The room we entered was of average size, stark and unwelcoming. The only lights were two florescent tubes which hung from the low ceiling, giving off a harsh purplish glow. There was nothing on the worn, crumbling walls. The only adornment in the room was a lone reddish couch press against the wall.
Our host grunted again, gesturing to sit on the couch. This couch was extremely gross, a good portion of it torn showing the yellowish foam padding underneath. But worse it was badly soiled with stain marks all over it, whose origins you did not wish to contemplate. He then barked even louder in Chinese and nine Asian women walked out. Or rather shuffled out, with significant disinterest, to the center of the room.
They were all dressed in different types of sleazy lingerie.
I let my eyes run quickly across the nine women standing in front of us. They came in all shapes and ages, from teens to the eldest probably pushing forty. And in all sizes, from painfully emaciated to a couple that looked like they came off a Wisconsin milk farm, to one small girl about 4’ 6” tall.
Now I took time to focus in closely, looking at each as an individual, specially studying their faces . . . what looked back at me was so far from what I envisioned this experience would be. It was my first visit to an Asian house of prostitution. My vision was from the movie “The House of Suzy Wong,” where there was an array of “lovelies” to choose from. But instead here before me, what I saw in these faces is best described in one word:
NASTY.
Did that girl second from the right have a couple of teeth missing? And what about that woman directly in the center with the wild hair? Not just a tacky orange color, but cut almost in a severe Mohawk cut, or the one to her left, was she sporting a mustache? And there were a couple that seemed to have skin so coarse and caked with makeup, you could light a match on it. But perhaps the oddest one of all, although her face was the most acceptable, had a huge bulge in her undies. My gosh, did she lost trying to find Boguis
Street?
What they did all share in common was an attitude . . . an attitude of total diffidence: listless, yawning, scratching a crotch here, picking a nose there, no smiles, just frowns. Their negative body language, their “downer” attitude sent a message loud and clear. “Let’s just do it, but I have no interest in trying to entice you.” (And who could blame them?) These girls looked used, exhausted, wasted. They were a total “turn off.” I felt sorry for them. But scared of them too.
After the girls were on the floor for only a few seconds, our host, the brothel boss, barked: “Okay, which one you want?” There was a long uncomfortable pause. No one said anything, as I believe my two cohorts had the same feeling I did. It was not just that they were not attractive. It was more than this, they looked mean and dangerous and unclean. I had no desire to go behind a closed door with any of them.
I looked across at Dieter sitting next to me, and then to Bret on the end of the couch. The silence hung, then Dieter finally whispered to me that he did not want to partake. I could see that Brett just shook his head slightly with a “no.”
Our host standing beside the last girl in line, moved forward toward us and demanded, in his intimidating barking tone: “Which one?” More silence.
Then Bret, nervously and lacking in his usual machismo ways he likes to display, said quietly: “It looks like we don’t care for any of these girls.”
Our genial host seemed to take this quite personally and moved forward threateningly to about five feet in front of us. In a deeper voice but with greater agitation he snarled: “Okay, I have more girls, but this better be no joke.” Off the girls shuffled, and for the first time I noticed a hint of personality in one of the girls. The small one giggled under her breath as she skipped off, as to say: “Finally now I can go back to sleep.”
There was a brief pause, perhaps two minutes, but it seemed longer as the tension filled the room. The host was now pacing back and forth, curling his fists, and rearranging his black turtleneck under his tight fitting jacket. There seemed to be some commotion in the back, some yapping of the girls to one another. He walked back and pulled aside what looked to be a sheet which led to another room and shouted his orders.
And out they came. As bad as the first group was, this cast of seven was worse! At least three of the girls looked deformed. A couple of them were rightfully young, maybe twelve or thirteen. And a couple of others had bruise marks on their faces, as if used for human punching bags.
“OKAY WHICH ONE? WHICH GIRL YOU WANT?” Silence. I hoped against hope that Bret or Dieter might say: “You know that one third from the right, she is sort of cute. I’ll take her.” However, no response. Our host was not happy and became in-your-face confrontational: “I bring you more girl, you get. Now you must make choice.” He was now two feet from us yelling: “Don’t play game with me.”
The sinister atmosphere hung heavy. Then I spoke as diplomatically as Possible: “I think we are going to pass on the girls you have.” And then I Added, “However we appreciate you taking the time to show us your girls.” (What a weird thing that was to say to him). This caused him to go to another level of intensity, as he crouched down with his face just inches from my face.
“Don’t you play fucking game with me!” His head looked like it was going to explode. It was turning beet red. He was sweating profusely and the veins on his neck were bulging out. He looked like a candidate for cardiac arrest.
And then Dieter, sitting next to me, made the comment of the evening, which to this day still makes me smile when I think of it: “Look, the rick shaw driver said we come and just look and not buy if not satisfied.”
And then so quick, his fist was thrown at Dieter, catching him squarely in the mouth. The boss was yelling something, screaming something like a mad man. I had no idea what. He was crazed like a bull. I sensed he wanted to kill us.
As he wound up to swing his big left-handed haymaker at Dieter, I jumped up. This does not sound very manly, and certainly not a move one would see 007 do, but I had a clear opening, and took advantage of it. I kicked him as hard as possible right in the balls. Doubled over, muttering and sputtering, Dieter, despite being punched in the mouth, helped me trip and wrestle him to the floor. Then Brent jumped on top of him and went into his Black Belt attack mode, delivering a powerful blow to a vulnerable area in the neck. We were not sure if he was out cold, and certainly did not wait to see, as we headed toward the stairway exit down to the street, while assisting Dieter who was bleeding badly from the mouth.
It was interesting to note, and I thought about this later, that during the violent confrontation with the brothel boss, the girls of the “house” seemed not to overreact or express alarm. Instead theirs was a more of a “ho-hum,” been here, seen that before attitude.
It is said crisis situations demand “fight or flight” responses. This demanded both. As we made our desperate escape to go down the stairs, a huge, as in hippopotamus, Chinese guy came charging up the stairs. His bulk was completely filling the narrow passageway, preventing our exit. We knew we could not out muscle him, but if we could get past him, we could out run him.
He was obviously the brothel bouncer, and he had other plans. I sensed he had dealt with dissatisfied customers before. He was waving his massive arms ordering us to “stop.” We instantly sized up the situation, that there was no way we could get by him. So the three of us just ran as hard as we could into him, using him as if a blocking dummy in football practice; and down the stairs all of us rolled. It was crazy!
We scrambled to run out, but he got hold of me just outside the doorway and started to pummel me. He continued to swing away, as Dieter and Brent struggled to get him off me. The real punishment was his weight. He was like a 350 pound hippo, and I felt I was going to be suffocated by his mass. Finally, the repeated punches of Brent and Dieter started to slow him down, and somehow I got up from beneath him and he began to stagger.
We started to move away, but just when we thought we were free of him, he lunged at Brent with a knife, catching him in the arm. Brent was furious and wanted to meet his challenge, getting back at him with his Black Belt lethal tactics, impervious to the impending danger. But Dieter and I yelled at Brent: “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here!”
And so the raucous “good time Charlies” full of bravado, bad jokes, big laughs and cheap booz, were suddenly silenced and scared shitless, as bruised and bleeding, we bolted into the CLEAN, CONTROLLED, CONSERVATIVE Singapore night . . .
A sobering experience. Not my finest hour.
~ The End ~
Picture above from Haw Par Villa, Singapore - Spirits in the form of beautiful women, kidnapped the monks and forced him to make love with them.
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