My Days in the Brothel

There is little activity in the lobby. Only one man is checking in. He has put down his wheeled suitcase and is shaking himself. It's raining outside, the mud still sticking to his black treaded soles. He opens his padded jacket and loosens his scarf. The woman at the front desk hands him a bathrobe and slippers. She ties a blue plastic ribbon around his wrist.

The elevator goes "ping," and a woman gets off. She also stands at the reception desk. A curt question to the receptionist, a quick sort in her handbag, a quick glance at the man. The woman is completely naked. Only on her feet she wears shoes, golden high heels. The man, still fully dressed, examines her. Looks at the breasts, at the thighs, at the shaved mons veneris. The woman rummages a bit in her handbag, closes it, hangs it over her shoulder and walks off to the right.

This scene plays itself out a few more times within a few minutes. Men coming in from the cold in thick coats, women rummaging naked in their purses. The elevator spits out more and more completely exposed women, they cross the lobby, get fresh towels. With one glance they are appraised and captured by the newly arriving men.

I sit in the middle of the lobby and wait for the press spokesman of the Paradise wholesale brothel, Mr. Beretin. Everything here is decorated to 1000 and 1 nights. Embroidered pillows on soft couches, hammered brass tables, indirect soft light from Arabic chandeliers. A touch of the harem. Only the mystery, keyword veil dance, somehow went wrong.

Mr. Beretin is sitting across from me in the registration area on the second floor. He has curls that are gelled back, a little longer at the nape, the Michel Friedman hairstyle in dark blond. He wears hand-stitched shoes and a large ring on his finger. "That's my family crest. If people out there knew what my real name was ..." he says, smiling meaningfully. He tells me his real name later in the week. But I have never heard it before and unfortunately forget it right away. Mr. Beretin used to be a photographer, a war photographer. If it banged somewhere, he was always the first one out. The others, the whistle blowers, stayed in the hotel.

Mr. Beretin sits behind the desk, I sit in front of it, where the women sit when they are here for the first time. Everything is recorded at this desk, he explains to me, everything is first registered properly here: Identity card, residence permit, photos for the Internet. And the instructions for the woman are also filled out here. Because in the house there is a standard price of 50 euros per half hour. But what does the woman deliver for it? What services are included? On the form, applicable is marked with a cross: Kissing yes or no? Lesbian show yes or no? French, dildo games, body insemination? Some things cost extra, of course. Anal for example. An extra 100 euros. Cum in the face is also not included, makes 50 euros extra.

Well, says Mr. Beretin, let me show you the rooms. He means the rooms where the naked women live. Because the women not only work here, they also live here. Often only for a few weeks, until they are passed on to the next brothel. Beretin knocks briefly and opens the door. Ten square meters, six beds next to each other. He quickly closes the room again. "We also have two-bed rooms," he says, and then we walk a bit. Finally, Mr. Beretin opens another door. Yes, this is it. Two girls are sitting there, one lying on the bed and dozing, the other sitting in front of a laptop. Mr. Beretin runs his hand through her hair and closes the door again.

Then he shows me the other rooms from Paradise, the ones that are be used for the half hour. They are twice as big, but there is only one bed in them. It is gold-colored and round as a ball. Mr. Beretin sits down on the pink terrycloth cover and scowls at the dark spots. "People fly to the moon, but how to get the stains out of here, no one can tell me," he mutters.

On the way down, he explains the business model to me, "We just provide the infrastructure here." The men pay 79 euros for admission, the women also pay 79 euros. In addition, the women pay a daily tax of 25 euros. Plus 23 euros for the shared room per night. Makes 127 euros cost per day for the women. Makes 23 euros earnings after three times sexual intercourse within 24 hours. Food is free. At least.

We enter the main room. Right next to the reception we go in. In front is a long bar. There are three men at the bar, each by himself. They wear white terrycloth bathrobes and have a blue ribbon on their wrists. The man with the rolling suitcase is also there. A naked woman has already stopped by him. "Hello Schatzi," she says, "wherrre arre you frrrom?" The second stares unblinkingly into the television at the bar, where a soccer game is currently playing. The third looks somewhat strained into the space that opens up behind the bar. Seats are grouped around an illuminated brass stele in the center. Naked women sit on the sofas, in twos, threes, fours.

Now one of them stands up and slowly walks across the room. But none of the three or four men who are there even lifts their heads. After a minute, the woman drops back onto the cushions next to her colleagues. "All original from Morocco," Mr. Beretin says, pointing to the gold-decorated massage room. "The producer we made big. Millions we put in here."

