Amsterdam Exposed Book Review - Edgy, Scandalous; An Unforgettable Read
- Details
- Category: Books
- Published on Saturday, 05 May 2018 18:41
- Written by Janet Walker
Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey through the Red Light District, from De Wallen Press and Beverly Hills entertainment executive David Wienir, grabs your attention, thrashing your senses with each page and delivers a shocking look into the forbidden.
Wienir, for the record, explains up front the perils of reading this challenging expose. If, in the privacy of your home, reading a detailed account of a law students effort to find one prostitute who will offer him an insider’s viewpoint into the working girls life, in a very liberal society where conservativism is more uncommon than the shop windows in Amsterdam’s Red Light world, finds you squirming, uneasy, or disgusted than Amsterdam Exposed is probably not the read for you.
If conversely, the idea of exploring the underbelly of Amsterdam’s red light district, a sprawling sex convenience store, vicariously, through the eyes of a young law student, an American intent on finding one person who will lift the curtain on the nasty ideas, coarse language, sophomoric descriptions, than Amsterdam Exposed is the read that will keep you up late.
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Beginning in the desert of Nevada, our law student David Wiener visits a brothel, by chance, to the streets of Amsterdam, where window shopping takes on a whole new realm armed he is innately drawn with the foresight of knowing that somewhere in this seedy, fucked up dehumanizing world, a novel will be born.
Pulled to the underbelly like a fish to water, David from the beginning of his journey had his own set of rules guiding him as he researched what he thought would be an easy piece of literary work. All the elements for a smashing success were present: sex, drugs, and a fundamentally different viewpoint on women selling a fuck or other gratifications rather cheaply.
Throughout the 250 plus page read, Weimir offers his own brand of reflection, wisdom and advice from the mind and career of an older man while book is the reflection of a season in his life as a young man traveling in Europe before the rise of terrorism, when he felt free from the constraints of his American upbringing.
Amsterdam Exposed does hot have individual chapter synopsis, although it is separated into chapters. Armed with two rules for his journalistic expose endeavor: No sex with any of the ladies and many reasons, the subject had to be willing to offer the information for free. Hard rules in a city that prides itself on the ladies in the windows who are working to pay the rent, to find a way out; to escape.
Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey through the Red Light District keeps the reader engaged as Weinir shares his experiences through the eyes of the genuinely timid soul of youth to an embolden and dedicated pursuit.
The women are some of the most exotic and beautiful in the world, he says, as well as some who aged prematurely from misuse, drugs, life, self-loathing, and show it. He also shares missteps that could have always remained private, and like the women in the windows (who pay nightly for the glass cage) he exposed his soul: the mishandlings, mistakes, melancholic rejections, elevations, and finally the climatic ending which his fantasies for Amsterdam were realized.
Personally, I chose to read Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey through the Red Light District, and knew it would be an assault on my mind. Delving into the grossness of life spent in shackles, prostituting, drugging and being used repeatedly for another’s pleasure is not what I prefer to wrap my mind around as I try to avoid pollution in all its forms.
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David Wienir has taken this subject matter and presented it in such a way that even I found many of his exploits amusing. Just when you think you’ve escaped the district, he brings you around for another explanation of life for the women: The Rules, the cost, the fears and the drooling sludge that waits outside the windows as the barely dressed women attempt to secure the rent.
Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey through the Red Light District offers insight, an insider’s view, the opportunity to travel, vicariously, as a young man through Europe when the world was slightly more timid and gaining as much life experiences was the only guide.
I recommend it and caution as the author does as well: It’s not for everyone. If words cement bad behavior and become the gestation for dirty deeds in darkened rooms than pass on this. Otherwise look at it for what it is an expose on the oldest profession in the world that has put women in shackles while they find a way to pay the rent. It is not an endorsement on the profession.
Amsterdam Exposed: An American’s Journey through the Red Light District is available online and at bookstore everywhere.
David Wienir is an entertainment lawyer in Beverly Hills. Amsterdam Exposed is his fourth book.
