5 Rotterdam: City of Hidden Intentions

TED LANGENBACH

Ted Langenbach is so omnipresent in Rotterdam, his sole intention to be seen, like the Euromast, that people now joke that he employs doubles. These doubles are then strategically placed on the terraces of trendy cafés, so everyone can see that Langenbach is there. It’s even claimed that he regularly cycles around these cafés himself to check that his doubles are sitting at the agreed location, so that he can then go sit somewhere else. With his characteristic dark beard, dark hat and dark expression, it is truly impossible for anyone to avoid him nor is that necessary, because he has been very meaningful as party guru.

Ted Langenbach has done priceless work for the nightlife in Rotterdam. He has completely revitalized it. His MTC parties in the HAL building (a large empty space, filled with party eroticism) and his later dance club Now&Wow and the former WATT ring a bell with everyone in Rotterdam and far beyond. The parties were immensely popular. They had something magical, particularly due to the artists and dancers who performed there and the sexual extravagance. Nothing was too crazy, and especially not for Langenbach. He is also mad about women and is even said to have had 1,000 bed partners until he met his true love in 1991: Pietra Ligura. They finally became a twosome.

Langenbach is recognized in the street by the average Rotterdammer as the man who throws dirty parties at his home, where the whips hang on the wall. The party guru constantly plays with sex at his parties. Once, there were giant vaginas out of which bumper cars emerged, for instance. But it’s never just vulgar. There’s always more than meets the eye. He likes to shock with nudity and sex jokes, but also with social issues, such as occurred after the death of Theo van Gogh.

As a result, he became an icon for the city. If there is such a thing as society in Rotterdam, then Ted is the emperor. The advantage of being well known is that you get heard in the media. Ted Langenbach has eagerly embraced this and never minced his words. Thus, he always tells anyone who cares to listen that he is an advocate of free love and a lover of pubic hair.

ELFIE TROMP & JERRY HORMONE

Elfie Tromp and Jerry Hormone (pseudonym of Jeroen Aalbers) are writers, slightly eccentric and who also happen to be a couple, averse to sugary romance. They know each other through fucking, as they say themselves when asked – a successful one night stand, which by now has endured more than five years. It was, however, an intellectually responsible one night stand, as they met at the literary festival Geen Daden Maar Woorden (Not Deeds But Words) in the theater. Jerry wore boots with a heel; for Elfie, that was like a red rag to a bull. When she spoke to him, he was so intimidated that he began to stutter. Besides heels, Elfie also finds stuttering enormously sexy. Heels and stuttering are, therefore, the basis of their relationship. That night, Jerry managed to lure Elfie back to his place. The sex wasn’t very good at first, because they were both smashed and two drunken bodies are not all that capable. It was only really pleasant the morning after. They went to the Wester Paviljoen for breakfast; both had eggs and ham because they’d burned quite some calories and were a bit dehydrated. Elfie stayed at Jerry’s place the second evening. From that moment on, the sex was immediately better.

Together they run the irregularly published magazine Strak. To finance the printing, design and launch party of the third edition, they started a crowdfunding project. The idea was to sell their own bodies. Donors were invited to hire a place on the bodies of the initiators as advertising space. Your name would then be written on a belly or buttock and the photos were printed in the magazine as adverts.

What was intended as a playful campaign aroused more reactions than anticipated. Not only positive though; they also received a lot of negative responses. People found it cheap.

In this visual culture we are surrounded by nudity. Women’s bodies in particular are used appropriately and inappropriately to sell goods. You can’t buy a piece of cheese without seeing a voluptuous female curve in the advertising. But when you mix that with something as sacred as literature, you’re suddenly seen as vulgar.

And yet, this vulnerable action (after all, the writer couple sold their own flesh) was a huge success and generated a flurry of PR.

A. MOONEN

He has been called the Netherlands’ filthiest writer. The man of anti-morality. The Pierrot of perversion. Others consider him an extraordinary stylist and the creator of an utterly unique oeuvre in Dutch literature. Since his debut, A. Moonen (pronounced: A-point- Moonen) has had solely outspoken advocates and critics, but he never really understood all the fuss. Moonen only strives for sincerity in his work.

