Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend Read online

  A nice high floats in as the train carries us into Centraal Station.

  We stagger out of the station and walk along one of the main roads leading off to Dam Square. It’s not even ten o’clock yet on a Friday morning and half of us are half-pissed and the other half are totally stoned (try to calculate the maths in that statement!)

  Laughing and joking we wander along a street that would win any game of Scrabble hands down: Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. It’s pretty surreal reeling around at this time of day and we probably look like some sort of homeless convention as we shamble our way up the road.

  We pass a few hotels that look a bit pricey so carry on looking for a pit for the night. One of the boys spots a sign in the window of a kebab shop down one of the side streets with a sign in the window saying ROOMS FOR RENT. Although it’s still early in the morning the kebab shop is already packed with hungry customers.

  ‘This will do,’ someone yells and we bowl into the shop to see if they’ve got room enough for the lot of us.

  ‘Hi guys!’ bellows the Turkish shish kebab seller behind the counter. ‘You English? You want rooms? You like Man United in the football? Here for a stag do, the ladies, the hash hish…….Come on in, I’ll sort you out!’

  The fella says he has six large rooms available and that we’ll all squeeze in just fine. He takes us through a side door and up the steepest set of stairs known to man. It’s like climbing the North Face of The Eiger only instead of being battered by evil snow storms and deadly ice falls we are assaulted by the thick smell of grease and burnt meat.

  The walls are tacky with grime and haven’t seen a lick of paint in a few decades at least.

  On the first floor he opens a door into the first of the bedrooms. It looks like someone’s been using it as an abattoir, there’s blood and what looks suspiciously like shit smeared up the walls. There’s no doubt that the food you can buy downstairs was slaughtered up here.

  The carpets are crawling with mites, covered in dodgy white stains and have not seen a vacuum cleaner, since, well, probably ever. The beds must have come from the nearest maximum security prison, with the thinnest, rankest mattresses with springs popping through. I don’t want to think about the other bodily fluids that this thing pretending to be a bed has been marinated in, let alone kip in it!

  We then get shown the bathroom and the lavatory. One room is an open sewer; the other is an open sewer with a shower head above it. The stench is worse than Satan’s arse with a very bad case of the trots. To get rid of the stink we can just have a smoke going all the time even when we are asleep, there’s nothing to worry about because there’s no chance of anything catching fire under a layer of rancid animal fat.

  ‘We can’t stay here. This is someone’s torture chamber. We’re gonna end up as a headless torso floating in the canal or under a big bag of lime in a forest by tomorrow,’ worries Kid D.

  ‘I don’t fancy getting buggered and flayed alive, I’m out of here,’ he continues whining.

  ‘Well I love the place,’ pipes up Deviant Boy. ‘What’s the damage chief?’ he asks the owner/ mass murderer of backpackers and daft English stags.

  ‘It’s ten Guilders each per night,’ says the kebab man, overjoyed he has some new guests or potential victims staying in The Hotel of Doom.

  ‘Tell you what mate, chuck in a free doner each per night and you’ve got yourself a deal my friend!’ and with that the accommodation and our fates are sealed.

  The guy has the front to make us promise that we would not smash the rooms up and that we will leave them in the state that we found them. No worries friend. They can’t get any worse.

  Bags get dumped, armpits sprayed, hair gelled and out we go to see how messed up we can get in The Dam.

  CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 11…..188 TO GO

  BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 1 PINT, 2 BOTTLES OF LAGER AND A LIMONCELLO

  Chapter Five: The Amsterdam Whore Equation

  It’s Friday afternoon and we’ve stumbled on a fantastic bar off one of the canals near the red light area. It’s got some cool snake theme thing going on and the beer pumps are chrome cobra shaped and look well cool. This bar is ticking all the boxes needed for a top stag do:

  -Cold Beer

  -A top shelf loaded with Spirits

  -Pool Table

  -Juke Box (With Banging Top Tunes)

  -Fruit Machines

  -Food

  -Drugs

  In the drugs category they have a dealer in the corner sitting behind a counter chock full of gear. It’s like being in a sweet shop for adults and offers the best ‘pick and mix’ on the planet.

