A holiday I will never forget

Sasha and his friends go to Amsterdam and experience a memorable journey.

I reach across from where I'm lying to grab my passport which sits on the other side of the bed, I carefully manoeuvre my arm over my body in a twist movement and grab it. The room I am in illuminates a red glow and is no bigger than a big janitors store room would be in a school. It has a bed, closet and a bathroom. I am in fact lying, trousers down in one of the infamous rooms used by the Amsterdam window booth prostitutes. As I lay there the hooker walks over to the bed and asks to check my ID, I hand her my passport and she looks at it closely. After a couple of seconds she hands it back and sits down next to me. She's a tall women, definitely eastern European that has caught on a pretty good English accent during her career as a hooker, probably explained because a lot of English men have visited her in the past for the dirty deed, leading her to be able to pick up the accent well. She wears pink glittery lingerie and dark red heels which makes her beauty and curves have an almost hypnotic glow for the common man to pass by her booth window.

She asks me to hold up my penis while she puts on a condom. she hasn't looked me in the eye since I walked into the booth. About ten minutes go by during the blow job and I'm starting to enjoy myself, I try to not look at who it is that's sucking me off, just that it feels nice, then all of a sudden the hooker takes her mouth off my c**k and speaks," you have 5 minutes remaining, are you going to pay for more?"

" Err no I don't think so," I reply.

" well hurry up and come then!" She demands while tugging at my c**k at a noticeably quickened pace. I stare at her, stunned at her cold demand and the sudden feeling of awkwardness kicks in. She hates her job and i'm sitting here contributing to this disgusting and immoral industry that exploits women of their pride and dignity which is their body. But as those thoughts rose in my mind, I reach orgasm and ejaculate in the tightly fitted condom, as I have the orgasm I attempt to affectionately rub her arm to make it less of a cold transaction and more of a genuinely given sexual act. It doesn't work, she ignores it. Although the blow job was given out of a cold money contract, the orgasm was brilliant, the best I have had for a long time in fact, it was one of those long lasting ones that you can feel in  man's G spot, which is in the bottom.

"If you want to f**k me sweetheart it's going to be another fifty euros," she points out with a provocative smile.

" No i'm okay thanks," I don't have another fifty euros and if I did I would not be spending it on sex, however tempting it seems. In a matter of a few minutes I am back out of the glass window door and walking towards the wooden paneled Indy looking coffee shop that my friends are waiting in for me to return. I just cant stop smiling as I stride down the cobbled Amsterdam road. All my past worries have gone, the sexual relief I just had puts a happy skip into my walk and I feel very relaxed just like after my past sexual experiences. Although this one feels different, probably due to the fact that I was just was given a sexual act and nothing more. No relationship pressure or a crazy woman trying to find out who I am inside, none of that bother. It's a whole new level of relief with no strings attached, a one night stand almost, but both participants know this is a sexual act bound by a money contract so its sealed to giving that experience and that's that, no horrible surprises.I start to ponder over if I support or agree on Amsterdam's legal system when dealing with the sex worker industry, but I conclude that I do not regret what I did and I believe it is something every man should experience in his life time as it is like no other sexual endeavour.I reach the coffee shop and progress to the second floor where my friends are sitting smoking a few joints of Amsterdam's famous herb.

" So how was it?" Gabriel asks with a knowing grin on his face." Brilliant!" I exclaim while slumping down on my chair and pick up an excellently rolled joint laying next to me on the table. "I feel so f*****g good, that was ...that was new," I say while lighting the joint. It plumes up in smoke from the end and marijuana smoke flies into my mouth as I suck it in hard. All of a sudden the cosy, hazy feeling of being high hits me throughout my whole body and I slide down in my chair.

" Man I feel so good, seriously Charlie, I recommend you go get a blow job right now from one of them, these prozzies know what they are doing!" I say with a large cheesy smile. Charlie is my oldest friend out with us in Amsterdam as I have known him for a good five years since secondary school and he made the big mistake of coming to Amsterdam late and trying to keep up with the weed smoking only to get too affected by the reefer to do anything he planned  when he arrived.

