midfuckepiphany

I remember disco.

Her hair was different the last time I saw her a year ago. It was curly. A bad perm.

She began aggressively rubbing my crotch as soon as I entered the bar. She couldnt have been older than 15. I felt ashamed, but it was her job.

Disco is a Shanghai bar girl.

In Shanghai, almost all the bars employ a certain business formula: they stock the places with hot babes whos job it is to come-on to the male customers in an effort to extract as much money from them as possible get them to buy them drinks, get them to pay to play bar games, etc. How far sexually the girls will go varies depending on the classiness of the joint, but virtually all of them will go pretty far.

Disco worked at a bar called Always one of a string of borderline brothels on Ningbo Street, a dimly lit, foul stretch that even the locals refer to as the sleaziest street in Shanghai.

That is usually where you will find me when Im there.

Around the corner is the slightly less dodgy Henan Street. Its bigger and better lit. On one side of the street is the Shanghai Westin, a gorgeous 5-star hotel and I stay there every time I go to Shanghai. On the other side of the street is a string of bars that employ the same formula as the Ningbo joints, but are a step up in terms of class, and the girls do slightly less crotch rubbing.

My favorite bar on that road is a place called Zoes. Last week as soon as I checked in I made a point to stop by for a beer. It was so cool because as soon as I walked in I recognized a working girl there that I partied with there a year before. Not only that, but she immediately remembered me and even remembered my name without my telling her. It made me feel like I had friends on the other side of the world.

Her name is April. Thats not her real name, of course. The girls explained to me last time that they all take western names because westerners would never be able to remember their Chinese names. Theyre probably right. Last time I asked them all their Chinese names, and they told me, and I forgot the names within hours.

April is the bookish one on the staff at Zoes. Her English is very good and she often does a fair amount of translating for the other girls. She is also the most tech-savvy and projects a sense of integrity.

We hugged like old friends and got caught up on what had been going on in each of our lives over the last year. Suzie, another girl I know from last time, was also there that day. I also met a new girl Candy. Later I would also meet Lisa, and see again Casey. Casey is the manager. Shes a smart, tough, shrewd operator. The female managers at these places tend to take on the roles almost of madams at whore houses, and they command the same kind of respect.

Work-wise, the trip was a near-complete bust. I had one very good and productive lunch meeting with one of my contacts he gave me lots of good background dirt, something thats hard to extract for a reporter covering the industry that I do. But the conference I was there to cover completely sucked all the attendees agreed. Ill be lucky if I can get a single page out of it. Also all the other appointments I made with people they had to cancel at the last minute. It was all for perfectly legitimate reasons, but still, Im not sure how Im going to spin this to my boss. For the magazine, the whole Shanghai trip ended up being little more than one very expensive lunch meeting.

My activities there were also hindered by the fact that for the first few days I was completely broke. I mean COMPLETELY broke. Not even enough for cab fare to get me one block.

Now you may be thinking: Dipshit, how can you be broke? Youre a reporter who jets all over the world? But thats the thing; reporters dont get paid shit the job is all perks, like the travel. I left the US on Sunday, and knew I would only have enough cash to last me through Monday the day of my arrival in Shanghai. After that Id be flat-broke busted credit card maxed out and a $0.00 balance in my checking account. That can be an unnerving reality when youre alone on the other side of the world in a communist country.

But I thought it would be ok because I was told by my magazines payroll office that I would get a sizable deposit in my bank account on Tuesday. In the meantime, I could still eat by ordering room service and charging it to the room. But Tuesday arrived and my payment still wasnt there, so I panic-dialed our London office. They explained that there had been a mix-up, but the payment would be in my account on Wednesday.

I was so pathetic that I actually currency-exchanged at the hotel front desk four US dollars in loose change that I had rattling around in the bottom of my camera bag just so I could have a beer with the girls at Zoes on Tuesday. Its such a strange sensation to be absolutely penniless, yet to be stranded in a five-star hotel with access to as much gourmet room service food as I like. Is it any wonder Im demented? Its like living in what Charles Bukowski might have called a cage with golden bars.

But Wednesday my payment finally came, so I was ready to hit the town. That night I went to Maoming Road a strip of cool, western-style bars and clubs. One has to keep in mind that in China, the whole place was completely sealed off like North Korea until about 25 years ago. For decades before that, no one in China freaking even know what nightlife was. Life during the night OR day consisted of nothing but toiling away in agricultural communes or inefficiently operated state-owned factories. Re-importing a nightlife like any other aspect of Chinas economic modernization process takes time, so there arent very many spots in Shanghai.

