As The Worm Turns
I spent September 2000 in Hong Kong for work. They put me up in The Peninsula right on Victoria Harbor, and comped me for room service. My first night there, I really didn't know what to do, so I took a long walk through Kowloon, taking the occasional photo and just sort of wandering around aimlessly through dingy side streets full of feral cats. At one point, I passed a hole in the wall strip club. I hate strip clubs - there's something about women pretending to like me and find me attractive in exchange for money that really bothers me - it's kind of demeaning for all parties involved, but I decided to go in. Blame it on jetlag.
The first odd thing was that there was hardcore porn on all the TV's, instead of the Knicks or ESPN. There were about eight women there, no men. I like talking to people and the women there were actually very nice - they were all from Thailand and very poor, which also makes me feel lousy, so I wound up giving out a few hundred Yuan (about 25 bucks). After chatting with them for a while, a few of them took me to a back room. It turned out they wanted me to try some of their food, and they gave me a plate with some meat that I sincerely hope was chicken. I tentatively put a piece in my mouth and my tongue immediately went numb. It was so spicy that it actually tasted metallic. When my eyes were finished watering, I politely handed the plate back and thanked them.
After some more chatting, three of the women asked me if I would take them out to dinner. I said sure. I thought it would be cool to be able to put that on my mental list of things I've done in my life - taking some strippers out to dinner. I figured we'd go to some interesting place, but they all wanted to go to McDonalds.
I bought them burgers and fries and drinks and we got a table and continued chatting. Their English wasn't great, but we were able to communicate fairly well. After a while, about eight huge Black guys came in and got a table. I tried to eavesdrop and they were speaking English, but with such heavy African accents it was hard to follow. One of the girls I was with, who was fairly drunk, touched her cheek and proclaimed "I hate black skin". I shushed her and kind of looked over my shoulder. She said it again, louder. "I hate black skin", and then said it again. About six of the guys came over to our table and stood there, not saying a word. I am proud to say I did not soil myself. One of the guys put his hands on my shoulders and said something I couldn't understand. I stammered something along the lines of "hey, no problem here, we don't want any trouble" or something to that effect - that part is a little hazy. They continued glaring at me. The girls were completely non-plussed.
The story is pretty anti-climactic. I slowly got up and they let me leave and walked back to the hotel. No idea what happened to the girls. That was all.
