Serbia

Saturday’s night felt like a dream. It went on and on and on with so many pieces of humour and fear, and suspense, and moments of “is this actually happening”. Right from the beginning it was a confusing jumble of disbelief.

     Even for the set up the call was a clusterfuck. Long story short, one of the girls who works the phones, Mel has a tendency of making friends with cabbies. No harm in that. Definitely something I’ve been guilty a time or two. However some how in conversation her job came up, that she works the phones for an escort agency. Skip to me now, I get a call from Leslie saying she has an over night call and am I willing to do it. I say sure because I figure I’ve got nothing to lose. men talk big talk about sleep overs, but when it comes to laying down cash it never happens. So Leslie gives me the number and I call. I talk briefly to some guy, and he hands the phone off to Mel.

     “So what’s going on here?” I ask her.

     “This guy wants to an over night.”
     “Does he have the cash?”

     “Yeah, we’re just going to get it now, then he’s going to drop me off at a bar and the cabby is going to find him a hotel.”

     “I’m confused, how are you involved in this?”

     “We got to talkin.”

      “So is this guy creepy or what’s the deal.”

     “Uh, kinda.”

      “Do you know him though? Like are you vouching for him?” I’m trying to get a handle on a very confusing situation.

     “Oh, no. Not at all. They’ll call you when they get him a hotel room. Ok? Bye!” And she hangs up.

     I’m uncomfortable about this. None of it’s making any sense. But then I ask myself, how is this any different from a rando calling into the agency. So I go ahead with it. Through the course of the evening the details get worked out and I’m dreading going through with this. Usually over nights are pro-rated but I really didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to snuggle with some old hairy drunken stranger. No thank you. So I aimed high and said I was out the door at 9 AM. He went for it. But thankfully the bank didn’t. He was only allowed to take out enough for me to stay until two. Such a win for me! Make tons of cash, and get to sleep in my own bed.

      When I arrived he seemed nice enough. He didn’t know what I wanted to eat, so he picked up three different dishes from the Mexican restaurant down the street and had them lined up to display to me. He also had a bottle of red and white wine, Pepsi and some vodka. The vodka was all his though. He polished the micky off through out the course of the evening.

     He was Serbian. He fought for the Serbian army since he was 14 until he was 41 when he immigrated 6 years ago. I wanted to ask him what it was like. I wanted to hear stories about his experience, but I felt guilty for my desire to sensationalise it. Part of me didn’t want to know, however. The look in his eyes told me enough. Death radiated from him, and I could tell that he has experienced more than his share of killing.

     We talked about my future plans to move to the Pacific Northwest, and he starts talking about gun laws and how I’ll be killed. For sure. I’ll be killed. I’ll be shot. There are so many guns. I’ll be killed. It was like his brain was stuck on a loop. I will die.  

      “Ron,” I said softly, “We can stop talking about talking about death. It’s ok.”

       His eyes focused, and he looked at me.

      “Thanks,” He said. I don’t know a lot about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) but I think this man needs help

     I have a friend from Yugoslavia. He was taken prisoner by the Serbians during the war and they pulled out half of his teeth. I do not know anything about this war, but given what they did to my friend, clearly the Serbians are the bad guys, they're the monsters. But I sit there with this Serbian and I feel the energy that is vibrating off of him. He felt like death and anger and pain and paternal. I have not doubt that he has committed horrific acts in the name of war. He frequently commented on how friendly we were here. How people were happy for the sake of being happy, and we were friendly to strangers. That is now how it is in Serbia. He told me about how his school mate tried to kill him in a squirmish because his friend was Muslim and he was labeled as being Orthodox. He didn’t give a fuck about religion though. He said it was bullshit.

