Mário, Melinda &…

"The drive from Germany along highway E-55 is pleasant and peaceful thanks to the well-defined hard shoulder and the locals maintaining the speed limit. In the evening, when the streets are deserted, it’s possible to witness the stereotypical German penchant for accuracy and kitsch.
The Czech-German border is, for the time being, chaotic, possibly due to its recent reconstruction and relocation. Arriving at the border’s No Man’s Land, you cannot miss the Vietnamese stands that serve as a Czech welcome mat. The highway ends in darkness, the road signs have disappeared and you have to crawl along, not because you’re worried about being fined, but because you simply can’t see a thing. Slowly you snake through the mountains and discover small wood and tin stands, in stark contrast to the pompousness of the gaudy, Mafia-owned motels. Everybody knows the kaleidoscopic E-55, not only as a paradise of cheap things, but also as the concentration of colorful, scantily dressed, longhaired women. From a visual point of view, it is exquisite, the flip-side of the grayness that is city standard. The female body business. They are all unique, despite the fact that driving along the road you discover identical hairstyles and lingerie models, emphasizing the female assets. They are so sexy that we just had to take a picture of them. Though it is thrilling to shoot pictures from the car as you pass by, you only get to look at them after you have the photograph developed. Recording with a video camera is a little better but you’re still driving a car or riding a motorcycle with another car on your ass whose driver may not particularly share your sympathy for the girls on the road’s edge. Since I cannot imagine taking a camera, coming to a motel and saying, “I like you and I want to take a picture of you,” we came up with a scenario that would not leave the girls feeling exposed, on stage alone, so they wouldn’t have to feel strange about yet another weirdo coming to take pictures of the E-55 curiosity. A friend arranged the photo shoot with a pimp who told the girls something about an artist in a mirror suit who rode a furry white motorcycle. Because the pimp agreed to the photo shoot, it didn’t matter whether the girls wanted to do it or not. Being at work, they had to do whatever he said. Despite the set arrangement, I also wanted to try and take pictures of another place and of some other girls. I had my eye on a place where the most colorful and feminine usually stood. We arrived at the motel imagining they would gather around us and start negotiating the amount we could have them for. It wasn’t so. Perhaps it was because I am a woman too and the guys who came with me were not after what the girls expected. A car with a German license plate pulled up. The girls immediately rushed to the window and began flaunting their charms even more outrageously. I finally got to see a guy who had come to Bohemia for pleasure. He looked like your standard pervert, like many of the other German middle-aged tourists I meet in Teplice who sometimes mistake me for the girls on the road. To me, they’re all potential sex tourists; in Teplice, it is hard to see them otherwise.
We tried to arrange the photo shoot but to no avail. We could either pay 1,000 crowns for 30 minutes for each of the girls or wait for their owners but nobody knew when they would show up. The girls could not decide whether they would do the photo shoot. The bar lady, evidently the owner of all of them, claimed that the girls did not belong to her.
So we decided to fall back on our prearranged photo shoot. The bar was empty, and the girls’ owners sat comfortably in leather chairs. The men pointed at them, and we were free to shoot. Once outside, they stood across the street from us, shouting to one girl, trying to make her groove. They looked more beautiful than the other girls had. They were proud. Something was happening, something that took them out of the drudge of the everyday waiting for a client. The girls were as beautiful as girls can be. The scene was free of all vulgarity with only the underwear revealing something other people might have problems with.
A month later, we interviewed Melinda and Mário. Melinda didn’t say much and it’s hard to say why. She was together with Mário who was convinced she liked sex. They both know that their story will come to an end one day. The idea of a rich German — a knight who falls in love in a brothel — is a fictitious dream, but still it might come true. The worse thing, however, is the real dream that haunts us every night. Sleeping with at least 300 guys a year must be pretty tough. The fact is that they’ve choosen to do it, and naturally some people are going to take advantage of the offer.

Do you enjoy what you do?
Mário: No, I don’t. But it’s a necessity. There’s just nothing better here right now.
And what if you could choose to do whatever you wanted?
Mário: In my situation, I’d probably make music, but only if it was financially interesting.
Do you have a favorite artist or a band?
Mário: A lot of things. I like heavy metal, for example, but I’d also listen to classical music. Anything good, really.
Do you go to parties?
Mário: Yeah, I do, but not as often as I used to. While under communism we used to drive down to Hungary to see concerts. It was forbidden but I still went.
If you decided to make music, does that mean you’d have your own recording studio?
Mário: I wouldn’t go that far. I’d be happy just playing in bars, but I’d have to make some dough doing it.
(To Melinda) And what would you do if you had a lot of money?
Melinda: I’d travel.
How do you relax?
Mário: I make love and watch telly.
Have you ever wanted to make a painting or take a picture of something interesting?
