DAY 10 continued: A hot prospect & an eye-opening comversation
Booked a 2nd night at the Viking Resort--feel like staying for a month. Alas responsibilities, too costly to ignore, call me back to Canada.
So I go to the plush Wild Orchid Resort that serves as the Southern Cross terminal. Buy my ticket for tomorrow's monger bus back to Angeles. A few more nights there, and then...don't want to think about it.
Pick up my laundry from a shop I never used before--and won't ever use again.They couldn't find my stuff! I eventually dug it out myself from a seriously disorganized pile. Almost lost my temper but realized, the Philippines is the wrong place for anyone bothered by chaotic inefficiency.
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May have found my girl for the night, at the Sweethearts bar. Had good rapport there before, so let myself be lured back in. A chance to practice an essential new skill I want to develop: ruthless selectivity--and no lady drinks for girls with no likely romping potential!
*A girl*I talked to last time, with only one previous barfine, comes up to me. I send her away: I'm not in the mood for clumsy innocence, and she's borderline anorexic.
*Get the waitress to call one dancer*after another off the stage. The first two are the prettiest (in my eyes), but I send them both packing: one has a hangover from tequila shots last night; the other seems catatonic or slow on the uptake.
But the 3rd has potential. Rosalyn looks around 30, but shocks me by saying she's 38. *From Zambales, 3 kids, abandoned by a husband who was a violent alcoholic. Doesn't like her job--except, she says, "when I meet a man like you."

*
We talk cheerily, we smooch, she spontaneously kisses me, we dance a bit, and she even pulls down her bikini and shows me the upper half of her kitty.*
I tell her, I'm talking to girls this afternoon just to get to know them, so I don't have to barfine a complete stranger late in the evening, when the time comes to pick a GFfor the night. Makes total sense to Rosalyn, and she gives me every impression she'd love to be my pick.*
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Next, off to Shagger's Rest floating bar. Immediately*mobbed by 6 girls. One starts massaging my neck, another my hands and arms. The bar has few other customers.
Getting mild ego strokes from *to girls' flattery ("You're so handsome...smart...young-looking...can I marry you?") I flagrantly violate my 'no-lady-drinks-without-romp-potential' rule and buy a round. Hey, rules are meant to be broken now and then.
Two more girls want to join my circle, but I wave them off: lady drinks for 6, at P150 each, is generous enough. There has got to be one suitable bang bunny among them.*But the more I interact with these girls, the tamer and less exciting they all seem to me.*
They're amused by my provocative innuendo, but show no eagerness to proceed to the barfine stage--a strange*contrast to last November.*They are especially incredulous and convinced I'm lying when I *mention that, in the West, spending the night with an escort*costs P50 000 or more.
One of the girls, age 24, boasts of being a virgin. Says she doesn't have sex with customers, just provides conversation and companionship for bar-hopping or dinner.*But then I learn, none of the other five girls is barfinable either.*Seems like *ripoff to me, given the expectations that attract *mongers in the first placd.*I feel almost a sense of outrage: what the hell's going on *here?
Shagger's Rest no longer has a mamasan, but there's a Western manager present. I introduce myself and ask, "Sir, how come this bar has changed so much since last November? What happened to barfines?"
At first, the manager--who shall remain unnamed--sounds testy and defensive. I've obviously touched a raw nerve. "We are a bar which has girls," he says, "not a brothel. Our girls here hostesses, not prostitutes."*
Silliest thing I've heard on my entire trip.But I compiment the manager on his noble vision for his bar, and gradually the he opens up.*I realize, the recent extortion raids by *corrupt police, in both Angeles and Subic, make the Blue Rock management nervous they might be raided too. So they've made changes that seem radical on the surface--but are largely cosmetic but confusing.
The manager explains: "Don't ask our girls, 'How much is the barfine?' They'll say, we have no barfines here. Instead ask a girl you're interested in, 'What would it take to get you released from work early?'"
"Well--what would it take?" I ask.
"Offer to buy her ten lady drinks. That's P1500, and the girl gets half of that, just like before she got half the P1500 barfine. She has met her day's drink quota and is free to leave. What may develop between consenting adults once she has left is none of the bar's business."
Economically, I can see, this approach works for the bar and for the girl--but sad*such games of silly pretense should be necessary in the Philippines. Now I understand why I got mobbed by so many girls pestering me for lady drinks. Also understand the Blue Rock's rationale for taking precautions--they don't want to lose their investment--but I'm not sure mongers will appreciate the complications involved.
So no wonder this bar is nearly deserted. Having few customers attracts a low quality of "hostesses," which in turn causes the number of customers to drop further.
*I'm not going back either. And my resolve has been strengthened to follow my new rule:*Never ever buy a lady drink, *however attractive the girl, without first making sure she's available for a romp.
*I don't care if they want to call it*"barfine" or "early work release"--but I won't support bars where girls mob me to meet their lady-drink quota, with no intention of having sex.