Moonen was twenty-three when he left Rotterdam. He’d always felt an outsider in the harsh and uniform city in which he grew up. In Amsterdam, he flourished. There was space for artists and deviant behavior was tolerated. Moonen discovered love between men and enjoyed it to the fullest, although he never chose it exclusively. He went to live with an older man who was acquainted with Gerard Reve, one of the Netherlands’ greatest post-war writers. Moonen let Reve read his ‘pieces.’ Later, Reve said to Moonen’s partner: ‘That boy can write, but he still needs to experience a lot.’

In the years that followed, Moonen did just that and he wrote about it in his pieces. Over time, these developed into complete manuscripts. He sent Zalf voor de dood (Ointment for Death) to several publishers, but it was rejected on ‘grounds of decency.’ In 1978 he finally made his official debut with Stadsgerechten (City Dishes), published by De Bezige Bij. This is the first in a series of autobiographical novels and collections of stories, full of descriptions of casual sex with prostitutes and random passers-by, fantasies about boys’ bums, a life of solitude in cheap hotels and run-down areas. Prominent critics such as Carel Peeters were enthusiastic, Hans Warren and Maarten ’t Hart were admirers. On the other hand, Jeroen Brouwers expressed his disgust and Aad Nuis called Moonen a brainless guinea pig of his own and other people’s urges.

Or, as Moonen said himself: ‘If people get disturbed by my books, it means that they become aware of their own lies. They are all doing what I write about, but they’re keeping up appearances. People can make all sorts of claims about my work, but I tell it like it is. I cannot lie, I’ve always had an aversion to lying. People don’t want to read books that confront them with their own illusory world. A blanket of lies and deceit hangs over the world.’

A. Moonen died in 2007 at the age of sixty-nine in a nursing home on the Nieuwe Binnenweg.

ANNE VEGTER

Poet Laureate Anne Vegter is one of the few female authors in the Netherlands who devotes much of her work to the theme of lust and pleasure. Very often in her prose and poetry, she has described the thrilling, but also incomprehensible and absurd aspects of eroticism, no less than in her collected poems Eiland berg gletsjer (Island Mountain Glacier). The poems bring together sex and the fear of death.

The collection also includes her own explicit drawings for the first time. On the first page already, you stare straight into the vagina of a woman with legs spread wide, with her breasts as mountains in the distance: the woman as a landscape. Accordingly, whoever reads these explicit poems imagines themselves an explorer, as the fingers explore the body of a new partner.

In 2004, together with poet Tsead Bruinja, I compiled an anthology of poetry about the female genitalia, entitled Kutgedichten (Cunt Poems). In my opinion, the most beautiful poem in this anthology is by Anne Vegter. It may not appeal to everyone’s imagination, but I find it tremendously exciting because it is obviously an expression of a strong-willed woman.

My precious cunt went down very badly at the center
Price per hour? Sixty-three all-in
they said, I said a driving lesson is cheaper.
If your arms don’t work you have no use for
driving lessons they said, let alone a car
Come on and train at our center,
maybe the car can be useful
if your legs work again later.
I say as long as your cunt works.
That went down badly at the center.
Sixty-three all-in.

Despite the fact that the post of Poet Laureate is a tremendous honor and practically the highest possible achievement for a Dutch poet, Anne Vegter remains ambivalent about her appointment. And that is perhaps understandable. You’re overloaded with requests, commissions, opening ceremonies and the like, leaving virtually no time for yourself. Every day she falls exhausted into bed in her Rotterdam apartment, she said in the summer to the NRC Handelsblad. Her entire sex life has gone to hell. Everything sacrificed for the position.

J.A. DEELDER

Rotterdam authors in any case seem preoccupied with sex. Even a writer such as the nocturnal mayor J.A. Deelder, who has revealed in stories and interviews that he doesn’t want to write about the act because he finds it boring and everyone knows about it anyway, has written an ode to the female genitals: the now famous Kutgedicht (Cunt Poem), in which he invented 128 monosyllabic synonyms for the vagina.