But Maoming Road is one of the few there are, and I like to check it out when Im there because its a fascinating gauge of how this country is developing. On Maoming Road you see all these nouveau middle class kids experimenting with western looks going to clubs and bars that are introducing current scenes. Meanwhile these old skool militaristic cops are patrolling the scene to make sure nothing gets out of hand, and they have almost these bemused looks on their faces in reaction to all the cultural changes they are witnessing - changes that they probably could never have imagined in their youth.

But in an indicator of just how fast the pace of change in China has become, even the Maoming Road scene had changed considerably since I was there just a short time ago. The whole citys scene has changed. What I noticed most was the apparent increase in the number of western faces I was seeing. The times that I was in Shanghai last year and the year before, I would almost never see a westerner, and the few that I did see were usually European or South African or Australian never American. But this time it seemed, you couldnt swing a dead cat without hitting a westerner, and MOST of them were American. Really obnoxious ones too: twenty-five to 40-something consultant/expense-account types.

Consultancy is the cheapest, most vile excuse for a profession on this planet cabals of ex-frat boys selling empty jargon to people too stupid to see it for what it is, and then slapping each other on the back and laughing at their ability to get rich off their plasticization of the world. This is why people overseas hate Americans because these are the only types they ever see. It was hard to avoid them on this journey.

Which was all the more reason to hang out at Zoes and the Ningbo Street joints. Obnoxious consultant types prefer the higher-end establishments. I belong with MY people the bottom-dwellers!

One night I walked into Zoes around midnight and started talking to Candy and Suzie. April was a few seats away entertaining a 50-something western businessman. I took note of a hot 20-something British blonde chick at the end of the bar. She was leaning over the DJ booth annoying the guy there with her drunken babble. Next to her, her pathetic husband was passed out on the bar. She was talking all kinds of crazy shit & trying to hook-up with every guy and girl in the place. Serves her husband right. Marry an ex-dancer-type trophy slut to look good in front of your buddies, and this is the kind of bullshit youre going to be putting up with for the rest of your life.

Candy, Suzie and April said they thought she was pretty because she was skinny. I told them I thought she looked like a prostitute. They seemed somewhat baffled by this and play-scolded me for my remark.

Then this tramp jiggled her way in our direction & engaged us in conversation. She kept slurring nonsense in her tarty accent at me like, Are you having the full Shanghai experience? (whatever that meant) and Im having fun, woo woo. Are you having fun? Then she put her arm around me and planted several hard kisses on my cheek.

I know she wanted me to make out. All I would have had to do is move my head two inches to the right and my tongue would have been down her throat. Thats what she wanted validation. Proof that shes still pretty, that she can still wield SEXUAL POWER. Because when all youve done your whole life is built your identity singularly around being a hot piece of ass, the inevitable way down is a hard fall that day when you realize that all your obnoxious shit that dumb guys would put up with when they wanted to stick their dicks in you, now just makes you a sad pest. Yes, a hard thing to face. So does she face it? No. Instead she pathetically tries to convince herself and everyone around her that shes still a valuable commodity by sucking face with a stranger in a bar while her husband dozes.

Most of all, I just cant stand when people expect me to play a role in a dumb play they have pre-written as part of their elaborate self deception. Its the non-conformist in me. I mean, I know I have issues probably more than most people but at least Im honest about the fact that I have issues, or at least Im intellectually honest about my dishonest acts that stem from them.

As she was slobbering on me, I shot April a look and smiled and rolled my eyes. April tapped the woman on the shoulder and pointed to her husband as if to remind her that she is married. Forget him, slurred bimbo. He doesnt know how to have fun. Then she grabbed Suzie and started grinding on her to some generic hip-hop for several minutes, which definitely got the crowds attention. Then she leaned on me again and said, Can you believe Im a 26-year old with two kids?

Ah-so the issue emerges.

What she wanted me to say: No, I cant believe it at all. Youre so young-looking and fun.

What I wanted to say: It fills me with dread that a vain, twisted basket-case like you has passed on her genes.

I quietly said goodbye to April, Suzie, Candy and Casey and headed around the corner. THE corner. The corner between dimness and blackness. The corner that takes you to Ningbo Road. There I would hunker down in the seedy bars lit inside with glowing red Christmas tree lights alongside other western ne'er-do-wells longshoremen types and shifty-eyed pedophiles. One night I was in Always and a western husband and wife walked in, apparently expecting a different kind of place. The woman took one look around at the sorry assortment of characters peering at her from the shadows and immediately turned around and split. Haha. The look on her face was priceless: Oh my god, weve wandered into HELL.