"Nah man I'm good, I just need to sit here for a bit,"  

Hugh smirks,"He's having such a weed mare, just go bed!" We all laugh at his expense. I try to block out the thoughts in my mind as they crawl up into my conscious, now i've paid for a sexual act does this put me on the same level as the creepy guys who visit prostitutes, especially in Amsterdam? F**k it I don't care, what's done is done, I can't do s**t now anyway, she was a cold b***h, she doesn't deserve my sympathy or my time wasting worrying about it, f*****g w***e. It was probably the best blow job I have ever had to be honest, no half-hearted attempt by a slightly inexperienced girlfriend, I think to myself.

Finally we finish off our joints and leave the coffee shop in a very familiar haze, we had just smoked a cannabis strain known as Bio-Amnesia and it had done its job beacause as I walked down the road I had to concentrate quite hard on where my feet were stepping and I felt extremely aware of everyone around me paranoid that they where noticing me. On top of that I had strange heavy breathing going on. After what seemed like an age we reached our tiny, rundown hotel located right in the centre of Amsterdam city down the road from the well known Grasshopper coffee shop and the canal. It separates itself from the many other small time hotels on the same street by its massive glowing yellow sign placed at the top of the building facing outwards to the street. Gabriel pushed open the wooden framed door and we walk through towards the steep, windy stairs leading to the fourth floor...

 One day earlier

On our journey back to the hotel from Stones Coffeeshop we made a stop to a marijuana related shop to purchase some necessary items for the hotel: rizzla, tobbacco and roach cards. I was looking forward to getting back to the hotel because i was holding a bag containing 1.6 grams of OG Kush in my trouser pocket. I found all the required items pretty quickly and included big rizzla paper with the lot to make our cannabis smoking session more interesting back at the hotel. I looked behind me to see where the guys where and noticed Hugh speaking to one of the shop keepers inquiring about a container of what seemed like magic truffles, a small see-through box named "Mexican eyes" with a square purple label stuck on top that had weird looking tentacle eyes printed on the background supporting part of its name.

" Now please only take two each for you, you must be careful with these, they can make you crazy  if you overdose, take them on empty stomach and in safe place," the shop keeper explained to Hugh in a strong Dutch accent and half good English. If I wasn't wrong I saw an actual concerned look on the shop keepers face as he said that. This raised an alarm for me about the danger these truffles could hold for us. I bought my goods and left the queue to join my group standing next to the counter while we waited for Hugh to buy the truffles.

"Hugh, what are you doing, are you going to actually buy those?" Gabriel asks curiously,

" Yeah why not, i've wanted to try them at some point anyway, why not in Amsterdam?" Hugh replies with another question.

"Because you know nothing about them, they could be anything, it's just stupid if you actually get them, what is the point of risking it?"

" It's casj man, i'll search them up when we get back to make sure if they are safe or not" he states confidently.

We leave the shop with the originally requested items and magic truffles and head back to the hotel and hastily walk in to get buzzed through the door leading to the hotel rooms by the lady working at the reception desk. She had greeted us when we arrived two days ago and I think she pretty much knew what was going on in our room, three young boys (Charlie hadn't arrived in Amsterdam at this point) staying for three days in Amsterdam and leaving and returning frequently with red eyes and stinking of marijuana. She didn't look up at us as she let us in, fair enough i thought, she probably gets many tourists just like us so much as she's used to it by now. "Thank you" Hugh says politely as we walk past her and through the door in a petty attempt to somehow make up for the mess and image we were giving to the hotel.We finally reach our floor, located at the top of the hotel, number 4003 if I remember properly. Gabriel takes out his wallet and gets out the hotel card and places it in the card hole and the door lock flicked green and opens. I guessed that the locks changed from key holes to more secure card locks due to the amount of room robberies and such that may have happened in the past. We flutter in and drop onto the first mattresses available, two of them moved from the bunk bed frame to the floor so we had somewhere to sit and more easily roll joints. I make a fast play for my originally assigned top bunk bed, mattress still in its frame. "Lets get involved with some Kush, then later tonight take some of these mushrooms" Hugh exclaims as a proposal for tonight's plan.

"No man, I'm not on it, I'm not on taking some weird looking mushrooms from some shop in Amsterdam" Gabriel fires back." They are truffles not mushrooms" I add unnecessarily.

