My company recently sent me to attend a three-day work conference. I won’t elaborate as to which city hosted the conference as I’d hate to incriminate this fine town for its legal and moral shortcomings. Suffice it to say, the city boasts casinos, and prostitution is against the law… I think.

As I sat in front of my video poker machine, feeding it crisp twenty dollar bills with regularity and relishing in the fact that bourbon was free, I was eventually accosted by two young ladies and a gentleman. It was late at night (i.e., early in the morning) and it clearly seemed at first glance, even in my somewhat intoxicated state, that these two women could be "ladies of the evening." They featured many characteristics often associated with the common call girl: short skirt, low-cut shirt, knee-high boots, heavy make-up, doused in perfume, toting a small purse, chewing bubble gum…

Aside from the fact that I was suddenly being solicited by two call girls in a country where prostitution is still illegal, there was something else askew with this picture. What was up with the guy they were with? He couldn’t be their pimp, could he?

This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.