would you believe otherwise?! the lecture continues. And then they point out the pimps who despite the police presence (both undercover and in uniform) and the security cameras all around, are walking in and out of the buildings to collect their money, standing along the streets moving their positions every now and then to keep tabs on their girls and possibly to sell drugs, and sitting in the bars drinking in between these duties. A number of these pimps are black…African to be exact with your guess at nationality as good as mine. Like that, I’m suddenly very conscious of walking around with slick sneakers with the dreads and muscle shirt with the chest tacomeat who are both Black African just like myself and my sister. Did I forget to mention that muscle shirt fittingly works as a bouncer, and looks it? Briefly, I wonder if people are looking at us as pimps with their potential “new hires”. In fact, how we happened to get a tour of the Red Light District was the guys wanted us to meet Auntie, a Ghanaian woman, old enough for that title, who occasionally stood in one of those windows and who muscle shirt joked would come from the window to the church. We laughed about it. When we got to her window however, it was empty at which point muscle shirt recalled that she was actually in Ghana.
And then we are back to no respectable woman of Amsterdam would do this. There has to be something wrong with her such as a bad drug habit or a low self-esteem. Maybe, she’s so in love with her pimp (boyfriend) that she would do whatever he tells her. Sometimes, the he in question is not just a pimp, but an owner for the girl might be a sex slave. We are told yes the rents for the windows are expensive and you must pay for them ahead of time in blocks of time such as a week’s worth of eight hour shifts (or sixteen if you are particularly enterprising) so after accounting for taxes one needs about five or so clients per day just to clear the daily rent. How very exhausting?! We are told, yes medical checkups are offered but no, they are not mandatory.
There are streets where the rents are cheaper and thus the fucks (and blows) are cheaper too at €30. Of course, there is more comment c’est dit racial diversity on these streets, an observation that makes N’ku angry. But really, this is just the principles of economics at work, n’est-ce pas?
Throughout the night I think about these girls who occasionally bang on their windows to grab the attention of a man passing by, or touch themselves suggestively, or hurl unknown liquid (urine?!) from plastic cups onto men who dare to disrespect or anger them. Yes, we missed being splattered by one such attack focused on someone in a group of guys ahead of us. Luckily for us, despite slick sneakers occasionally joking with the girls peering into the windows, showing us how one would start a transaction, no-one directs any vitriol towards us. But I was saying. Who are these girls some with lost eyes others having a grand old time? What are their stories? What do they do when they are not merchandise in windows? Does anyone else care to know? Do these men, clients, ask themselves these questions?
Needless to say, by the end of the night, or rather by morning, I was not very impressed with the Red Light District. My stance now is that legal prostitution is a great myth. I don’t believe that the majority of the women are there of their own volition. I do not see any kind of female empowerment in action. I’m upset that behind this façade is a whole industry of human (sex) trafficking because a legal enterprise should not be a front for criminal activity. Worse, I’m disturbed by the notion that this is a tourist attraction. That grown (and not so grown) men come in droves, drunk or what not, pointing, giggling, and being rude in general. That parents walk their children down these roads irregardless of the time of day. That I am here.
And then I smell it. The stench that slick sneakers in his moments of seriousness kept referring to. The stench that transitioned him from boy to man and stopped his coming down these parts for services. I wonder? Is this the stench of Sodom and Gomorrah here in the shadows of De Oude Kerk?
They say travel opens your mind. Well, this experience has me seriously confused.
“Imagine you are an 18-year-old Hungarian girl. You end up in the Red
Light District and don’t even know which country you are in. Your lips
are pumped full of Botox, your hair is dyed blond and you are wearing a
skimpy bikini. You have to allow dirty sweaty men to have their way with
you for 16 to 18 hours a day. A girl like that speaks no English.
But somehow she has managed to register with the Chamber of Commerce,
to obtain a stamp from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service in
her passport, to sort out a tenancy agreement, to open a bank account and even to find herself a room in the Red Light District. How is that possible? You tell me…”
A lover of mangoes. A woman - smart, without pretense, lefthanded, Afropolitan - navigating this thing called life. An unapologetic believer in social justice and karma. Choosing to radiate positive energy and be true to myself. Here, my musings.
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