Where does so much money actually come from, I wonder? "Everything is washed here," Mr. Beretin says. I beg your pardon? Oh, the laundry. We are standing in the laundry room. The drums are turning in ten washing machines. A busy woman in her 50s is heaving bathrobes and terrycloth towels out of the baskets. "By the way," says Beretin, "we have nothing to do with the so-called milieu. Nothing at all. The fact that the Hell's Angels do security at our place, that's just a coincidence." The white towels dance in the laundry drums.

And then the Paradise spokesman adds, "There are cameras everywhere out there. We see everything here, no one can take pictures here without being noticed." With the last photographer, Mr. Beretin really had to speak plainly: "I told him, next time you can pull your camera out of your ass again." He gets a little louder at that sentence because the drums have switched to spin.

My first day of work in paradise starts at 4 p.m. the next day. I drive from Stuttgart onto the autobahn, straight into the Echterdingen industrial park and park in the large parking lot next to the five-story, red-painted functional building. I heave my photo case up the steps and stand at the reception again, the naked women with the handbags are already there. I take the elevator to the second floor, where the large rooms with the round beds are. I walk through the long corridor, most of the rooms are open. Everywhere the same bed, only the decor of the rooms varies. Sometimes red, sometimes yellow, sometimes black. At the key board in front, I pick up No. 31, which is the last room in the corner.

Here I am for the magazine stern. I want to take portraits of johns. Men who admit that they go to brothels. Who not only let themselves be photographed, but also tell me why they do it. "Nobody does that," everyone had predicted to me. Even the people from the milieu had shaken their heads in disbelief. But at least I want to try. So I approached the owner of Paradise, Mr. Rudloff, and asked him if I could take pictures of the "guests" at his place. He actually said yes.

And here I am, in the whorehouse. My light is on, the room is marked as occupied by the tassel on the door handle. I go down to the bar. Just then the place is filling up. Mr. Beretin had taken the "International Trade Fair for Joining and Fastening Technology" from the trade fair calendar. "It could get crowded there." The first gentlemen from fastening technology are already in their bathrobes. I have to wait for the right moment. Better before or after?

I'm standing at the bar. Apart from the bartender, I'm the only dressed woman in the room. I give myself a jolt and approach the first one. "Good afternoon, I'm doing a story for the Star about Paradise and the guests here." He responds kindly. But firmly. He is married, he says, and has two daughters. If that got out... The next bathrobe is not married, but is in a relationship. "For my girlfriend, a world would collapse..." I pull a cigarette out of the pack. Damn, I start smoking again.

A man in his late 50s, a building contractor, a youthful, slim guy with thinning hair, gives me a light and takes the opportunity to tell me how great Thai women have their pubic hair parted, they have a real side parting. "Unfortunately, they can't do that here because of hygiene, everything is shaved off." And he also tells me how he recognizes the density of a woman's pubic hair, even when she's dressed for once. "When the eyebrows arch - like yours." And at that, he runs his finger along my right eyebrow.

As I drive off the yard that night, I don't have a single man in the box. Though I've stopped at little. Arriving at the hotel, I take a long, hot bath. The next day, I go to the bars of Stuttgart's old town with a friend who knows her way around. I have a thought: Every woman who provides me with "a guest" gets 50 euros from me. Somehow I have to get to suitors. I give out my cell phone number and go to lunch with Sandra.

As soon as we sit down, my phone rings: "Hirrrr Illlonnna. IIIcccch habä Frrrrrayer fiier diiich. When can you be hiiieerrrr?" Bingo. 20 minutes later, I'm at the Tabu Bar and meet Ivan. A fat, jovial truck driver who willingly talks and allows himself to be photographed on the leopard blanket quickly brought by Ilona. I get hope.

My second day in paradise. I climb the stairs, greet the receptionist and the naked women in the lobby, take the elevator to the second floor and roll my photo case along the corridor. Diagonally above me, couples copulate on two flat screens. The woman in charge of cleaning the rooms groans. A glance at the paper baskets overflowing with kitchen roll paper tells me why. I grab number 29 from the key rack, set up my light, hang the tassel on the door and head down to the bar.

The place is packed. I am already greeted by some regulars. "The girl from the stern (star) is back," says Hans. However, this leads to some confusion. Because the naked women are also called 'The Girls from the stern (star)'. Because they live upstairs. And have to come down to work. There are many men there. In bathrobes, with towels around their waists. They sit at the bar, at the buffet or lie on the Arabic cushions in the large room. One of them is lying right at the back with three women on the swinging suspended bed.