OLGA LAWINA

Passions and obsessions are not solely the reserve of high poetry. The theme is not shunned in Rotterdam-based comics. Agent 327 is such a comic, being the best-known creation of comic artist Martin Lodewijk.

This humorous comic revolves around the antihero Hendrik IJzerbroot, alias Secret Agent 327, who works for the Dutch Secret Service.

In the stories, which are nearly always set in Rotterdam, Agent 327 is assisted by the stunning Olga Lawina. While her appearance is that of a dumb blond, she is actually the one with the brains. It is thanks to her that IJzerbroot is able to solve the cases.

The sex bomb with a panoramic chest is based on the opera singer Olga Lowina. In the comic she has her own bureau: BIPS (Beautiful Important People Security), but she actually began as a stripper.

Olga Lawina is the only character in the comic whose appearance undergoes a gradual transformation. While her proportions were still anatomically correct in the beginning, as the series progresses her eyes and particularly her breasts become bigger. She starts wearing a navel piercing and her behavior also becomes ever more promiscuous. She prefers to wear clothes that reveal as much as possible. While 327 has presumably seen her naked on stage during a dance/strip number in De gesel van Rotterdam, the reader only gets a look at her body in Het oor Van Gogh; in a painting, but entirely nude nonetheless.

The good news for fans of Olga Lawina and the rest of the comic community is the recent announcement that there will be an animated film of Agent 327. Dossier Manhattan will be showing in cinemas in 2017.

PURNO DE PURNO

Purno is a little man in a purple skating suit with a high nasal voice, spoken by Theo Wesselo. The series was part of the children’s program Villa Achterwerk by the VPRO in the years 1989 to 1996 and from 2006 to 2007, but the many ambiguities and sexually tinted (word) jokes also make the series very popular among older viewers. YouTube has even put a few episodes behind the 18+ button.

In the opening sequence, Purno de Purno is apparently squeezed out of an anus and falls onto a breast. This immediately sets the tone. Then, as the story unfolds, a whole series of hallucinatory scenes follows with amusing references to sex, double entendres and nods and winks. As a random example, take the following conversation from the series. Here, Sjakie (S) leads Purno (P) and a nameless character (N) around the ‘homo museum.’

S: ‘Today we dive into history. Here we go, the homo museum.’
N: ‘Homo museum?’
P: ‘Yes, what’s that all about, Sjakie?’
S: ‘Homo means human. This is a museum about the evolution of mankind.’
P: ‘The ovulation of mankind?’
N: ‘Yeah, menstruation I’ll bet.’
S: ‘Are you starting already, guys? Look, the Homo Erectus. This was the first human that stood upright,’
P: ‘Yes, that’s obvious, that he stood upright’.
S: ‘Guys, try to remain serious. Look, this is the Homo Filius. A kind of human that liked only men.’
P: ‘Why did he become extinct, Sjaak?’
S: ‘The Homo Filius couldn’t have children.’

With Purno’s much used expression ‘Sapperedosio!’ (+/- Juicylicious!), Theo Wesselo has enriched the Dutch language.

These days, with his band Hausmagger Theo Wesselo makes rock music that’s dripping with horniness, as you can hear in songs such as Man in the metro.

Chickies, bitches, babes, pussies in the metro
Bottoms, legs, bellies, blouses in the metro
Skirts, panties, sweaters, ruffles in the metro
Oh man
It sure smells good in the metrooooow

DE KAAP

In the recent past, Katendrecht, a district in South Rotterdam, was the famous and infamous prostitution district. De Kaap, as the area is nicknamed, also had the largest Chinese community in Europe before the Second World War, mainly due to the shipping industry. Because of this, the area was known as the red light district and Chinatown until the late 1980s, an image that still holds sway with many Rotterdammers, although most of the Chinese and all the ladies of ill repute have since disappeared. The image has even grown to mythical proportions infused with a tinge of romance. Nonetheless, it’s reasonably safe to assume that in the days when this prostitution district was on De Kaap, it was not always peace and harmony.

In 1960, for instance, the café prostitute nicknamed Tiger Annie, while very drunk in a hotel room on the Rochussenstraat (central Rotterdam) with the nineteen-year-old Willempje G, was strangled by him.

