This piece contains subject matter that
some may find offensive. Please do not read this if
you are disturbed by 'adult' themes. Views expressed here do
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management.
My intention in this piece is not to displace all
sympathy for these sadly misfortunate girls, but to facilitate a
more accurate understanding and informed wariness of this industry,
and finally, to dissuade other would-be saviors from the whorish
gallantry and exploitive chivalry as heroically bestowed by a
nameless john upon himself.
Dear Anonymous john,
Well, glory be! Beyond the pillars of
engineering academia and Mrs. Anonymous’ famous rhubarb pie, there
lies a quite fucked up world. Proper fucked, indeed!
Wake up! For an older guy with a college degree, you sure are
naïve. You’re the reason—at least one of the many stiff
ones—why this business exists. You can’t vindicate all your
sexploitation by buying off one twenty-one year old waif. Who
are you? Some honorary Mormon who bicycles into the sex
districts of foreign countries in search of slender, lip-sticked
souls to save? Is your arm sore yet from patting yourself on
the back?
I’d like to propose a less wordy version of
your story…
I came to Korea to supervise guys who build shit
without safety codes. I hung out with so many prostitutes that
I learned how to spell all of their countries of origin. As I
bought drinks for the lot of them, a story slowly began to unfold; a
story of deceit and corruption, of sex and money. Finally,
after wading through the bars, and sometimes beds, of the bigger,
more voluptuous ones, I found a skinny young one that did such
things to my “lusty old” dinky. Things that words simply
cannot describe. She was like a pornstar incarnate, but
without the gratuitously orgasmic fakery. She was a good girl,
MY good girl. Although soured by circumstances, she still
managed to experience joy, but only when she was with me.
During our pillow talk sessions, I began to sympathize and finally
decided to break her chains of sexual bondage. I
purchased her contract with my almighty dollars and paid off the
tyrants who had been keeping her here. Her story—and her
pussy—compelled me to set her free. It was spendy, but DAMN,
if she didn’t laugh and cry and fuck like never before! Her
freedom being signed and sealed, I delivered her to the train
station and watched as my tangy butterfly fluttered back to her
daddy in Kripplechickstan. And now, whenever she says her
prayers, she’ll whisper one for me, her personal Saint Pink
Dinky.
Religion shouldn’t matter too much when a family’s
starving to death, so I’m not buying the tainted-Muslim sob
story. The truth is that those pitiful sex-workers took a risk
to get out of whatever situation they had back home. Sex sells
in any country, and in the business of international
“entertainment,” scandal and exploitation come with the
territory. What kind of moronic father wouldn’t be able to
anticipate the kind of work conditions to which his good little
Muslim daughter would be exposed? It’s not like these girls
are told that they’re getting an interview with Intel. And
that story about the mama-san restricting the petite girl to just
one meal per day? Please! How could someone watch her 24
hours a day? Surely she could eat somewhere, somehow, if she
really wanted to. What would they do? Beat her?
Which reminds me of a question: did any of these girls show
any signs of physical abuse? Undoubtedly, they’re caught in a
life of emotional and psychological torment, but physical abuse
would confirm the enforcement of these dietary restrictions, which
they would have ‘johns’ like you believe they are subjected
to. Here’s another question: if you somehow found
yourself in their situation, which story would get your customers to
open their wallets wider?
“My name means ‘crafty vixen’ in my native language,
and my devoutly Muslim father kicked me out for coming home drunk
and smoking cigarettes, so I came to Korea to have sex for
money.”
“My name means ‘angelic buttercup’ in my language, and
my father, brothers, and cousins are starving to death, so I had to
come here to make money.”
How many times has that story been told? How
many wavering would-be ‘johns’ have been reluctantly reeled in as
soon as a girl whose name means ‘flowery puddle of innocence’ spells
out precisely how and why she tragically wound up pitifully pounding
vodka, sucking cigs, and haggling over precisely what is meant by
‘long time’? How many engineers, john? Do you envision
these girls as being starved and curled up on cold linoleum floors
reading their Koran, and then noticing a newspaper ad for
“entertainers” in another country? You said that many of them
were naïve and innocent before being thrust into sexual servitude,
but how do you know? How could you be sure that they were such
virginal angels back home? Surely some of them were already
outcasts who drank and smoked and fucked like bunnies before coming
here and getting ravaged by guys like you.
