So, as our first full day at the new digs, Jamie and I had a busy day planned....yeah, right. I did wake up early at least, though that had more to do with the fact that I passed out at 10pm the night before, burned out from too much travel and too many rum and cokes. Obviously, I was the only one up in the group at 6:30am, as everyone else stayed up much later than me and made it a habit of never waking up south of 11, so I amused myself till they all got up. No, not like that (dirty bastards!). I hit the pool for a while. Not much to say about the pool. Umm, it was filled with water and was nice? After reading for a bunch more and grabbing breakfast, the rest of the group joined me in the land of the living. We settled on a trip to the neighboring White Beach some time in the early afternoon.
White Beach was another resort area near our Panagsama Beach, but was a little bit pricier and upscale and actually still had a beach (Panagsama's washed away thanks to all the construction of resorts along the shore). How truly "white" the beach was was clearly up for debate. 20 minutes cruising on the Bat Bikes and we were there. One of the Brits we were hanging out with had been here before and spoke highly of it. Cept he came in January, when it wasn't monsoon season. We had perfect weather, no heavy monsoon rain or anything, but we learned that the currents or winds or something change and thus deposit a whole shit ton of junk along the beach. Also it was high tide, so we had about 4 feet of good beach sand before the line of coconut remnants and then a foot more of beach before you hit the water. The water was lovely and we were enjoying ourselves until we left the water and discovered some presents along the washed up junk. I assume the thought process went something like this: "Hey, that stick looks an awful lot like a syringe! Hey, that is a syringe!" "I found another one!" "Me too!" I could handle the flip-flops and scattered wrapper or so, but multiple syringes (3 to be exact) really took the buzz out of our beach trip, not to mention our concerns with swimming/ walking in the area. We settled for taking in the sea breeze from a local restaurant/bar. We were only too happy to get back to our resort area so we could start doing stuff...or not. More reading, more pool time, more relaxing, more eating.
Now we come to the point in the evening that I'm sure you've all been waiting to read about, namely my encounter(s) with those particular women who work at night and service men (and possibly women, but realistically just men) for money. I had left the bar scene earlier than the rest of the group because I was sick of drinking and losing at pool and was just innocently reading on my balcony when the midnight bell rung. Soon after a woman walked up to my balcony (my balcony overlooks the road that traverses the whole beach) and tried to strike up conversation. "Try" being the key word. Now, I instantly knew what she was looking for, despite having never encountered anyone of her occupation before. Nobody is just randomly walking through the resort area at midnight wearing that much make up and dressed up that nicely. She tried striking up a conversation with me, but she was no match for my awesome (read: hella awkward) social skills around women. I really had zero intention of conversing with her and wasting her time, but I tried to politely tell her to leave, rather than simply telling her to fuck off. I don't understand either. She eventually asked if I spoke English. That's right, my responses were so choppy and strange and unintelligible that she thought I couldn't speak English. That or she thought I was retarded. Soon after she left. Whew. Crisis averted.
But my victory was short lived, as another lady came by soon after and she simply wasn't interested in taking no for an answer. This time I was ready for her, as I had somehow gained some confidence from the previous encounter (again, I don't understand either) regardless of how disastrous it was. This time I politely insisted that I just wanted to read and eventually she went away. I finally understood why Collin swears by the "Stone wall". Not the same circumstances, granted, but it feel damn good to shut her down nonetheless. Satisfying, satisfying.
But still, I was not out of the proverbial woods. After some period of time, the second girl came back again and tried to win herself a sale. At this point it was around 12:30am, I wasn't tired and I was really bored, so I invited her up on the balcony to chat. Yes. You heard right. Look ye one and all upon Eric Wallin, who talks to prostitutes and does nothing else because he doesn't have fuck else to do. Sometimes I amaze myself. I guess I thought the whole thing would be amusing and enlightening. Soon after we began conversing, I realized that this woman was not the Rhodes scholar, Salman Rushdie enthusiast, Ornette Coleman aficionado, or social critic that was forced into this profession due to the deplorable conditions and lack of jobs that I had hoped she would be. Yeah, I set the bar pretty high. To start off, she didn't even get my name right. She kept calling me Sam, which was the name of one of the British fellows. I don't know how they got our names, but I assume it was in cooperation with the bar, as they called Jamie "Jimmy" and nobody did that except for the people at the bar cuz he signed his name on the billiards challenger board as "Jimmy". I didn't bother to correct her, as the whole thing was some amusing little joke to me, I guess. The conversation, if you could call it that, shifted back and forth, from actual talking (or what is commonly referred to as a "conversation") to points where I just stared off in the distance and hoped she would get the message and just leave. I really can't explain why I decided to talk to her in the first place, but as soon as we started conversing, I realized that I just wanted the whole thing to be done with. She really sealed it early on, when she tried to shift the conversation towards discussing my book (a Murakami at the time) and couldn't even pronounce his name correctly. Rule number 1 for getting a literary enthusiast going: You must, must, must pronounce the author's name correctly, or else you are just wasting your time. Learn how to pronounce Dostoevsky, Satre, Murakami and any of the other hard ones. Eventually, the person staying in the cottage next door to me came back from the bar, and the young woman took the opportunity to move the conversation to "quieter" environs, even though outside of the neighbor and his date, there wasn't a soul around. So we moved from the well lit environs of my cabin porch to the considerably less well lit surroundings of the restaurant/bar along the sea. By this time, I had almost completely clocked out on the conversation and really wanted her to go away, so rather than man up and tell her to leave, I went the terribly indirect route of staring off into the gorgeous night and saying not a damn thing to her for minutes on end. In my defense, I'm not really sure what she expects me to say to questions such as "What type of women do you like?" and "What are you thinking right now?". I understand that many people open up and share many private things with prostitutes, but I'm not that desperate that I have to be sharing my darkest secrets with someone I pay to have sex with. Those shall remain in my head for all of my days. It's not like she wasn't good at what she did, though. She put on quite a show. The frequent eye contact, the occasional and slowly increasing physical contact, the various body positionings while we were talking, the self deprecation designed to get the guy coming to her defense and telling her that she's not ugly, not old, etc but really quite beautiful. All professional moves, but to no avail. After some time along the shore, I realized that I had to leave now and quit being polite otherwise I was gonna end up sleeping with this woman solely because I didn't want to offend her by telling her to go away. Yes, I am that pathetic. How did I make my grand escape? Like a smooth motherfucker, obviously. I abruptly stood up in the midst of our "conversation", pushed in my car, stammered something like "Ummm, this was nice and all, but....uhhhhh....I'm tired and I have to go to bed now....Bye" and then ran away quite quickly. Like I said. Smooth. Like a god damn pimp. When Jamie got back, he dealt with the ladies in a different manner. He asked one of the girls if she could go get him some smokes, then when she returned he promptly paid her and then shut the door in her face. I believe he took the direct approach. Different strokes for different folks. Final Tally: Packs of cigarettes (1), Hours Wasted (1.5), Sexual Intercourse (zilch). Looks like somebody pitched a shutout. Nice.
Pics: Album 1, Pictures 84-112
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw2-VG43bPc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akyQ8cj6t-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89t1bpgKv8k
On Skin Color, Epidemiology and Bias
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