  They serve grass, resin, skunk, super skunk and some trippy ultra-strong variety of weed called purple haze. The local Dutch lads take their drug smoking seriously and sit with a coffee and enjoy their buzz. They know alcohol + spliff = game over.

  The mad English attack the Stella Artois and the gear together. This is not a good idea and will only result in a state of unconsciousness. It’s a fatal mistake to ask the dealer to ‘give me the strongest shit you’ve got man.’ He will and you will regret it. Probably some weed with LSD mixed in it which will massively mess your noggin up for the next week.

  Also on offer in this most excellent establishment are ‘space cakes’, brownies baked with cannabis resin in them for the non-smoking wimps amongst us. These are a major error again because they are super strength and will send you into a coma before you know what hits you.

  They also sell cannabis teabags to enable you to eat a ‘space cake’, drink cannabis tea and smoke a joint all at once. This will definitely get you hospitalised so make sure you’ve bought some fully comprehensive travel insurance.

  We all skin up and start puffing hard. This is a ‘brown bar’ as you are allowed to smoke gear in it. Why they are called ‘brown’ is beyond me as the walls are yellow with nicotine and the place reeks of the sickly sweet smell of the grass.

  But we love it. The tunes are pumping out the juke box and the pool table is seeing some hustler action. This is the life. I’ve got a massive buzz on, the chat is racy and the laughter comes thick and fast: I’ve not got a care in the world. It’s fair to say that not a single gram of fuck will be given today.

  Meanwhile Kid H has been looking at Kid I for a while and says ‘I know you. I recognise you now.’

  ‘Course you recognise him you plum you’ve been drinking with him all day, he’s Kid G’s cousin,’ Kid C mutters.

  ‘No,’ Kid H continues ‘I know you from before the weekender.’

  He is staring hard at Kid I who says he has not got a clue as to where they might have met before.

  ‘You live in the village and you drive a silver 4 x 4 thingy don’t you?’ Kid H asks of Kid I.

  ‘Yeah that’s right but I am sure that our paths have not crossed before.’

  ‘You must recognise me. Have a really good shifty at my picture. Is my face ringing any bells yet?’

  Kid I has not got the faintest idea what Kid H is banging on about. In total frustration Kid H stands up, drops to the floor and starts rolling about making horrible noises. He is holding his arm at a weird angle and screaming in pretend agony.

  ‘Recognise me now you tit?!’ he yells while writhing about on the floor looking like an earth worm who is just coming up on an E.

  Kid H looks like he is having some sort of seizure or fit of some sort but none of the locals seem to bat an eyelid. Suddenly the penny drops for Kid I. You can almost see the light bulb that starts to glow above his canister. PING!

  ‘Oh Shit. Kid H I’m sorry mate. You’re the fella that I knocked off his bike a couple of months ago. I did not recognise you without your Lycra budgie smugglers on. Got to apologise but I’m sure the accident was your fault anyway!’ exclaims Kid I.

  ‘How do you work that out? I was coming down the hill on my bike on the way to work and you just pulled out of a side street without looking. I hit the front side of your car and went straight over t
he bonnet and cattle trucked my arm when I hit the ground. How was that my fault?’ questions Kid H as he gets up off the floor.

  ‘Well, if you had been driving in a car I would have seen you for sure. Anyway I did stop and check that you were OK. You said all was good, no damage to you or the bike and we shook hands. No harm done. However there is the small matter of the dent and scratch your bike put in the side of my jam jar though, but buy me a pint to call it quits.’

  Kid H can’t believe the gall of Kid I. They eye each other up warily and then crack up laughing.

  ‘Fuck me. It is a small world huh. I was almost killed by Kid G’s cousin. Is that how you find new mate’s is it? By running them off the road you crazy fool?’

  At that moment Kid H becomes ‘Hit’ and Kid I is nicknamed ‘Run.’

