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| One of the many sights of Prague. |
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By Robert Downes
From 'Planet Backpacker'
There’s nothing like a good nudie show to lift a man’s spirits, and with two upscale cabarets in the heart of downtown, I decide to attend the ‘Prague Ballet.’
After six weeks of traveling solo across Europe -- including mountain biking 700 miles across Ireland, England and down the Danube -- I'm filled with the sort of loneliness that comes from wandering through strange countries for weeks on end with only your thoughts for company. A cabaret of beautiful women parading in their birthday suits sounds like a pleasant balm for the chatter in my head.
The club is on a dark side street just off the main square in town. Its illuminated sign shines like a beacon, promising a lively show. It looks friendly enough, and I stroll in off the cobble-brick road to its dark embrace.
I should have been more clued in, passing a red-lit room filled with hungry-looking women in lingerie, who eye me like a box of chocolates. Needless to say, I’m not used to getting adoring glances from beautiful young women -- what’s up with that?
ICE QUEENS
The Czech dancers are tall, slender -- certainly beautiful -- and look bored out of their minds, gyrating with the frigid poise of models walking down a catwalk. There are none of the lewd moves or tarty humor that gives an American topless bar its fun. In short, it’s not a very sexy show, even though the ladies are wearing nothing but nail polish and lipstick. The ice queens pirouette on the stage before melting into the darkness. Still, it passes the time, and I find myself admiring the dancers for their athletic, svelte figures. They look like they spend a great deal of time in aerobics and pilates classes.
Periodically, women in upmarket bras and panties stop by my table and ask if I’d like a private dance. “No thanks, just watching the show,” I say, imagining that they want to do an American-style table dance where you get a lesson in gynecology.
A tough-looking Russian drunk glares overhead for several moments, looking like she wants to slug me. “You vant privaht dahnz?” she mumbles.
“No thanks.”
“Und vhy nut?”
“Married,” I wave my ring finger. “Not interested.”
She glares and then glares a little longer. Again, I get this impression she’s winding up for a sucker punch.
“Oh, alvays too many married!” she grumbles, weaving off.
Bunkered down behind my beer at a cocktail table, I'm starting to feel like Little Red Riding Hood in a game of role reversal. It's beyond strange to think that the sexy, young women here are actually hitting on me when under most circumstances, I'd be virtually invisible to them.
A NEW START
It’s early in the evening, and there are only a couple of us guys in the bar, with the sharks in lingerie circling. I’m glad when a petite young blonde comes and sits at my table, keeping them at bay. I deduce that she is a Russian -- she insists she is a Czech -- but before long it comes out that she is indeed here from Russia, looking to start a better life. She says her name is something like Natalia or Natasha, but in my mind she is Natalie, like the actress Natalie Wood from the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Natalie is a nice girl who comes across more like a kid sister than a stripper. I ask her where she’s from, what her hopes and dreams are, etc., none of which I remember from one minute to the next.
“So when are you going to dance?” I ask.
“I can only do private dances,” she says. She adds that the women who are dancing on the stage get paid out of the cabaret’s $10 cover charge.
She explains that the private dances are held in rooms upstairs for around $100. “I give you private dance, sensual massage, a blow job, and if you want, we can do more for more money, yes?”
It turns out that $150 buys the whole show. At this point, I feel rather naive for sitting in the middle of what is basically Prague’s biggest vagina market without having a clue.
THE PITCH
Natalie makes her pitch, which is not without appeal, since I am, after all, sitting in a brothel for the first time in my life. But three things run through my mind: For one, I promised my wife Jeannette that I’d be good on this trip. I remind myself that being faithful is rule number one when you’re married. It’s a sobering thought that plunges me into a dark mood, like falling into a well.
There's something about drinking a beer that brings out the philosopher in a man, and my thoughts go spongy with the consequences of cheating on my wife, even with a hooker. I reflect that Jeannette has trusted me enough to grant leave from our 11-year marriage to fulfill the dream of a lifetime. At the age of 55, I've abandoned wife, home, family, friends and my job in order to backpack around the world -- a trip that will carry me on through Egypt, India and Southeast Asia -- the events of which are recounted in my book, "Planet Backpacker."
Few wives, perhaps, would be so generous as to allow their husbands to take off on such a lark. I don't think Jeannette would care if I watched a harmless striptease, but going upstairs with Natalie would be breaking our deal.
QUITE PETITE...
But there are also the practical considerations of a lone traveler: I’d have to go out and scrounge around the city streets for an ATM in the dark to withdraw the money, and since I’d want all or nothing, it would mean burning down $150 when I already feel like I’m tossing buckets of cash on a bonfire with little to spare in the tight budget of a backpacker. And it's not like I haven't had sex before -- thousands of times -- albeit in a marriage bed, rather than a brothel.
Then too, Natalie would be the last girl I’d pick in this cabaret. Like I said, she is quite petite -- less than five feet tall -- and reminds me of a kid sister.
My thoughts flash to the California-style blonde bending over a nearby table with buns like ripe honeydew melons. Or a bleached blonde with a hard face, but a body like Angelina Jolie’s who is in earnest negotiations with a beefy salesman. Or, most of all, a sophisticated brunette who’s a dead ringer for a young Jane Seymour in an impeccable negligee and thong who’s been sitting next to me in a cool silence for the past hour. When she stands up and turns around, the triangle of her burgundy thong is seared into my neocortex like a brand. Now there is a prize.
But my window shopping is irrelevant since it would be rude to let my new friend Natalie down after she’s gone so far to explain the ropes to me... and it all circles back to being faithful to my wife. So, checkmate.
“Sorry, I’m married,” I say, waving my ring finger.
“We can just do the dance and massage if you like,” Natalie says hopefully.
Maybe if I'd had two pints of Czech lager instead of one -- that might have been the tipping point, even for a husband who aims to stay true.
Some sort of payment seems required, if only for the conversation, so I pay Natalie what most women seem to crave: a compliment. I tell her she’s very nice and good-looking, but no can do.
The only part of me I leave at the cabaret is a complaint with the doorman that my beer cost $15 instead of the $5 they promised. He gives a bored shrug, like “shit happens,” and I exit stage left.
I heard later from the guys in my hostel dorm room that the cabaret got pretty wet and wild after midnight. It’s a downer to think of sweet little Natalie down there, sucking on penises for a living -- but everyone’s on their own trip -- just as I must continue on with mine -- so I don’t knock what she’s doing.
Still, I think she’d make a better waitress than a ‘lady of the night.’
Dangers, warnings, crime, trouble, hazards, etc.: I can't imagine you'd get in too much trouble visiting a strip bar/brothel in Prague, since the staff has a vested interest in your visit going smoothly while divesting you of cash. I have heard of club patrons being strong-armed by goons at bars in Budapest, however, and hustled over to ATMs to withdraw cash for unexpected expenses. This may be simply an urban legend, but it never hurts to ask how much a drink (or service) is going to cost before you agree to go for it.
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