Last night after I played some soccer with some guys from the customs office in Nanhai, I was invited to dinner. The dinner was huge and extravagant at the loveliest restaurant that I have been to in China. I was entered into chugging contests by my teammates that were sure I would emerge victorious in a battle with their plump old boss (who had previously been slugging back brews with the voracity of John Henry tunneling through a mountain). After continuously losing to this bahoimith, they took me home, told me to get showered up, and threw a piece of paper with some chicken scratchings on it at me. They instructed me to meet them at the club for a female dinner guest’s surprise birthday party.

I got to the Gold Coast directly and went on the hunt for my new friends. The Gold Coast was three stories at the base of a hotel with gaudy everything and 25 extraneous ladies in sparkling gold anime-like outfits hanging around every floor doing absolutely nothing but smiling and looking pretty (who am I to argue with that?). I couldn’t find them after my first pass, so I asked Sailor Moon if she could tell me where the phone was and politely obliged. I got to the phone, and was having trouble with my phone card when another girl approached me because she thought she knew exactly what I wanted. I figured that some of my new friends told the staff “if a scraggly looking 6’2″ white guy comes in, bring him to us.” This was not the case, however, and she brought me to a room with two fat old businessmen-looking guys and about twelve eighteen to twenty-two year old girls.

It took me a bit to register what this was as I looked through the glass that separated us and thought to myself, “No. I’m looking for a room with a bunch of guys from the customs office that I played soccer with today, not two fat old businessmen and eighteen to twenty-two year ol- Ohhhhhhhhhh.”

It was the whore room, of course.

This was my first glimpse of actual, card-carrying whores. I have probably seen plenty of whores, maybe I have actually seen one or two tricks being solicited, but I’ve never seen honest-to-God, in the flesh whores.

I think for a sec, and it’s obvious. These girls see a white guy in the club and think he wants to sample the goods; it’s just good business. Maybe those sparkly gold chicks are more useful than I originally gave them credit for. As I am getting the point across to her that it’s not what I’m looking for, the ho train leaves for another part of the club. I wander in the other direction, but five minutes later, I walk by another door and see the girls being LINED UP in front of a couch full of horny old Chinese guys.

I found the party I was supposed to be with, got a kiss from the birthday girl, ate some really messed up fruit that I’ve never seen before and had a cake fight. The fight spilled out into the hall and involved two of the whores that had been on the bench up to that point the night. They were cute, but I think I would have picked #5.