I was sitting at a bar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with the police chief of the city. It was a hotel bar and across from that bar was a gift shop. Working there was a striking and tall blonde woman that I’d chatted with briefly earlier. I guess the police chief had seen me talking to her so he said, gesturing at the woman, “You want her?”
I replied, “Want her? For what? I don’t want any gifts.”
“I’m not talking about gifts. I’m talking about do you want to take her up to a room, she will do whatever you like. Free.”
I was silent for a moment. No, I didn’t even consider it. Just pondering what to say to not cause an international incident. So I told the truth as near as I could, which was, “Oh, thank you, but my bus will be here in a few minutes and I really need to make that. It’s my ride to the airport.”
The reality was the bus wouldn’t be here all that quickly, but I had no interest in having some coerced woman offered to me by the police chief of Tashkent.
Of course I felt bad for the woman. She had been nothing but genuinely nice to me that few minutes I’d chatted with her. I later found out that the chief there was also the biggest pimp in the place and ran dozens of women like the blonde gift shop lady. There was, as often happens in life, no way I could help her, and nothing else I could do.
I made my excuses and left the bar with a glance back at that woman, as she was arranging items in the empty gift shop. I have no idea what her life was like, or if she thought it horrible or ok or even good, but the distance between what liberals imagine sex trafficking is like and what real sex trafficking is like is something I know better than those mooks, by far. I’ve seen it and that’s its shape.
