Me and D. Amsterdam. About 9pm. Headed to a party from Central Station.

We board a tram to Overtoom, punch our strippenkaarts, and take a seat. In the seat in front of us are two people.

To the left sits a Thai (maybe Malaysian or even Indonesian – I couldn’t say) tranny. Tall, thin, caked with makeup and flouncy, long hair. She has a colorful dress on, pretty sure it had sequins on it (maybe rhinestones). She smells more flowery than the fields of tulips we passed on our way up from Rotterdam. If she were any more an over-the-top Asian tranny, she’d be Lil’ Kim.

To her right, a short, stubby, exceedingly pale butch dyke, wearing full-body denim and a (naturally) denim cap covering her short blond hair. Little greasy glasses are perched at the end of her nose. She looks like a dyke friend of mine, who is allergic to the Y chromosome.

They start making out, messily and noisily, the tranny’s high-pitched titters barely drowning out the grunts by her dyke girlfriend. Not sure if I’ve ever seen such a passionate display of love in public before, least of all in staid Holland.

Yes, I’m serious.

D. turns to me. “What exactly are we looking at here?!”