The fat guy smoking Pall Malls, he says he almost married one of those girls. He met her in a bar one of the last times he was in the Philippines and fell in love, almost bought her a ring and took her home.
He shrugs. The skinny kid with the knobby head understands. Same thing happened to him, sort of. You know? The fat guy grins. The fat guy and the skinny kid found each other in the smoking lounge as if they had picked up a shared scent, a couple of misfit white guys dragging halfway around the planet. Then another, a fellow traveler in a red running suit, walks over. The skinny kid knows that feeling, too. He was nervous his first time. An American man is yelling at her. Her arms are in close, holding her own bare torso in a loose hug, and she shifts her weight from foot to foot, gently twists her shoulders from one side to the other.
Is that dancing? Is it close enough? Do they even care, the men watching, the Koreans and the Japanese, the Americans and the Aussies, the fat guys and the skinny kids sucking on stubby bottles of San Miguel? She is supposed to dance for half an hour, then go work the room for a while and wait for her next shift onstage. Papasan, the guy who runs the G-Spot. His name is Thomas Glenn Jarrell, an Ohio native who did a tour in the army before settling in a dirty little city that is moderately famous simply because it has bars, dozens of them, and girls, thousands of them, and only eighteen bucks a night.
Seriously , fat guys and skinny kids tell each other in Japanese airports, they love Americans. The girl blinks the itch from her eyes and lets her arms fall to her sides and wiggles her hips.
Change her name. Make her a little younger or a little older, but never too old. Dress her in a red bikini or a slip or a pleated plaid skirt. Wrap her naked around a pole or put her in a room with a big glass window and a flock of other girls, bored and trying not to look it, waiting to be picked like lobsters from a tank. Move her down to Manila and pay her more, or move her up the coast to a shack on the National Highway and pay her less.
