Hanging with Hookers

Disassociation. When you can’t even believe what is going on around you, and to cope you pretend to remove yourself from your body as you go along for the ride. That was last night for me.

Ladies, let me ask you this: while getting all dolled up to go out drinking and dancing of an evening, have you ever had to think, “Maybe I shouldn’t whore it up too much, as I’ll be hanging with actual whores later on this evening?” Yep, my dad and I headed out on the wackiest ‘double date’ scenario I hope I ever go on in my life…his friend ‘My’ (the one who’s a few days younger than me) and her brother ‘Tongue’ (apparently spelled Tom, but pronounced like the body part) joined us to go to Martini, notorious Phnom Penh bar at which to pick up hookers, and where my dad and his friends have many times before, he overshared with me. If only that had been the only (and mildest!) overshare of the evening. Naturally, I had already drank 2 beers beforehand, and got another at the club. After downing it pretty quickly, I got a Singapore Sling for myself and offered to buy a drink for My. Although she demurred at first, she ended up ordering a B52 and drank it through a straw while it was on fire. Rock on. The dance floor was pretty quiet-the first thing out there was a cockroach, and then some hookers (still so weird to say seriously about women in this very real profession) checking themselves out in the mirror. We were in the disco part of the bar, and I had to periodically leave to breathe and convince myself that I could and would live through this strangest of experiences, under the auspices of buying more drinks, going to the bathroom, or rounding up a hair tie. As it turns out, hookers are really nice, showing me where to pee and even finding hair ties (I paid her 200 reil, or 1/22 of a dollar for the favor). Finally, the dance floor was hopping enough, (and I was drunk enough) to hit it. Hookers are also really fun to dance with, at least for the only ‘barong’ (white) woman in the building. They’re not the best dancers, but they’re friendly, and make me look better by comparison. One was almost as tall as me in my heels, and looked kind of like a man. A tranny! Later my dad told me that he was going to warn me to watch out for the ‘kitoy’ (tranny), but he didn’t get around to it. But I love trannies, and after all, cutting it up to the Black Eyed Peas with ‘whores’ and trannies isn’t really that different from my usual nights out!

And here’s where it gets really interesting (you thought you’d heard it all)! I’m the only one dancing at this point, (my dad’s old, My was hanging with him, and her brother was shy, could speak as much English as I can speak Khmer, and is half my size, so I forgive him for being intimidated), and I’m informed that the group is splitting up and peacing out shortly, My and her brother to the airport, and my dad and I to a traditional Cambodian club. A customer of My’s was flying in from Korea. What?!? This was a development I hadn’t expected. Am I a bad person if I was a tad bit relieved to find out that she’s just a hooker too, and not a potential future stepmom (which the Cambodian concierge of our hotel jokingly called her every time she and I walked by yesterday)? So my dad has no settling down plans after all (his vague reference to possible future children in an email turns out to have been an allusion to a condom breaking…classy…). A year or two ago, I thought I was being pretty forward-thinking and crazy when I went to a strip club with my brother and his friends. Little did I know I’d be hanging with hookers in Cambodia with my DAD! Good thing I didn’t have much of a relationship with him when I was younger…it’d be 100 times more awkward if this whole adventure was killing any admiration or respect I had had for him since childhood. Learning that the childhood hero who raised you was a womanizing dirty old bastard I’m sure would be quite traumatic. Learning that some dude I’ve barely known my whole life prefers Vietnamese to Khmer girls isn’t all that bad, relatively. I’m doing my best to laugh along with this (who but David Sedaris has as fucked up stories as these?), but even so, I think I’m going to get back to the states and have to curl up in a ball watching Disney movies in a semi-conscious stupor for a week.

As if learning that a ‘mamasan’ (or Madame) once offered my dad a 9 year old (which he was…gentleman enough? not to accept) wasn’t enough, we went to Touol Sleng today, the prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed thousands of men, women and children in the ‘70’s. Cheery and uplifting it wasn’t. It was shocking and numbing, but I don’t think it really hit me as much as it would have if I hadn’t already been so shocked and numbed by the events of the previous evening.

Tomorrow we’re headed to the fantastic Angkor Wat. I’m hoping and planning on seeing some incredible temples and riding an elephant or two, immersing myself in old old culture and not thinking about hookers or genocide for at least a few days (though we didn’t get to the Killing Fields today and will be hitting those up once we get back to Phnom Penh in 5 days). Breathe, relax, think about home in a few short days…Lord give me strength!