- Thread starter Meemselle
- Start date
LADIES ONLY! And Now A Few Words From Meemselle....because one word is never enough
we would not want to see any diminution of your sartorial splendor, however temporary.
Wait till I post the ones about the two broken legs and the tissue graft if you really want to ROTFLYAO!
do give us ample advance warning, so i can stock up on a copious supply of popcorn.
I wrap my wine bottles with them.
Double duty............heavy duty....
Nice to see your humor..... of a sort
Remember the James Bond book ?
Nosensayuma.... TeeHee and Mr Big
Thanks Meemselle. I've read all your posts, and enjoyed them all. You have a gift as a writer, and should keep all your posts, and maybe eventually collect them and have enough to publish.
Beyond the immediate events you recount, there is the story behind. Jewish woman from the US, broken marriage, moves to a tropical island to re-start her life. Don't want to pry, but wow?
Lindy
Beyond the immediate events you recount, there is the story behind. Jewish woman from the US, broken marriage, moves to a tropical island to re-start her life. Don't want to pry, but wow?
Lindy
I disagree. I'm certainly not in that demographic and I laugh my a** off at Cabarete Diaries!
All right. Twist my arm. Always responsive to the demands of my Gentle Readers, here we go.
This is from two years ago. I thought I'd give you more hysterical stories detailing my physical woes here on Hispaniola, but I decided to challenge you a little. This is provocative and potentially polarizing. I also think it's the best thing I've written in a long time.
I'm posting it and going into seclusion. Enjoix!
On Being a Feminist in Sos?a
July 22, 2013
I threw away a guidebook yesterday.
Not like me to throw away a book?ever. It was the Lonely Planet Guide to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A little bit out of date perhaps (from about 2004, I think), but perfectly serviceable. But the reason I did was because the book described Sos?a as the epicenter of sex tourism in the Dominican Republic, if not the world. I know that our guests see this?and more?in guidebooks, websites, and chat rooms. I just don?t want to reinforce it by lending a guest that particular book. Am I na?ve? Maybe.
So is the guidebook right? Again: maybe, and then again: maybe not. One might argue that Thailand is certainly a contender for this dubious distinction. Perhaps the authors/editors were giving the award only for the Western Hemisphere. I don?t know. But I threw it away, because that?rightly or not?is not the perception I want circulated about Sos?a.
When I first visited Sos?a in the early 1980s, tourism to the North Coast was in its nascent stages. The hotel I currently manage was one of maybe 3 hotels in town. There were perhaps 6 restaurants, and one of them?Oasis?the original caf? of the Jewish settlers (where Rocky?s is now), was still in business. Oasis was the only place that had ice cream in those days. And goat. They had goat on the menu. (I know, I know: big deal, but I?m from a small town in Massachusetts, and despite decades in NYC, this was/remains a novelty. So sue me.) Menus were in German and Spanish, and only a few of the newer establishments had menus in English. Northern Coast Diving was here, and there was a new restaurant called MamaJuana that nobody I knew went to because it was SO expensive: burgers were more than 100 pesos (about USD$3 then). There were no shops at Playa Sos?a; there were roving kids who sold oysters and cheap jewelry and Haitian ladies who sold peanut brittle and wiry little guys who would clamber up the trees on demand to cut down coconuts that they would fill with sugar and ice and rum.
Then things happened. By 1984, Punta Cana had a real airport and the resort developments that had begun in the late 1970s proliferated, providing tourists with AIs that had consistent electrical power, tons of amenities, and an overall experience more attractive to the less adventurous visitor. The international recessions of the 1990s had their trickle-down effect in the DR, as fewer tourists from Germany, Canada, and the US came to visit. Dominicans working in the tourist or construction businesses lost their jobs. Rich Dominicans who had employed two servants maybe cut back to one. Families were suffering, desperate for income.
Dominicans are extremely enthusiastic capitalists, and will pursue anything that will make money, especially if it looks like ?easy money.? Most women domestics earn somewhere between $4,000 and $8,000 pesos a month. That?s $100 to $200 USD. A month. A whore can charge RD$500 or about US$12.50 (see note below) or more a trick. Depending on the trick. I?m not an expert on this, but I read a lot. And as I understand it, a night can include several such transactions?well, you do the math.
Sos?a has always been a transnational place, with the influx of foreign business in the early part of the 20th century from the United Fruit Company, and then in 1940, with the arrival of the rescued Jews. There have always been lots of ex-pats here, first the Germans, then Canadians and Americans, drawn by better weather and a favorable exchange rate. But the influx of the sex tourists ? or johns; let?s call a spade a spade, Miss Cardew? was something different. Something different entirely.
I have never completely understood why here, in the same way that I have never quite understood why Monsey evolved into an almost completely Orthodox town in Rockland County. Or why Mystic, CT became the epicenter of the patchouli candle. I imagine it?s a perfect storm of price, opportunity, and availability.