SANCTIONED ZONES

Rotterdam was the only city in the Netherlands that sanctioned soliciting zones. These soliciting zones were located in several areas in the city. Besides De Kaap, these included the G.J. de Jonghweg, where the curb-crawling vehicles often led to traffic jams, and the Keileweg. Wherever the prostitutes were, it led to irritation. And that went from bad to worse with the arrival of heroin in the eighties. For many of the girls, life in those days was worse than desolate.

At that time I was employed by the Roteb, the garbage collection service of Rotterdam and environs. The company’s garbage incinerators were located on the Keileweg. It was not uncommon for us to give a heroin whore a lift to work in our truck full of garbage. It was painful to see how tired, emaciated and sick the ladies of ill repute were. I didn’t want to imagine the humiliation they were prepared to accept to get the money for their next fix. A fix, not to relax, but simply to be able to continue. To me it seemed practically impossible to break this vicious circle.

The city council (at that time comprised of the political con-victions of the ultra-right wing, Christian democrats and liberals) finally decided they no longer wanted to condone the ‘inhumane conditions’ under which the prostitutes worked on the Keileweg and to remove all the roughly 170 addicted prostitutes out of the drugs circuit before the end of 2005. On 13 September 2005 the sanctioned zone on the Keileweg was closed for good.

From then on, all street prostitution in Rotterdam was illegal again, as it was before 1984. Katendrecht has now become a hotspot for hipsters, the G.J. de Jonghweg is again a quiet place to live and the Keileweg is undergoing a revival. For instance, the artist Daan Roosegaard has recently settled there.

Practically next to the former prostitution zone stands the studio of artist Joep van Lieshout. He already worked there when he was less well known and the prostitution zones still existed.

Sex receives ample attention in his oeuvre. He made gigantic sculptures of genitals, a Bais-ô-Drôme (a fuckmobile, so to speak), provided a room in the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam with an orgy-size bed, a hotel room in Tokyo was equipped with enlargements of primal images of a male and female figure with enormous genitals. And, almost by way of a signature, sculptures of sperm cells appear frequently in his work. Little ones, but also very large sperm in which you could live: a few examples of that category lay on the banks of the Seine in Paris for a while in 2008. Van Lieshout is also a lover of sex in real life. It seems that he has a need to pick up women. But conversely, there is also his attraction. Van Lieshout is even described as the ideal lover.

LYDIA SCHOUTEN

A wonderful mural by Lydia Schouten hangs in the Witte de Withstraat. The Witte de Withstraat is the nightlife district of Rotterdam. Here, people can pursue each other. It’s always relaxed, but those who so desire can certainly feel the thrill of the chase and the excitement of what the night may bring. Since the start of her career, Lydia Schouten has denounced traditional women’s roles and the woman as a sex object. The painting shows a woman topless. Through this, the text is written: ‘Plotseling, als ik mijn tepel wil gaan kussen, zie ik honderden mannen me bekijken…….’ (‘Suddenly, as I’m about to kiss my nipple, I see hundreds of men looking at me…….’). The mural was made especially for the prostitution zone on the Keileweg, but since the abolition of the sanctioned zones it hangs in the Witte de Withstraat.

BOKITO

In 2007, the male gorilla Bokito broke out of his enclosure in Blijdorp Zoo. After escaping he attacked the visitor Yvonne van der Horde. The incident kept the (local) media busy for months. It was claimed that Van der Horde had wanted a sexual relationship with the silverback gorilla. This allegation, however, was entirely false. Bokito was her favorite animal in the zoo; she was only fond of the ape, nothing more. Conversely, it was indeed a sexual action by the alpha male. Bokito had been hand-reared in Berlin and had lived for three years in the apartment of the monkey keeper, whereby he lost the boundary between species, the human species and the ape species.