At the bar I meet two guys in their late 20's. They are somehow sympathetic to me. We strike up a conversation. They are just setting up an Internet portal. An app that helps you get the perfect alibi for visiting a whorehouse. "We can deliver everything, even a bona fide accident report and hospitalization," the nice guys say. "If the wife calls at an inopportune moment, our customer simply sends us a text message. We'll then take care of the alibi." I encounter the two more times. At some point, I see the boys coming from the fifth floor, from where the Paradise management sits. From "a meeting with a sponsor."

I approach a group of young men, in their early 20s. One of them, Christian, agrees. A real ladies' man. Dark beard shadow, damn good looking. We go to number 29. Why he enjoys paying a woman for sex, I want to know. "It's power, kind of," he says. "Then I can do whatever I want with the woman." Clear words.

Downstairs is really busy now. Italians, Frenchmen, Russians. Alone, in pairs, in groups. The women put their arms around their necks, their hands on their arms. The men are checking them out, touching them, kissing them. Only to make a waving hand gesture. Or walk hand in hand with them up the stairs. It's not always friendly up there, one of the cleaners tells me. Sometimes, the women are already being harshly manhandled in the hallway or loudly insulted as "sluts," etc. I'm sitting at the bar, holding hands with them up the stairs.

I sit at the bar, light a cigarette. Behind me, a naked woman has been staring at the slot machine for more than a quarter of an hour. She's waiting for three strawberries to line up next to each other. She feeds and feeds the machine - but she gets nothing in return. Next to me, two Swabian family men exchange tips. A bulky late-fifties man with a half bald head and a late-forties man with the Stuttgarter Nachrichten in his bathrobe pocket. "It was really grubby," I hear. "I told the housekeeper about that." And I hear about a "Sharon" who looks "great, she's only 22, but she does coke. The man in his late fifties shakes his head. "No, she doesn't need to come on to me anymore. It doesn't work at all."

Now "the Roman" is announced to me. He's still a real macho man. And a regular guest here. He has just arrived and is surrounded by two girls. Fashionably trimmed chin beard, emphatically cool. I ask him why he's here. "It's easy here without stress," he says. "I have sex and then I leave. Without demands." An argument I will hear many times.

From the third day on, I belong. The regulars greet me like an old friend. The naked women nod at me. Hans, late 50s with a mustache, has his two-hour date today. "Desch iss Championsleague. You have to wait three months with her, because she only works on weekends." And she's also "multiple-orgasmic"! But maybe only with Hans. He has a backpack with him today. It is quite heavy. What's in it, I want to know. "iPad for listening to music, shackles, handcuffs and a bit more."

Mohammed is also back, today with two friends. He's an electrician, in his late 20s, slightly swishy and has a huge tattoo on his chest. What does it say? Two words that are very important to Mohammed: "love" and "mother.

Most men here seem to see it as a welcome change to be able to tell a "normal woman" everything so right. Some tell me in all details, what's going on in the room. Others suddenly get a moral. Like Michael. He could play the viola in the string quartet. Narrow face, fine hands, reserved smile. "As a good Catholic, I shouldn't be doing this. My ideal is to start a family, have children. In the end, there's nothing left here, half an hour of fun and that's it."

And he tells me something else that many others will also tell me. "It's like an addiction." Once you start, you can't get away from it. You just wouldn't be able to get along with normal women. "Something happens in your head, you can't get rid of it. Women your own age," he says, "you can't do that at all now." And then he gets more and more gloomy. "We're all guilty here, aren't we?" he exclaims, standing in front of me in his white bathrobe. "Of course there's forced prostitution here, they can't control that here." Michael suddenly thinks the money should rather be donated to Russian orphans.

Today I get the same rejection three times when I ask the man of my choice if he wants to be photographed: "You know, I'm not representative." Why not? "I come from a very different background than most here. I'm a banker." Banker. A clearly overrepresented profession in paradise.

Late in the evening, one of the employees chats with me about the women's "boyfriends." "They all have boyfriends," he says. I don't understand right away. "Well, pimps," he specifies somewhat impatiently. "Every six weeks they go home and deliver the money. Or right here in front of the door." Indeed, that's where I now see a couple of these "friends" standing in the parking lot of Paradise.Young men in leather jackets and bull necks smoking cigarettes leaning against their cars. Their cars are more modest than classic pimp boxes.They seem more like suppliers to the women than their pimps. Later I learn that some of them are also their own brothers.