But by the 1990s, if one googled ?Sos?a,? ? and how else does one find anything in the www. world ? the only thing that popped up were lurid pictures and accounts of the ?chicas for sale,? and ?hot hoes.? Crime shot off the charts, tourism plummeted, and anybody who was researching a vacation to the DR that did not involve paying for sex was not choosing Sos?a.
I watched this from a distance, with tremendous sadness. I didn?t and don?t understand why it had to be Sos?a. I have heard there was a similar thriving sex tourism scene in Boca Chica, but that it was cleaned up, and many of the sex workers moved here. The interesting thing about prostitution in this country is that it is legal, but having a pimp is illegal.
There are those that argue that because of this loophole, Dominican whores are actually ?entrepreneurial feminists.? While I reject this as just so much socio-psycho babble, I do make the distinction between sex trafficking and the business of the sex trade. Even if there are women who choose consciously to work as prostitutes as a means to improve the economic situation of their families, I would argue that they do so because their options and alternatives are pretty limited. Being a ho never sounded like ?easy money? to me, but I guess it?s like Chris Rock said about fidelity: ?A man is only as faithful as his options,? and I am one of the lucky women, by dint of race, parentage, citizenship, education, and opportunity, who has always had options.
When it comes to sex trafficking versus sex tourism, it?s hard to tell the difference, but it?s like pornography, or art, I guess: I know it when I see it. And when I see an overweight, looks-challenged, older white man with his doughy arm draped possessively over a Dominican woman who looks barely 16 and very frightened, I don?t say to myself, ?Oh, look. There goes an entrepreneurial feminist.?
Somebody once described the Dominican Republic as a country with nothing to sell but its beauty, and it doesn?t matter whether it?s the breathtaking natural beauty of its beaches, mountains, valleys, or its young people.
I was walking back from dinner not too long ago along Pedro Clisante, which is the main drag in town. I continue to be astonished at how much female pulchritude can be squeezed, poured, or deep-fried into Day-Glo orange Spandex. Ho fashion never gets old. I decided to sit for a coffee at the Cuban place and chat with the guy who owns the cigar store, an old ex-pat with a ponytail and a nicotine-soaked voice. He?s an amusing raconteur, and it?s a good place to watch the nightly parade.
I was looking across the street at one of the Italian restaurants, and there was a little girl, no more than 4 or 5, the daughter of the owners, I think. There is a support pole in the middle of the open-air dining room, and as the disco-salsa music throbbed, this little girl did an absolutely authentic pole dance, with bumps, grinds, shimmies, and spins. It was horrifying.
And what was even more horrifying was that nobody (except me) seemed to think it was inappropriate. And her delight in her accomplishment?and in having an audience?was overwhelming. When she saw that people were watching?because I was not the only one?she turned it up a notch and started making her dips deeper and kicking her legs higher, and I thought I was going to be ill. But more than that, I was shaken by devastating sorrow and anger as I realized that one day?and it?s not far off? the four year-old?s sparkling and mischievous eyes will transform, eventually and certainly, into the flat, hard, exhausted eyes of the whores.
* Note: based on the then current exchange of USD$1=D$40
This is from two years ago. I thought I'd give you more hysterical stories detailing my physical woes here on Hispaniola, but I decided to challenge you a little. This is provocative and potentially polarizing. I also think it's the best thing I've written in a long time.
I'm posting it and going into seclusion. Enjoix!
On Being a Feminist in Sos?a
July 22, 2013
I threw away a guidebook yesterday.
Not like me to throw away a book?ever. It was the Lonely Planet Guide to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A little bit out of date perhaps (from about 2004, I think), but perfectly serviceable. But the reason I did was because the book described Sos?a as the epicenter of sex tourism in the Dominican Republic, if not the world. I know that our guests see this?and more?in guidebooks, websites, and chat rooms. I just don?t want to reinforce it by lending a guest that particular book. Am I na?ve? Maybe.
So is the guidebook right? Again: maybe, and then again: maybe not. One might argue that Thailand is certainly a contender for this dubious distinction. Perhaps the authors/editors were giving the award only for the Western Hemisphere. I don?t know. But I threw it away, because that?rightly or not?is not the perception I want circulated about Sos?a.
When I first visited Sos?a in the early 1980s, tourism to the North Coast was in its nascent stages. The hotel I currently manage was one of maybe 3 hotels in town. There were perhaps 6 restaurants, and one of them?Oasis?the original caf? of the Jewish settlers (where Rocky?s is now), was still in business. Oasis was the only place that had ice cream in those days. And goat. They had goat on the menu. (I know, I know: big deal, but I?m from a small town in Massachusetts, and despite decades in NYC, this was/remains a novelty. So sue me.) Menus were in German and Spanish, and only a few of the newer establishments had menus in English. Northern Coast Diving was here, and there was a new restaurant called MamaJuana that nobody I knew went to because it was SO expensive: burgers were more than 100 pesos (about USD$3 then). There were no shops at Playa Sos?a; there were roving kids who sold oysters and cheap jewelry and Haitian ladies who sold peanut brittle and wiry little guys who would clamber up the trees on demand to cut down coconuts that they would fill with sugar and ice and rum.