Mário: Sometimes I take a pretty girl to a pool somewhere, I lay down and I get an image but not one that I would paint. It’s not my... I’m just retarded in that way.
Do you like any paintings?
Mário: I don’t know what it’s called; it’s by Picasso. It’s, like, the melting clock.
You mean Dalí?
Mário: Yeah. That’s it.
Have you ever been to an exhibition?
Mário: Not for a long time. We went to Prague, to a concert, TOTO. An American band. Rock music, kinda pop rock, from the 80s. You know it?
No. Tell us something about your job as a pimp?
Mário: Everybody wants to write about what a pimp does, but I’ve never read why people do it. If you were here, in this environment, you’d find people and wonder how they can do such a thing, and they’re good people and all. Like my uncle. He owns a hotel. Two years back he went along the route here and when he saw them, he would spit on the people for what they’re doing. He totally disapproved of it. But the world’s like that today, the financial situation — you have to look for your place. And when by chance you end up in this environment and you’re in it for a few days, you will understand what those people actually do, why they do it. When you do get a chance, you get over it. You get the money and all of a sudden you know how it’s done. It’s completely different from a person on the outside who looks at it as using and abusing people.
How long have you been a pimp?
Mário: Three years. I’m a chemist by profession. A year ago I owned a motel in Rakovník. That’s where I met my girlfriend. She didn’t have a job so I let her work behind the bar. After two weeks she told me she’d heard a lot about this kind of work but she didn’t know anything about it, and now she’s in a completely different world.
Mário’s girlfriend: I only saw films about what Mário was doing. It’s not like that at all.
What is different about it?
Mário: When they show brutality in films, the illegal stuff, that’s completely different. When a girl gets on my nerves, I take her, pack her suitcases, put them outside the door and she’ll stand there and go nowhere. After a while, she comes knocking on the door and says: “Sorry, I didn’t mean it.” Understand, it’s different from films where they grab a girl by her hair and say: “You’re gonna work, you’re gonna work!” That’s total bullshit. A girl is not a suitcase or a radio that I can put somewhere and she’ll just stand there and not move! She’s a living person.
Do you buy girls or do they come to you and say, “I want to work for you”?
Mário: The entire world today, the entire business, is based on who you know. Right?
Sure.
If you don’t know people and you don’t show up in a particular circle every day, you can’t do certain things. If you have some artists around you who are somebody, soon you will be somebody too. They’ll just put you there, just like that: A year or two and you’re among them. That’s exactly how I came to be a pimp. [Laughter.]
Hey, girls, why did you laugh when I asked Mário whether he buys girls?
Melinda and Mário’s girlfriend: ….
Mário: So, I got this motel in Rakovník. I called Slovakia. I got friends there who have friends and those friends don’t have a job. They get 1,200 crowns welfare a month. How can you live on that? So the boys told the girls, fair and square: “There’s work over there. You wanna make money?” And then they tell them straight what they’d have to do. And if they wanted, they took them here, and I made a deal with them. I said I had to pay this much for the rent and other stuff and the girls stayed here and it works all right.
Do all of you live together?
Mário: I have an apartment; she’s got her own room. At the motel, they both had their own room with a bathroom — their own little corner. But I’ll tell you what, every girl could’ve gone back to Slovakia. I paid her 1,200 to 2,000 crowns every morning.
What do you do, girls, with all the money?
Mário: For them, it’s just enough for one day. That’s an interesting question. I wonder about that too.
Melinda: I buy chocolate.
Mário: They’re just getting fat, that’s all.
What else does this work give you besides the money?
Mário: The past five years since I came to Teplice… When I came over from Slovakia, I was jackshit; that’s something like a “worker” in our language. Those five years taught me so much that I can now look at a person and there’s a 99 percent chance I know what I can expect from him.
So you learned to identify people.
Mário: As they say, “Nobody fucks with you.”
So now you do your work just for the money?
Mário: It’s definitely for the money. You get used to a certain amount of money. I could go to work no problem. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I’m making 100 D-marks a day. Offer me a job where I can make 100 marks. If somebody offers me a job I liked and told me: “Here’s an equipped studio, I’ll loan you a guitar, make music, play!” Would I make that much money?! Hardly! Sometimes I even make 300 to 400 marks a day.
That means about one client a day?
Mário: Well, one, two or three.
It must get pretty tiring waiting for them all day?
Mário: It sure is. She should talk about that.
Do you work from 5 until 5 in the morning?
Melinda: Yeah.
Mário: But you have to admit that I’m the only who’d ever let you if you said you wanted to go home. Just yesterday, tell them what time we went home yesterday!
Melinda: At one thirty.
Mário: If she can make the money, she can work until eleven for all I care. If she got a client and made 300 to 400 marks in two hours she can call, I’ll come, and that’s it.