The "International Trade Fair for Industrial Springs and Spring Parts Technology" has opened. At the reception, the size 43 bathing slippers are in short supply. "I only have 42 and 44 left," the receptionist calls out to the waiting group of men in rain jackets. I'm going to get something to eat first. The buffet is crowded. The women sit there with wrapped towels and have plates with huge mountains of meat in front of them. The men sit opposite them in bathrobes. The women almost all speak Romanian among themselves, the men say nothing. The men and the women have nothing to do with each other, they don't even look at each other. Except for the glasses-wearing lawyer in his mid-50's. He's sitting with a 21-year-old woman and going on vacation: he's rented her for a few hours.

Later at the bar,  one of the Romanian girls stands next to me. I invite her to join me in the third champagne that a drunken Swiss man has bought me. "Tomorrow I go home for a week," she says in English. "Finally. I can't do it anymore. Ten customers I had today. Just dicks, dicks, dicks." And then she tells me about her little brother. A little fat boy, she says, smiling. Soon she'll see him again. Maybe it's her son, too.

I end up in room 11 with Joachim, who looks like the kind older gentleman to whom you sometimes pour out your heart. Joachim is 58, divorced, has a daughter, 25 years old. He has been going to the room with the same woman for many months. She's 29. I want to know if that's not strange, a woman his daughter's age. "No," says Joachim, "I always make sure that they are older. So under 26 I don't do."

Over the next few days, I photograph more men. All of a sudden, it's relatively easy. I start to become part of the staging. I hardly notice the nudity of the women anymore. Housekeeper Rita begins to grow on me. I exchange text messages with the two nice guys who pull up the scam alibi portal. I don't even see the copulating couples on the flat screens on the second floor anymore. But they are becoming more and more, the moments when I turn away because I have to laugh. In the meantime, I watch myself while taking pictures. How I move my tripod back and forth in the whorehouse room. And with what naturalness the men take a seat naked in front of my lens, as if they were at the hairdresser.

There's just one thing I can't get away from. I just can't get used to it until the last day: To the sight of the women and men when they go into the rooms. How the women walk down the corridor in front of the men. Like naked undead, they stagger along on their high-heeled shoes, with mask-like, unmoving faces. Silent, the Zimmertroddel in their hands. And the men in the white bathrobes behind them. When they leave the room again after half an hour, the order is reversed. He goes first, to the men's locker room, the woman walks behind. She picks up her money. Because they only pay afterwards.

Günther is sitting across from me in room 11. Günther is an innkeeper, in his late 50s, stocky, very hairy and has a mustache. "That was the best sex of my life," the last prostitute said to him. As I photograph him, I notice that Günther is not unaffected by this photo session. He makes me the spontaneous offer to "film him having sex". And to make it even clearer what he means, he unfolds his bathrobe and asks if he can touch me. I yank open the door and nonsensically say, "Nah thanks, I'm here on the job." Only then does it occur to me that everyone is here on the job. Later, Günther sits back down at the counter and gives me a friendly nod. The bathrobe is left open.

The atmosphere in the large room downstairs is now getting lively. On the platform at the bar a naked woman dances at the bar. The music gets louder and a few of the other naked women cheer her on, clapping and jeering. The men stand motionless in their bathrobes, holding onto their glasses. They stare at the women as if there were a soundproof glass wall between them. Five minutes later, it's over. One of the girls is drinking a water next to me at the bar. Her pupils are as big as nickels.

My last conversation is with Ingo. "He'll chew your ear off," one of the women whispers to me as I walk with him to the second floor, to No. 2. And yes, we talk for two hours. Ingo is a tax clerk and wears a frog-green bathrobe. He signals: I am different from the others. His dyed blond hair is pulled up, his fingernails are painted. It happens to Ingo again and again that he falls in love with a professional. That he wants to save her from the whole swamp. Each time he falls for her. He swears that it will never happen to him again. But right now, he's just waiting for the one, he tells me. He comes here twice a week just for her. Ingo can name everything exactly. The power games of the men, the pretense of the women. He sees it all. And still he comes here. "Kind of schizophrenic," he says.

It's three in the morning. I'm packing my things. I roll my suitcase through the aisles one last time. I encounter two undead with their customers. Were the flat screens with the copulating couples already off? I roll down the hall. I see the "Roman" sitting at the bar. "Well, Roman," I say, "happy?" He slowly turns his gaze from the screen and looks at me with wide eyes. "Happy? Show me one who's happy here. I used to watch soccer in the pub with my buddies, now I'm here. I'm completely isolated socially." And his wife, she would notice that somehow, too. The marriage, his children, the family. "It all kind of falls by the wayside."

I roll the suitcase across the parking lot, heave it into the car and drive past one of the bull-necks. He's stubbing out a cigarette. I desperately need a hot bath.