“Everyone” is an artist..”

as we walked further from the red light district and closer to the much talked about supper club where patrons dined on mattresses and dj’s dj’d the chillest chill out cd’s available, i wondered if our plan to share a sixty euro set menu would work.

if you didn’t read the previous blog, the situation was this. I was desperate to go to this restaurant. my friend quite liked the idea of going to this restaurant. the menu dictated that each patron had a set menu, and the set menu was sixty euros. for me: worth the extravagance of the "experience" i was told the restaurant would deliver. for my friend…. just extravagant.

so we were going to walk in, give the name of our reservation and then casually mention that we intended to share a menu; as we both weren’t that hungry. if there were any problems my friend would affect much attitude and if necessary storm off . and as added back up, we were both dressed to impress.

as we pressed buzzers and opened small doors we found ourselves face to face with a jovial sassy gay man from Massachusetts. He was the manager/host/door whore. he immediately took to the style of my friend (Viva floaty vintage yellow dresses!!)  and he was so nice to both us that we couldn’t help but be a little disarmed.

So much more demurely than planned, my friend made our request.

the man gave us a critical once over, nodded and said it would be fine. he called out to the waiting staff and informed them we would be sharing one meal (of 5 courses) and that it was fine by him. disgruntled (and probably coked up) the head waiter nodded and sashayed back into the dining area. the door closed and we were told to wait downstairs in the bar until our bed was ready.

so we walk down this black leather corridor and immediately i believe the hype. i am an interior design junky and this place was already giving me a serious fix. we order champagne from a broad shouldered bar tender who clearly was less than impressed by the crowd she attends to. and it’s true, as beautiful and chic as the space is, the crowd (other than having loads of money) don’t really seem to have much going for them. but, as my present company is fabulous, i really don’t care.

as i lay back on a huge black leather lounger sipping champagne with my friend there was no where else i would of rather been. our glasses soon emptied, my friend excuses herself to the toilet and when she comes back she excitedly informs me that instead of a ladies and gents there are homo and hetero doors.

the hetero door being the obvious and easier one to find, my friend had politely asked of the whereabouts of the homo toilet.

i think this caused some surprise to the cloakroom attendant.

and then we were called up to the restaurant. i think we both took a deep intake of breath as we walked into the room. it was so white, blindingly bleach bright white, with mile high ceilings and a massive screen on one end of the room showing ambient visuals. on the other side of the room a cooler than thou DJ spun chill out music.   surrounding the perimeter of the space were a series of elevated white mattresses. big enough to lie down, on as well as having space for a small coffee table (where food and drinks could be placed).

we walked to our bed, dropped our shoes on the floor and crawled up onto the matress. it was nice to rest on the overstuffed pillows and stare out at everyone. masseurs walked around offering massages (at a fee of course)

the waiters were all gorgeous arrogant gay men who were arrogant in the way only gorgeous stylish gay waiters working in an it-spot can be. no wait, yes there was one girl. she had seriously strong legs under a very short skirt and she gleefully kept climbing up onto the bar to pass drinks on to a table upstairs. wisely, the management had her serving parties of businessmen. i have no doubt she got great tips.

as each beautifully presented course was replaced by another,  a strange "performance piece" took place on a small stage in the middle of the room. the stage was set with orange props, a table, chairs, candles, bottle of wine. In walked a pair in boiler suits (orange) carrying cans of paint (yellow) and bags of more props (yellow). as we sipped champagne and worked our way through the courses the props and performers transformed from orange to yellow.

i hoped desperately that there would be more to the performance than that, but of course when one colour had successfully eclipsed the other and cigarettes were smoked (by the performers) they did a vague bored bow and strutted off.

it was time to go soon.

we made it through the last few courses, paid our cheque and exited. as we got to the front door the host was disappointed that we were leaving. i think we were closer to his concept of what the crowd should be, than what it actually was. he asked where we were going. when we said the sugar factory, a recently opened art club our dutch friend had told us about, he looked impressed.

oh quite right, excellent idea but we will be open until 5. there is a club downstairs…

before we could even think of saying no he asked our names, had our hands stamped (so we could come back in without paying) and then introduced us to the bouncers, making it clear that on our return we would not be paying and should there be a queue, we would not be waiting in it. score!!

and so we walked on to the sugar factory, preparing ourselves for our journey with a little bit more of what we had acquired at the smart shop.  of course this meant we ended up getting a little lost but not for nearly as long as one would expect…

earlier that day, when we had left the hotel,  our dutch friend had been working the 24 hour bar. He was entertaining mates of his who had stopped by. one of them had warned us that the current trend in Amsterdam nightclubs was to play music too chilled out to dance to and too loud to talk over.

so yes.. we were warned.

when we walked into the sugar factory

we were quite impressed…. ………………………

….initially.

the space was vast, dark, with strange little corners and odd chairs. There were gigantic projection screens with visuals that were actually visually interesting.

