I was propositioned, last Monday night.
Went to a gig with my mate Simon, and was walking back to the tram stop, when a slightly weaving lady of about 35 or so, positioned next to a garden gate, called out to me asking if I could give her a light. “Sorry – don’t smoke”, I replied, cheerfully and entirely un-seductively. I was just about to make off again when she asked me if I wanted “any business?” Quick to embarrass in these situations, I politely declined and set off at a trot. “Wurnt mek it wirra fat lass, then?” she responded, angrily, to my departing back. Evidently I had slighted her most dreadfully. “I don’t really want to make it with anyone, at the moment” I replied, over my shoulder, and doubled my pace.
As bon mots go it wasn’t up to much, as a dignified exit manoeuvre. I have known better. In fact I can tell you I bore witness to it in 2001, in Prague, with my friend Nicholas. We had spent the evening making merry in the most amazing Blues and Gumbo/Creole food joint I have ever been to. Red Hot And Blues, it was called, just off the Jewish Quarter. Sadly it is no more. Cracking evening.
As we weaved our way to the tram (ooh, a tram again, look), a young woman pulled up close behind us, with an edgy-looking fellow alongside her – evidently her pimp. Her tactic for attempting to draw Nicholas into some manner of paid-for congress was to continually tap him on the arse and say “we go?”, repeatedly.
This went on for some time, and he and I ignored her/them. After about the 300th tap and enquiry, my dear friend broke stride, turned ‘round and stopped them in their tracks. “No”, he said, in a most stentorian voice.. “YOU go”. And they did. Cool story.
So yes, prostitution, embarrassment (mine) and generally being a witless fool (again, me). I was reminded I had promised last time to write about these things, and Monday’s little scrape reminded me about it. I have two stories to tell you.
Back to the year 2010. And to Vienna, a city I really rather like, and will be returning to with the ever-lovely and tolerant SWK just next month.
This was a work trip, in fact, but not one the like of which I had been on before. Seemingly from nowhere, I had been given the full responsibility of getting 18 graduate students to a Summer School at the quite prestigious Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien. The preamble to the thing had taken forever, frankly. They were all international students (and quite lovely, I have stayed friends with a number of them), so we endured an epic journey to London to get everyone a visa. Flight bookings, sending ‘round paperwork, figuring out who was going to stay with whom. Weeks of work, it was. I wasn’t in the best of form, having had a few of the students hole up at Gatwick with excessive baggage, and no bloody cash to pay for the balance owed. So, I was down about a ton already and wondering how I would word the expenses claim (I was forever out of pocket in that bloody job.)
Students wandered off, constantly. At times I was well down to single figures, searching Duty Free. However we finally, all of us, flew to Austria, and I managed to herd them all through the arrivals melee and out of some back entrance into the pouring rain. Eventually, after an absolute age, a man in a leather jacket appeared and I asked if I was Herr Cox. I confirmed I was, I gave him a large amount of Euros, and a fleet of black SUVs arrived. All rather cool, at least for a while.
We had agreed to travel to two halls of residence, in sequence. Empty one car of students, I’d see them onto the premises, then drop off the second lot at the further location, and take that car to my hotel. Simple.
No.
Fine, yes, we got to the first place, in what was now the gloom of 10.00pm on a hot and wet July night. I was sweating inside and drenched outside from standing waiting for the taxi guy. Taxis disgorged the requisite students, and I led them to the door and pulled the handle and… nothing. Not a sausage. Called the intercom. Nothing. Not a sausage. The rain it fell, and the taxis did wait. I tried calling numbers from my dossier of papers, but just got auto messages in German about how the nummer I had dialled was falsch. Belting evening I was having. I’d been up since 6.00am, and had survived on coffee, fags and air.
Finally, after what felt like hours, a student, American if I recall, appeared from off the street and opened the door with some sort of key. “Grab that door!” I shouted, startling her and my other international chums.. but it got us in. But not much further, as it turned out. Inside, lockers, a mop, a lift, and nothing else. No note, no indication about who was meeting us. Nothing.
I ordered the gang to stay put. They complied without a nanosecond’s hesitation – I suspect there was a certain wildness in my eyes at this point that suggested I was to be taken really quite seriously. I got in the lift, went up a floor and, well, started knocking on bedroom doors. This was actually my best tactic of the evening, and it got me through only two moves and one more trip in the lift to a lady called Meredith in no time. Meredith (tall girl, again American, with small round glasses, uncomfortably of a slightly Gestapo feel, given where we were) was stood there in her underwear, smoking, and gave me a pretty long look, but was on the whole quite phlegmatic about the whole affair. She showed some signs of having heard of both England, Sheffield, and late arriving students. “Sure, bring ‘em up” she said. I whizzed back downstairs, corralled the students (mixed gender group), and whispered in the ear of one of the boys “third floor, tall girl in her knickers, she’ll sort you out”. And fled into the night and back into the lead cab.
