"Professional" Women

As my user name here suggests, I think of myself as a good man - except when I sit down to write. Then I give my imagination free rein, a lot of incest apparently, not that I personally have ever been tempted. At the moment, I need a new plot, so I am taking a side track. This is all true, but don't get your hopes up. If you want sexual couplings, read my stories. This is just for fun, and maybe will give me an idea for a new story.

Maybe she wasn't the first hooker I recognized as such, but the incident is a good start to show how innocent I was, a US soldier in Germany. I went in a bar in Munich to have a beer, and a woman complained that she was having trouble attracting the bartender's attention. I told him that she wanted something to drink. When she smiled and thanked me, I realized that she was expecting me to pay. The bartender looked at me and recognized that I was too young and inexperienced to have understood her gambit. I didn't have to pay for her tea in a whiskey glass, and left the place a little wiser.

About the same time, on payday outside our barracks, a couple or three slutty looking women hung around on the unpaved shortcut through some bushes to the nearest public transportation. Guys who seemed to know, said that quickie cost five D-Marks, a dollar twenty-five, back then. One guy explained that when he wanted it that way, he wore his uniform, not wanting to get his civies dirty.

Another Pfc and I went up to Copenhagen and looked around "Nyhavn" one evening, the "new harbor" in the 17th century. Now it is an upmarket collection of waterside bars and restaurants. Back then, it was still where seamen found what they wanted. We discovered that many of the girls - native talent - had dyed their hair black. Was that considered sexier, where so many girls were blonde? It let us recall that the hair of "girls" down in Germany was more often bleached; platinum/straw blonde. It let them stand out from the natural blondes and brunettes.

Back in Germany, three of us from my unit spent two weeks on a maneuver with a German unit. It finished with party, local girls invited. With hindsight, I have to assume that it wasn't the first maneuver party the girls had attended, also that the German soldiers had a much better inkling about the situation. They told me that the girls would do it for 10 D-Marks behind the building.

It was a couple of years later, I was now a civilian working in Hamburg. Everyone knows about the Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit, where the action was, back then still serving seamen, although the Beatles had already performed there. By then I had a girlfriend, so we just went there for the scene, early Sunday morning after a night of partying.

"Grosse Freiheit" translates "great freedom." In the 17th century, the name of the street originated because it was outside the city limits of Hamburg, outside city's restrictions on religion and tradesmen. The "tradeswomen" came later. A few years later, we saw a couple having sex on the small stage in a place there. That surprised us and probably shocked our newly wed Australian guests.

But back before, in Hamburg there were two other areas with such women: St Georg, near the main train station (of course), and the Gänsemarkt and ABC-Strasse. I had a colleague who had worked in a bank branch at the Gänsemarkt. When the bank invited its customers to a reception, the girls, some of whom had nice savings accounts, explained that they wouldn't attend, to avoid possibly embarrassing some of the bank's other customers.

Both these areas have changed now, and the famed, oft romanticized image of the Reeperbahn as an area catering to seamen is also passé. Seamen these days are on container ships that dock on the south side of the Elbe River, too far away, and the ships' turn-around times is too short to allow shore-leave. Besides, most crews are staffed with men from third-world countries, who have no money to spend.

Skipping a few years, I traveled by camping van, first to Turkey. Saturday evening in Istanbul, I followed men going up the hill across the Golden Horn, opposite the Topkapi. They knew where they were going. We came to a few old houses. The doors and windows were open. The view in one reminded me of Picasso's painting: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (The Young Ladies of Avignon). The girls were standing around, waiting, some half naked, some in their slip or night gown. A sign on the wall read: "Visite L10" (less than a dollar in Turkish Lira at the time). The Turkish girls took no notice of me, smiling enticingly at the young Turkish men. It seemed, however, that they were all just to ogle the girls. The European girls did single me out. A couple of them gave me a better, hopeful smile. Another one, however, looked away, apparently embarrassed to be seen in that milieu by an American or European. The scene at the next house was quite the same. I just looked, pleased that my following the men had shown me something that was not in my guide book.

Many years later, I found the area again, as will be told below.

My trip continued to the east, through Iran and Pakistan and on to India. One evening in Calcutta, a man spoke to me, offering girls. When I refused, he mentioned boys, then said: "with me?" I didn't.

A few weeks later, in a large city further south, I happened upon Peace Corps workers. We went to somewhere to dance. Later in the evening, she explained that she wore no panties to avoid the Indian men getting arouse by seeing the shadow of a panty hem on her pants. She also had tissues in her bra to keep her nipples from showing. I saw them, however, and quickly knew why they could have been arousing for those men.

I shouldn't have mentioned her, since she was only a very willing volunteer -- like a couple of other girls I met that trip, who were also tourists.

My trip continued to Southeast Asia. Someone had given me the name of cheap hotel in Bangkok. I found it. It was a haven for backpack tourists, had a swimming pool with guys diving in just the jockey shorts. I shared a room with a guy. The second night, he asked if I could sleep in my camping van. In the morning, he said that he was afraid he might have caught the clap.

Back in Europe, working in Frankfurt, my office was a short walk from the main station through the red light district. Even in the morning, one had to sidestep girls. At lunchtime, it could happen that one took one's arm and offered her services. A small but well-built colleague once told that a man had asked her how much. She was quick-witted and replied: "More than you can pay."

On a business trip to Amsterdam, of course, I looked at the girls in the windows on that street. I forgot to mention the Herbertstrasse in Hamburg, where the girls also sit in show windows and invite one to go upstairs, or wherever. I never did.

