lacur

Have you ever seen someone who looked completely dead inside?

Have you ever seen someone so desperate, so helpless that they were pushed into the prostitution ring?

That’s what happens in the red light district in places like Bangkok, Amsterdam, Mumbai or Tokyo. Adult bars and massage parlours which runs the open end prostitution business.

So many women. Young, and middle aged. Slim, fat, short and tall. Plain jane and exotic looking women. Wearing revealing short skirts, strapless top, doned in cheap make ups and fake smile. Their eyes dead, but they’ll be flashing a pearly white smile at you. They linger around with desperate looks that scream to be picked.

‘Pick one,’ he says.

You pick a woman, and pay her ‘manager’. The pimp. A menace looking guy in his late 50s.

The girl that you pick escorts you to the hidden room to get the job done.

Most of them have a story to tell behind closed doors. Though it wasn’t unknown how most of them did not willingly choose to sell their bodies. Flesh trade is an uncertain industry.

Large numbers of kidnapped women and girls have also been trafficked into the district as sex workers. Migrants who have been promised lucrative jobs (conned by their agents) because they think that living abroad is the best life ever. A packet of condoms thrown at their face and were told to repay their ‘debt’ by sleeping with men for 30€. Modern day slavery.

Some, grew up there. There’s some girls, voluntarily coming into the industry to make money. Some were pushed into the flesh trade by their own spouses/ partners for money. The rest came here as a last resort for earning money to feed their kids at home.

Although they were laughing at some petty jokes, chilling while sipping a glass of expensive champagne sponsored by their clients and leaning over the bar counter, they look completely dead inside. Their eyes appear cold and empty. There’s no more pain and misery anymore.

Beneath those dead cold eyes lies a completely broken soul. Shattered by humans they once trusted most.