AMSTERDAM, Jan. 17—“Here we go guys, this is Chris,” our new guide said as he pointed to a tall, muscular, dark haired Russian. “Dr. Chris, they hired me for 2 hours.”
I was travelling in Amsterdam on holiday with two friends of mine, Brandon Gething and William Felegi. We flew out of Dublin and landed late at night in Amsterdam. We were asked by customs what our business in the country was, when Gething replied, “To try to not catch an STD.” We had met our guide, Tony Azevedo, the following day in the Red Light district. He had taken us into a tattoo shop to introduce us to some of his friends.
He was about 5’6”, weighed 130 lbs, forty-five years old, had an eight-pack stomach, a salt and pepper mane that consisted mostly of the salt, and while he was not shaggy-looking, it was obvious he had not shaved in days. He looked and sounded like he could be George Carlin’s brother. He spoke four languages fluently, and had been deported from the United States in 2002 for suspected murder. He spoke quickly, with strong gestures and a slight New York accent. His gray shoulder length hair hung neatly in its natural wave, and he walked the way a man would should he have all the world in his possession, with no possibility of losing it. He had found us wandering the district, and I hired him for the day.
Azevedo, known as Old School, had been homeless for almost three years, and had been making a living giving tours to tourists, and selling drugs. He had been born on the Portuguese island of Azores, immigrated to the United States when he was five, and was denied citizenship when he was 18 because of his criminal history. He moved to Amsterdam in 2002, after living 8 months in San Miguel, Azores. He was forced to leave Azores due to discrimination. He said because it was such a small island, everyone knew he was there only because the United States no longer wanted him. He worked four-and-a-half years in construction in Amsterdam, but quit when his Muslim boss tried to force religious modesty protocols on him one day when Old School was working with his shirt open.
His two passions were cocaine and prostitutes. He made 150-400 Euros every day between drugs, tours and donations. He would spend some on cocaine, and the rest on lunch and the girls in the district. He slept in a shelter two nights a week and with a friend once a week, just to shower and shave. The other four days, he would break into boathouses on the canals and try to keep warm. He never complained and would rather sleep outside most nights than give up his lifestyle.
“Will you at any time be bringing paying customers?” Chris says as he laughs and shoots us a selling smile. He works with two other artists, Johnny T and “Uklain from Ukraine.” Their shop is underneath the street, and covered floor to ceiling with pictures of tattoos they’ve drawn. They mumble to each other softly in Russian as we look around the room. The shop is lit by two red lamps that cast an ominous glow. Chris looks charming, a natural born salesman, but Johnny T and Uklain are huge, very muscular, and absolutely unsmiling.
“How you like your new hat and sweatpants?” Old School asks. Johnny T cracks the faintest of smiles and calls him a good man. “That’s on the house. I stole ‘em off Jesus. They told me “take one,” I stole six of each. C’mon, I love robbing Jesus. I love it. He loves us everyday.”
With that, the entire group breaks out in laughter, releasing all the tension I sensed building. We said our goodbyes, I shook hands with Chris and the incredibly tight-gripped Uklain, and followed Old School out the door. Outside, the air was cold and wet. The sky was gray and it had been raining intermittently, while the city of canals had taken on a dreadful chill. It was late afternoon, and would only be getting colder throughout the day.
Old School led us to the nearest group of prostitutes in the district. Hiring a girl in Amsterdam is like going window shopping for new shoes. There are four parallel streets that stretch for about four blocks, with several side alleys. The four streets are in pairs, with a canal separating each pair, creating an open area about one hundred feet wide with nothing obstructing the view across the twenty-foot wide canal. Sex shops, adult video stores and brightly lit theaters with apartments above them line the sides, making each set a self-enclosed area of licentiousness. At night, a red-orange glow illuminates the streets. The girls wave from their windows, wearing very little clothing, while smiling sweetly. Occasionally one will open their door and say something in Dutch or English to potential customers that pass within earshot. During the day, most windows are empty, but after 8 p.m., one is hard-pressed to find a room without a devilish beauty inside.
