In Berlin there are about half a dozen of them. Alina works the door. It covers her body like a bun covers a hot dog. When she gets up from her chair, the dress zips up over her ass until she jigs it down again with her fingers. The rest of the girls wear the same dress in different grades of pink. They all smoke cigarettes. Marlboros or Chesterfields with health warnings written in Cyrillic. And everything inside, from the drink in your hand to the seat you lean on, smells like cotton candy.
Europop plays from tiny speakers, hidden high up in the shadows. The majority of the women are from Eastern Europe. The same goes for the girls speaking Spanish, like Petronella and Barby. Obviously they lie about their age. Someone who looks in her 40s is allegedly in her 30s, and the year-olds are all The women act like the men are interesting and desirable, and the men convince themselves they actually are.
The men start arriving as the factories and shops close for the day. Erben knows his clientele well. Erben bought the King George more than six years ago. It was a strip club before that. He grew up in East Germany, where his first taste of the oldest job in the world was renting out apartments by the hour for a family friend. When the Wall came down, Erben moved south to Bavaria before deciding on a return to Berlin. What you want is the sort of girl who can still turn on some charm after 12 hours sitting down with nothing to do.
Erben comes across as likable. The girls support the argument. He loans the girls money. But does he fuck them too? And it can cause problems between the girls. But whom does he fuck then? The girls have families, though.
Klaudia has a year-old daughter. She picks her up from work at night, and they go eat kebabs together. Klaudia is also a nurse. She does OK as a prostitute. She holidays in Ibiza in summer, the Alps in winter. The average flat-rate customer fucks 2. Here, a customer can treat it like his own pub, and they have time to talk to the girls.
