Like anyone

He is not a big spender, and he knows it. An ordinary job, he comes once a month, sometimes less. The first time, he wondered whether that would matter.

It did not. The host received him like anyone, took his coat, poured his drink. No glance at his shoes or his watch. Here you are not measured by what you spend.

He is never hurried. At the bar it always runs a little later than planned, and that is fine. It is less about what people assume and more about the attention: a conversation, a woman who takes her time, a room where the day outside stops for a while. He comes in with a full head and leaves with a smile. After that he can carry on.

Once he asked the host, half joking, why they bothered with him when others spend ten times as much. The answer stayed with him: a kind guest who leaves happy is worth more than a difficult one who leaves a fortune. Good manners count for more here than the size of the bill.

It is a rule the house has run on since 1986, kept by the same family at Overtoom 294, one of the last licensed houses in Amsterdam that still work this way. He does not know all of that. He only knows that here he gets the attention he does not find elsewhere, in a licensed sex club on the Overtoom, where it does not matter what he earns.

That is why he comes back.