" We said we are going to search them up and if they are safe I'm going to try one or two." Hugh replys meekly. 

" Fine whatever," . Hours go by and we roll and smoke joint after joint, getting higher and higher. I start to find it near impossible to move my muscles without it being an irritating chore and a permanent grin creeps across my face. We get to the point of high where everybody is silent and in a "weedy" daze for a good amount of time, I do not remember much of this part of the day. All of a sudden I sit up, confused, still high and with a dry mouth. I check my phone to see what time it is, 6:30am. Holy s**t I've been out of it for a while. I take a look around the room. Gabriel is lying like a Crucifix on his mattress and he coughs weakly every so often. That reminds me how sore my throat has become throughout this three day holiday, whenever I swallow it hurts and if I breath in too hard I start to cough.

Our room is as simple and cheap as you can get for a hotel that is not either unsafe or roach infested. It contains two bunk beds lain with very thin, paper like sheets and rough pillows. The block television doesn't work which we found out when first arriving in the room and the blankets we found in the small blue lockers located along both sides of one the bunk beds is stained with come, the bathroom is extremely small and would be the nemesis to a claustrophobic person. There were also strange unexplained dirty footprints all over the ceiling.

All of a sudden my phone dings loudly and comes to life, it's Charlie sending me a text, ' arrived at  the coach station, do i get public bus from here? Also when I arrive be awake so you can let me in', I reply by saying, ' get a cab, its only 15 euros or something from there, the public buses here are a mare,allow that, also when you arrive the lady at the desk will let you through, come to the fourth floor and we are in room 4003.' I send the text and lock my phone and in no time I am back in a semi conscious daze.

A loud knock on our door wakes me up instantly from my sleepy oblivion, Gabriel stands up and opens the door. Charlie storms in like he has no care in the world, wearing a white t shirt, dark blue jeans, his usual Nike trainers and ray bans. He has a look on his face that shows excitement to start his first and only day here. " Alright guys, that trip was an actual mare, but the ferry was okay, I had a pint and got some sleep in"  he claims while looking around the room,eyes widening as the crack-den-like room enfolds  in front of him, "bloody hell, what have you done to this room!"

" We thought you'd notice the mess," Gabriel admits with a slight smile,

" Shut the door man we're sleeping" Hugh croaks having been alseep this whole time at being disturbed by the ray of light that broke in as charlie opened the thick white paitned door. " Oh sorry there Hugh, got any weed? I need some after that horrible trip and so I can try and get some more sleep."

" Yeah there's a zoot at the end of my bed" Gabriel tells him,

" let's have some as well, you wanna make a play for these zoots Sash and Gabe?" Hugh enquires." Yeah," we both reply sheepishly. Charlie lights the joint and has his first toke of the holiday. We get through three spliffs and Charlie all of a sudden goes over to the unused mattress sprawled on the floor, covered with empty food packets and water bottles, dirty clothes and tobacco. " Is this my bed then?"            

" Yes" I answer." Sweet, well I think it's time for me to have a bit of a lie down now, man this weed is good!" Charlie says to no one in particular while clearing up his mattress. It wasn't just Charlie's mattress that had rubbish all over it, the floor was just the same.

 Back to the day I will never forget 

 Out of breath, with my calves slightly aching we finally reach our room and Gabriel, who chose to hold the key card for the holiday, opens the door. We sit wherever possible and stay silent for a moment. Then Charlie breaks the silence," awrrhhh! I'm so baffed!"                                                 Gabriel chuckles, " How are you this high!" .

" Dunno man...just am, gotta deal with it now that..."

"what was the strain we got called again?" I ask anyone, interrupting Charlie and Gabriel's conversation. "Think it's Fruit berry Diesel,"  said Gabriel .                                                                       

" Ah, sick!" I start to have feelings of excitement knowing that i'll be smoking a new strain of marijuana and wondering what its affects will be. Time goes by and most of the gram of the Fruit berry Diesel has been smoked. What remains is a few more joints of it and another fat spliff of a mix of OG Kush and black hashish bought the night before. After having smoked a lot of different types of cannabis during the three days in Amsterdam, the strongest and most effective weed for me was without a doubt the black hash we bought from Stones Cafe located on the main street for coffee shops in central Amsterdam. If I remember correctly it was named "King Hussein" and it was suprisingly smooth on the throat but with a very unique taste that I can not really describe, it makes you so relaxed that you end up lying down on your bed not being able to move at all for a good few hours, and in those few hours amnesia must happen because you will not remember any of it even though you were awake the whole time. 

