This is not necessarily a story per se, but don’t let that fool you: there will be plenty of touching skin and outbursts of pleasure. This writing, however, is more of a factual breakdown, a first look on what’s happening in one of the best-known tourist attractions in Europe, a place where sin and lust live together in tiny rooms, a place as despicable as it is intriguing, where the rich and the poor, the famous and infamous are all alike. It is the front page of mankind’s obsession with procreation, the quintessence of the original sin: Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

In the old center of Amsterdam, situated around two of the world’s most famous canals and literally nothing more than a stone’s throw away from the biggest square in the entire city, lies a collection of narrow streets, paved with cobblestones and crooked tiles. The buildings are old, but their inhabitants aren’t: they are the beating heart of a dark part of tourism, one that is often tucked away behind walls and doors, but is brought to the surface in this small, yet bizarre area. Walls are traded for windows, through which every passer-by gets a sneak peek into this strange world.

One thing has to be made perfectly clear, although it may be a bit of a buzzkill. While the face of this world is one of beauty and pleasure, underneath it lies, and has lied for centuries, a deep connection with the underworld, criminal organizations, human trafficking and force, dating back to even the colonial era that made the Dutch into what are today, but at a huge moral cost. On the other hand: despite what happens in backrooms and other off-radar places, the vast majority of what tourists get to see and do is fully legal, well-regulated, and very, very lucrative.

But enough about that. For most, the Red Light District is a place of fun. Where in the world can a person walk around a city center, allowed to peek into people’s bedrooms, where beautiful creatures are not only showing themselves off, but also whispering: for the right price, anything is possible.

This was not so much a realization I had when I first walked these streets, when I was a young boy, on my way to yet another museum our teacher had lined up for us. Back then, it was merely the sight of a woman in a bikini that did something to this boy in the same way it would at the beach, or the pool. Only when I was a student, and I moved from a rural town to the big city, my fascination for this enclave of pleasure started to grow. At first, I only visited. I walked by, barely made eye contact with the girls behind the glass who were trying to sell themselves. But the greater the fascination became, the more I started to accept the fact that I couldn’t stay a tourist in my own town forever.

Yes, let’s make this fully and entirely clear: on more than one occasion have I spent time on the other side of those walls, accompanied by a beautiful girl. And never in my life have I felt shame, or regret, for doing so.

It may sound like an excuse, and I will explain in a bit why it isn’t, but the first time I visited a girl, it was for research purposes. I was writing what I thought then would inevitably become my debut novel, a story about a boy from Amsterdam who is destined to be the ruler of the District. More than once, I had to describe what happened between the moment an anxious looking fellow sneaks through one of those doors, and, later, reappears, sometimes fully satisfied, often even more on edge than before. I had no idea what happened, though, and I figured I could ask anybody, but the best source would always be myself. And so, on a hot summer day, encouraged by a few beers and a hormonal destiny to unload, I accepted a girl’s wink and stepped inside.

There are two people in this world: those who have been inside one of those rooms, and those who haven’t. To those that have, I would say: enjoy this feast of recognition. For everybody else, I will try to explain the feeling a nineteen-year-old gets in a situation like this.

First, there is this realization that should not be taken lightly: the realization that sex is inevitable. It’s the same feeling one gets when the girl you met at the bar invites you in after you walked her home; when your crush asks whether you brought condoms; when your girlfriend texts you she is home alone. When the girl behind the window winks, and you accept, it is settled. No matter how many times one has slept with another, no matter one’s age or experience, this is always a big moment for a man – or any other human being.

The room in which the action is going to take place, is a peculiar environment indeed. It is usually very small: a bed, a desk and a chair are often the only things in it. It smells of flowery substances, but it is a rather strong, penetrating odor. The light is red, or pink, or purple, and sometimes, one can hear the newly created couple on the opposite side of the wall engaging in their version of this artificial form of love.

Once you’re inside, and all of these brand-new impressions are fighting to get the upper hand in your brain, you realize you have no idea of how to behave. Should you pay up front, or afterwards? Should you get fully naked, or leave your shirt on, or your socks? Surely, you will be using one of her condoms, right? And does she even give head?