Do I think that it’s sad? Sure. Do I agree that many
of these girls are taken advantage of by recruiters and
employers? Of course. Have I witnessed their low
self-esteem and pathetic way of life? Too many times. Do
I agree that being a hostess or prostitute corrupts a girl’s
innocence and irreparably distorts her perspective toward men?
Absolutely! Hang out at a Vegas tittie bar for a few
hours. Or better yet, drive out to Bumble Fuck County in the
Nevada desert and visit one of the dormitories where indentured sex
servants are required to live for the duration of their
contracts. I am offended by your letter, Mr. well-traveled
American, and by your egotistical audacity. Contrary to your
claim, you obviously have NOT “seen prostitution in all forms, just
about everywhere on the planet.”
If you think that these former soviet lasses got it
rough, then check out Thailand, Cambodia, or any other third-world
Asian destination. This Russian mafia shit is nothing compared
to the sex industry standards of less-industrialized
countries. Try Bangkok brothels where rich profiteers from
Mainland China take several wives expressly for the purpose of
knocking them up so that the girl babies can be sold into
prostitution once past puberty. They raise them, then deliver
them to a whorehouse owner, and return every few months to collect
their daughters’ earnings. There are no contracts, no buyoffs,
no juice drinks and sob stories. It’s just cash for pussy, and
she better hustle it or else she starves. In Korea, you pay
the girl and her activities are largely unsupervised. She sets
the rates, and she collects. Of course, each girl’s primary
responsibility is to get the stupid stiffs to buy juice-on-the-rocks
for 10,000 won a pop. (Psst… I have a secret for you if you
promise not to tell anyone: some of them, no MANY of them, will do
it for free if you’re friendly, frequent, and
persistent.) If she squanders her earnings, or loses it,
or drinks it, or spends it on stuffed animals, it’s all up to
her. Just ask M.R.
Tricked by unscrupulous Koreans? How ‘bout
this: I was faxed a contract from the “director” of an ESL
institute in Pusan. I signed it and faxed it back, thinking
that I had insured myself against any of that rampant monkey
business so thoroughly documented on the web’s Grey List. Upon
arrival in Pusan, dude picked me up from the airport, took me to
some foreigner flophouse for 2 days, and then delivered me to an
institute I’d never heard of. “Ahhh yes, I work for a
consortium of language schools,” he told me after I asked when I
would begin teaching at his school. I was basically forced to
sign a new—and substantially less appealing—contract in order to
receive my airfare reimbursement. I had no money to live on,
much less purchase a plane ticket back to Amerikanistan. Sex
was never mentioned, at least not until I met that Canadian girl who
said, “I want you to cum in my mouth,” and then I was hooked!
Hooked, I tells ya! Self-indulgently locked into this life of
all-night Hite benders, cheap cigarettes, and petite lolitas.
I spent 3 years trying to get drunk Koreans to buy ME ‘cocktails’
while I chatted unintelligibly for a ‘short time’ and then gave them
the slip when they wanted to befriend me for a ‘long
time’.
So now you’re thinking that those poor
girls from Povertystrickenstan are totally exploited while I simply
got fucked around. You obviously haven’t been groped, gawked
at, spit at, or puked on enough times while living here yet.
Who really thinks that they can fly half way around the world and
get something for nothing? Foreigners who come here must
somehow somewhere sacrifice some of their standards, or else get the
fuck OUT. No employer, nor anyone else, can legally seize and
withhold the passport of another. There’s always an OUT for
foreigners living abroad under a non-totalitarian government; it’s
called an embassy or consulate. They have them here in
Korea. There is also another OUT proven effective in
immediately dangerous situations; they’re called police. Of
course, if you can find a lusty old rich guy to cough up a buyout,
then everybody’s happy. But probably the best advice to an
exploited and starved hooker from Unfortukraine would be to scrape
up a few hundred bucks the old-fashioned way, and then simply escape
by airliner in the middle of the night. Disgruntled English
teachers do it all the time here in Pusan; five foreign teachers
within two years at my institute alone.
