Angel
I had already heard about the city’s most prestigious and notorious Hostess Club. Salacious stories of nefarious affairs involving visiting dignitaries were recounted with relish and resentment by drunken embassy staff drinking at the bar in the Banker’s Club. The Millionaire’s Club was nestled in the bowels of a hotel and shopping complex known as the Asia World Hotel.
From the earliest phases of construction, the hotel was plagued with scandals involving everything from building code violations to high-level bribery and organized crime money laundering. Every few months, a new scandal would be linked to the complex, but it was just business as usual. The club catered to the American and European businessmen, who are brought there by Chinese businessmen to cement deals with foreign buyers. Although it was the first pleasure stop for senators, congressmen, and members of parliament on trade missions, it was never mentioned on any official itinerary.
French Cognac and American Whisky were sold by the bottle starting at US$500 a pop. Included in the cost is the storage fee. An unfinished bottle is stored in one of dozens of small wooden lockers lined in neat rows along the back walls of the club. Each locker has a small brass plate with a number engraved on it, and a small brass key that would unlock the box is handed to the patron. When the patron returns to the club, he merely hands his brass key to the waitress. These clubs are thus also known as Bottle Clubs.
The hostesses at the Millionaire’s club were top notch. Dressed and made-up to appear like Los Vegas Showgirls, they filled the dance floor in a dazzling orgy of gold lamiae, satin, and sequins. Glittering under the disco lights, they looked like metallic beauty pageant contestants, a little too perfect, too rehearsed.
Like a Broadway production, getting to look that good was a team effort. Ritzy beauty salons staffed by dozens of efficient, plain-looking girls wearing nursing uniforms catered exclusively to the city’s estimated two hundred thousand sex workers. Their hair and faces took a team of beauty shop girls almost three hours to complete. There were also aerobics classes, designer dresses, English lessons, and trips to Japan for quality plastic surgery and breast enhancement. The considerable expense of maintaining the façade was just the cost of doing business, like a new paint job on a used car you’re trying to sell. If you passed a Millionaire Hostess on the street before they went to the salons, you wouldn’t recognize her, but afterward, each was a Miss Universe winner, a China sex doll, a Suzie Wong in sequins.
The company of one of the hostess’ would cost fifty dollars per drink, served in a shot glass. Every toast is a Gan Bei (bottoms up). The girls are trained to drink at least a dozen watered-down shots of cognac every half hour. If the drinking was going well, the girls would occasionally excuse themselves to go to the washroom to pee and, sticking a finger down the throat, vomit. In this way, they would not get too drunk or too fat.
If you desired to have sex with one of the hostesses, then you would first have to `buy her out’ of the club. This was, in theory, to compensate the club owner for the loss of business, the hostess would have provided selling drinks. In this way, the club owners were morally and legally absolved of the crime of running a brothel. The going price at the Millionaires club was $1,500 US, all major credit cards accepted. A receipt would be provided under the letterhead of an international trading and consulting services company so that corporate accounting departments, or taxpayers, back home would be none the wiser. After buying out the hostess from the club, you then had to negotiate the actual price for sex. The bar fee entitled you only to her time, not her body. This could run several times the buy-out fee.
The smart girls who worked at the Millionaire’s Club socked away the money they earned into America dollars. Some foolishly played the stock market, won, and promptly lost fortunes. Others found semi-permanent contracts as Shiow Tai Ta , `Little Wives,’ the popular euphemism for a paid mistress, or as they used to say, a kept woman. Their wealthy businessmen patrons would bemoan the tremendous cost of their upkeep to fellow tycoons in that peculiar Chinese way of boasting by pretense to poverty.
I was strolling along one of the side streets that lead off Sugar Daddy Row in the city of Taipei. It is along these back streets that the more interesting things happen. The back end of The Ploughman’s Pub opened up into this back ally, the formal entry being on the main street, and it had an outdoor patio that I thought would be a good place to sit, drink a beer, and watch the street action. It was around 11 pm, still early, and so there were only two people out on the patio. The one I noticed first was a stunning Chinese woman dressed in a white cotton blouse and shorts sitting at one of the tables. She had high cheekbones, full sensuous lips, and a long slender neck swathed in long black hair that shone silvery under the glow of Taipei’s ever-present neon lights.
She was sitting with another woman who wore a cocktail dress that had too many laces and frills. She must have thought she looked trendy, but instead, she came off looking low class. The other woman was plain-looking though she tried hard to mask it with copious amounts of make-up.