Luckily, the girl I was with wasn’t born yesterday. Her name was Sasha, or so she said, and she was of Russian descent. She had smiled at me when I walked past, and when I came by again, she had opened her door – which is against the rules – and whispered: come, come, you have me. This simple call to action, along with her gorgeous body and quite attractive face, had drawn me across the line. As an experienced prostitute, Sasha must have easily noticed I was not very comfortable, and perhaps she even guessed it was my very first time in a situation like this. She held up her hand, waited for me to put the money in it, and said: you sit, I do. Exactly what one wants to hear on moments like these.

Now, nothing is easier than bragging. But since this is not so much a story as it is a documentary of a sort, I will use the truth and only the truth to describe what happened. And the truth is: I had made two rookie mistakes. Mistakes that I have never made since, not even outside of the District. Firstly, I came in red-hot. I had not touched a girl in a few months, and I had not let off steam for days. I knew my weaknesses when I was this agitated, but I wrongly assumed the mere experience of prostitution would put me off so much, I would easily be able to postpone any early arrivals. On top of this, I had shaven my private area for the first time, and I was wildly underestimating the new array of sensations that came with this action. Add the perfect form of Eve’s body, her skilled tongue and her unexpectedly tight hole, and one can hardly blame young me for barely surviving the first oral vacuum she pulled, almost exploding on penetration, and definitely filling up the condom within the first not-so-flattering timeframe. I imagined the sadness in her eyes when she felt it, but since prostitution in Amsterdam is nothing but a business, I think she was actually glad it didn’t take long.

As awkward as the whole situation may have been, I had learned many valuable lessons. I knew how the room looked, smelled, felt, I knew about etiquette, about the order of things, about the vibe inside one of those tiny rooms; I learned things about myself and my own body, about how it was to sleep with a girl that I could normally only dream of sleeping with. I didn’t become a man that day, for I already was — but I did become a better man than I was before.

Basically, the Red Light District in Amsterdam consists of three separate parts, attached to each other. First, there is the most touristy part: window after window on either side of a canal, where the most extravagant girls appear behind. This is the showy part of the District, with sex shops, porn cinemas and bars in between the windows. Across the canal, around a famous church, are the slightly less attractive hookers; mostly short, thick women in their forties and fifties, trying to relive the days long gone. Pick the right street, and Valhalla appears: part three of the District, a maze of three or four small streets where the pretties girls are. Here, one will also find buildings that are rebuilt solely to house as many prostitutes as possible, as well as a narrow alley where two people cannot pass each other without touching, with gorgeous girls on either side.

It was in this alley that I had my second experience, and I was desperate to make it a better one than the first. I started by picking a girl that didn’t look nearly as comfortable than the previous one. She smiled at me as I passed by her window, surely, but she didn’t wink, knock on the glass, or open the door — until I had turned my body ninety degrees and stood in front of it, that is.

Vika, as she said her name was, also appeared Eastern European, but she was shorter and far less curvy than Eve. I gave her the money and started to undress, as a sign that I knew what I was doing. She waited for me to get fully naked and got on the bed with me, used her lips to roll a condom over my semi-erection, and started to suck.

Two things happened here, things that would change the course of action in comparison to my first run. To this day, I still don’t know if Vika was indeed new to the business, or if she just wasn’t very good at it, or perhaps she was having a rough day, or her skillset simply differed from my sensations of pleasure, but the fact of the matter was that the moment her mouth touched me, I knew: this is something I can deal with for a lot longer than when Eve did it. Every man in this world will agree that no matter how beautiful, experienced, or horny a girl is, there is no way of knowing how her oral style is going to affect you. As it turned out, Vika’s techniques weren’t necessarily bad, and I’m sure many men would praise her skills in that very department, but there were small details that made me doubt whether she would be able to make me reach an orgasm at all this way, let alone an early one.

