Yeah, I know you've heard it all before, go to Amsterdam, the weeds legal and cheap. $20.00 kept me baked for a week, but I'm not much of a smoker. The hookers are legal and clean of HIV and other diseases. Amsterdam is a city that is rich with history and some great museums and nightlife. Looks like the party might be over, and just when we need it the most.

There are a couple of sex museums not to be missed in Amsterdam for those of you have haven't been fortunate to partake. Hard to believe, but the Erotic and Sex museums were some of my favorite experiences. I'm not a nympho or anything—a slut, maybe. We fond our way to the Sex Museum just by wandering basically, because if you're stoned, and you don't know your way around that city, you're screwed. (You're pretty much screwed even if you're not wasted. There are canals everywhere and they all look alike.)

The Sex Museum, the more official of the two, greets you with a satyr, no arms, and a massive hard-on. You can't really miss him; it's a primal thing. This is the real deal, with the sexual history of the world dating back 2000 years. It makes me feel good to think of some Roman guy (or girl) grinding a dildo out of limestone 2000 years ago. You can get kicked out of school for that now. (Makes you think. . . but then again, look what happened to the Romans.) Most of the art at the Sex Museum is from the 18th and 19th century, along with an amazing amount of popular culture and kitsch to boot. Usually, the Sex and Erotic museums are written off as being stupid tourist traps in most of the guidebooks but, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I love them. I'm a geek though, and damn proud of it too.

The Erotic Museum is the place to go for the kitsch angle. It's in the middle of the Red Light District. At the cash register (it only cost us $5.00 for me and my boyfriend to get in), there is a model of a lass on a bicycle. The idea is to look up her skirt as you pass by. You get the idea, fun stuff. The guy that sold us the tickets was a grump though, and it sucks when you're a tourist and people are grumps, you automatically feel like your dressed wrong or something.

Inside, this place is 5 floors of amazing. There is some artwork done by John Lennon for Yoko Ono there, which surprised me. I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but still, that's pretty cool. A whole floor dedicated to S&M, wowwie. . . I vaguely remember going underneath a mannequin that was pissing in some Lucite over my head, it's sort of hard to describe. The other really cool thing they had were these cheesy phone booths, where you could hear phone sex in at least five languages. I only know one language, being an American and all, but the others were still interesting, even if you don't know what the hell they're saying. I mean, how much better than that does it get?

And then it happens, that, oh shit, I-had-no-idea-feeling, and the pot is kicking in big time. Paranoid, I'm in some parallel universe paranoia. And I'm looking at these narrow winding stairs, and as I'm going up, and up and up… and I'm looking at these European women's giant asses and thinking of that Queen song "Fat-Bottomed Girls." German women, and they're all giggling like schoolgirls, and I'm staring at their butts and wondering if I'm going to have an ass like that some day. Probably not, since I'm half-Japanese, which sort of bums me.

So we got to this room and it was totally set up with Disney-like characters. It was like kindergarten all over again, and it felt like nap time. There are even plastic toadstools to sit on (I needed it at the time) while you watch Disney-esque porno films, ours was animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, except getting nasty. These things are FUNNY. I totally want to have them in my video collection, and I don't collect porn or anything. Just to give you an example, I remember Dopey or Grumpy or one of the elves diving head first into Snow White's vagina (love that word,) and like swimming up inside her, and then some of the other elves start to follow him in. The best part was one of the elves stayed behind so he could play with her clit. He was using it like a punching bag, sound effects were great. I know a lot of you are probably thinking I'm making this up, or I hallucinated it or something, but it's the truth, and my next mission in life is to track down that porno on the Internet.

So my boyfriend and I are laughing so hard my stomach is killing me. And all these middle aged German women are laughing with us, they were great. They were wearing really bad jogging suits if memory serves me, and I had this great epiphany. I don't think I ever feel so connected to people, anybody, as when I laugh with them, and we don't even speak the same language. Too bad Arafat and Sharon couldn't get baked in Amsterdam and watch Snow White animated pornos, I think it would be a good bonding experience for them. I bet you Disney would sue for copyright infringements though. Geeze, I hope they don't read this. I actually work for them occasionally, I could get blacklisted for this.

So, the rest of the day was pretty much a blur, literally. Space Cake stays in your system 3 to 4 hours after you eat it, which I didn't know at the time. It's pretty funny—there are carts that sell Space Cake at Vondel Park during the summer, and they warn mommies not to feed the kidlets cake they bought from the vendors unless they know what they are getting. Although Amsterdam is extremely open-minded, they're also extremely organized and cultured community, and drugs laws are strictly enforced for the under-age. The legal drinking and pot smoking age is 16. The legal driving age, 18. We had a cab driver explain that one to us. They figure, well, if your going to drink and smoke pot, and possibly even ingest hallucinogens, some of which are also legal there, you damn well better know what your getting into before you get behind the wheel of a car that can kill somebody. Now, is that progressive or what? Why can't we be more like that?

The biggest news stories when we were there back in November was still about September 11th, and how the Dutch for the most part supported our war in Afghanistan, but we damn well better not use it as an excuse to go after Iraq or anyone else, but the other raging debate was whether the prostitutes in the Red Light District should be allowed to have pillows in their prostitute rooms. The hookers wanted to have pillows for comfort reasons, and I'm sure you could find other creative uses for them. The government was saying "no," because they thought that the pillows could be used to smother them, and they would be putting themselves in danger. Now I'm thinking, could you imagine that conversation happening here in the U.S.? George Dubbya saying, "You know ladies, I'm just thinking about you and your safety." I still want to see the inside of a prostitute's room. I wonder if they smell weird? Anybody ever been in one?

My boyfriend and I toured some other parts of Europe and came back to Amsterdam to fly out again. This time, we stayed sober and enjoyed the Van Gogh museum, which is really amazing. So, all the Lonely Planet guides and Rough Guides are right, you won't exactly remember your first time in Amsterdam, but good times are never exactly remembered. There is a big world out there, and not everyone thinks like us. I just don't want anyone to miss out on an experience because of some lame government that got voted in. Maybe it'll take them longer than expected to get the drug laws changed. I suspect it will be a long drawn-out fight. Let's hope so.