Dear Bruce Springsteen,

Before we start the entire semi-funny fake open letter routine I just wanted to say: big fan. Love most of your work, adore your live performances (Live in Barcelona, best live dvd ever!) and Human Touch to me is sort of a personal anthem (which says many sad things about my social life but let’s not go there). Just wanted to get that straight.

Anyway, I’m writing this letter on behalf of the prostitutes living, and working, in Amsterdam. As you might now, considering that you wrote, recorded, and released it, you have a new album out called “Devils and Dust”. It’s sort of an acoustic album based on a bunch of different life stories and, although that entire idea sounds cornier than the next Freddie-Prinze-jr.-still-playing-a-teenager-movie, it works pretty neat.

The title track for instance is a beautiful song about an American soldier in Afghanistan, Iraq, or wherever you people are these days, wondering what “if what you do to survive / kills the thing you love”. Other tracks are about a young boy losing his mother, Mexican immigrants trying to cross the American border, a boxer at the end of his career and Jesus (it’s an American thing, isn’t it?). God knows what All I'm thinking about is about but that one is my personal favourite on the album.

So far, no problem. However there is one song, and here the girls come in the picture, which is a little more problematic. In the song Reno you sing about a man having sex with a prostitute (presumably in Reno). Although it’s not quite Penthouse material you are pretty graphic in the song which has caused some controversy in the US, more specifically the lyric “ ´Two-hundred dollars straight in, two-fifty up the ass´ she smiled and said”. Although I do think it’s a bit of a cheap lyric the girls themselves don’t really have that much of a problem with that part of the song. But then again they are (what for it!) pretty cheap women (ba-da-dum-tsjing!).

The problem also isn’t in the part at the end of the song where the man and the woman have a drink afterwards and the guy thinks to himself “It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, not even close”. The girls would like to point out that most of the people they get are stoned or drunk so they don’t really remember anything from the entire thing anyway. Most men will probably wake up the next morning with a hangover and an STD not really remembering anything from the night before. Which I suppose makes the STD a nice souvenir they can give on to their wives. Also, as one of them said, “It’s not like you’re so fucking great”.

Their problem is with this part of the song “She poured me another whisky”. As one of the prostitutes (a woman I totally made up and decided to call Betty-Sue for no reason whatsoever) said “I dunno what them fancy women in Reno do with whiskey an’ all but here in Amsterdam we ain’t doin’ none of that stuff. You’s lucky if ya get a glass of water baby!” (why she talks in a fake Southern accent I don’t really know…. it’s probably a female thing).

So to conclude: the girls would like to ask you if you could refrain from singing that whisky part during your European performances. They’re afraid that men get the wrong idea about visiting prostitutes and they would like to point out that it’s just as it has always been: it’s still about abusing illegal immigrant women who would get beaten up or even killed by their pimp if they don’t do what he tells them to do (without whisky).

Oh and on a personal note: do an E-street band tour next year!

Adios!
Boris

Ps. I guess you don’t know Michael Bolton either do you? You’d think someone would….