How’s the competition on the route here?
Mário: There’re four of us in the hotel. Look, I’ll tell you what. Business, finances aside, competition is big and pretty fierce and that’s OK. Everybody tries to have his girls, have them dressed best and stuff like that. Make sure she speaks German and all that. Make sure she’s got manners. That’s his job. Sometimes you get girls that can’t even sign their names. She looks fine but she’s just illiterate. So you’ve got to fix her up so that when she sits down with a client she can talk to him. And they cannot speak Czech, only German.
Does it happen often that clients want to talk to you?
Melinda: Sometimes.
Are the clients older or younger?
Mário: We get all sorts. I wouldn’t say older or younger but mostly nervous. They’re not these dapper guys; they’re shy and just can’t find a girl. Know what I mean?
Did you like the Mirror Man’s visit?
Melinda: Yeah. It was like in a movie.
Mário: The girls didn’t dress up at all, that’s a shame. It would’ve been better if there was music outside. I was thinking when we went to [the disco] Aura with the girls, and they started dancing and were all hot, that would be a blast, those pictures could speak.
And you go to discos together?
Mário: Yeah. At least once a month so the girls can chill out a bit. When I get the time, I’ll write a book about all this.
How many girls do you have?
Mário: When I was running the motel, I had other girls too. But now that I have an apartment, it doesn’t work. Sometimes these two can’t stand each other.
What were doing before, Melinda?
Melinda: I wanted to go to a business academy, but I didn’t pass the exams.
Mário: Melinda’s got an interesting story. Some friends of hers came over and stayed with me for about half a year. They were making problems so I kicked them out. They were gone for about three months and Melinda came back. She met a friend in Prague and he took her to somewhere in Chomutov. She didn’t have an easy time of it there so she ran away and called me up. I took her back. That’s the point, as they say in movies, about how mean the pimps are and stuff like that. Somebody explain that to me, and even though she was arrogant and didn’t come to me straight away, she got a lift from Chomutov herself, but she called me in the end. Why? Maybe she had a rough time when she was with me? [Laughing] Is that right? [To Melinda.]
Melinda: That’s right.
Mário: Melinda had a friend, a stuntman in [the film studio] Barrandov. One German guy bought her a ring. Now she’s in love with this young German guy. She didn’t want to hear German for six months, but now she’s learning every day. I told her, “What are you going to do in Slovakia on 1,200 crowns welfare?” She won’t get a job there! She should just get herself a decent German with a factory who’ll buy her a Mercedes and she’ll come home for a visit. Ain’t that right?
You know a lot of people, right? Do you know any artists?
Mário: [The Czech teen pop singer] Michal David is a good friend of mine. Once he came over to my motel.
During the time you’ve been doing this, have you had a steady boyfriend? Do you think it would be possible?
Melinda: No, I haven’t… It could work.
How about the other girls on the route? Do they have boyfriends?
Melinda: Clients.
What guys come up to you, what do they do, what do you talk about?
Melinda: We tell jokes. They’re different sorts, doctors, workers from Germany.
Mário: One of them was a priest, right? [To Melinda]
Melinda: A minister.
Mário: Yeah, that minister had to try everything. [To Melinda] But musicians are the best lovers, right?
Do you specialize in anything?
Mário: I’ll just say that this route is going downhill. Girls usually do the classic stuff, down on all fours and stuff. This freak from Germany used to come here all the time; he didn’t want to do nothing but run around the bed and bark. That was enough for him. We get head cases here but that’s why I’m here, to watch out.
Do you have cameras in your rooms?
Mário: An alarm. We really stick to the half-hour rule. If she doesn’t come out, if she can’t keep the time, someone goes in there, rings the bell. And if there isn’t a sound, we go in.
Melinda, are you ever scared when you take a client to the room?
Melinda: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Mário: The important thing is that the door is never locked. We can bust in the room anytime. I think that the German guy knows that because the girls leave the key on the other side. If he wants to lock the door, he’s out instantly. He wouldn’t dare do anything.
What are you going to do, say, in a year?
Mário: I know this route will go under. They’re building a new road here so everybody’s getting a bit nostalgic. When it was starting up here in 1990, people made 1,500 to 2,000 marks a day. Today we make 200 to 300 marks, that’s nothing. There aren’t any more clients. No exaggerating, our daily expenses for just food and drinks is 50 marks.
What is your favorite color?
Melinda: I like white.
Mário: I keep telling her to wear red.
Is color important when a client chooses a girl?
Mário: It works. When they all are dressed in white, it’s good for nothing. If four girls are dressed in white, three in black and one in red or green, it strikes the eye. I keep telling them that. Hey, what time is it?
It’s 12.00.
Mário: 12 already, we’re outta here.

01.06.2000