MY PROSTITUTION CONFESSION

The eyes of the entire world were on Elliot Spitzer after it was revealed that he spent over $80,000.00 on prostitutes. (Side Note: If I spent $80,000.00 on a prostitute she better build me a house.)

Since it’s probably only a matter of time before the hot spot light of national attention is focused squarely on me (in my personal little megalomaniacal fantasy) I thought it would be prudent to be proactive and go ahead and reveal my one and only (I swear) encounter with the sordid world of prostitution.

The year was 1993. I was singing with a 120 voice men’s chorus at the time and we were getting ready to take a three week concert tour in Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. Prior to the trip we were warned that one of the side effects of the burgeoning capitalistic economy in Russia was a very thriving market for prostitution. We were told that as a large group of foreign men traveling together, we should be prepared to be propositioned.

We were not disappointed. The hookers were as thick as…well…they were as thick as hookers at a Shriner’s convention. During a trip up an elevator in one of the hotels we stayed at, a woman crept up behind one of the guys in our group, reached around him, and stuck her hand directly down his pants. So much, for dinner and drinks first. Two weeks into the trip, I remained un-propositioned and it was beginning to affect my self esteem. However, that all changed when we arrived in St. Petersburg.

A bit of background information is needed to explain the rest of the story: We were told not to drink the water there. Bottled water was not as prevalent as it is today, so we drank a lot of soda. However, the only soda we could find in Russia at the time was Orange Fanta. Many of us returned from Russia with a slight orange tint to our skin.

One night I was lying in my hotel room about 1:00 a.m. unable to sleep because I was very thirsty. I didn’t want to drink the tap water so I decided to get up and go downstairs to the bar to get an Orange Fanta. I walked up to the bar completely unaware of the other patrons. I ordered my soda and turned around to leave. That’s when I noticed that I was the only man in the room. There were at least 30 scantily clad women of the evening gathered around tables in the bar. None of them were talking and every one of them was looking directly at me.

In the subsequent 17 years, I’ve told this story many times. When I get to this point in the story, the punch line is always; “and a dozen Orange Fantas later I finally made it back to my hotel room.” But that’s not really true. It was actually two dozen Orange Fantas later before I made it back to my hotel room. Ok, that’s not true either. You might think it would be provocative to have 30 women staring directly at you, but trust me, it’s not. I can say without any hesitation that it is the most terrified I have ever been in my life. I’ve heard women talk about being looked at like a piece of meat. I may not know what that’s like, but I do know what it’s like to have women look at me like I’m a giant American dollar sign.

What I actually did was grab my Orange Fanta, run as fast as my little legs would carry me back to my room where I crawled under the bed, sucked my thumb, and cried for my mommy.

My son has heard me tell this story many times. When he was an undergrad, he spent a semester in Russia as a foreign exchange student. What did he bring me back from Russia as a gift you ask? A bottle of Orange Fanta with Cyrillic writing on it, of course.

(If you knew my son, this would be obvious)

I’ve kept the bottle of Orange Fanta proudly on my office book case since then to remind me of my trip through the seedy underbelly of Russian prostitution.

I’m happy to report that I’ve been prostitute free since my return to the states. We don’t seem to have many prostitutes here in Oklahoma. I’m sure they exist. In fact, they say that in Tulsa all of the prostitutes congregate on 11^th street. But I don’t think it’s true, because I’ve driven up and down 11^th street very late on Saturday nights for hours at a time and I haven’t seen a single prostitute. However, a friend I met there named Trixie wanted me to give all my readers a “shout out.”

Now that I’ve gone ahead and made my prostitution confession public perhaps I can avoid the media circus that was visited upon Mr. Spitzer. That is as long as no one finds out about my trip to Spain with the same group in 86.