Follow the Pink Elephants: On Sex and Wildlife in the Dutch Jungle

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.  Hunter S. Thompson

I remember screaming, "Follow the Pink Elephants!" Normally, such an outburst would have been the product of old-school tomfoolery or severe dementia on my part, but this time, there were, in fact, Pink Elephants promenading down the street harassing people - mostly tourists. And yes, who in their right mind wouldn't follow these things? They were clearly superior beings to ourselves. We would have been idiots to resist.

So we tagged along.

Amsterdam is a confusing city, to say the least, and very little of it has to do with being stoned for most of the time. The layout of the town is based on its many canals, which are arranged as a series of concentric circles. It remains the only major European city besides Venice that is almost entirely navigable by boat. Oddly enough, the only people on the water are sucker tourists with rented paddleboats (like the one we had). The streets wind, and people piss in public. All in all, travel presents no small challenge, and this time, we were on foot. Good god.

But there was no turning back. We were sufficiently lost, and eventually, the Pink Elephants led us all the way from Liedseplein and the Hotel de Paris to the Red Light District. I should have known those elephants. They rang a bell when I saw them, which might be why I was so keen on following them into this diseased pit of legal prostitution and Live Sex Shows - the latter being the primary form of entertainment for which our elephants were representatives. Those bastards from Theatre Casa Rosso almost dragged my counterparts and me in there. If we hadn't have been on the last leg of our European Excursion and woefully out of money, we probably would have spent the night watching young, enslaved Asian girls performing fellatio on prominent Dutch businessmen. I cannot imagine the horror.

But let me tell you, folks. I had heard about Amsterdam's Red Light District many times before, and no account of lechery had ever surprised or startled me. It seemed natural that the Dutch would act in such a way, and rightfully so. Holland is, after all, a Land of Jabbering Maniacs. It is where I coined the phrase.

I was wrong to be so nonchalant. Not two minutes into our exploration of the city's seedy overbelly, we saw two thirteen-year-old kids bartering with a prostitute. It was clear they were getting nowhere with her, and we stopped to laugh and take bets from passers-by. Money plays, but none played that night. Not one person took us up on the offer, and the kids were sent home to deal with their budding sexualities alone - or possibly together. I turned around and looked at the window where I'd seen a hooker oblige one of her customers, having led him slowly behind her curtain while yammering on about Rough Sex in her harsh Viking tongue. This had happened five, maybe ten minutes before, and already she was back in the window fixing up her makeup and waiting for the next Johnnie to come along.

She saw me looking at her from across the way and beckoned. Hookers are not shy in Amsterdam. They will offer you FFFM action for half-price (they did). Of course, the catch is that you will never really know the full price in the first place, and by the time the blood gets back into your brain, you've been swindled into contracting god-knows-how-much expensive Cockrot from women named Olga. (They are all named Olga, by the way.) Chlamydia Jane, indeed.

I never had the balls to barter with a hooker, though, and neither did my associates. I didn't have any intention of partaking myself, but it seemed a necessary novelty - a mental souvenir to hold onto for when I had grandkids or something. At the very least, it would have made an amusing story, but I don't have such a tale to spin. For now, we're going to the Dollar Menu Aisle.

The hookers are arranged curiously. Along the main drag are most of the attractive prostitutes, windows lined in purple and blue*. They are of all nationalities and descents but are predominantly fair-haired with a good number of Asian beauties that send money back to their families in the homeland. In fact, cameras are not allowed anywhere in the area. The last person who snapped a picture of an Asian hooker was run down by the manager and beaten in the streets. Word has it she was a rival prostitute looking to shame the competition by sending Mommy and Daddy some lewd shots of their daughter rubbing her pussy for pedophilic textile entrepreneurs from Brussels. Amsterdam is a rough town, and the hookers are near the top of the food chain - all things considered.

But we were talking about the Dollar Menu Aisle, weren't we? It is a curious facet of the District, to be sure. Like I said, the beautiful girls are on the main drag, but adjacent to the major thoroughfare are a set of small alleyways. These are more secluded and are bathed in neon purple just like the strip. They act as tributaries to the Good Stuff, but the road to the Good Stuff is lined with Discount Items. Alleyway girls are either heinously overweight or look like they've been mauled by a drunken hippo, and they are oddly arrange according to their race. Any tourist looking for exotic cuisine can find it in a very categorical and organized fashion, and, in these alleyway Flesh Boutiques, some of the girls flash their unapologetically lopsided tits, an action that has been outlawed in public but is overlooked as long as it doesn't occur on the family friendly Main Drag.

Absolute madness, and, in an otherwise curiously silent city, the Red Light District is one giant din. It is the melting pot of town where people from all races, creeds, and nations commingle to browse for Hot Sex. The Irish seem particularly fond of the area.

Truth be told, I was horrified - not on a moral or principle level, but on a purely hygienic one. I am a mild-to-moderate hypochondriac, after all. Moreso than that, though, the entire scene might have been the most foreign, unexplainable thing I've ever seen in all my travels. It was like a raging carnival for the Sordid and Lonely, and when these two things are let loose, there is nowhere for them to go but toward the Insane. It is easy to find your way there as well. The dirtier the streets, the closer you are to the Main Attraction.

I didn't recover from the shock of it all until the next evening when we smoked the last of our hash, which finally stilled my shuddering nervous system and entrenched in me the nagging feeling that I mustn't ever trust strangely-colored pachyderms again.