The second interesting thing was Vika’s position. There are a limited amount of ways a girl could place her body in order to make sense during the act of giving head, provided the man is simply lying on his back. She could line up between his legs, or turn herself around completely and give him a nice view on her goods; an acceptable third way would be to kneel next to her subject, and form a perfect three-way crossing of two bodies. Vika went for the latter option, but in quite the sloppy way: she was leaning on her elbow, which she had placed between my thighs; her head was tilted, so much that she had to apply some force to pull my dick in the right angle; and the rest of her body was more or less upside down on the bed, her knees on shoulder height, the upper of her two legs slightly raised. This coincidental alignment of our bodies resulted in my right hand naturally lying right in front of her exposed, perfectly shaven, and seemingly pristine bits, which made it sheer impossible for me not to run my hand past her thigh and whisper: can I touch?

Even after my experience with Eve, I was still very much under the impression that prostitution was purely a business of lust, and that any form of affection wasn’t appreciated. It was therefore a tad surprising that Vika raised her head, unhooked herself from me for a moment, and whispered: yes.

I had touched multiple girls before, and the act itself was almost starting to feel natural, but the way Vika’s treasure was shaped, was nothing short of perfection. Even in this position, with her legs slightly spread, its contours remained intact: the only thing that proved she did in fact have a gender, was a small, barely visible line in the middle, that disappeared into nothing on both sides. Not a single hair, nor the slightest appearance of deeper structures showed. There was so much room in the Bermuda triangle between it and her thighs that I was convinced a skilled aimer could shoot an arrow through the gap if she was standing up straight.

Time passed, and since I had no intention of telling her how to perform better, at least according to my personal taste, my mood oscillated between proper arousal and slight annoyance. Feeling pretty good about myself, I managed to focus most of my attention on my right hand. At first, I convinced myself that the ease with which my fingers slid between her lips was only caused by her natural state of being, but as I kept touching her, I started to realize my actions actually resulted in a reaction — a reaction that was anything but expected, given the circumstances, and still felt immensely out of place in this very situation.

Vika’s wet pussy within reach, her barely succeeding attempts to keep me excited and my growing impatience provoked me into stepping it up. Given Vika’s position, I thought it would be interesting to haul myself over her, off the bed, and see if I could get the angle right. I told the girl not to move, pulled her hips towards me just enough for it to reach the edge of the bed, and aimed my dick towards the right spot. The large mirror on the bedside wall, stretching all the way over the length of the bed, showed her entire body getting ready for my arrival, and the muscles in her face tightening when I entered her. This improvised position had a few major benefits: I could touch most of Vika’s body without moving too much, my fingers were in perfect position to rub her lips and clitoris, and the fact that I was staring at myself in the mirror made me feel like I was being watched by a close friend, who was continuously approving of my moves, my handwork, and the pace and force with which I was fucking this girl.

This continued for longer that I could have hoped for, and definitely longer than I had expected. In fact, it took me such a long time to get there, that something else happened — or at least, I think it did. Just after a position change — I was back on the bed, Vika lying on her back underneath me — I thought I saw something in her eyes, a shimmer of hope. It was as if she realized something, or had a great idea, or figured out the solution to a problem that had taunted her for ages. I noticed it, kept doing what I was doing, and forgot about it for a second or two. A series of events, however, led me to believe I had done something that I never thought I’d ever do to a hooker, but her dilated pupils, her short breaths and a squeezing, sucking motion on my dick surely looked, walked, and quacked like a duck called orgasm.

I never stopped to ask, and both the mental and physical sensation of it all dragged me into the dark corners of climaxing as well, but to this day, I know what I saw, and I know what I felt.

While the vast majority of Amsterdam’s girls and venues have quick, straightforward action as their number one goal, there are people and places one can go if one has a slightly kinkier way of living. Some girls, for starters, don’t just wink at men anymore; they have broadened their horizons, and maximized their target groups, trying to lure in women who are ready to live their lives in whole new ways. There are possibilities for threesomes, whether it’s a couple paying a girl, a single guy with two hookers, or even group action. There are women dressed in latex suits, carrying whips and handcuffs, for those who need to be overpowered, as well as ones with some extra flesh, some extra years lived, or even girls with something extra in a way that is quite a surprise when you walk past. Some might give you a sneak peek of props they can use, or skills or assets they have, even though indecent behavior visible to everyone is still illegal. (That said, I have seen girls who deliberately leave the curtains open if their customer asks them to, thus being fucked for the entire world to see). It needs no explanation that most things, if not anything, could happen in Amsterdam. Search well, and you might find place for all you have ever longed for.

