Hearts of Darkness
I'm slowly discovering the seamier side of Hong Kong, though that's a little like saying one has discovered that gambling seems to be popular in Las Vegas. Then again, it depends on your neighborhood. Just as I've met several native Las Vegans (Vegasites? Las Vegers?) who swear they've never set foot inside a casino and encountered The Strip only when a traffic route made it necessary, the neighborhoods I'm living and working in are far removed from the hustle of areas like Wan Chai and Mong Kok, where I spent some of last Friday morning and very early Saturday morning.
Friday morning I awoke in the grips of a classic hangover-horndog feeling brought on by too many solo sakis the night before. It was too early for lunch and I was too tired to sleep. So on a complete whim inspired by getting on the wrong shuttle bus from work and winding up kilometers out of my way in Mong Kok several nights before (where I had spied more than a few garish posters of fetching women outside of neon festooned doorways) I decided to return to the scene to see about relieving part of my double H feeling.
A 20-minute subway ride dumped me in the middle of Mong Kok where I wandered more or less aimlessly until spying several similar establishments all sporting signs in Chinese with thinly clad pouting women and narrow stairways that led up at least two and sometimes three levels from the street. I picked one at random, took a breath and climbed up the stairs into what looked like a dark small bar.
An elderly, portly smiling woman asked cheerfully if I was there to "make love." No B.S. about it or her. I liked the straightfoward approach, agreed with her diagnosis whereupon she escorted me into a smaller, darker room where I almost sat down on a trash can because I couldn't see the chair. She told me the fee ($HK300) for one hour and that she would bring "a pretty girl" but if I didn't like her I could ask for another.
Again, she was upfront, cheerful and polite. No overt hustle, no apparent hassle. I agreed to her terms, but because I hate rejection or rejecting anyone, was pretty sure unless whoever she directed into the darkness was on four legs and growling, I would take what I was offered.
"Jennifer" didn't disappoint. Actually, it was only after we'd made a brief introduction in the dark and I was escorted by the mamasan up another flight of stairs to the "hotel" where I paid another $60HK for a "room" that I finally saw her face clearly. She was young, reasonably articulate and not a little charming.
"Why are you here?" she asked before we got down to business."Do you have a broken heart? Or are you just horny?"
I confessed to the latter and still a little shy went into my reporter mode. I learned that Jennifer had been working there for about 7 months after she'd quit a quality control job at a textile factory, that she'd "cried - oh, a lot!" after her first four or five clients, had done "two or three foreigners" including an Italian who had "beautiful eye hairs" (eyelashes - "so long, like a picture!') and whose businessman father/boss made his life miserable.
Tiring of the Italian-with-the-beautiful-eye-hairs paternal problems, I subtly suggested we relieve my own and we took the shower before retiring to the "bed" - actually a long wide shelf, not unlike the one in my apartment but with a better mattress, more room and mirrors on one wall and one end.
She was giving and seemed to genuinely enjoy receiving and capped it off by taking me unasked in her mouth until it was over. The condom lay unwrapped beside my head. We took one another's cell phone numbers, she told me her schedule (9:30 am-8:30 pm 6 days/wk, Sunday's off) and we parted company with a kiss.
That night the shift ended mercifully early and I accepted the invitation of two senior editors to hit another area, Wan Chai - the site of my "Amazing Grace" encounter. Praying I wouldn't run into her/him we repaired to one bar that I'd seen previously described on a local chat site as "a hole where only a bunch of old, fat expat losers hang". Judging from most of our fellow patrons, that description did not seem to be entirely incorrect and after a couple double bourbons and some beer we hit another bar called Fenwicks that one of my hosts described as "the heart of darkness."
Indeed. It was crammed, jammed and sweaty with expats, both losers and winners, and some of the most amazingly beautiful Filipinas I'd ever seen - most dressed (or undressed) to the proverbial nines.
Both of my companions have had some experience, marital and otherwise with Filipinas and I asked for a summary.
"Are they all hookers?" I gaped.
"No, Most aren't," was the reply.
"So...so...what does one do? Like, what's the usual protocol?"
They laughed.
"You pick one up, buy her a drink or two and take her home. Then she'll want to be your maid or cook and eventually your wife. But that's only after a week or so."
Sounded reasonably simple, except for the"wife" part. Eye contact wasn't hard and we quickly went from a trio to a sextet. I was with "Julia". Two J-names in one day. I was on a run and her English was good, her cleavage first rate and she looked a little like Imelda Marcos in her circa 1966-boinking-George Hamilton prime. I bought her a couple drinks, danced to
Mustang Sally and
Play That Funky Music White Boy among other chestnuts from a Filipino band and then she put the press on.
"You need a maid? I can cook for you, too," she shouted brightly over the music and bar din. I demurred.
"Surely, you're more than a maid or cook," I shouted back."You're a complete, lovely human being! Not just a domestic!"
"I need a visa! I cannot return to Manilla to live!" Then she described only what could be called a social and economic and domestic hell hole, all the while thrusting her cleavage and shooting her chocolate brown eye lasers straight to my heart and groin.
Suffice to say, I was too polite to completely blow her off and lacked the drunken duplicity to lead her on and back into my miserable shelf bed in hopes of a quickie with Imelda. Like Jennifer before her, though, we exchanged phone numbers, she slipped me a little tongue and whispered something breathy in what I think was Tagalog before we parted.
In the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur: "I may return."