Suddenly I'm wide awake and it's dark out, we've been snoozing for a rather long time, I check my phone's clock, it is three in the morning, Charlie and Gabe seem fast asleep. The room would be completely dark if it wasn't for the small amount of light generated by the moon coming in from our small barred window. The bathroom door flies open and Hugh stumbles out and looks at me, his eyes having a "weedy" glaze about them. Wanna go search up about these truffles then?" he asks me." yeah sure, i'm actually on taking these truffles if they are safe, as you said we were planning to take them before in London." 

" Innit, anyone else on coming down stairs to the bar?" 

" I'll come, I can't sleep in this disgusting room anymore anyway," Gabe admits and crawls out of bed. We get to the bar and Hugh orders a Jager bomb after ironically saying the motto YOLO ( You only Live Once) conjured up in a rap song by the annoyingly famous and slightly homoerotic Lil Wayne of whom Hugh despises.I head to the computer located opposite to the bar and pay a euro to use it for twenty minutes. I get to the relevant page and I read out what it says to Gabe and Hugh.

" It says basically we can take a maximum of 15 grams each of these Mexican ones and that they are mild with small amount of psychedelic experiences and a moderate amount of the stimulant feeling," 

"that's fine, what does it say about the trip and symptoms?" Hugh asks.

"Come and read it yourself," I say impatiently.

 F**k reading the whole thing out. I get up and walk over to the table where they are sitting and take a seat beside Gabe. Hugh shuffles over to the desktop, takes his Jager bomb and begins to read it, eyes creased, obviously intrigued by the what is written on the page because he smiles fiendishly at the information laid out on the screen.

 Magic truffles 

We noisily re-enter the room and Gabe rushes to the toilet while we take our places in the room that we were at previously. I look over to Charlie, he's now awake but still lying down although now he has propped his back and head up by leaning on the bottom of the corner of my bunk bed, he had placed a cushion behind his back and head to make it  more comfortable for him to lean on. He is still wearing his ray bans. Hey guys, where did yous go?"

" Just down at the hotel bar to search up about the truffles Hugh bought yesterday, oh yeah Hugh had  a Jager bomb at the bar"  I inform Charlie.

" Is it? Jeez Hugh, wasn't that money for the cab tomorrow?" 

Hugh shrugs innocently, in fact it was for the cab originally but the temptation of getting a Jager bomb at the bar seemed to make Hugh's decision for him however expensive it was. 

" The truffles are safe though," I point out as if that were more important. We progress through the night to smoke a few more joints, my eyesight becomes very fuzzy and my right eyelid keeps fluttering and shutting at its own free will. After a while Gabe ends up going back to sleep and Charlie is silently lying in bed attempting to pass out from his daze. Like Charlie i'm in that daze just before you fall asleep but Hugh awakens me before i can doze off properly. " Sash you on taking the truffles now?"

" Lets do this," I reply, still half asleep and after a couple of seconds of consideration. What's the worse that can happen? They wouldn't sell possible lethal truffles, if the advised dose is taken and we stay in the room nothing will harm us. I decide to take one truffle instead of the recommended bunch, just to be cautious and Hugh passes me one of the smaller truffles from the packet. I look at it closely. It looks like a mini, freshly picked potato still with mud on it and loads of small bumps bulging out like a mutated potato if I had to describe it in a phrase. I start to seriously consider not taking it because my inner voice starts to tell me that it may be a bad idea. However I throw it in my mouth and start chewing vigorously before I fully change my mind. The taste is vile, very very bitter and a bit like horse radish if that's the right vegetable to compare it with. Whatever it was like it didn't feel edible. I swallowed it after a good half minute of chewing and felt it slide down my throat and oesophagus. I then go back to sleep as iI was still in a high daze.