That’s not to say every experience is as good as the next. Sometimes, one just gets unlucky. It happens everywhere in life, and it happens here, too. A girl can be in a terrible mood. She can be arrogant, or not quite ready yet, or perhaps she just came out of an hour long pounding with The Guy Who Never Came. It’s difficult to put one’s finger on it, but it happens.

It happened to me, too. It was during a rather unplanned visit to the District. I was getting home from work and I was only aiming to walk through the area, when I realized: I haven’t gotten laid in a while, I haven’t masturbated in days, and I really want to be inside a girl right now. I could have picked any of these gorgeous women trying to get my attention, but as I walked past a seemingly empty window, I noticed a girl sitting on the bed, playing with her phone. She was extraordinarily pretty, but as she seemed preoccupied, I walked along — that is, until I thought: this is her job, and I’m willing to pay up, she should put her phone away and get to work! I walked back to the window, stood in front of it until she eventually noticed me, and pointed at the door knob.

This is not a great strategy. She didn’t say a word the entire time I was in her room, she managed to give me the most boring blowjob I have ever had, and when I was ready to take it up a notch, she dragged herself on top of me, put the tip inside, held onto the rest of my dick and basically jerked me off until I finished. I was too flabbergasted to say something about it and too horny to care, but I’ve barely ever felt so disappointed in my life.

But hey, every story deserves a happy ending – literally. And while this may well have been my worst sexual experience ever, I’ve also had one of the very best in the district. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the streets consists of several buildings that have been turned into one, where it feels like one has slightly more privacy than out on the tourist-packed streets. It was in one of those buildings, tucked away at the very back of the first floor, that I saw Camilla, a short Latina girl with beautiful curves. She didn’t necessarily invite me in, but she did smile at me, and everything about that smile said: please, if it’s going to be anyone, let it be you. How does one say no to that? As I was getting naked and cleaning up, I thought about all these old, fat, smelly guys girls like her have to deal with every day. It felt like I owed it to her to be on my best behavior, and, preferably, make it slightly less of an agony for her.

I had paid her, I knew that, but from the moment I walked over to her, I completely forgot about that. The way she looked me in the eye when she put the condom over my semi, how she touched my belly while giving head, looking up every few seconds to see if I was still enjoying myself. Time after time, this poor girl had to deal with the most horrible of men, these arrogant bastards, who cared about nothing but themselves, who forced their wrinkly dicks inside her, only to get it out when a few puffs of barely liquid cum had filled the condom. She had to fuck people she wouldn’t even touch outside of these four walls, people she despised, people she hated, cheating, lying snobs who were only after a quick bang. And now, despite all these terrible experiences, she stood up, grabbed my hands, and helped me to pull down her panties.

I fucked her. Of course I fucked her. I paid her, and she knew what her job entailed. Fucking her was inevitable. But it was different. Neither I nor she rushed anything. She didn’t try to avoid contact, in fact: she initiated it, holding my hip while I took her from behind, burying her nails into my chest when she sat on top of me. Whenever our eyes met in the mirror, she smiled. I never felt the need to flex, to pretend to be better than I actually was, and she appreciated it. This wasn’t care-free, no-strings sex one would find behind Amsterdam’s red-lighted windows, this was two people accepting the fact that being with each other would be the highlight of their day, or perhaps even their year.

We fucked in every position I could think of, and her smile when I came was bigger than my own. She laid on the bed and watched me putting my clothes back on. I walked to the door, ready to leave, but Camilla quickly got up and turned me around. She tippy-toed, and I had to bend my heard forward for her lips to briefly touch mine. I barely felt it — and yet it was by far the most meaningful kiss I have ever had.

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