But there would be no crotch-rubbing from Disco on this journey. I was so stoked to have recognized her, and it gave me such a cool feeling of familiarity, that I now felt I had a personal investment in her future.

Disco and I talked a lot during my nights there. I found her absolutely charming. She seemed so sincere and sweet, and she was trying so hard to find a better life. And her eyes. Sad eyes.

Her English had improved a lot since last year. Last time she apparently only knew five terms: Hello and Sit and Buy me a drink? and Cheers and Another one? But this time we were conversing in basic sentences fairly effectively. Lots of girls that work in the bars, I find, come from dirt-poor villages outside of Shanghai. Coming to Shanghai and doing anything ANYTHING seems like a better prospect than certain poverty in the countryside, and working in the bars gives them a chance to learn English as theyre forced to grope westerners.

Much of our talking on this trip turned into de facto language lessons for Disco and Yuyu another really sweet girl who worked at Always. Whenever this would happen, they would get so excited and run and get their English-language phrase books and enthusiastically refer to them as we conversed. I spun through the books myself, amused at the corny English phrases they contained and the girls diligent notes in the margins. I also noticed that the girls or somebody had modified some of the phrases in the books to reflect life in the bars. For example, the phrase, Have you seen any movies lately? was changed to: Have you seen any pretty girls in Shanghai?

Ah, the hooking life.

In my heart I think Disco liked me. Then again, shed probably like anyone who treated her halfway decently and represented the prospect of a better life. But I sense she is a good person. One night I went in there she was entertaining a 40-something western businessman in a dark corner. I sat at the bar and conversed with Yuyu. Disco kept breaking off her conversation with her customer and coming over to say hi. She looked so sad. She was slurring, slightly drunk. I always assumed the drinks that they would get the customers to buy for them were just water or something. But one night I tested Discos when she wasnt looking, and it definitely had alcohol in it. But every time Disco came over to say hi, her manager (madam) would yell at her to go back to the customer. She seemed frustrated by this. She later told me that the guy kept trying to get her to have sex with him. She made a point of telling me she didnt do that kind of thing with customers. Maybe true, maybe not.

Yes, hooking is everywhere in Shanghai. Nobody seems to be above it. Not Disco. Not the western visitors. And certainly not me as a patron, I mean. The girls wait in the darkness at the end of Ningbo Street for horny guys leaving the bars, then they pounce on you, a half dozen at a time. They also walk up next to you along the streets and proposition you. And they wait outside the bars along Hengshan road another western-style bar district like Maoming Road armies of them, all gorgeous. Virtually every girl in every club or bar is a whore.

This time, I even had a hooker proposition me in the Westin elevator on the way down to the lobby she had just turned a trick in the hotel and was already drumming up new business talk about efficiency. I had one girl on Hengshan road proposition me RIGHT IN FRONT OF A COP. He shot her a look that seemed to say, cmon, show some respect, Im a cop for crying out loud, cant you at least do this when Im not looking? She gave him a look that seemed to say she was sorry. But not too sorry. Haha. After all, what was he going to do? He was one cop in an ocean of whoredom.

Last time I was in Shanghai, I was determined to fuck a whore. I dont know why. The girls there are just so beautiful and sweet. Somehow it almost doesnt FEEL like prostitution. The girls there almost act like YOULL be doing THEM a favor if you fuck them. Thats real poverty for you. Thats desperation. And its all so cheap too in Shanghai you can do anything you want to, to a drop-dead model gorgeous 16-year-old, for an average of 50 US dollars.

All the hookers that Ive met in Shanghai almost each and every one their faces are etched in my memory. Propositioning me, standing out in the rain. Looking up at me with sweet, soulful eyes. Holding their umbrellas over me so I dont get wet as they ask me. That dejected look when I say no. Theres something primal that happens to a guy when a gorgeous girl walks up to you and says, Hello - I fuck. I suck.

Indeed.

Its all so clich, in a way. Shanghai, after all, was famous as a seat of decadence up until about 1930. The Paris of China. The hub of opium trade in the Orient. Colonized by the French, the British, the Americans, the Italians, and the Japanese. But then wars in Europe siphoned the attention of westerners away from Shanghai, and Chiang Kai-shek, the Communist army and Triad gangsters reclaimed the place. Then China sealed itself off from the world for the next several decades.