     He started to tell me the history of Serbia and the conflict, and how it related to Yugoslavia, Romania, Afghanistan, Bulgaria and America. I enjoy hearing about these things from clients. Although, like all things, I take what they tell me with a grain of salt, but there is truth in their perspective, it just may not be factual truth. I tried to contribute to the conversation, but he was not interested. He went on to tell me about Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Cartier, Roosevelt, Kahn, Caesar, Napoleon. The list goes on. He told me about how history is written by the victors. For example, the Nazi’s didn’t do horrible things, it was all a lies told by the victors.

     “Woah, woah woah,” I say, “You’re saying the holocaust didn’t happen?”

     “No, it didn’t!” He insists.

     “Wait! What? No. It did happen. The entire world agrees that it happened. Even the Germans say it happened.”

     “They’re lies. History was rewritten.”

     “So you’re saying the photos that we’ve all seen of the skinny people in the 40’s were photoshoped?”

     He begins to give me an example of a photo of Abraham Lincoln what was edited to look like he was in a different location from where the photo was originally taken.

     “Hold on!” I stop him. Getting him to stop talking was actually quite difficult, as he really had no interest in what I had to say, but seriously. “Cutting out a man in a photograph out and placing it in a new back ground is completely different than making people look emaciated, and having piles of naked bodies.” I don’t know why I’m arguing about this.

     We talked for about two hours and almost a full mickey of vodka before we get down to business. I never told him about the GFE rules. No point in bringing it up just to tell him what he’s not going to get. I was straddling him, looking down on a face that looked very much like Robin Williams, and he would grab me by the back of my head and quickly pull me into him. He was trying to steal a kiss, but I am the champion kiss dodger. I could tell he was getting frustrated though, and having him hold my head in the crook of his shoulder really limited my movements.

     “I want another girl,” He says suddenly.

     “You do?”

     “Yes. I want another girl.”

     “Did you want another girl to join us, or did you want me to leave and another girl to come?” I asked.

     “Not two girls. I want another girl to come.”

     “Ok. Am I doing something wrong?” I asked him. I don’t really care. I have the money. If he sends me away that means I get to go to my friends birthday party.

     “No, never mind. It’s ok. I want you.”

     “What is it that you would like?” I ask, choosing my words carefully. “Would you like to chat more, or would you like to do a different position? I want to know what you would like so you can enjoy yourself. What can I do for you?”

     “I want kissing.”

     “Ok, I don’t do that. So I can call for another girl. But if another girl comes, you will have to pay her. Are you able to pull out more money now? Did you want me to call for another girl?”

     “No, no, no, no, that’s ok. I want you to stay.”

     We did this dance three times. The second time I was talking to the agency before he changed his mind, and the third I was talking to the girl. I was being completely frank with everyone involved. The guy was flakey. I told the girl about his money problems in front of him to emphasise the point to him that she would not wait until the morning to receive payment as he suggested multiple times. He kept trying, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I felt empathetic to the guy though. He wanted something I wasn’t going to give him, but wanted to be able to get it for him, and really, I wanted out of there. I was trying to problem solve for him. The thought of ‘maybe I’ll just leave the money behind for the time that I don’t spend there, so he can pay the next girl.’ Then I wanted to slap myself. Smarten the fuck up girl!!!

     We talked about his job for a while. In Serbia he was an engineer with five degrees. True or not true? Don’t care. Here he is a building manager for the twin towers downtown. This means if there is a problem with the air conditioner, elevator, anything structural, he looks after it. He cannot become an engineer here without re-doing a large portion of his education. You could see the frustration he felt about this in his body. He told me a story of when he was training a new employee and accidently saw his pay stub to discover the new employee was receiving a higher salary than he was.

     At school the term ‘othering’ has been bouncing around. It means to see a group of people and focus on the differences rather than the similarities, as a result you see them as something ‘other’ than yourself. This perspective allows one to excuse or ignore the mistreatment of ‘others’. In this case it’s a less culpable word for racism. It includes all the ‘isms’ though. I find looking at the treatment of people through this lens really does make it easier to see the mass inequities that occur. And it allows me to call them as they are. Fuck othering. It’s racist.