Price Gouging Prostitutes

At the dockside nightclubs in Cape Town and Durban, prostitutes compete with each other for foreign seafaring clients. The ladies may be colleagues, but they're also rivals. Seeking to secure their own livelihoods, they deploy sneaky strategies to outwit their competitors. One particularly dangerous ploy is to undercut the competition by reducing the price for sex.

In Cape Town, many sailors are repeat-visitors. As fishing trawlermen, they come back to Cape Town every few months. Many establish relationships with the women. If a seaman returns to port, he expects his woman to be available for him. And she expects him to seek her out too. They enjoy a temporary bond that the other girls are supposed to respect.

But if a woman doesn't have a boyfriend arriving soon, she may find it difficult to make money. The other sailors may already be attached to other women. So what's she to do? She can't just steal him away. She'll earn a sound beating from the angry rival and her associates. Everyone agrees that overt theft of a client is a no-no.

The most devious way to poach another lady's client is to offer him a cheaper rate for sex. If he normally pays R600 ($90) for an engagement, she may charge him half that. If he's game, she'll make arrangements to meet outside the club without anyone finding out. Then, she hopes, he'll brush off his other woman for her.

Recently, a woman poached another lady's regular Chilean client by charging him only R200 ($30). They secretly met and had their fun. When he sailed away a few days later, no one knew that they had been together. But when he came back, he met up with his other regular woman at the club and offered to pay her just R200 for a session. She looked at him like he was crazy.

She tells him, "We always go for R600. What makes you think you can have me for so cheap now?!" Then he told her he only paid R200 for the other lady. So, he doesn't want to be ripped off.

The pro was livid. She grabbed his R200, stuffed it in her bra, and marched up to the poacher and hit her in the face until her nose started bleeding. Then she waved a dismissive hand toward the seaman, saying, "You can have her! I don't want a cock that's been dipped in that 200 rand pussy!"

Price gouging is common in any business. It grants consumers products that they desire for a cheaper price. And it rewards producers with new clientele, even if the initial profit margin is thin. But at the dockside clubs, price gougers can face the violent wrath of rivals who see them undercutting their ability to make business.

In fact, most women recognize that price gouging is a self-defeating strategy. Over time, guys may demand the cut-rate deals all the time. Ultimately, it drives down the value of the women's services, making it harder to make a living through sex work.

Waiting for the Gush of Seamen

When I get downtown, the dockside clubs are totally empty. No sailors anywhere. Everything else is in place—willing women, cross-armed bouncers, bored barmaids, earphoned DJs, sleepy cabbies—but their presence lacks meaning without the seamen. They are the source of their livelihoods. Needless to say, everyone feels slightly agitated.

The women lounge around in the booths and watch Animal Planet on the big screen TV. The "Crocodile Hunter" is busy taunting spitting cobras into squirting venom in his eyes. He relishes every jet of poison deflected off his glasses. Meanwhile, the club girls squirm as they watch slow-mo close-ups of snakes shooting liquid death from their hissing fangs. For the moment, it relieves the boredom, but it doesn't shake their deeper financial anxieties.

Eventually, a couple of Taiwanese sailors walk in. Three women race to them. The men sit down and enjoy the attention: their laps are never empty. And they're generous enough, buying beers for themselves and the ladies.

But after awhile, the women realize that one of them has to go. Three ladies with two sailors: not gonna work. Despite the promiscuous atmosphere at the club, the women are profoundly monogamous in their sexual negotiations: they insist that everyone pairs off. No three-somes allowed. (No one wants to split the fees.)

While the men crawl deeper into insobriety, the women follow close behind. But they also become aggressive with each other. Then it happens. Two of the girls go at each other. Fists fly toward faces, hands grab for hair, palms hurtle toward cheeks, fingernails claw at flesh, feet kick at shins, tongues hurl abuse, and lips spit at eyeballs. Their smacks reverberate across the room above the noise of the music as the two stumble, struggle, curse, and thrash about.

The bouncers watch with mild interest—quite unperturbed—then reluctantly break it up. But like on Jerry Springer, the bouncers don't separate them so far that they can't still smack each other every now and then.

The three girls—who live together!—forget about their quarry as they are escorted outside. They yell endless accusations and insults at each other while a small crowd of women gather around them (happy for the distraction). They eventually share a cab home and continue the drunken dispute there. The Taiwanese, meanwhile, just laugh, imbibe a few more beers, and accept the attentions of other ladies.

Cape Town's dockside clubs are prone to seasonal fluctuations. But usually there's at least a couple dozen sailors to go around. Tonight, virtually NO ONE came. Instead, what came out were the women's expressions of boredom, anxiety, and frustration at a totally wasted evening of work.

Breaking Up Brawling Sailors

The other night at one of the dockside clubs in Cape Town, a dozen Chinese seamen stood poised to brawl with 8 Filipino sailors.

The trouble started by the pay phones. A Filipino guy bumped into a Chinese who was busy talking to his family on the phone. The Filipino failed to apologize and the Chinese shoved him in return. They got in each other's faces, growling in their respective tongues. Then the Chinese went back to the phone while the Filipino stomped off.

Soon after, the Chinese guy complained to his shipmates who immediately demanded redress from the Filipinos. The atmosphere at the club changed. No more good times, no more touchy-feely with the ladies, no more happy-go-lucky jacks. The crews flexed their sinewy muscles, ready for fisticuffs. The women stood helpless as their johns abandoned them to stand by their mates. Their honor was on the line.

Such displays of testosterone and rigor are regular features of dockside interaction. Insobriety, jingoism, and competition over females put the sailors on edge with each other. Usually nothing happens, but if the macho tension becomes too great, bedlam can ensue.

A few months ago, a group of Vietnamese sailors stabbed a Chinese seamen to death in one of the clubs. A Vietnamese guy had a drunken dispute with the Chinese over a prostitute. When the Chinese left and stumbled over to another club, the Vietnamese sailor rounded up his mates and followed him. There they surround him while one of the gang finished him off with a single stab.

When I was in Durban last year, Korean and Indonesian sailors cracked each other's skulls with pool cues. Two women—unhappy with the fees they had negotiated with the Koreans—tried to see if they do better with the Indonesians. A big NO-NO. When the Koreans saw the women with the other guys, they waylaid them. Two had to go to the hospital. And the women left empty-handed.

So what is the club owner to do? Bouncers typically get between the opponents, establish their dominance, and send one of the parties outside. In this situation by the phone, the Chinese were escorted outside.

But the owner called the Chinese guy back inside and insisted the Filipino sailor apologize to him. The Chinese accepted with a handshake and joined his mates outside. But they refused to accept it. So the owner sent out two 6-packs of beer that mollified them. Cops and security guards kept an eye on their public drinking—shrugging off the illegality—but the problem was defused.

The next night, the same group of Chinese and Filipinos were at the clubs again, sitting right across from each other. But they carried on as if nothing had happened. Such is the power of alcohol-based conflict-resolution strategies by savvy club owners.