“At one time, one guy used to own all the windows. Another time, one guy used to own all the sex shops. And one guy used to own all the sex shows,” Old School tells us. He walks over to one of the girls, a skinny, tanned girl with fake breasts, and hands her a small wad of cash. “I love you, just like heaven,” he says to her, gives her a hug and gestures for us to follow him onward.
“You know her?” I asked
“I know about forty-percent of the girls here. I do odd jobs for them sometimes. Buy them water, buy them cigarettes. Sometimes we talk. They give me half price, they know I’m homeless.”
We turned right off the main strip, and into an alley. It was tight, about three feet wide, with door sized windows every four feet, most with the shades drawn, but some with a scantily clad girl on the other side. As we walked, Old School starts telling a story about a twenty-eight-year-old American man with a wife and two kids that he met. The American paid twenty Euros for the tour, and asked only where the transvestites were. “HOMO!” Old School yelled as he finished his story, and took a sharp left out of the alley and onto the second main street in the district.
We stopped for a brief moment while Old School unpacked a cigarette and fumbled for his lighter. I took this opportunity to ask him more about why he went to prison, and how he was deported.
“I was robbing a safe. I got caught. I’m not that good,” he said with a smile that could charm a snake. He had already alluded to being a violent criminal, but there was something about him that could put one at ease. “And then in prison, I killed a guy. I sharpened a toothbrush into an ice pick. I put it through him, and broke his neck. He was a Muslim rapist. I did justice. Justice. So they got me, but yeah, they couldn’t prove anything. I was part of a gang. So I just optioned out, said let me get the fuck away from all of this. I figured Europe would be good.”
Old School leaned in and started to whisper. “Man, it’s full of fucking Muslims. They’re everywhere. It sucks. You don’t see what I see.”
Old School’s racism was not what was funny about him, though. It was the stream of consciousness analogies and descriptions he came up with. He finished his extremely explicit rant about what a Muslim does in Africa, and we began walking again. He took another drag on his cigarette.
“But listen, I believe in law and order,” Old School said as he stopped and turned to face us again. “You go rob a bank, you get caught? Jail. You don’t get caught, you get fifty grand, so you’re in good shape. You gotta pay. Like they said, you do the crime you do the time.”
His face suddenly became grave, nothing like the face we had seen just a second ago. It was hard, colder than the air, seeming to suck every ounce of heat out of it. “I was a young lad, raised by different people,” he began. “Went to prison in 1982, for armed robbery, attempted murder. There, I became a gang member.”
He looked around. A sick smile came to his lips, one of pure hatred, and sadistic delectability, as if he could almost taste his memory. “Special ops, they called it. Some of us didn’t have to get tattoos, ‘cause we had to do special things.”
As he punched his last word, his face grew warmer, and we saw once again, the cheerful rogue who had fled just moments before. He began speaking again, though deliberately, with a tone that men use when it is time to be honest with one another.
“Listen, I believe that if you kill a pedophile, you did justice. Cause they all repeat. Look, I don’t like to kill people. I don’t even like to fight people. I believe in teaching. Used to teach in East New York, Brooklyn. For free. I’m into teaching and giving, not taking. When you take a little child’s life like that… scum.”
He turned around, and pointed to a house down the street in the opposite direction we were travelling, and as quickly as it began, it was over. “Over here, there’s a building you must see. I have to show you. Really bent now, you can see it good. What’s going on? Awesome picture, eh?”
He was pointing to a corner house across the street and about a hundred yards down to our right. It was four stories high, brown brick, and the façade was almost completely covered by windows. But, the many windows were not the point. About thirty feet up, the building was leaning forward past the one next to it by at least a yard. It began leaning forward after the first floor, and by the fourth, it looked as if it were looming over the street, the way a cat does over a mouse, as if it would pounce on the next tourist to venture too close.
We had travelled with Old School for only twenty minutes so far, and he had already made us laugh, and almost fear for our very lives, with rapid and seamless transition. We had gotten tips on dealing with prostitutes, staying away from street dealers, and the layout of the entire Red Light district. We had met three large Russians, and a prostitute. I had asked only a handful of questions, and we still had two-and-a-half hours to go.
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