Miss X is tall, athletic-looking and elegant, with long dark hair and pale skin. At 2 o’clock on a quiet Wednesday afternoon she is wearing a figure-hugging teal-colored dress and high heels. She’s all legs and shoulders and chest, but she’s not self-conscious about it. And she’s friendly, with a kind smile and that Latin American habit of touching your forearm when she speaks.
We’re in a kind of cafeteria, this beautiful girl and I, with a grizzled, non-nonsense man sharing our table because he is acting as her bodyguard. This is the Empire, a gentleman’s club formerly known as Defiance. We’re using the cloak-and-dagger name of Miss X because she guards her privacy closely.
She is a prostitute. It’s an ugly word often replaced with the more jocular “hooker”, or, in the determinedly PC 21st century, sex worker. But there is no really pleasant, affectionate term, because society as a whole condemns these girls. Perhaps the nicest is “ladies of the night”, although the girls here are available from 11 in the morning, so if afternoon delight is your thing, it can be arranged.
It is more accurate to say that Miss X and her colleagues – I’ve got two more lined up – are currently working as prostitutes, because this is a short career, both through choice and through man’s inherent ageism, which insists that sex is the province of youth. Anyway, these girls don’t want to be doing what they are. They are doing it for the money.
“You get accustomed to it,” Miss X says. “You have to do it for the sake of your family. When you come here you change the chip in your mind.”
Each of our three has a family including children back in Colombia (where all the current Empire girls are from), and although Colombia is a lot better than it was a few years ago in the heyday of the drug cartels, it can still be a dangerous place and the economy is struggling, so many people are obliged to go abroad to work.
Let me introduce you to the other two. Miss Y is petite and apparently unblemished by life, looking a good five years younger than her 32 years. She too is friendly and amiable.
And then there is Miss Z, with wavy brown hair and a pretty, girl-next-door face. She has only been here two weeks and is still adjusting to her new line of work. She’s nervous about doing this interview and doesn’t really feel qualified to talk.
To further complicate matters, only one of these girls – the confident, worldly Miss X - speaks English and my Spanish is hilariously hesitant and clumsy. I prepared questions in advance with the help of my Spanish teacher.
I put basically the same questions to each girl.
At what age did they become sex workers? They all started in their 20s.
They do six months in St Maarten and then go home for a year or so, doing whatever they can, but not sex work. Their families and friends don’t know about their double life. Miss X says she once stopped doing this for three years, but was driven back to it by the need to provide money for her family.
Is it possible to have a normal life outside work?
“For me, yes,” say Miss X. “But it depends on your personality.”
Misses Y and Z say no, it’s not possible.
Do you have a boyfriend?
“No,” says Miss X, slightly irritated by the question. “For what?”
What is the most difficult part of the job? Different answers. Miss X says it’s when a client doesn’t want to wear a condom, so she refuses to ‘provide the service’ and he wants his money back.
Miss Y says it’s when clients are disrespectful.
For young Miss Z, it’s simple: “Everything.”
At what age did you first have sex? Nothing remarkable here, ranging from 14 (Miss X) to 18.
How long do you intend to continue in this line of work?
“Until I have bought my house,” says Miss Z, while the others are less specific, but it’s clear they will pack it in as soon as possible.
The Empire Club has been in business for many years and is now in the hands of Pierre “Hypnoz” Charville. He has renovated what was a dilapidated property, installing air conditioning in the rooms and the bar and generally upgrading the place.
If prostitution is legal in St Maarten, I ask him, why is it still so low-key and clandestine?
“Because obviously if a man goes to a brothel his wife won’t be happy about it,” he says. “And St Maarten is a small place. Our clients are a mix of tourists and locals.”
I ask Hypnoz what attributes make a woman suitable for his club.
“What I look for in a girl is that she’s respectable, doesn’t use drugs and knows what she’s here for,” he replies. “They can’t be too choosy; but as humans, they have their preferences.”
He is keen to emphasize the family-like relationship between the club owners and the girls. “There is no pressure on the girls; we don’t insist they have a certain number of clients. We take them on trips to the beach, and to discos now and then. If they have any problems they can come to us and we’ll help them.”
Back to the workers.
An article made up of interviews needs pictures, so I politely ask each girl if she would mind, maybe a shot taken from the back or with a magazine held in front of her face. They all decline.
“People would recognize my body,” Miss X says, although I think the dress might have something to do with it.
Thirty minutes later I put the same request to Miss Z. She laughs bashfully and looks down at her chest, where a small, loosely-laced garment contains as fine a pair of accoutrements as was ever bestowed on a woman, and it’s as if she’s saying, “You expect me to conceal my face but allow you to show the world these?”
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