He's chawed his way through the popcorn, the olives and the pickles—and he's starting on the mixed nuts. I think he's worried about his waistline.
As I leave the table, I'm absurdly self-conscious about approaching the prostitutes, not only because I look like a seedy sex tourist but because it's akin to standing up and declaring, 'I'm JR, and I have to pay women to sleep with me.'
Not like anybody in here would care, of course. I'd probably win a round of supportive, AA-style applause from my fellow losers.
The blonde is beckoning me to cross the threshold out of the darkness into the disco lights. For some reason, it reminds me of a vampire inviting a victim into its lair.
Turns out I'm not far wrong: 'Florentina' is Romanian.
'Hi, um, my friend likes you, but he's shy,' I say, thinking 'How lame is that?'
Aside from the fact that I've just made Mehmet heterosexual, it's like I'm back in school, only the message I'm supposedly relaying has a decidedly adult edge: My friend thinks you're, like, really cute, and, um, he wants to know if he can screw you for money.
'One hour, $100. Two hours, $150,' she shouts over the din.
Grinning inanely to cover my embarrassment—I wasn't consorting with a lady of the night, I was simply asking her the time of day!—I report back to Mehmet.
'No wonder they don't do any business,' he scoffs.
I take that to mean it's not enough to turn a profit. Call me a sucker, but 150 bucks doesn't seem much for letting a stranger ram his anatomy in you for two hours.
And that's without factoring in the risk of being locked in a room with a hardcore deviant or serial killer.
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