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View Full Version : A Hard-earned Living: Prostitution in Tallinn



Stan
03-10-2007, 08:40 AM
By Scott Diel
http://www.citypaper.ee/articles/904/

Funny and interesting, and also very true to this day !


Enter two women. The first, a brunette, has a ski-jump nose and wears black pants with leopard skin cuffs. She’s in her mid twenties. The second is in her fifties. She’s a chemical blonde with short hair and a white polyester suit. She could be a secretary from New Jersey. The two do not take drinks. They take a perch above the nightclub’s bar and dance floor. They wear serious faces and scan the crowd.


I haven’t the nerve to ask Lii to sort fact from fiction in her book. I hesitate to get too personal. But more than that, fiction is written for a reason: it is supposed to be truer than non-fiction. In non-fiction, the elements never line up quite the way the writer needs in order to create great character. “Fiction frees to serve truth,” a writer once said.

Barbie is on the dance floor with her Finn. They dance a bit, talk a bit. Barbie disappears and returns with her coat, a white fur. She points at the door and gives instructions to her Finn. She disappears into the crowd, I assume to find her pimp. The music is loud and throngs of people are dancing, the vast majority of them unconcerned with anything but their own good time.

But a few are doing business. Whether by choice or circumstance or fate, they are doing business.