Walmartian Greeter as White Knight!

[Manila, 4/12/25]

Leaving my room around 4:15AM, I didn’t have many options. There’s an all night hipster hangout advertised as the most “chill” in Vung Tau. Its music alone is enough to chase me away. With Front Beach at low tide, people waded way out, their small bodies lit up. The parking attendant’s speaker wasn’t blasting, so he wasn’t dancing. Seeing a slim woman exercising most nimbly made me wonder if I could do the same.

By the cathedral, I paused to make a video, then decided on an unknown sidewalk café. At two adjacent tables sat seven or eight taxi drivers. With their clients more likely foreign, these men must be de facto pimps. Knowing all the girls, they sometimes get discount. Makes sense. Many nights there just aren’t enough sex tourists or sexpats.

At Shanghai, you can get up to six ladies on a round bed. It’s not that special, they complained. “It’s shabby, and just big enough for a married couple and a child.”

“What do you do with six?” one laughed.

“You screw, grab, poke. You do it with drugs.”

Why stop at six? Why not be cocooned by endless flesh squeezing from all sides? Nearly tipped into that sloshy grave, you’re back in the womb. Orphaned enough, you’re adopted by a nubile orphanage. In that reddish light, they appear newly born, just like you, but without the white hair, wrinkles and well marinated defeatism.