Becoming Svetlana

Author's Note: This is an entirely fictional story, however I am drawing on my own real experience in this world. the feelings the protaganist feel are quite real. English is my 3rd language and I am writing this through a translator and an editor.

Chapter 2

I sat in the room becoming more sober and gaining more of a hangover from my night of heavy drinking. I was starting to really understand the situation I was in. I had no documents, no phone, no way to prove who I was. If I had tried to explain to the police that I had simply been a customer at the KTV and not a worker they would have laughed since they caught me on my knees between a sitting Chinese customer with his trousers around his ankles.

I heard some of the other girls talking that this happens when there is a conflict between organizations promoting clubs with girls. The police are paid to conduct the raid and only arrest the foreign girls, then they are offered this choice: prison or working for a new boss. It became clear I was going to be working for a long time in a job I did not want.

A man walked in and everyone stopped talking. The Chinese woman who spoke Russian walked in my direction. She pointed at me and then at Tanya and two other girls.

"You 4 girl, you go with him he take you to work, stop in toilet first then get water bottle" she told us.

We followed her instructions and then were loaded in to a van, then he started to drive. One of the girls tried speaking to him in Russian and English but it was clear he only spoke Chinese. One of the girls, Dasha, spoke rudimentary Mandarin so she tried to ask where we were going. Dasha reported back to us we were going to Shanghai and it was a 12 hour ride.

My head was hurting and I was trying to position myself in my seat in a way which could give me some relief from the pounding, I couldn't find that comfort spot though. I heard two of my new colleagues talking to each other. Dasha, the one who spoke some Chinese was from Khabarovsk which made sense to me. She was talking to a girl named Vika, hearing this made me decide to continue using the name Svetlana. Vika was from Russia as well but from a village I'd never heard of in the Chelyabinsk region. Her poor grammar and heavy use of lower class slang reinforced that.

As I listened I learned that a Dasha was 22 and had been working off and on in China for 2 years, spending a month or two in China and alternating between Turkey and Egypt in the winter months. This was Vika's first time abroad but she had been working in Chelyabinsk for several years and was 23, although to me she looked closer to 30 than to 20. They were working at different KTVs but Dasha had been at the one I was arrested at.

Dasha looked over at me, "Hey, what's your name? I saw you when we got arrested, I don't think I've seen you before." She said in one rapid fire burst of words.

"I'm Sveta," I lied, still not sure why "I just got here today or yesterday, I'm not even sure when now." I wanted to tell them the truth but I wasn't sure how they would react.

"I usually meet the new girls when they arrive, I didn't even see you in the line up." Was her response staring straight at me.

By then Tanya and the other woman whose name I had yet to learn were sitting up and looking at me. I felt trapped, much like when I was in line at the police station. I wasn't sure what the best way to get out of the situation so I decided to go with the truth as I remembered it.

"Actually I was in the club as a customer," I started, "I went with a couple I met on the bus to my hotel. We were quite drunk and decided to return to the hotel but I had forgotten my purse and.."

My story was interrupted by Dasha and then the other girls laughing, even Tanya who I felt I had some connection with was laughing.

"You're serious?" Dasha asked between laughs. "They don't just arrest customers for being Russian and wearing a red dress." She stated and was laughing again. The laughter attracted the attention of our driver who looked back strangely.

I sighed and relayed the rest of my tale of how I had ended up being mistaken for a hostess and how I was seen by the police. The laughing was louder this time. I could feel myself turning red. I was so humiliated. Any idea that I would get any sympathy from these women left me right then.

Tanya broke the ice "Well, hopefully the debt won't be so big that you have to stay more than a year."

I thought she was joking but nobody laughed. Despite having a laugh at my expense they all were in the same situation as me. Our freedom was gone and we would be working for our freedom for an undisclosed amount of time.

The silence was maintained and one by one we all dozed off. After some time I woke up hearing the unmistakable sound of people speaking Chinese. We had stopped the man talking handed the driver some plastic bags and the woman whose name I didn't yet learn was taken out of the van, the door closed. And our driver started to drive off. He started speaking slowly to Dasha. When he was finished, Dasha reached up to the passenger seat and grabbed the bags. They were full of boxes of rice and chopsticks.

"Breakfast, ladies!" Dasha announces as she passed out the food.

"Where did she go?" I dared to ask.

"She's working here, but the rest of us are going to Shanghai to a hotel."'Dasha responded.

I couldn't believe it. That woman whose name I never managed to learn was right in front of me taken to a place she didn't even know to sell her body. Then I remembered I was in the same situation. I wasn't really a fan of white rice at the time but I was so hungry that I ate every grain without missing one.

