WHAM, BAM, THANK YOU MAMMON
THEIR god is the dollar, their temple is the nightclub, and the holy trinity of their faith is power, money and sex. They are the territory's new material girls, so dazzled by Hong Kong's frenzied worship of the dollar they will sell themselves for an extra Hermes scarf.
Each night just after 9 pm Tsim Sha Tsui's pavements suddenly teem with them - faces slashed with blood-red lipstick, bodies swathed in designer clothes - making their way into the area's numerous nightclubs to replace the younger, poorer, 'tea dance' girls and start the busy night shift. Police estimate there may be as many as 15,000. Most are in their late teens or early 20s. Most have respectable daytime jobs and, contrary to every stereotype of prostitution, most do not need the money. Gold credit card Suzy Wongs, they represent a phenomenon of prostitution perhaps unique in the world.
'This [1994] is my year as a prostitute,' says 20-year-old Alice, her slim frame wrapped in a white Joyce evening dress, her long hair held with a Chanel clip. By day Alice earns $12,000 a month answering telephones for a well-known Central property company. By night she earns three to four times as much working as a hostess in the Grand Delight Karaoke Club.
'After this I will be a rich and powerful woman,' she says. 'After this people will not look down on me like they do my mother and father.' She waves a leatherette dice bowl in the air and her lace sleeve falls back to reveal the twin symbols of her trade: a Rolex watch of breathtaking value and a frayed elastic cord threaded with a numbered plastic disc.
Her other hand is wrapped around the corpulent thigh of 'Ah Tong', a 40-ish businessman with a penchant for singing Endless Love and wearing gold ornaments on his black Gucci shoes. He is drinking Hennessy XO at $1,800 for a quarter bottle and paying $7.80 for every two minutes with Alice. By the end of the evening, Ah Tong and his three business clients, each with their own hostess, will pick up a tab of $10,000 to $12,000. It does not matter that Ah Tong is neither handsome nor courteous. In Mammon's temple there is just one commandment and Ah Tong knows it and knows that pious Alice knows it: respect thy sugar-daddy. So long as his American Express gold card works, Ah Tong's jokes are hilarious, his singing voice is star quality, his every word a drop of wisdom, his glistening giblet lips a temptation to kiss. He is a man of power; a girl just can't keep her hands off him.
It is 2 am and Alice is drunk. Ah Tong has just agreed to pay the $800 bar fine to take her from the club. They snuggle together in a picture of love. Yet only moments before, when Ah Tong and the club's mamasan were negotiating her price, it was a different story. Protocol demanded that Alice retire to the locker room and an intense, businesslike air settled over the velveteen couch.