Amsterdam Heads

On paper, Amsterdam seemed to be custom made for me. Sexual flavours abundant in a melting pot of legal weed, dance parties and the biggest ecstacy production on the planet. Where do I sign up?

Well start as naive student, smile & nod, and cross your fingers. That's all Moses did, and the seas parted for him. While my oceanic exploits will be discussed another time, the cultural seas parted for me. They promptly crashed together again and have tumbled me back to the shore - leaving me wondering just what the fuck happened.

Cast your mind back...

Saturday afternoon. The Sun hits our faces as we step out of Amsterdam Central Station and into the madness. While this city is normally a writhing orgasm, today was a little different. Today it was a veritable bukkake party, as the annual Gay Pride parade was on. God help anyone that ordered Soup of the Day. These people weren't here just to see a standard sex show and get high – they were hoping to be get down and become the stars. We meandered to a canal and watched the floats. Leather clad men with whips & seatless pants, sailors uniforms, and mermaids were abundant – and these were only the spectators. Topless Indian lesbians, coloured head to toe in rainbow body paint danced gaily as a butch gold Buddha waved to the crowd. Two magnificent Queens surveyed the scene before them, atop a 20-foot mast. They seemed pleased with their homosexual Kingdom.

Here is a picture of me in a Giant Clog.

As day turned to night, the streets transformed into dancefloors. DJ's spun their records, infrastructure held dicso lighting above the maze of streets, and people were ass to ass. The million dollar apartments above the street had people dancing in every window, their half naked bodies gyrating silouhettes to the masses below.

All in all, it was a whole lot of fun, although I lost count how many times I quickly broke eye contact with strangers. It seemed everyone wanted to be my 'special friend.' I really needed this T-shirt.

The sad part was that the council had declared this year the street music would stop at midnight. For the most liberal city in the world, I thought that was pretty lame. We thought we'd head back, doing some window shopping along the way. The red light district of Amsterdam is pretty crazy, with girls sitting in the windows like store displays, tapping on the glass and beckoning you inside. There must be a few hundred of these, interspersed with sex shops selling every toy under the sun (for places it dont shine). Seemed there were a lot of straight people at the Gay Parade, and at this time of the night most had ended up down here for a good old fashioned perv (ourselves included).

We trudged back to the train, content with what we thought was the end of the night.

How wrong I was...

To be continued