But now it seems to be happening all over again the fast action, the hedonism, the invasion of westerners, the corruption. Well see if history repeats itself and China implodes under the weight of internal divisions and western exploitation. However if it doesnt, give China 50 years, and it will be a global superpower so immense that it is going to make the United States look like a piss-ant third-world country.

Ive never been with a hooker before, but last time I was in Shanghai, on my final day, I decided I was going to go for it. As I left a bar I was in on the last night of my stay, I thought, The next hooker that propositions me, Im going to take her up on it. I walked a few yards toward the hotel, and sure enough two shadowy figures stumbled up to me from the darkness. It was a gorgeous, shy girl who couldnt have been older than 16 and an older woman. The younger girl asked me in broken English if I would consider being with her for $50. The older woman pointed to the girl and said, You like? You like? I looked at the girls face. I looked at the older woman. I just couldnt do it. They had the same facial features. I just know it was her mom pimping her out. When I finally said No thank you. She lowered the price to 100 RMB thats 10 US dollars! I flew home the next day, still a hooker virgin.

But this time I was determined, dammit. Nothing would stand in my way.

On my final day there during the day I went exploring, looking for some neighborhood that I was told was historic, but I got hopelessly lost and failed. On my way back to the hotel I encountered a Mongolian fellow who looked homeless. He had a blanket set out on the sidewalk upon which he had displayed a selection of fine swords that he was peddling.

Cool, I thought. I MUST have a Chinese weapon.

I sampled several of the goods, removing them from their sheaths and swatting them around in the air. There was one in particular not the most expensive that he seemed particularly keen to sell me. It was not the most obvious choice, but I agreed with him, I liked it, and I bought it. It was a heavy black baton that you could turn into a sword by unsheathing a dagger and plugging it into the end of the baton/handle (see pic). It was only the equivalent of about 15 US dollars. We were both kneeling, and he handed it to me with the greatest of care, sort of like Sonny Chiba handed Uma Thurman her sword in Kill Bill. He gave me a nod, as if to certify that we both shared THE KNOWLEDGE.

What I love most about my baton/sword are the two stickers on it, which together I think speak volumes about the current state of the world: One sticker is an American flag with the words USA SABER on it. A sticker right above it reads boldly: MADE IN CHINA.

Before I was to choose my hooker on my final night in town, I wanted to be sure to say goodbye to all the girls, so I popped into Zoes at around 11pm. April told me that after I left the night before, that British floozy and her husband got into a big fight, and left the place without paying. Their bill had been 900 RMB, the equivalent of about 90 US dollars. Casey had to go across the street to their hotel and bang on the door to demand payment, but apparently they were very rude to her and only gave her 100 RMB.

I wound up staying at Zoes a lot longer than I meant to. We were having a really good time, and I took lots of pictures. Also, just as I was about to leave, Casey bought me a beer a rare honor for a male patron, I was told. I was touched.

Finally I got out of there though. But before I selected my hooker I wanted to say goodbye to Disco and Yuyu, so I headed around the corner to Ningbo Street. Inside 'Always,' Disco was sitting with a middle aged fellow on a tattered couch near the back of the place. I chatted with Yuyu for a while, and we messed around with my camera. Disco came over, ignoring the stern looks from her manager. She looked very sad and she was fairly drunk. Then she did something I didnt quite understand: she started apologizing to me. She said she was sorry for everything. She said she was sorry that she was with other customers. She said she was sorry she didnt have an email address, which I had asked her about before. And she said she was sorry that she smoked cigarettes. I tried to calm her down, and I told her everything was ok. I told her Id probably be back in May, and that Id come and see her. I asked if I could take her picture. She dutifully struck a sensuous pose that looked well-rehearsed. A sensuous pose, with a sad face.

I hugged Disco and Yuyu goodbye and left.

Enough of this sentimental babble it was hooker time!

But I must have stayed in the bars too long. It was well after 3am, and although I was taking my time walking, for the first time ever in my experience, there was not a single hooker to be found anywhere. Just dead streets. Perhaps even hookers have shifts that end. So that sealed it. I had failed. Again. Failed in my hooker mission. Im a failure. A no-good, despicable, rotten, scum-drinking failure. And I will never be anything more than that. I never have been, and I never will be. I was born under a rotten star. Its destiny. Im doomed.

Doomed like disco.