I saw a scowl pass over her face when she first saw me, which she quickly suppressed, but I saw it nevertheless.
However, my attention was on the good-looking one, the one that looked me in the eye. I stopped, bowed, and gave her my best devilish grin. The plain one just stared, but the good-looking one smiled and shifted slightly in her chair as if to make room for my impending intrusion. I made my introductions and joined them for a drink. The good-looking one was called Angel, a common name for working girls, the other, the plain one, who could remember? After introductions and polite small talk, Angel explained that her `husband’ had asked her to find a private English teacher so that she could pass the U.S. emigration language test. She asked if I was, by any chance, an English teacher. I answered in the affirmative, and, as luck would have it, I had a few slots open in my busy schedule to fit in some private lessons, after hours, of course. She didn’t even blink when I quoted her my corporate rate. She gave me her phone number and address, and we arranged to start the lessons the following week.
Angel lived in a clean, modern air-conditioned apartment in the central district. It was just around the corner from Buffalo Town, a notorious triad hang out, but briefly the hottest disco in town. Our lessons consisted of about ten minutes of vocabulary and pronunciation exercises, after which Angel would get a headache, and, to relieve the pressure, she would take me out to restaurants for late-night dinners and drinks. Confucian etiquette dictated that as host, it was customary for Angel to pay, and she always did, as though she had cash to burn.
Angel had a child-like vulnerability about her, though torn and battered by the men in her life; she was still waiting for her daddy to take her home. Over the weeks, over drinks and delicacies, the story of how Angel came to work at the Millionaires Club, and who her ‘husband’ was, was revealed in drunken, emotional glimpses into her tragedy. It was an age-old story.
Angel was born and raised in the south. Her family was Hakka (Guest People), a people who spoke their own dialect and traced their origins to North China. In the twelfth century, the Mongols drove them into the land of the southern barbarians – the Cantonese. There the strangers received the title guest people. The Hakka dispersed throughout southern China and South East Asia until some reached the island on the fringe of the empire – Taiwan.
Angel’s family became destitute after her father had gambled and whored away the family’s savings. When Angel was fourteen, her father disappeared. Whether he fled from his `creditors,’ or whether they caught up with him first will never be known. The next year her mother took her out of school and brought her to the local textile mill that was employing underage workers. Although Taiwan has child labor laws, as with many other laws, they are meant to look good on the official records. How the law was actually applied was dependent on one’s Guan Shi, (connections). If you had no Guan Shi, then the law applied to you. If you had Guan Shi, well, then something could be worked out.
And so, underage and uneducated, Angel was sent to the factory. It wasn’t long before the fresh and pretty young girl attracted attention. One day the shop foreman approached her and told her that there was an opening in the management training program and that the Lao Ban (boss) was interested in interviewing her as a potential candidate. A car was arranged to pick Angel up after work that day. The car took her out into the country and up into the high ground where the wealthier homes were located. She was surprised to learn she was being driven to the boss’s personal residence for the interview. A faint feeling of foreboding came over her as the car passed through the security gates. The house was surrounded by an eight-foot cinder block wall whose upper surface bristled with barbwire and sharp shards of broken glass embedded in concrete – standard security measures in a nation infamous for its cat burglars.
The driver showed her into the entertainment room and left her with her employer. The boss sat staring silently at her, drinking expensive America whiskey from a tumbler, and smoking a Marlborough cigarette. He was in his fifties, potbellied, wearing a bathrobe. His hair was slicked back with liberal amounts of oily hair gel. In the middle of the room, feeling awkward and insignificant, stood the night’s entertainment. This was part of the game. Her vulnerability was an aperitif for more humiliation to come, to stimulate the appetite for the banquet to follow.
She stood silently, waiting for the boss to speak. A woman’s place was to respond to questions, not ask them. Still holding his drink, he stood up and raised his left hand up across his chest. Angel thought he wanted to show her the large gold Rolex he wore, but in the next instant, he backhanded her with such force that she spun around and fell to the ground on her hands and knees. With the same hand, he grabbed her by the hair at the back of the head and forced her up onto her knees. In his other hand was the now empty tumbler. This he broke on the edge of a nearby table and, holding the base of the glass, he slowly pressed the broken shards into her face. She was told to do as he said or else he would permanently disfigure her. He released his grip on her head and undid his zipper. He instructed her in oral sex. When he became erect, he pulled his penis out of her mouth, and, lifting her up by the hair, he threw her face down across the table, overturning glasses and bottles. The expensive American liquor poured out across the table. Pressing her face into the puddle of whisky, he raped her. Lubricated with the blood of her broken hymen, he then sodomized her. This he enjoyed most. As he pushed himself into her, he would slam her head into the table, and as he drew himself out, he would pull back her head by her long thick hair until her neck seemed on the verge of snapping. As his excitement increased in tempo, so did the beating of her head upon the table. She passed out at some point during the ordeal. She awoke on the floor. Blood ran down her thighs. The boss was gone, and the driver was waiting. On the way back to town, the driver stopped off at a secluded spot and had his turn.
