I am in the restroom of the Veneto Casino washing my hands when two tall and beautiful Latinas flank me on either side, applying exaggerated lines to their eyelids and plumping up their bras. One is darker skinned with a leopard-print bustier, long silky black hair resting down over a pair of skin-tight black pants, long legs standing in gold 6-inch heels. The other is a little more European looking wearing a sparkling sequin silver pantsuit boasting one of the largest fake asses I have ever seen. Her feet are squished into tall heels, hair cut into a black straight bob. There is a lot of upkeep to this kind of beauty and it is a deliberate exaggeration of appeal.
Hookers. I am standing in between two hookers. I finish up my hand drying, try real hard not to stare, and scuttle out of the restroom to the roulette table my crew mate is saddled up to, feeling as inadequate as a 12 year old girl. As I sit down and take a look around, I realize that the bar top is lined with sex workers awaiting the evening traffic, lipstick applications occupying small hand mirrors, leaning bangled wrists on the bar ledges lazily. Men smarm around the casino slowly sucking on toothpicks, eyes lazy and pervy checking out the menu for the evening. A young woman close to me in age and a little more casually dressed sits down and smiles. I scoot over graciously. She orders a drink from the waitress and orders Jake and I another. We thank her, raise our eyebrows to each other impressed with our luck in meeting such a nice person and go back to playing. She asks if I am having a good night. I tell her it isn't bad so far. She points to my chips and squishes her bosom on the table closely. "Can I have some of your chips?"
I greedily hug my pile in realization and shake my head with a smile. "Sorry hon. I don't think so." Her candy sweet smile melts into a disinterested line and she turns to my crew mate. Giving up, she moves to the blackjack table where two young men hand her a couple chips. She's smiling and on her game again. The waitress returns with our drinks (which are free at the casino), we shrug to each other and continue on.
To learn a lesson from a good hustler one need not go much further than Panama City. Taxis and hookers are where I would look first. They await you patiently in dimly lit corners of slot machines in casinos and in the dark alley you stammer down in the late hours when the bars let out. Bass blasting in the background, drinks sloshing the movement of your legs, hand up, they arrive. The fare for American travelers is what is called the "Gringo Tax" here amongst ex-pats. Five to even 10 times the price for cabs but still so much cheaper than we can experience back home which is why most don't complain too much. Hookers cost around $80 for an hour of their time. A very hurried time, a cab driver once complained to me, but still not as expensive as in the States. They spend an hour at a time with several different men a night, turning each quickly. I have never thought to know this much about the sex industry here but you really can't help it. It is everywhere and fascinating with its allure and manipulations to more than I would care to have known about. Taxis and hookers work hand in hand, taxi drivers offering young men places to get special massages and pretty women to keep them company for the evening. The working girls shuffle their business back into the waiting cab drivers who carry the buyer back to their expensive hotel room downtown. Overweight Tommy Bahama-wearing old white captains on our dock almost always eventually end up sporting a young twenty-something beauty as a girlfriend for their stay in Panama City with no shame.
A month ago I was invited to a dinner by a young guy on the dock I am friends with. Crashing our lovely outdoor evening dinner came 2 of these captains and one yacht owner from a few boats down. Snapping their fingers at our waitress, they drank their rums and quickly delved into the subject of fun for the night. I listened quietly while evil-eyeing my friend as they discussed the kind of fun they would like to have. Classier or younger? Venetto or call up Manuel for his contacts? One of the captains looks me up and down and asks me what I do for a living. I told him I was the chef on the yacht next door. He smiled at me sheepishly, pointing to his admittedly large man boobs. "Hey would you date this? I can't get a pretty girl to look at me or smile at me unless I got a $100 bill attached to my forehead." I smile and look him in the eye, put some food in my mouth and try to eat my meal and listen. I wanted to ask... Why do you have so little respect for yourself? I am almost embarrassed to admit I wanted to hear more of this conversation and to see truly what these guys would end up talking about. They were pretty comfortable talking about their sexual options for the night. I listen to the yacht owner beg the guys to stay out with him. His wife is asleep on the boat and he is looking for "young ass." I have passed this yacht owner and his dear wife everyday as they tool around their retirement home of a fishing boat, traveling the world for their golden years. I shake my head in disbelief. My friend looks at me and says, Let's go. I am relieved. I feel as though my eyes are darkened inside somehow. Tinted from this. I cannot explain it in any better way. I am becoming numb to it now.