  The ‘Hit & Run’ lads are still good mates today, nearly two decades later and the story has become so embellished by now that Hit’s head actually came clean off as the bike went straight through Run’s engine block causing a massive explosion. After all, what is a bit of exaggeration between friends?

  “PISSED UP CONVERSATION #1: ‘Let’s open up a bar exactly like this one when we get home, it’ll be the mutts nuts!’ shouts one of the lads, Kid F.

  ‘Well two things are going to knacker that idea straight away,’ says Mule. ‘First we’d drink all the profits and second drugs are illegal back home. Don’t think the local police are going to be too happy about a bar full of kids stoned outta their heads.’

  ‘But everyone would be so chilled out that they wouldn’t be arsed about fighting. Check it out here in Amsters. It’s only the English acting up and getting out of control.’

  ‘Yeah the English disease they call it. Can’t handle our mind altering substances or our drink, cool ain’t it? Get another round in son.” END OF CONVERSATION….

  Although it’s only early afternoon, two of the single guys in the stag party have disappeared off to the red light area for a bit of window shopping and maybe [this means definitely] sample a bit of the old ‘in and out.’

  For the record I have never paid for sex although I have the sort of boat race that would suggest that I have to.

  The ladies always look red hot all togged up in their full kit and webbing but I just can’t indulge because of the mathematics of the game as follows:

  Let’s be generous, very generous in most cases and say the average bloke’s penis is six inches [half a foot] long when erect.

  Say Hooker X entertains eight clients during each working day, 8 x 6 inches, this is four feet of cock per day.

  Suppose she works five days a week this becomes, 4 x 5 = 20 feet. After three weeks work in the month, due to nature, this becomes, 20 x 3 equals 60 feet of nadger each month.

  So the grand total of nob in one year, would be 60 feet x 12 months = a massive 720 feet of man meat.

  To put that into perspective Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in London, England is only 169 feet tall. Therefore your average brass gets four times as much ‘Man Column’ over the year than Lord Nelson!!

  That’s what puts me right off and why I don’t join the two lads on their jolly. They have convinced themselves that by going on a Friday afternoon they will end up on top of a cracking bit of MILF (Mum I’d Like to Fuck) who only works while her nippers are at school.

  She only shags a few select punters during the daylight hours and then disappears off back to her ideal home, hubbie and 2.5 children of an evening.

  This idea is the exact opposite of the ‘go ugly early’ theory when out on the pull in your local night club.

  If you’re into a bit of Hermann Goering [Whoring] fair enough, I’m not the shag police, just rubber up and dive on in!

  I’m certainly not disrespecting Prostitution as a career choice. It is the oldest profession on Earth and hookers are clearly doing something right by providing a most pleasurable experience. It’s just not my cannabis-laced cup of tea.

  Back at the snake bar, we’ve got chatting to a great bunch of local girls and lads. They can’t believe the state we are all in so early in the day and are ripping the piss out of us daft English mad dogs.

  The banters flying back and forth, there’s a brilliant laid back vibe going on. One of the ladies is an absolute cracker. Long wavy blonde hair, a great body and a razor sharp tongue on her. She is giving out a load of stick and knows who to pick on in the group to get the maximum laughs.

  She told us that her name is Kristall, not like crystal the gem but spelt with a K, an I and two L’s. Her English is excellent, which is a right result, as none of us speak a word of Dutch and most of us are currently only speaking Pissed. She tells us she has five big brothers at home, so is used to hanging around with a herd of crazy males.

  I suspect she also tells us this to let us know that any unwanted funny business could be met with a pretty severe kicking. She has also skived off work early to grab a few beers, seems they celebrate POETS day here as well. You know ‘Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday’. Avoiding work to go out drinking is the same in any country it seems.

  Kristall just may be the perfect woman. You can see that most of the firm have got their eyes on her but don’t have a chance of pulling really, not until they become half sober at least.

