Off The Rails in the Granville Inn

Prostitution has reared it's head in different aspects of my life lately and as a result I've been left wondering - am I not reading the signs? I've not been in a relationship for a little over a year now, however I'm reluctant to suspect the universe of conspiring to send me some preternatural message, having said that, I've been wrong about the esoteric before.

Some colleagues and acquaintances are embarking on an Easter weekend blow-out in America's hedonistic capital Vegas. You can gondola through your desert bound hotel, catch a water slide through a shark tank, engage, wed and annul your nuptials to your best mate in under twelve hours and apparently make a porno with midgets named Bubbles, or am I misinformed here? Then, of course, there's the hookers. How did I forget the hookers?

In the same week that the spur of the moment decision was made to abandon the shackles of Sydney for the city of excess, I've been privy to some drunken conversations of debauchery, including the terms 'knee-deep in hookers". While I am uncertain to what degree of sincerity these allusions have been made, I have been shown various websites demonstrating the creme de la creme of Vegas' adult entertainment, watching the tension of anticipation and excitement increase as well as my knowledge of this world on offer that I've been pretty blissfully ignorant to.

This isn't to say I've turned a blind eye to the sex industry, I mixed with prostitutes on the strip as a teen on underage adventures through The Cross and I've had more than one mate employed within the industry. One mates Mum still doesn't know that the small company that she did reception for was really a Tempe based brothel full of larger than life personalities. What I didn't necessarily realise, or at least give much thought to, was the variety of tastes, lifestyles, budgets this industry caters for, but I guess, like every industry, product differentiation, adaptability and knowing your market is the key to success and longevity.

I've recently returned from my own shackle escape in South East Asia where I spent the majority of my time in Cambodia. An intoxicating place, it has the power to warm the cockles of your heart and seconds later break it. Cambodia brought me face to face with the aftermath of war, revolution, dictatorship, poverty, corruption and of course prostitution. A book, that was a scribbled recommendation written in the back of my Rough Guide by a travel companion I met, is responsible for taking away some of my innocence, or perhaps more accurately disabling me from my ignorance any further. Amit Gilboa's book "Off The Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls and Ganja" is the culprit.

Before I talk anymore about Amit Gilboa's book, I need to bring up the phone call I got early Saturday morning as I lay in bed celebrating the coming of the weekend and the close of another miserable week at work. I currently have a loaner phone after my phone had an unfortunate encounter with my full, hot, bathtub, so instead of being woken by the theme song of Super Ted, which at that time would have been annoying enough, it was a monophonic, factory setting tone, never the less, I answered the call. "Hi, I'm in room 67 at the Granville Inn, are you available?" I was slightly groggy and confused, so I daftly asked "excuse me?" and got the same, confused and half asleep, I hung up and the phone, alas it rang again. The same introduction was offered. I hung up. The phone rang again and the unnamed caller made the same introduction, I queried how he came to have my number, "the phonebook" was the given reply, I laughed and said "I don't think, so" the voice on the other end on the line shot me down with "Does it sound like I'm fucking joking?", in response, I hung up. The phone rang a final time with the same introduction and I explicitly informed the caller to "stop calling this number", this ended my rendezvous. I couldn't get back to sleep after this either. I felt awkward.

I have just finished the book. I've been reading it since I returned, for about three weeks now in fact. It is not a long book, nor is it poorly written, in fact it is so sublimely written I am often lost in thinking that I am also at the table in the Majestic eavesdropping, it is however an "intense" read and it's the shocking things that bring me back and remind me that this book isn't a launch into the surreal, it is very much the real. I have no particularly intelligent or insightful comments to offer, nor will I condescend to preach and moralise either, because at some stage we've each crossed someone's moral boundaries and really, who am I to question any ones survival instincts? Poverty isn't a world I know.

I don't really know what the point of this stream of conscience is, other than to relieve myself of my awkward reaction to what could have been a genuine "wrong number" call. Perhaps my emotions, which would normally have been pure hilarity, were abstracted by the conversations that I have been privy to, at the bar, on the train or in the park where I have sat reading Gilboa's excerpts of Phnom Penh's $2 whores. I don't know how to react to "She still hasn't forgiven me from the last time in the brothel. I kind of forced her to let me shag her up the ass. It must've hurt, but I gave her a nice tip." and another chap justifying his love for the Tool Kok girls,"I'd still love them and think they're great girls, but now the blow jobs and the shagging are so normal that I'd really miss it" or finally this description of Phnom Penh's sex industry "Convenience. Like whorehouse Seven-Elevens".

I guess it was all of this that inspired this uncomfortableness in an individual that normally takes a huge amount of pleasure in the ugly, bizarre, obscure, and uncomfortable. I buy clothes particularly because they're ugly, enjoy peeing in my mate's latrine is filled with more Jesus paraphernalia then a church charity shop, I regularly check for new 'Engrish' websites and I adore tasteless jokes, ordinarily I would laugh this off, and did with my mates at the lawn bowls later that day, but in the current climate of my life it bothered me. I did promise nothing intelligent or insightful and I think if we can agree with nothing else I have said here, we can agree to that.