That being said, this conversation is not uncommon. It is almost like a sport, talked about with ease, something I am not used to. Many young and old men from the United States let their inhibitions down and buy a woman for the night or simply entertain her with drinks at the blackjack or dinner table to have the attention. For a lot I naturally assume it is their shot at having a beautiful woman by their side that perhaps they may not be able to otherwise attain. For all it is some sexual issue. For some, something to try. Some things I wish I could unsee, it is so unbelievable to me how common it truly is. I know it is not just a Panama City thing too. It is a Jaco, Costa Rica thing…it is a Dominican Republic thing…It is a Las Vegas thing. It is an everywhere thing, especially in Central America.
As for these women, a lot of them are truly stunning. I can understand the allure handed so deliciously on a cheap platter of ease. A lot of the women come from Colombia. One of my regular cab drivers, Diose, tells me that this is due to a corruption in Colombia where a lot of these women are forced into this line of work at a young age. Often voluptuous, often with plastic surgery, of which the butt implant seems to be the fad to a point of ridiculousness. They are given these surgeries and makeovers, brought to Panama, and required to bring in a certain amount of income a day towards their debt for all their "upgrades." Some have their families threatened. They need to do a lot of business in one day and there is a lot of competition. The reason they are brought here, naturally, is because Panama boasts the U.S. dollar with a much better economy. Although this is new to me, this is a business transaction that has been in action for many years with our military and the settlement of U.S. and European citizens. It is obviously a huge part of Panama's draw for travelers here, foreign business men from all over the world partaking regularly. The government turns a huge blind eye to it, requiring these women to have health check-ins, yet maintaining their hypocritical stance that it is still illegal. As with many areas of the law in Panama, the police seem nonexistent. This is, after all, a huge money maker and what government can be upset about that?
Taxis are like hookers in that they are also everywhere and they are typically there to scam an unknowing traveler. It costs the average Panamanian a couple bucks to ride across town. The average tourist will pay $10-15. I have gotten my cabs lowered to $5, sometimes paying a couple bucks more if I am impatient and it's hot out. They don't operate on metres, so you can be stuck in traffic for an hour like I was yesterday and the agreed-on price remains the fare. Due to the amount of business we give to cab drivers with provisioning for the yacht, we have 3-4 taxi drivers daily that will call trying to outbid the others. It works in our favor for this sort of thing and I have come to really care for and enjoy talking to the drivers that I have gotten to know over the last few months here. Taxi cab drivers that work for us also are still relatively inexpensive, charging us around $10 an hour and offering butler-esque service. My regular guys escort me through the fish market carrying my cooler and helping me through watery walkways. In the grocery store they help to carry bags and through the cat-calls of the produce market, they are escorts of security. Taxi drivers are as diverse as people normally are. Some are good, some are sly, some will try to drive you to their house at the end of the night and drag you out of the car (true story, though I obviously got out alright), and almost all are hustlers in some way or another. Their eyes are guarded, they don't talk a lot, they don't ask a lot of questions, and they seem to understand more English than they lead on. I have yet to meet one who obeys any traffic laws and rightfully so. Nobody here does. No one is above cutting into any corner, to get an edge, to pass miles of traffic to the front of the line and force their way in. It is a survival of the pushiest and an inability to care about anything but the destination and the dollar being acquired quickly that allows these men to continue to raise the small funds that they do to support theirs.
I want to wrap this blog up with something safe and explain. But sometimes things just are what they are and there is no making them anything else. Certainly there are other wonderful and beautiful parts of Panama and I will write about those too. For now…Taxis and Hookers.