You don’t even know yet what sex means to women raised
in patriarchal cultures on this side of the pacific. Stay long
enough and you’ll get a clue. I have friends who are not
engineers but who work in Korea. They go to other poor Asian
countries for vacations and manage to hook up with local girls eager
for companionship. No money changes hands. Often my
friends will go to a known brothel for a few nights in a row, but
without purchasing any action, then eventually end up befriending
and sleeping with one of the girls for the duration of their
vacation. Some of these girls want whatever kind of comfort
and pleasure that can be found anywhere near a western man.
Some of them no doubt fantasize about floating away to Ameridise on
the wings of his wallet. They’re lonely, often times
miserable, and usually shunned by local men. And lets face it;
sex is fun. It feels good for the girls, too. Many of
them have no qualms about receiving free meals for a week in
exchange for sex with a friendly-faced Caucasian man.
On my first trip to Bangkok, I frugally hopped the
city bus with my bags in order to save a few bucks getting from the
airport to Khoa San Road. A Thai girl with understandable but
heavily accented English asked where I was going, then offered to
help me get there. She talked me into saving some time by
getting off the bus and into a taxi for a few dollars more.
Having just finished work as a concierge at a major hotel, she
invited herself along to drink with me. Okay, sure. She
looked professional and was obviously educated, attractive but not a
knockout, more of a marshmallow than a waif. Long story short,
I wound up on the receiving end of gratuitous sex for the length of
my stay in the city. She wanted to come with me to the
southern islands, but I was leery and declined. We exchanged
emails and, on my next trip, she met me at the airport like I was
her long lost boyfriend. It was during that second trip that I
began to notice some odd behaviors. She would change clothes,
apply perfume, and go out to meet another “friend” from 11pm until 1
or 2am. Fragile and monogamous western male ego that I am
[not], I casually questioned her until eventually ascertaining the
nature of her extra-promiscuous activities. She was not
embarrassed, and indeed seemed surprised when I told her that I had
never imagined her living in such a way. You see, that was
what she did…have sex with men. Sometimes for fun, sometimes
for money, sometimes for a nice meal, or for whatever else she
wanted. She was a kind of professional mistress, but not a
whore, at least as far as she was concerned. We exchanged a
few more emails, but I never attempted to see her again.
Then there was Cambodia. (I am not proud of my
participation in pay-for-sex activities. However, I am not
ashamed to share my knowledge and perspective on the matter.)
After polishing off a “special pizza”, I finally gave in and agreed
to let my scooter driver take me out to “see the girls”. I had
resisted his countless offers for 3 days knowing that I would spend
money that I couldn’t really afford for favors I didn’t really
need. He must have been paid a finder’s fee for bringing
tourists; otherwise he would not have been so adamant and persistent
about taking me there. So we rode in light drizzle, with me
feeling tingly from the pizza, to a remote area with maybe a dozen
open-air-type cantinas. They were arranged in city-style
blocks, and we proceeded to curiously walk between the first couple
bars just to get a look at the place. Apparently, the light
rain had all but squashed any chance of the girls getting much
action, so they opted to run out into the mud and maul us.
Throngs of short, brown, poorly-clad working girls mobbed us,
pushing and pulling and shouting unintelligibly for us to visit
their establishments and consider their nubile wares. It
sounds stupid and barely believable, but all I really wanted to do
was check the place out for curiosity’s sake. I was shocked
and embarrassed and tried to shake them off, but eventually a tall
thin one grabbed hold of me and stung me with temptation.
They light your cigarettes and massage your shoulders
and thighs, waiting for the world’s oldest question, “How
much?” And when you realize that $40 could pay for another
week of room and board in this country, then apologize and shyly get
up to leave, they pull you back down beside them, pouting pitifully
while rubbing their pertness against you, forcing eye contact that
demands you take what they’re selling.
Well, Anonymous, I hope that engineering pays well
because our world has plenty more prostitutes to save.
And to all you wanna-be Hooker Heroes out there:
I know a guy who went to an Asian sex club, accepted a young girl’s
offer and left with her, then changed his mind after stopping for
another drink. He told her “No thank you…I’m sorry,” and then
she began to literally cry and sob miserably until he relented and
took her back to his room. Once she was naked, he could hardly
refuse her, and quite foolishly, he barebacked her skinny little
ass, contracted HIV, got AIDS and died.
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