A visit to the sex bars of Barretto, Olongapo City

A visit to the sex bars of Barretto, Olongapo City
Jannis Otten
May 2018

We visited two clubs/bars in Barretto at the first weekend of May. The first bar was called “the office”.

I was naive and without any great idea of the conditions in such establishments. A cry of ecstasy escapes the women, who wildly gesticulate at us and guide us from the street to the bar. They welcome us saying “hey baby” and call us “handsome”.

I get the impression that it happens not that often that two young handsome fellow in their twenties visit the club.

Men in their fifties and sixties, mostly American oversized men are sitting in the bar, staring at the half naked women on the stage. A look in the women’s faces, their expression and their body language says it all. They do not seem to be happy.

They are just standing there without even dancing. I get the impression of a cattle market or where they are in a fish bowl.

Before we can place the first order at the bar, a cluster of eight women between the ages of 21 and 40 have already formed around us, they steer us to a table in a corner of the store. They smell us, stroke our breasts, and stroke our hair and beard.

Very offensively, their hands wander to our crotch. They press their abdomen against our knees. As they rub against us, they bare their breasts in front of our faces. They all want to talk to us, find out our name, and know where we have our hotel room, if we are shaved and how big our penis is. I take the hand away that is already starting to untie my pants from my crotch whereupon I am asked if I am shy or a virgin. I feel cramped. The offensive way the women behave overwhelms me. My legs start to shake and a strong escape reflex seizes me.

What did I expect an evening with some drinks and good conversation with a colleague? or a feast for the senses? If we watched the women dancing and, of course, being complimented by the women.

But the sheer power of the women around us feels strange and wrong.

Under the pretext of smoking a cigarette we are directed to the backyard. We both have to take a deep breath.

We decide to not stay longer; we pour out half our beer, pay, and leave the bar. I am not in the mood for drinking anymore.

This situation I face here is not fun at all.

So that’s Barretto I thought. I got over my first cultural shock, a first impression of what it is like to be part of this industry. We were heading for next Bar. The interior of the bar is lighted in blue and green neon light. We are facing a similar picture like in the first bar.

About seven Americans in their 60s are sitting in there with their drinks, facing the stage. Their eyes are on the three women dancing in tight bikinis on the stage. The light is suddenly turned off and a military voice fills the room. The order to salute is made, whereupon all the women of the bar line up and follow the order from the band. They do not move. As if petrified, they are looking straight ahead.The men get up, walk around the women, and touch them on the breasts, the face, on the back, on the stomach and legs.Particularly audacious men slide their hands inside the panties. With relish, they pull their fingers out of the inside of the woman, smell their fingers, and give scoffing comments.The spectacle lasts about three minutes, until the light conditions change and music resounds from the speakers.

We are sitting at a table with an oversized man in his late 60s. He wears an old pink T-shirt and short white trousers, which he nearly loses when he stands up. On his side are two young looking girls. I can’t hold myself but I feel disgust by this picture. He is in the mood for small talk. He told us, he is coming from Texas and that he would go on holidays regularly on the Philippines. He said he has faced very much “crazy shit” in his life. I am not able to say if he means his time in the wars in Vietnam or his experiences in the sex bars of the Philippines. But when I am honest, I didn’t really care. The more he talks, the less sympathetic he is in my opinion.

Again and again he grabs the young Asian woman, pulls her top down or licks her face. He looks at the club’s menu and is told by the 23-year-old girl next to me that pizza is available today. “I don’t care.” He says “I’m not here to eat pizza. I am here to eat pussy.” Turning to me, he says, “If you are shy you die. You have to be very direct.” Then he grabs the girl at the back of the head and claws his hands in the braid of the young woman. He pulls her vigorously by the hair to the back, which elicits her a short cry of pain. “I know you like that, don’t you?” He says “I will do that when I fuck you later. And you will like it.”

The grip on my water bottle petrifies and I hold it so tight that the white on my knuckles shimmers in the neon light. I’ve never seen a human being treated this way. I do feel like spitting the Texan in the face or breaking his kneecaps.I just have little time to think about what I could or should do about that situation and the way he treats this poor woman.

Suddenly the light turns off again and a woman with a living anaconda enters the stage. More or less aesthetically she performs and smokes a cigarette while she dances. She sinks to the floor and spreads her legs in front of a man on a bar stool right in front of the stage. He smokes too. The dancer takes her cigarette and stubs it out in the upper pubis area. The man takes out a 100 Peso note out of his pocket, folds it and inserts it in the bikini of the woman. Triumphantly, he lifts his half smoked cigarette, looks around and extinguishes it next to the woman’s labia. The light is turned off and I am not able to see the dancers face. When the light is turned on again, the Asian girl and the giant snake have disappeared from the stage.

I feel sick.

We have no time to exchange many words, when a man of forty from Oklahoma laughing joins us at our table. He asks what we do in the Philippines and what we would like to see here during our stay. We tell him we are just here for a short time, we are here for vacation and if he has some ideas where to go.

“It depends, what you want to see. In the Philippines everything is possible and there is crazy shit. ”

We explain to him that we would like to see the “crazy shit”.

With this statement we have probably hit the right vein in the man.

In a tone of conviction and with great pride he tells us about his experiences.

He visited a restaurant in Manila where only short people work, he says. Right next to it is a club where you would be raped on entry directly from the women there. “They really beat me up and ripped all my clothes off. They punished me so hard.”

“He says with a laugh.

Then he visited a bar where handicapped and amputee women would work. In the bar it looked like a torture chamber and you could use the “goods” offered there at will, beat and torment. While talking to us, he is eating a chicken wing. He eats half of it , throwing it back into the box of the other half eaten chicken parts that is still on the table from which he came.

“Now you eat,” he orders the women at his table. The women reach gratefully. He takes a step forward and takes the chicken wing. One woman eats out of her hands.

“Not you.” He just said and turns back to us, while he takes a sip of his beer.

Fatherly, he pats Moritz,(my companion) on the shoulder.

“When you are in Manila, there is a club where those bitches have sex with animals on stage.” He told raises and us his glass to a toast.

I did not do him this favor. We left the bar to get some fresh air and to review briefly what we heard .

This experience I had this evening has been bothering me for a while now.

What is my conclusion?! A human being is for sale.

Power over a person is for sale.

The dignity of a human being is for sale.

Here it costs me 20-30 euros. It is not clear to me whose dignity is sold here. My dignity or hers. What do I give up if I actually would use such a service?

I do not want to judge about prostitution at this point in general. It is a personal decision whether a man or a woman can and wants to use this service. What makes me angry is the matter of course with which these men talk about the systematic degradation and defamation of these women. One gets the impression that it is a famous thing to exercise power over another person for the purpose of humiliation. It is no longer about an exchange of services.

It is not about the performance of whatever fetishes one have. It’s about violence and greed and dehumanization. To be touched by the women has been unpleasant for me. But I realized that I only experienced very briefly and in a fragmental way, what these women are forced to go through day by day.

End