The rest of the ride was without incident. We stopped a few times for toilet breaks and finally I fell asleep. I was woken by Dasha shaking me telling me we had arrived. I got out of the van and took in the fact that we definitely were in a huge city, but in the rear of a building it seemed. We were hurried into a door where a woman met us and took us to an elevator and she pushed the 8th floor button and up we went.

When the door opened on the 8th floor we were escorted to a room. When we entered the room it was obvious it was not a hotel room. It had been transformed into an office. There was no bed, several desks with computers and many mobile phones.

Surprisingly a Russian woman came and greeted us. She looked about 45-50 years old with poorly dyed blonde hair and was wearing a track suit. I almost laughed when seeing it, but I kept proper decorum.

"Welcome to a Shanghai ladies, I am Margarita and I am your dispatcher, I was told you owe a debt to our employer, each of you owe a sum of 750 thousand RMB, I will ensure your work will be recorded precisely so that your debt will be settled fairly." She stated matter of factly.

"You'll be staying in a room in the hotel and working here, when there is an order you'll be notified and sent to the client's room. You will know how much he should pay and what services he expects." She continued.

"You will get 3 meals brought to you in your room for now, as you work longer for us you will be permitted to go for excursions, but for now you will need to stay in the hotel, this is for your protection from the police of course..." she went on.

For the next 30 minutes she proceeded to tell us all we needed to know about, everything from clothing, to condoms, to soap. We were told that we would be provided makeup and manicures and even given phones. The phones were to be used for communication with the administrators and there was a translator app that would allow us to talk with customers if there was not a common language between us. Margarita asked for our names and gave us some documents to fill in. I called myself Svetlana Ivanova, still not sure why I was lying.

After all this we were told we would be taken to our room and we should get cleaned up and ready to work. There wouldn't be an adjustment period or any other orientation. Just an uninterested command to go get ready to prostitute yourself. I was still somewhat in shock to this whole situation so I quietly followed him he group as we went down the hall and a door was opened for us. We were given a Key card as we entered and then the door was shut behind us.

I looked around. Two queen sized beds, where the TV would normally be there was a a rack of clothes hanging, on tables there were condom and lubricant boxes strewn about. There were purses and shoes laying everywhere on the floor. I looked closer and it was obvious the maids did not visit this room often if at all.

Dasha immediately claimed the shower first. She snooped around and found a pair of underwear that was her size and grabbed a skirt and a top with little to no regard for how it looked. I started to look at the clothes, they were cheap. They looked cheap, they felt cheap, and they obviously made the woman wearing them appear cheap as well. I reasoned that was the point.

When Dasha was finished I took my turn in the shower. I washed myself as best as I could with the cheap and not very appetizing shower gel. I washed my hair and then left the shower and dried myself. Input on the panties and with my hair under a towel went to look for what to wear. I ended up wearing a short red shirt that only went down half my thigh and a pair of thigh high stockings. I found a tight white tube top and put it on braless. The clothes were cheap and looked as though they'd been worn often. A lot of them were ugly and even for these type of clothes were horribly dated. I supposed they were easy to come by here in China as these trashy clothes were flooded into the market from workers working in slave like conditions. Then I laughed at the fact I was in that exact situation.

We sat waiting for seemingly hours, then Tanya got an SMS. She smiled and cynically said "Time to start paying this debt."

I didn't have time to think. Less than a minute after Tanya left my phone started to buzz. I nervously looked down at it. It said:

Room 414

1 hour

No extra

1000RMB

Just like that, with no fanfare or ceremony, I was matter of factly sent to a hotel room to be a prostitute. I stared at the phone for half a minute until Dasha's phone vibrating brought me back to reality. She looked at me and asked "What floor are you going to?"

"4th" I said hesitantly.

"Me too, let's take the lift together." Is all she said to me and was heading out the door.

I grabbed my purse with lubricant and condoms and headed after her. I was so nervous waiting for the lift and I was shaking when the door opened on the 4th floor and I saw my room was right opposite of the lift. I walked slowly to it as Dasha wished me luck. I took a deep breath, put on a smile and knocked. I had no idea why I was complying so easily with this whole situation but I knew everything was about to change now. I was really about to become a prostitute.

A Chinese man answered the door and ushered me in. I was taller than him,

I could tell even without heels I would be. I entered the room and he started speaking Chinese. I had no idea what he was saying so I just stood smiling at him. He gave me some money, I checked that it was the correct amount and put it in my purse. He continued speaking Chinese to me and gestured me to the shower. He then sat down on the bed and started watching the news on television.

I got in the shower, as I was told was the custom in China and washed myself quickly. I decided to only put the skirt back on. Then I decided against that idea and just wore a towel when I came into his room. He looked at me and said something in Chinese in a harsh tone. Then he got out his phone and said something in to it. The phone repeated in Russian, "get dressed again as I shower I want you clothed."

