AMSTERDAM—In typically shameless Amsterdam style, the Prostitute Information Center is nestled just across the alley from Oude Kerk, one of the oldest churches in the city, in the heart of the Red Light District. I’ve come here to interview Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who runs the information center, for a sidebar in Let’s Go: Amsterdam 2004, but she’s a bit busy.

The website is down, and she’s been on the phone with her webmaster all day.

While I wait, the souvenirs on sale are distracting enough: pamphlets on buying and selling sex in Amsterdam, t-shirts and figurines, reports on sexually transmitted diseases, bulk-pack Durex condoms charmingly renamed Beneluxe for regional promotion.

A couple comes in, their teenage daughter in tow, and buys a t-shirt. Majoor, gauntly cheekboned and businesslike, cups the phone between her ear and shoulder to take their money.

The next customer to the drop in center is unmistakably American, and by the accent probably Midwestern. His face is scrubbed to pinkness, his white hair combed over meticulously, and he laughs like an attack: nasal and whiny. Majoor sighs—the website is stubborn—and gets off the phone to take his question.

“I’ve noticed,” he begins, “that in those red-light windows out there, the prostitutes tell you that you have only ten, fifteen minutes.”

“If you’re lucky,” she says, smiling a little.

“Well, what if I want someone for longer?”

“Longer?” she says.

“Like a lifetime.”

She purses her lips. “I don’t understand.”

“Let me tell you my story,” he says. Americans always want to tell their story. His is fairly dull: wife left him, has a grown daughter, wants more children. “In order to do that, I need to find a woman who’s still of childbearing age—in her thirties. I’ve tried mail order bride services, but mine ran off on me. Can you help me?”

Mariska is polite but firm. Her smile is tight. “Sir, everyone wants someone to love them for their whole lives. You’re not going to find it in the red light district. This is an information center for commercial sex.”

“Well,” he says, “I know you don’t go to a gas station and ask for a Rolls Royce, but maybe the gas station attendant can refer you to the Rolls Royce dealer, right?”

His laugh attacks the room again, shrill and unembarrassed, and he tries once more. “So do you know where the illegal Eastern European women hang out?” The more desperate, the better.