Another time, wandering around in London one evening, I was spoken to by an unremarkable looking woman, who suggested that we could go somewhere together. She certainly didn't look the part, looking like a typist, hardly anyone's secretary. We didn't.

It was quite a few years later, when a friend talked me in to joining him on trip from Moscow to Peking. I'll call him "Randy." That wasn't his name, but suggests his interest on trips. Our night in the Hotel Ukraine in Moscow was interesting, not just because it is monument to Stalinistic architecture. When one got off the elevator, on each floor, there was a large open space, large enough for a not so small ball, with a floor attendant. Is he or she still there, now that hotel is named Radisson Royal Hotel Moscow? ("Royal" for whom?)

When a single man went to his room, after several minutes he got a telephone call, a man speaking English and asking if he wanted to meet a nice Russian girl. When Randy and I met again in the bar, we hadn't. I'm not sure about Randy later. The "nice Russian girls" were also there, sitting together. Quite nice, but not as attractive as the blonde who joined them. She was very nice looking. Before she had really started on her drink, she got a call on the phone. With a superior smile at her colleagues, she got up and went back to work.

In Irkutsk, the hotel was surprisingly large, Soviet bravado, with more than one restaurant, although our large group of tourists were served in the large main restaurant. The menu of the "European" restaurant offered only standard courses from eastern European countries, members of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Looking at the website of the hotel now, it looks like things have changed since then.

Does the security service still offer nice Russian girls, when one is going to bed? I hadn't yet and went down to the basement bar that offered a strip show. The same girls? They were quite attractive, but kept their thong on. The girls in the food market the next morning were also very attractive. Some of the same girls?

Forget Peking from that trip, but on another one, Randy and I were in Shanghai. Maybe, probably, we oversaw any girls in our hotel. Up the road, however, across from the park that had once been the race track, in a good hotel we saw a well-dressed girl sitting and waiting. By then, Chinese girls, not just that kind, had small cell phones with a loop and ring, so that they could show them off by letting them dangle from a finger.

Our next trip was to aCentral Asian country. Randy had said that he was going to give our native tour guide a good tip in advance. He had found the right man. A couple of days later in a seedy, erstwhile Russian hotel, we had bad rooms. He offered us an upgrade for a few dollars. We moved to a suite that had been renovated, two bedrooms. We assumed that it was for official guests.

When we went down to dinner, we saw a couple of blonde girls wandering around. After dinner -- I can't remember just how -- they were in our suite with us, attractive Russian girls. They were both good, for both of us.

In the next city, the guide was disappointed that on the roof terrace bar, he couldn't find the girls he had invited. The next evening, however, we picked up two with our taxi, local girls, and drove to a ground floor apartment, meeting a man and woman, who served drinks. Eventually, Randy and I disappeared with the girls. Mine had the biggest breasts I had ever sucked, but more than a mouthful is superfluous. Afterwards, the guide told us that the woman had sucked his cock, making us a little envious, since the girls hadn't done that for us. Maybe a language problem; if we could have asked them? Mine had a nice, shaven pussy - like the Russian girls'.

(The guide had two wives, both culturally from neighboring countries. We had met them both, living in different towns. On a later trip to the country, my women guide frowned when I asked if she knew him, then telling that he had left both of them and married a woman from his own culture, apparently at the insistence of his father.)

Our next trip took us to Southeast Asia. No, we didn't play with young Thai girls, but in another country there was a large bar. Maybe one could also eat there, but the attraction was that a girl joined one and soon had her hand groping in one's crotch. When we left the place, the girl grabbed a rubber from the basket near the door, and we set off, both she and I behind the guy on the motorcycle taxi, who knew where to take us.

Oh, she knew what to do, starting by sucking my cock, but when she rolled her rubber down on it, it was so tight. I wasn't going to feel anything, at least, not like I wanted to. She seemed disappointed, well, but she had gotten her money, no more than what the experience was worth, despite the frustration.

In that area of the world, hotels often have a sign that advices that the room price will be increased 50% if there is a "joiner."

In the next country on that trip, Randy quickly found a brothel. He took me there for a beer, but I let him have his pleasure alone.

When we were back in Bangkok, the member of our small group, who had once had Thai wife and talked too much, complained that he couldn't find the "Cowboy Street" with its go-go bars and girls. I found it, just down the street from our hotel, across a six-lane road, and a block further. He stopped talking so much after that, too late, since we flew home the next day. "Cowboy Street" or "Soi Cowboy" is well covered on the web.

Our last trip together took us to Istanbul, back to Istanbul for me. By then the red-light area in Istanbul had been mentioned in German papers. At the hill of the Galata tower, I felt I had to show my little knowledge of the subject that interested him, telling him that what he had read about was somewhere down the hill.

I was lucky; we took the right steep walking street and arrived down at a side street guarded by two men, who insisted on seeing our ID. Foreigners weren't allowed to enter, but Randy was surprised by my unexpected knowledge, and I was surprised that I had found the area. There are many websites about the red light district in Istanbul. On one, I saw photos that confirmed my recollection of the area (just views of the street, none of the girls).

As another friend recently said: We've reached the age when we don't regret what we have done, rather, what we didn't do." I don't know if he was thinking about the same "sins of omission" that I was. I once tried to count the girls (girlfriends or almost) who might having been hoping I did more than I did with them. But then, there were those with whom I did: ;-)

And I have found an idea for a new story, just fiction, of course. Randy and I will take another trip, this time to Burma. I've been there; he hasn't. He will be missing something.