and then we noticed the crowd…

its not that my friend and i are snobs,  its just that this crowd were so… strange, unfriendly, insane and very very very odd dancers. there seemed to be some people with parents there?  there were some people who seemed cool,  but they just sat along the sidelines, staring at those on the dance floor with a mixture of pity and fear.

but our disappointment was soon overcome

because we had some

….enforcements

to get us through the night 

this meant that we were able to dance through

the Latin house

(!!!) and the club-by renditions of world music

and the 9o’s house

all because …

well actually no. because despite our minds being altered our love of electronica was just too strong. fairly quickly we realized that drugs or not we just couldn’t be made to like or dance too bad, out-dated music.

so we started talking about everything and nothing and i know that it was terribly  meaningful, emotional, deep and profound but for obvious reasons

i don’t remember ANY of it now.

it soon became clear to us that it was a good idea to go back to the supper club and cash in on our "guest list" privileges.

but i had been mugged a few weeks before the trip, and this combined with the paranoid phase i was having with what we’d taken, made the walk back through empty streets a little tenuous. i don’t know how, but my girl talked me out of it.

when we finally got to the supper club it was all hands in the air craziness. the crowd were cooler but the music was a confusing mash up of rock guitars and house beats that i just couldn’t dance too. and after a while my friend couldn’t really either. so we decided it was time to go back to the hotel and maybe have a goodbye drink and smoke with our dutch friend.

and with the next episode this saga will end.

our last full day in the city, my friend and i had some agendas to address.  we wanted to buy a lap dance at the coyly named  strip club near our hotel, "la vie en proust" , we wanted to go to this ultra-chic restaraunt-bar-club called the supper club, we wanted to get wasted on legal mind altering substances and lastly an idea that i would be forced to live up to, to go into the red light district and pay a girl to talk to us about what it was really like being a sex worker.

the last idea i’m pretty sure i came up with when i wasn’t all together, and with anyone other than my best friend, would never expect anyone to take seriously. but we two together are dangerous pair.

day began innocuosly enough, breakfast, checking out new neighborhoods and having long lunch. and then my friend decided we should take the "herbal ecstasy" to make our walk back to the hotel more interesting. as it kicked in we completely lost any sense of direction we had managed to acquire in the last few days and got giggly beyond control. i reallly wanted to go to this skater shop to buy a pair of silver haivianas

(stylee brazilian flip flops).

and we found the shop in a combination of luck and sheer faith. i bought the sandals lightening quick as it became clear that even a small talk cash register conversation was beyond me. however… my friend was starting to roll into passionate must talk mode and it became her goal in life to convince the sales assistant to stock an obscure brand of eco friendly brazilian trainers. her points were mainly

1. the shoes are cool

2. the shoes are brazilian

3. the shoes are eco friendly

all strong points yes, the sales attendant seemed interested, nodded and expected us to walk off. but my friend was consumed by a desire to make the sales attendant as excited about the shoes as she was, and being an intellectual, she was given to processing and discussing why this information was helpful and right. but her brain ballet dancing in her head meant all she could do was insist on variations of the above three points over and over and over until all the sales attendant could do was assure her that yes the shop would do everything in its power to stock the shoes and even then it was an effort to get her to leave.

i somehow managed to get her off the topic of the shoes and onto our planned evening. my friend was holding me to talking to a sex worker and drugs or not i was seriously starting to lose my nerve. we then had our reservation at the supper club which we would move on from to a new (as in two weeks old!!!)arts-club our dutch friend had alerted us to. so far so good, but how was i going to get out of talking to this sex worker? would we just embarras ourselves? could it all go horribly wrong? well before i could analyse that any further my friend exclaimed

"SIXTY EUROS!!!??"  I hoped she wasn’t back on the topic of the shoes. while i had been thinking about sex workers my friend had found the write up for the supper club in out time out amsterdam guide. apparently there was only a set menu available and it cost sixty euros." For the americans i think this is something like seventy dollars? and for the brits roughly forty pounds. now i admit this is a little on the pricy side but living in one of the most expensive cities in the world makes you less fussed about money when traveling. every friend i knew who had been to amsterdam had always gone on and on about the supper club. it had been hyped to me for years and i just had to go. my friend was into the idea of going but without the years of hype, and the euro to pound conversion it suddenly tranformed from being a nice idea to being completely overrated. this is when the herbal stuff reaaaaly kicked in. so we had a diplomatic paranoid neurotic debate over whether to go or not and settled on going but attempting to share one set menu. if they didn’t like it my friend would

play the french diva and storm out…………….. (play being operative word)

it was set.

back at the hotel we got ready to go out as i tried to smoke off my nerves about our impending sex worker meeting.

why do i come up with these ideas?

or at least why do i say them out loud to my best friend?

well with uniform and armor on (pretty clothes , make up and heels)

i was just about ready for the red light district. we strutted out arm and arm and then i got a little excited. we debated over how we would know who to approach, what we were looking for,

what we wanted to ask, i think we discussed everything but money.