He brushed past me and tossed my clothes and my purse with the money at me and got in the shower. I quickly got dressed and pulled a condom out of the package in my purse and looked at it. More generic cheap Chinese stuff. Only the best it seems. After about two minutes of shower time and 2 minutes of drying my client came out of the bathroom completely naked. He walked up to where I was sitting on the edge of the bed and said a short phrase in Chinese. I didn't need a translation, it was a command and I knew exactly what he was commanding me to do.

I reached up and gently took hold of his cock. Much like my last Chinese man his wife as not as large as I was used to but this one was smaller than the previous one. As he quickly got hard I struggled a bit to put the condom on then I put the condom covered head in my mouth and started sucking it. I was moving my head back and forth as I on the bed and he stood in front of me. He moaned slightly and a picked up the pace a bit. He started speaking in Chinese and was saying a lot. I looked up and saw he was talking with on the phone. He got more involved in the conversation and seemed to forget he had my mouth clamped on his cock.

I just kept sucking him. I came to the realization that this was a means to an end. Just do what these men want to earn my freedom. He stopped talking and i looked up and noticed he had finished his call. He gestured for me to stop and as I did he spun me round and pushed me face down bent over the bed. He then pushed my skirt up while pulling my panties down. With out any preparation or warning he put his cock to my pussy opening and just forced himself in. After a few strokes he began to pump his cock in and out of my pussy. He was fucking me quite hard, he reached up and grabbed a handful of hair and pulled my head back, so far I was almost looking straight up.

Now he was fucking me almost as hard as he could, despite the size of his cock I was certainly going to be sore from this experience. Now he was saying things I didn't understand in his language. He put his hands on my waist and pumped a few more times then one I could feel that he finished cumming. I collapsed forward on the bed. He, while breathing hard, was saying something to me. I turned around and looked at him and realized he was gesturing me to remove the cum filled condom. I nodded and reached up and carefully removed it tied it and threw it in the trash.

I looked at him and he had his phone out. He said something in Chinese and in Russian the phone said. "I will take a shower now, you have the money, please leave before I am finished with my shower.

I nodded and he turned went to the shower. I sat for a moment thinking about what had just occurred. I felt dirty, I was in shock about what I had actually just done. I suddenly wanted to get in the shower and clean every centimeter of my body 2 or 3 times. I looked around for my things, only my purse and heels, pulled my skirt down and panties up and quickly left.

I was fighting back tears by the time I got to the lift and was really about to cry as I returned to my floor. I pulled myself together and went to the "office" and gave them the 1000RMB I had been given. An old and somewhat fat Chinese woman I had yet to see saw me and asked me in basic English my number. Unlike in the KTV, now I understood what she meant and I in fact had a number. After telling her, I was 1000 closer to my freedom.

I went back to my room and got a new pair of panties, put the worn ones in the hamper marked for them and rushed in the shower. I indeed did clean myself more than I had in years. I gave my full body and hair 3 cycles of shower gel/shampoo. Until I got out and heard one Of the other girls rushing to get in the shower after me I almost forgot where I was. I felt clean again. Then my phone vibrated. Another customer. I sighed deeply and got dressed. After I used the blow dryer to dry my hair and applied my makeup I was out the door to the 11th floor.

All of the same feelings entered my mind as I continued to the room. The order on the phone was the same, the transaction went down the same way, only this time I was not clothed and bent over a bed, I was naked except for my stockings and heels on my back with my legs spread and straight in the air as a 55 year old Chinese man was on top of me using me for his own pleasure while saying God knows what to me until he finished.

After he finished he collapsed next to me. Having learned from my first client I reached over and carefully removed the condom, tied it and put it in trash. He was already standing when I turned around. He didn't use the translator on his phone, he just gestured that he was going to the shower. I got dressed and left.

I went, again dropped the money and returned to my room, this time I waited as Dasha was in the shower. I was still feeling overwhelmed with this first day of work. But somehow this time was easier, I didn't wash my hair, just my body. I was out of the shower in 5 minutes. I got dressed and waited. Another SMS.

This drama unfolded 2 more times after that that evening. 5 men had paid for the use of my body that night. 5 men whose names I don't know and will never know. I was exhausted and still in shock at what I had been through. I was sore, I found bruises on my body. No matter how many times I brushed my teeth, the taste of latex and lubricant just would not leave my mouth. I some how found a way to eat something, it was a terrible microwave ramen noodle bowl. It tasted so good though. I fell asleep on the bed and barely noticed as my roommates shuffled in after their last customers.

I woke up at mid afternoon the next day. As I was assessing my body, its aches and pains and bruises, my phone vibrated. It was time to get back to work.