Ever since that day Angel gags at the smell of American whisky.
Angel rushed to her mother and told her the story. Mother was displeased. There would be no chance of arranging a suitable marriage now that she was ‘spoiled goods’. Soon all the old wives in town would be gossiping. Angel would have a reputation. It mattered not how the virginity was lost, but only that the absence of this valuable commodity excluded her from the polite society of pig farmers that was her village. After the infamous Japanese rape of Nanking, untold Chinese virgins committed suicide to cleanse their dishonor. Suicide was one of only two actions to take. The only other course of action was for Angel to seek employment in the big northern city of Taipei.
A small suitcase, the address of an employment agency, and a dozen balls of sticky rice accompanied the fifteen-year-old girl on the bus to Taipei.
Angel first sought employment at an employment agency that advertised low skilled jobs in one of the thousands of electronic factories. But pretty young girls are much better employed elsewhere.
Angel was soon discovered by one of the Mama Sans, who pay finder’s fees to employment agencies whenever a pretty girl walked in. Especially sought after are the naive and vulnerable country girls that stream into the city with little education and few job skills. The ugly girls are put to work on the assembly line, working like robots while living in the squalid dormitories the companies provided and deducted the expense from their salaries. The pretty ones are referred to the Mama San’s, who, in turn, work for the gangsters. Because of her age and beauty, Angel was given English lessons and started work as an escort, a low-level form of prostitution that would be sent out to service clients, sight unseen, in hotels. Once, she was sent to the prestigious Howard Plaza Hotel that was hosting a robotics convention. There she was jumped and gang-raped in the hospitality suite by three American businessmen. The last one vomiting his whiskey into the back of her hair before passing out on top of her.
Angel really hated the smell of American whisky.
As an escort, Angel didn’t know who or what was waiting behind the hotel door, but a hostess was able to see and drink with a client, and she had the option of refusing to go home with a customer if he appeared too suspicious. After the second rape, Angel applied at the Millionaire’s Club.
As prostitution goes, Angel’s position was up there near the top of the trade. The only women who made more were the real Chinese movie stars who, in keeping with the tradition of Chinese entertainers, could be bought for the right price. Only millionaire businessmen and third world political leaders had both the required prestige and the reputed $10,000 and up fee for a bona fide Chinese starlet.
Angel was one of the lucky ones, for a while anyway, since luck invariably runs out on us all.
About a year after starting work at the Millionaires club, a wealthy American businessman from Miami bought her out on an exclusive contract.
Larry Rubenstein was an electronics importer with a small trade office in Taipei. He was in his mid forties, almost bald with curly red hair ringing the back of his head so that he resembled his namesake among the three stooges. Larry also had a good Jewish wife and two kids. Larry had met Angel at the club and, after buying her out one night, decided he had to save her.
At the Millionaires Club, every hooker had a heart of gold. They were all waiting for some handsome American corporate prince to take them away to the Disneyland they imagined America to be. Most importantly, they could escape to a place where no one would know their past.
Exclusive access to Angel’s charms didn’t come cheap, especially considering he had access to them for only one month a year, and even then, they weren’t too exclusive. Each month Larry sent Angel an international money order for five thousand dollars U.S. while her rent was paid directly from his Taipei office, listed as a warehouse. A whole Chinese family could live comfortably on a tenth of that. I warned her to sock it away against the rainy days I knew were ahead, but Angel burned through the money with endless shopping sprees. A few times, instead of studying English, Angel would ask me to accompany her. We would go to the night markets that stayed open till dawn. These are incomprehensible mazes of stalls, storefronts, back alleys, and warehouses whose decors range from hovel to palace. The desired prey of these excursions were always dresses and shoes, and only the most trendy knock-offs direct from Hong Kong would do.
The sales girls in the boutiques loved her impulsiveness.