and then finally we found ourselves walking down a street lined with red lit window boxes     all containing nearly  nude women, all looking anything but approachable and very very bored. and then we passed this girl.

she wasn’t what i would call either of our types, but she was attractive and something about her composure was strong, but most importantly she was the only one who smiled  at us and in a way that seemed genuine. my friend and i looked at eachother, yes she was the one. so we gingerly walked up to her and she walked out of her window box to negotiate. we stood in her stairwell and took a deep breath. suddenly i was able to face the situation simply because i wanted it to be very clear that we respected her and didn’t want to waste her time.

i explained that we were filmmakers, fascinated with the sex industry and what we wanted was to talk to her about her experiences. would she be up for it? she would be up for anything if we paid apparently but she still seemed a little confused by our request. she was used to talking to people for money but not quite in the sober non sexual set up we requested. so we walked up the stairs and into the bedroom. the woman sat on the bed, she was spanish, ferociously tall with endless legs and waist length hair. she was wearing the teeniest of bikinis in black pvc, set off by six? seven? inch spike platform stripper heels.

my  friend and i sat across from her in two arm chairs. a side table between us had and ashtray which we immediately began chain smoking over. money was exchanged, glances and stares transpired and then we got to business. it may sound crazy but that talk was absolutely one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. it doesn’t matter what your ideas are about the sex industry or those who work within it. and i didn’t expect to judge her or feel sorry for her but the thing i really have to make clear about this woman is this. if there is one word that screamed in my head the time i was with her and even now, that word without a doubt woudl be

"BRAVE"

her name (or so she said) was angie. She was a 22 year old from madrid who had been working in amsterdam for the past two years. the recent facts of her life were astonishing. she had had a friend who was working in the redlight district who told her how good the money was and with that info angie made a decision and left her family, friends and long term boyfriend to pursue her own caceer in the sex trade. in amsterdam she has no friends and no inetrest in making any, she does not socialise with any of the other girls who work alongside her. in fact she looks down on most of them, for wasting their money, for not being able to save, for drug addictions, for attachments to dodgy pimps.

on top of all this she’s still with her boyfriend in madrid, who has no idea what she does  (however, her MOM knowS!!!!!) She tells all her clients that she has a serious boyfriend. in fact she refuses to kiss her clients or let them kiss her. she doesn’t go out amsterdam, preferring to save her money. in fact her whole gig is about saving enough money so she can leave and then do whatever it is she decides to do. and considering she can see up to thirties guys in a day and twenty minutes with her will set you back sixty euros (there’s that figure again?!) i think she has quite a lot saved.

She makes so much money that she can be very selective about who she sees and when she works. for example, she never works at night time because she finds the men to be much worse, drunker, dodgier etc. she has regular clients. (mostly married but then she said most of her clients tended to be in relationships and would almost always admit to it at the beginning of the session). Her regular clients varied from dutch men who come 2-4 times a week, to rich professional men (especially americans) who would see her 2-3 times a year, or even monthly.

and she’s hardcore about the time slot. regardless what the state of play is at the twenty minute mark, she will stop and inform the client to either pay up for another twenty minutes, or ask them to leave. and as hard as it was to get locker room talk out of her about the cultural sexual difference between different nationalities of men she did admit later that she was regulary frustrated by her english clients because they tended not to finish within the session, or for that matter be able to finish at all. this is obviously characteristic of british lad culture that opts for a holiday in amsterdam. (the dutch are really amazing for their good humour and tolerance but when pushed most would admit that groups of english boys were their least favourite tourists, always looking for more drugs, or drink or sex or all three at once)

when we asked her if she ever enjoyed the sessions or was attracted to any of the clients she was adamant  that it had nothing do with her pleasure and it was impossible to feel pleasure in the dyamic of what she does, and the kind of guy who comes to her. i don’t think we were convinced at first but the more she spoke the more it became clear how she compartmentalised the experience. she was a woman with a serious boyfriend in madrid, and that was part of what kept her sane. this related to why she refused to let anyone kiss her, would not kiss a client and even would refuse to see any client who started to show a romantic interest in her.

i could go on for ages about all the things she said but i want to keep some of it to memory. the nicest thing about the talk is that my friend and i came to respect her even more as well as being increasinly fascinated by her story, meanwhile she dubious of our supposed genuine interest in her life story softened as she realised we really  were genuninely fascinated by her and her life. my friend and i debate over whether she gave us more than our allocated time (i personally think she did). she gaves us a very warm goodbye with double cheek kisses. i teased her and said we were getting special treatment  as she was deigning to kiss us. she then shooed us off jokingly and waved at us from her window box as we walked away. as my friend and i walked off to our next destination we were shaking. .. we had to stop and look at one another to take it all in. had we really done that? thank god my best friend holds me to the "crazy ideas" i make verbal.

but there is more to tell about what happened after. whether it is one or two episodes will be decided later… keep reading!