I wake, eyes still closed. I was witnessing a new universe full of brilliant swirls and swishes of all colours, twisting and flying across my eyes. A mixture of a yellow and blue background suddenly takes over from the basic nothingness that usually is seen when your eyes are closed. The swirls suddenly stopped moving and start change direction, this time towards each other to finally create a figure with a blackened face. The figure's arms are flailing in sync with the remaining swirls still flying across my eyes. Out of nowhere the Hindu God Ganesh's face becomes the head of the figure and he looks at me and stares hard into my eyes, his pupils pulsating in size. I spot something else strange about his eyes, as he slowly moves towards me with his body turning  three hundred and sixty degrees, there are hypnotic swirls where his retinas should be.If  you know the optical illusion where you look at it in the middle for a few seconds and you can see it all around your room when you look away you'll understadn what I am describing. The two swirls in his eyes zoom in and come together to make one almighty mind f**k swirling round and round making me more and more dizzy. I've had enough and open my eyes wide. I'm instantly fully awake and aware of my surroundings. Hugh is laughing loudly from below, a mad tone to his laughter, I look down to look at him. He is lying on his stomach touching everything around him while moving his head from side to side. I remember him clearly, scanning the room and cackling at any object he sees. Without me actually realising it  I join in with his mad laughter and strange behaviour."HAHAHAHAHAHA, Hugh look at Charlie, look at him, he's asleep!" I hound. charlie's presence for some reason is all of a sudden the most humerous thing for me. hugh screams back," He's having a mare...oh my God Charlie's in Amsterdam!" 

" Guy's seriously shut up, I'm trying to sleep here," Gabe says weakly.

If Gabe knew what we would do if he spoke up I'm sure he would have kept quiet. " It's Gabe! Oh my God it's Gabe, he's trying to sleep, hahahahaha!" I tease, with Hugh adding on a few more "It's Gabe!"

I try to control my laughter and attempt to process my thoughts one by one, but I feel completely normal, no drunk or high feeling, no, not that, something different, I'm totally fine but something is just not right, I can't put my foot on what exactly, I just don't feel...sane. I fly out of my bed and jump down from my bunk. Before I know what I'm doing I start doing laps around the room. Am I going mad? I can't control this s**t, did I just take too much, have I become one of the baffled tourists who overdosed and went insane like what the shopkeeper said? I ask myself. I concentrate on where I am again. Somehow i've ended up sitting cross legged on the top bunk bed with no mattress. I attempt to lay down on the bed frame and calm myself. After a while I manage to control my laughter. I then get this urge to get out of the room, I have to get out! "Hugh, how sick would it be to be like this outside, f**k I wanna go outside!" Hugh clicks his finger and points at me, "Jeeze, that would be f*****g amazing!"

Charlie groans, " We shall go outside later on when you two have stopped fiending so much." I begin to realise that I cannot focus on any object with my eyes, they just keep looking forward into space so things seem a lot further away than they are, or closer depending on the erratic change of my retinas. This confuses me but it seems amazing at the time and I gurgle with happiness  looking out of the window at the blue sky, sun now rising. Hugh is now on his feet and climbs up to my top bunk, I see this as an opportunity to discover the realms of his bottom bunk. Its amazing. Hugh's bed seems like the darkest part of the room and undiscovered territory for me. Out of nowhere I get a feeling that I'm hanging in mid air, I quickly hold on to the bunk frame above me, hands and feet both clinging as if for dear life, I then attempt to climb back up wherever I'm hanging from. My unhealthly living gets the better of me and i soon tire from this climbing so I leap off the bed and flee into the bathroom. The bathroom is yet more undiscovered ground for me and the mirror interests me the most, I see myself! I have a peculiar, almost distorted face compared to my normal one. It amuses me and I start laughing again. My pupils are huge and my ears seem to have grown a lot. My smile seems strange, It's not a normal grin, it looks tainted. One that has been forced by something I can not control, it makes me feel like I'm not me anymore. I run back into the dark room and retire to Hugh's bottom bunk, my thoughts jumbled. I sit there confused and scared, a being deep within me rising as me and Hugh let out spurts of strange laughter, struggling with our sanity as dawn brakes and another day in Amsterdam begins. 

Author's Note

grammatical errors, if any left will be sorted out in time.