“You have very good taste little sister! This dress is designer, only one. It look so beautiful on you. Very classy, but very expensive.” They would sing politely like schoolgirls.
“Money is no problem,” Angel would beam back. “My husband is paying for it.“
The shop girls would ooh and ah and but while Angel was in the dressing room, they would whisper among themselves, “Dirty little whore! Who she think she’s fooling, pretending to have a rich husband.”
They assumed I couldn’t understand Mandarin, and they were right. But I had already learned every curse word and insult to maintain my façade of incorrigible rogue, so I understood what they had said perfectly well. I never told Angel what they said. Better to let her believe that her ‘reputable married woman’ act was working.
I spoke with Larry a few times on the phone. He would phone every night. If it were late Taiwan time, Angel would hush me as she ran to the phone. “Hi, darling,” she would whisper like a lonely child. “I miss you so very much.” At first, it seemed sweet, but after a few weeks, it was not so cute anymore. She believed this would all end up happily-ever-after. Once Larry phoned early. Angel said that her English teacher was there. He asked to speak to me. I was apprehensive. We had just had sex, and I felt a little guilty. For weeks I had been dining and drinking on this man’s ticket while being handsomely paid.
“Hi! Larry? Nice to talk to you. Angel’s told me a lot about you.” I decided to brazen it out.
“Mr. Smack, how are you? I hear you’ve been looking after my little girl,” Did he know?
Was `Looking After’ an allusion to having sex with Angel?
“Well, I’m just teaching her English; that’s my job.” If he was feeling me out, I wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Mr. Smack, I wanted to talk to you because I hope you can help me to get Angel a visitor’s visa. I want to get her out of there and bring her to Miami, where I can look after her proper.” I was touched. He sincerely wanted to help her. There was a vulnerability about her that was seductive to those suffering from white knight syndrome, well, a white knight with a hard-on.
“And I don’t expect you to do it out of kindness. I will pay you for your time.”
“Sure, no problem. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Larry gave me the name of his branch manager in Taipei and his immigration lawyer. I was to contact them, and they would fill me in on the details.
“I really appreciate you helping me out this way, I won’t forget it.”
” That’s okay; I’m Canadian, we’re here to help eh.” I joked back, trying to make light of his gratitude since I was feeling a little more guilty.
Later Angel put a tape in the VCR that Larry had sent her. It was a home video of Larry giving the guided tour of his house. It was typical Florida architecture; sprawling bungalow, four-car garage, redwood fence eight feet high, swimming pool, manicured lawns, stone patio, and Japanese influenced landscape.
‘See this is where you’ll be living when you come over,’ was the basic plot to the story.
Then came shots of two fair-haired kids; Isabel 10 and Jordon 8. No shots of the wife though. Larry was obviously sincere in his plans for Angel. You would think that the two of them had more life experience than to think this would work out. Towards the end of the tape, it started getting mushy. There were proclamations of love, and I miss you. Angel turned off the video and turned to me,
“Now is personal.” She shrugged and smiled as an explanation. “He just say a lot of things to me.”
“That’s Okay. I’ve seen enough.” Angel didn’t hear the sarcasm.
“Listen Angel, you need to make contingency plans in case this doesn’t work out.”
“What is con tingy plans?”
“If you don’t go to America, What will you do then?”
“Larry promise me he do everything he can, and he have lots money and many Guan Shi.”
“Yea, but Larry is married. What about his wife?”
“He going to divorce her.”
“If he tries to get a divorce, she’ll take him for everything he’s got.”
“What do you mean?”
“In America, divorce laws are not like here. There the woman usually gets custody of the children, and she’s entitled to half of everything they own and half of everything the husband makes for the rest of his life.” A complete reversal of roles compared to Chinese divorce customs.
“Wha say!” Angel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her eyes were wide open.
“Oh, I don’t worry. Even half of Larry’s money is enough for us be happy.”
“But if his wife gets a good lawyer, which she will, they will eat him alive and spit out the bones. After that, he’ll be living in a friend’s garage and working at the local Radio Shack.”
“No, Larry will buy another house, he very rich.”
“Well, I’ll only say this once more and for the record. Save the money Larry sends you. You could live comfortably and still be able to save forty grand a year. If this goes on for a couple of years, you’ll have enough to buy an apartment.”
“Oh, it’s so nice you worry about me. But I know everything will be fine.”
“Yea I guess you’re right. Everything will work out okay.” I resigned.
There is a point at which truth merely becomes a nuisance.