Illustrations by Craig 'Questions' Scott. I recently stumbled upon a website called the Amsterdam Diaries. Initially, it just seemed to be a chronicle of one British guy's visits to the city's red-light district—another coarse vaginalogue written by a creepy, monosyllabic regular. But I soon realized there was more to the site than the many others like it.
There's a noticeable political slant; there's a wealth of research into the history, laws, and culture of prostitution; and the stories, written with finesse in the first person, actually contain more than faint traces of humor and humanity.
Given that the blog's author is a rich professional who enjoys the finer things in life, it kinda reads like American Psycho if Bret Easton Ellis hadn't given Patrick Bateman axes and had toned down the psychopathy. For example: "Now I'm dressed, I feel the part. It feels good to be suited and booted. If I find pussy that fits like my boots, it will be magic. I have a fuck-fund which looks like a well that can never run dry.
I'm physically very fit. If I get any fitter the government is likely to tax me on it. The blog now attracts about , visitors a month and is, in the author's words, "probably the most extensively documented primary research into the prostitute-client transaction and relationship. With that in mind, I contacted the anonymous author, who—after some negotiating—agreed to meet with me as long as I revealed nothing about his identity or his location, for fear that "if any tabloids or feminist journalists tracked me down, they could and would set about making my life really fucking miserable.
The fact that he's a decent writer with a deep interest in his subject matter obviously doesn't make him a saint. But to me it makes him more interesting than your average Amsterdam-bound British tourist, those guys who end up spending all their money on weed, novelty ashtrays, and sex with as many women as their Heineken-filled, semi-conscious penises allow them to.
