SPIKE//

My enquiries started several years ago when I spotted a New York Times article about a police sting on a Queens brothel. The headline caught my eye and I kept reading long enough to see that this brothel was run by an infamous Latina midget. I was appalled. How could I be living so close to such wacky-ass shit and have no idea?  How could I be so naive? There were Mexican midget madams running whores only miles from my cozy suburban upbringing, and here I was, clueless. I didn’t realize there any were brothels in these parts, let alone ones like you might read about in some peyote-infused Kerouac ramble. Intending to never be thusly caught off-guard again, I vowed to learn where to find a hooker in my city.

I asked around and it turned out that everyone in town - apart from me - knew where to find a hooker. “Down by the Lincoln Tunnel- you can pick up a girl in the city, drive across to Jersey and then drop her off over there.” Or sometimes a terse, “The Dolphin Hotel on the West Side”.  I got recommendations for myriad neighborhoods, nationalities and kinks. I learned where to solicit the best gay hookers and where I could have all sorts of predilections satisfied. Stupefied, I’d ask my informant (usually someone I’d previously assumed was a total square), “But how do you know this?” And the answer would come back, “You gotta know.” 

(Previously, in things I didn’t know about whorehouses, here)