Driver was by now a bit frosty. This had taken some time, and we had another drop off to go. My mental map of where we were had started to fade, and I was really tired. However, soon we were there.
Second attempt went a bit better. Once again, we couldn’t get in, but some element of the amusement arcade of buzzers and bells at least freed the door for us, so we got out of the epic rain fairly swiftly. Various young folk were to be found inside. To a man and a woman they were drunk (the tail end of some sort of (ironic) welcome party, I think), and not terribly helpful. BUT, there on the noticeboard there was, yes, a note, and a number. This time, I had the one European student call it, and in no little time another woman (fully and modestly clothed) appeared, and I was soon freed of my burden. My gang departed with her, and I departed to the rain and.. yep, the taxi had fucked off for the evening. Terrific stuff. I stood, soaked, in the street, and thought, well, at least the students are in the right places, with instructions for tomorrow. Job = safe.
However this did rather leave me a bit stymied. My soggy map was meaningless, and my phone dead. The only possible solution was to start walking. I remembered that there were innumerable railway stations in Vienna. If I alighted upon one, or at least signs to it, I would be able to hit a cab rank and be thereby home free for my hotel booking. Off I went.
Nope. Nowhere land. May as well have been in some distant farming district. Street after street looked just as the last ones. I gained more water, more tiredness and more frustration. The city was silent. I started to think about the possibility of a late bar being open and being able to beg the staff to order me a cab, and then, suddenly, I found one!
My problems appeared to be at an end. I drew near to the reassuring neon beer sign. And at this point I got it all wrong. Three women stood at the door. As I drew up to them, hair plastered to my head with rain and clothes clinging to my ample frame, I remember thinking “crikey, these ladies are barely wearing a stitch, they must be mad”. Nope, that was just me and my inescapably foolish take on events.
“Hello ladies.. Wie komme ich am bestern zum Bahnhof?” I enquired, haltingly. There was a single beat and all three were upon me, with enquiries as to vot I vould like, Englischman. Even then, it took a moment to dawn on me what was actually going on, as hands started to reach to me. “I’m terribly tired, and new to Vienna”, I said. Like a royal fuckwit. Hands upon my person grew tighter and more eager. The reality of my situation dawned. I was indiscriminate, vulnerable new meat to the Viennese sex industry. And an unpromising cut thereof, the truth be known. I have never wanted to go to bed with a prostitute (sounds sneering, sorry, I don’t have any issue with well-organised prostitution, compared to the rather grim alternative).. even if I had, this would not have been the night for it I would have chosen to, err, ‘break my duck’. I like to be wooed, after all.
None of the company was about to pull out a city guide. I stammered. I gulped. And I broke, unexpectedly, free. “Thanks, ladies, I’ll sort myself out” (innuendo abounded, that night), I said. And ran for it. Actually ran away (see the next post for my strategy next time around). I had a wheely case to my side and pulled it into my hand and ran like the wind. Ish. In reality, I waddled away like an exhausted, 18 stone, drenched dimwit ingénue would.
I turned right, left, right and right again. My lungs afire. I looked back and found no one craved me so much as to have broken the mini-skirted peloton. Thank fuck. Or, rather, not fuck. I looked forward, to find the Westbahnhof facing me. Get. In.
I dove into the back of a cab. Horizontal, I was. Dead on my feet. Virtue intact. An interminable conversation followed about where I was going. Numbers pertained to districts, it seemed. In the end I just said “WU, WU, WU, bitte”. I handed over my remaining Euros and we pulled off (sorry).
20 minutes later, I was ej(acula)ected. To similar silence and indistinct locality. Concrete and darkness. Hours had passed. I circled twice. Death appeared close. I took a chance and assumed the kindly middle-aged lady I bumped into would not prove to also be a prostitute. Mercifully not. A little frightened of the messy tourist, perhaps, but nothing more than that. “Yes..yes.. Ambassadors” she said. And did some pointing.
I followed. And so the hotel appeared. I checked in. I went upstairs. The two boiled sweets on my pillow formed an excellent dinner, and I passed out, fully clothed.
Part Two to follow. With added whalemeat and high heels. As you do.
suggzy 