Then things happened. By 1984, Punta Cana had a real airport and the resort developments that had begun in the late 1970s proliferated, providing tourists with AIs that had consistent electrical power, tons of amenities, and an overall experience more attractive to the less adventurous visitor. The international recessions of the 1990s had their trickle-down effect in the DR, as fewer tourists from Germany, Canada, and the US came to visit. Dominicans working in the tourist or construction businesses lost their jobs. Rich Dominicans who had employed two servants maybe cut back to one. Families were suffering, desperate for income.
Dominicans are extremely enthusiastic capitalists, and will pursue anything that will make money, especially if it looks like ?easy money.? Most women domestics earn somewhere between $4,000 and $8,000 pesos a month. That?s $100 to $200 USD. A month. A whore can charge RD$500 or about US$12.50 (see note below) or more a trick. Depending on the trick. I?m not an expert on this, but I read a lot. And as I understand it, a night can include several such transactions?well, you do the math.
Sos?a has always been a transnational place, with the influx of foreign business in the early part of the 20th century from the United Fruit Company, and then in 1940, with the arrival of the rescued Jews. There have always been lots of ex-pats here, first the Germans, then Canadians and Americans, drawn by better weather and a favorable exchange rate. But the influx of the sex tourists ? or johns; let?s call a spade a spade, Miss Cardew? was something different. Something different entirely.
I have never completely understood why here, in the same way that I have never quite understood why Monsey evolved into an almost completely Orthodox town in Rockland County. Or why Mystic, CT became the epicenter of the patchouli candle. I imagine it?s a perfect storm of price, opportunity, and availability.
But by the 1990s, if one googled ?Sos?a,? ? and how else does one find anything in the www. world ? the only thing that popped up were lurid pictures and accounts of the ?chicas for sale,? and ?hot hoes.? Crime shot off the charts, tourism plummeted, and anybody who was researching a vacation to the DR that did not involve paying for sex was not choosing Sos?a.
I watched this from a distance, with tremendous sadness. I didn?t and don?t understand why it had to be Sos?a. I have heard there was a similar thriving sex tourism scene in Boca Chica, but that it was cleaned up, and many of the sex workers moved here. The interesting thing about prostitution in this country is that it is legal, but having a pimp is illegal.
There are those that argue that because of this loophole, Dominican whores are actually ?entrepreneurial feminists.? While I reject this as just so much socio-psycho babble, I do make the distinction between sex trafficking and the business of the sex trade. Even if there are women who choose consciously to work as prostitutes as a means to improve the economic situation of their families, I would argue that they do so because their options and alternatives are pretty limited. Being a ho never sounded like ?easy money? to me, but I guess it?s like Chris Rock said about fidelity: ?A man is only as faithful as his options,? and I am one of the lucky women, by dint of race, parentage, citizenship, education, and opportunity, who has always had options.
When it comes to sex trafficking versus sex tourism, it?s hard to tell the difference, but it?s like pornography, or art, I guess: I know it when I see it. And when I see an overweight, looks-challenged, older white man with his doughy arm draped possessively over a Dominican woman who looks barely 16 and very frightened, I don?t say to myself, ?Oh, look. There goes an entrepreneurial feminist.?
Somebody once described the Dominican Republic as a country with nothing to sell but its beauty, and it doesn?t matter whether it?s the breathtaking natural beauty of its beaches, mountains, valleys, or its young people.
I was walking back from dinner not too long ago along Pedro Clisante, which is the main drag in town. I continue to be astonished at how much female pulchritude can be squeezed, poured, or deep-fried into Day-Glo orange Spandex. Ho fashion never gets old. I decided to sit for a coffee at the Cuban place and chat with the guy who owns the cigar store, an old ex-pat with a ponytail and a nicotine-soaked voice. He?s an amusing raconteur, and it?s a good place to watch the nightly parade.
I was looking across the street at one of the Italian restaurants, and there was a little girl, no more than 4 or 5, the daughter of the owners, I think. There is a support pole in the middle of the open-air dining room, and as the disco-salsa music throbbed, this little girl did an absolutely authentic pole dance, with bumps, grinds, shimmies, and spins. It was horrifying.
And what was even more horrifying was that nobody (except me) seemed to think it was inappropriate. And her delight in her accomplishment?and in having an audience?was overwhelming. When she saw that people were watching?because I was not the only one?she turned it up a notch and started making her dips deeper and kicking her legs higher, and I thought I was going to be ill. But more than that, I was shaken by devastating sorrow and anger as I realized that one day?and it?s not far off? the four year-old?s sparkling and mischievous eyes will transform, eventually and certainly, into the flat, hard, exhausted eyes of the whores.
* Note: based on the then current exchange of USD$1=D$40