OQ

Club OQ is an exclusive nightclub with a worldwide reputation. Visitors can enjoy a variety of live shows, erotic lap dances, beautiful girls, erotic videos and pleasure. And all at a cost of €25 entrance fee, including three drinks of your choice. Those who wish to go further can always retire to a private room with one of the ladies. Naturally they have to pay extra for that. Cor de Geus, the owner, does have a suspicion as to what the name OQ stands for, but he is not certain about it. In any case, he didn’t come up with the name himself. The club was already called OQ when he took over from a certain Jan in 1979. Jan had seen the name somewhere and found it a nice short name. At that time, Jan sold sex films and Cor thinks he might have seen the name somewhere there, because OQ means sex from behind in French.

Cor’s mother was not happy that he’d started a sex club. His father was already deceased when he decided to tell his mother anyway. She refused to see him for eight years. When you come from a Christian Reformed environment, a sex club is obviously not done. Today OQ is one of the mastodons among the nightclubs in Rotterdam. This is partly due to the fact that the council gives no new licenses to other operators. While it’s not always easy in such a rapidly changing market, Cor de Geus has no intention of retiring: ‘I wouldn’t be able to stop.’

FOR SEX, GO TO REX

After the Second World War, American and British films could once again be screened and the Rex cinema focused on action and spectacle films. The matinee screenings, which featured westerns and Tarzan films, cost fifty cents at that time. There were also often premieres of B-movies, such as Buccaneer’s Girl, Heroes Die Young and Hell Bent for Leather to name but a few. In the 1960s, Rex began showing films with titles such as Street of Painted Lips and Forbidden Fruit. Over the years, sex films became an increasingly important part of the program. Via soft sex, they eventually started showing hard porn. This earned the cinema the slogan: ‘For sex, go to Rex.’ In those days, in the time of my youth, the wildest stories were going round about the Rex cinema. Besides the racy scenes on the silver screen, they claimed that actual sex acts were taking place in the auditorium. There was talk not only of the obligatory masturbation, which produced the necessary sticky tissues, but even sexual acts of the audience with each other. There was even a rumor that a woman came round every now and then to let herself get laid by the moviegoers. She was married to a paraplegic man and was thus unable to find satisfaction at home. So she lay naked on the stage under the silver screen and anyone who felt the urge could have his way with her. Not infrequently, a queue formed. Apparently, there were sessions where she had more than twenty men. I’ll probably never know what’s true from those stories and rumors. And I think that’s no great loss. A fantasy is often many times more interesting than reality.

The emergence of video ultimately meant the demise of the Rex; video killed the sex cinema. Increasingly, visitors stayed at home because they could hire the latest porn films in the video stores and the Dutch film rental agencies no longer released 35mm cinema porno films.

The curtain finally fell on the Rex in October 1996. The closure was not the result of a decision by the cinema operator, but by the police, who found that the Rex no longer held the required licenses during a routine inspection. These days, a casino and a supermarket stand at Middellandstraat 115–117.

A couple with whom I’m friends now live above the former Rex. When I visit them, I can’t help but wonder what used to be stored here in the past. Could it be all those reels of film with sex? My friends never think about what their place must have contained; they are very content to live there. I, on the other hand, like to indulge my fantasies when I’m visiting. I can well imagine how the boy who changed the film reels was visited by lonely ladies. It’s almost inevitable that in that – then dark – space, steamy sex regularly took place.

HOLLAND POP FESTIVAL

At the height of the hippie era in 1970, in imitation of Woodstock, a three-day festival was held in the Kralingen forest. The Holland Pop Festival attracted tens of thousands of visitors (estimates range from 80,000 to more than 130,000), many of whom entered without paying. The festivalgoers enjoyed bands such as Pink Floyd, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and Santana. Entirely in the spirit of the times, there was an unprecedented feeling of solidarity and they strove for love, peace and joy. This was expressed in a lot of dancing, smoking hashish, nude swimming and love for each other. The police, who in those days were still ruthless, were remarkably restrained in dealing with the long-haired, work-shy scum. There were only a few skirmishes in those three days, despite the many visitors. The hippies also came with very different intentions. In those days change was in the air, and everyone wanted to believe in it. Now, forty-five years later, there will finally be a second edition of the Holland Pop Festival in the Kralingen forest, taking place on Saturday 26 September 2015. The line-up is not yet known, but the organizers promise it will be just as surprising as the first time. Nothing has been announced about free love.