  She’s telling us how great Amsterdam is and where all the cool clubs, bars and cheap but cheerful restaurants are. ‘You’ve got to visit Anne Frank’s House, see the trendy art in The Rijksmuseum, take a bicycle tour along the canals, it’s just amazing.’

  Kid C interrupts, ‘You must be joking love, none of this lot have got any culture whatsoever and apart from the freely available drugs, the only Touristy thing we might go and see is The Museum of Sexy Time!’

  ‘Wow I love that place!’ says Kris, ‘Let’s go there right now.’ With that she rustles up a few of the lads and a couple of her girlie mates come along for the stroll. Some of the boys are not keen to leave the snake bar until chucking out time, which will be very late doors.

  Back home the pubs still close at three in the afternoon and don’t reopen until seven. It’s like living in the Stone Age. Being here in Amsterdam, somewhere more civilised that allows all day opening is an opportunity not to be missed, certainly not to go to a museum.

  ‘Catch up laters dudes,’ we say high-fiving the rest of gang as we wander into the sunlight on our way to see how grotty and quite literally, packed full of grot, The Museum of Sexy Time is.

  Like hard sex with your other half, it doesn’t disappoint!

  CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 10…..178 TO GO

  BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 3 PINTS AND A CINZANO BIANCO

  Chapter Six: That Dutch Dog Sure Is Handsome

  We arrive at The Museum of Sexy Time to be greeted by two massive plastic cocks as we walk in which make us all laugh and we shout out ‘Helmet!’ just for old times’ sake.

  We have been yelling ‘Helmet!’ for years since school as it was an in joke. We still shout it out now at gigs, in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and even in a church once during someone’s wedding. The vicar even cracked a smile. We’ll never grow up.

  For a Friday afternoon the place is packed with a mixture of nervous looking tourists, dirty old men and pissed up people (us).

  We pay a couple of Guilders and go in with the promise that we will see erotic art (dirty paintings), antique love photographs (porn for the oldies) and unique objects which I’m guessing are going to be whips, chains, vibrators the size of marrows and gimp masks.

  It’s great. As you go up the stairs to the next level there is a plaster cast of an arse hanging on the wall, which farts compressed air at you when you stand on a certain step. This might just be the funniest thing we have ever seen and we march up and down the stairs in our semi-slaughtered state, giggling like a load of four year olds.

  Farting is the ultimate gag and one that lads never seem to grow out of. The smellier and louder the guff you can produce the more respect you get from the gang for qua
cking it out.

  Always remember not to push it out too hard and soil yourself. So, not a good look my friend.

  We wander about looking at the pornography on display, some of which is kind of titillating, some of it just bizarre, and some that is going to mentally scar me for the rest of my life.

  The majority of the right grim stuff is seen in their recreation of two video booths which have a warning on them that the films shown inside are of a very explicit nature and that viewer caution is strongly advised. This is the understatement of the century.

  We’d seen video booths along the canals and they looked like the 90’s version of the old peep show. For a small bit of change you went into your own private cabin, selected the grot movie you wanted to watch and got ten minutes worth.

  To be honest that’s about all the time you need really. The plot of most sex movies isn’t really worth a wank, but hold on, actually it is!

  I wondered whether office workers in the Dam popped out at lunchtime for a sandwich and a much needed one off the wrist. Was masturbation part of the national culture here or were the booths just for the stoned stag parties?

  If the former it was no surprise that the locals were all such a happy and sociable bunch.

  The Museum had two video booths sitting next to each other so three of us crammed into each one. I ended up sitting in the one with Deviant Boy and Kristall.

  Now this wasn’t a first date, but if it was, it was most definitely not the place to take a lady you wanted to impress. For a start the floor of the cabin was littered with used tissues. Call me naïve, but I liked to think that the last user just had a particularly nasty cold!

  We put some coins in the slot and Channel 1 comes on. There’s a big button under the screen which you press to change the video so you can scan through and find something that floats your boat. Now I’m as broad minded as the next guy but some of the utter filth I saw that afternoon was worse than any horror movie yet created by Hollywood.