A2 cried in a different man's lap each night. I never knew her real name. All the immigrant construction workers and foreign businessmen always wanted me to sing Britney Spears songs for them, and told me I looked like Barbie. They named higher prices when they begged for the whole night, offering thousands, sometimes.

At the meat market in Wan Chai, I watched some of the girls sitting by the bar, anxious and dolled up, waiting to see whether any men would pick them. When I used to hostess, I sat like that in the girls' waiting room until the club got busy, glad not to have to entertain yet, but hoping for a customer, always worried that I'd go home empty-handed. A customer once told me he only chose me because I looked so sad.

The Mommy, as we called her, took a slender brunette by the wrist and delivered her to a young white man at the table next to us. As she let go of the girl's hand she passed her a folded bill, and the girl slipped it deftly into the space between her caramel skin and her tight, red dress. She was the prettiest girl in the place, and he too, appeared to be a catch, neither old nor ugly.

When I took that job they told me that if I ever felt too uncomfortable with a customer, I could leave. That wasn't true, and I couldn't scrub the sweat or smoke out of my skin for weeks. There were nights that made me want to run out of the room screaming, burst through the back door, run down the dark and sloping city streets, past the gas stations and chain link fences, until my lungs or legs gave out.

A Vietnamese gangster called Lucky always used to pick me. His runners rushed in and out of our room, dropping off thick stacks of bills, wrapped in rubber bands. He loved to show me off to his associates, like a CEO flaunting his trophy wife. He used to joke that he'd take me to a Vietnamese cafe in the suburbs, so that I could slap the asses of all the skinny waitresses that served coffee in lingerie.

I heard that they had host bars in Japan, where effeminate young men catered to rich old women. One of my girlfriends at work and I always said we'd go there someday to abuse the male workers, just to be able to give back a little bit of the shit we'd taken.

Despite the treatment, we didn't have to send the money we made hostessing back to our starving families in China, save it up for English lessons, or use it to feed our children. At the end of a few months, our work visas wouldn't expire, and we wouldn't get shipped back to villages in rural China.

When I had made enough money to quit, I was given a tour of the hostess bars in mainland China. Some of the girls looked as young as fifteen or sixteen. Never having seen blond hair in real life, they couldn't stop touching mine and taking pictures. My companions said the little village girls were blessed to be making big money. They said the girls were lucky to have them as customers, said they always treated their girls respectfully, and that that made the job almost pleasant. When the woman selling candy and flowers came around to our room, I bought a bouquet of red roses and gave one to each of the girls.