A pickpocket distracts a man with sex: she and her accomplice grope his groin and his pockets.
Ego-stroking sex-based scams target vulnerable loners, or those who appear to be single. In a bar scene or come-on, some people suck up flirtation as if it were a windfall. Flattery becomes a white noise that all but drowns out warning bells. Bob and I watched in Barcelona while a working girl latched onto a man strolling along La Rambla. She pulled him into a shallow alcove and he couldn’t, or didn’t resist her handiwork. Both parties appeared to be into it until the woman’s groping fingers became light fingers. Coincidentally, the man’s wife and daughter caught up with him just then, too; he and his intimate thief were only two steps off the sidewalk. We have no idea how he explained the scenario and evidence of his willing participation to his family.
Sexy Pickpocket
In Prague last week, a woman used the same technique right in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel. She worked hard on one man, then serviced his eager friend as well while, of course, serving herself.
It was all over in two minutes. Marriott’s security camera caught the entire encounter. You’ve got to see the sexy pickpocket at work.
Do you like hearing the sounds of lovemaking from the hotel room next to yours?
I’ve had my fair share of overhearing neighbors in hotels. Not surprising, given the number of nights I spend in hotels each year (average: 240).
Sex sound effects are certainly superior to the sounds of snoring, or worse, fighting. I’ve been kept awake entire nights by both. Yeah, travel is glamorous.
Unlike next-door-snoring- and next-door-fighting-wakefulness, other people’s nighttime sex sounds put me into a sort of dreamy, foggy trance—as long as they don’t go on too long. One night, wakefulness dragged on and on and the neighbors’ lovemaking sounds—loud and dramatic as they were—became repetitive and predictable. I had no urge to tune in, as with a fight or loud conversation. It wasn’t interesting. Still, I lost a night’s sleep.
I can’t help wondering about the noisy neighbors. What do they look like? How long have they been together? Do they always sound like this? Maybe they’re each married to others.
Mornings-after are amusing if I get a glimpse of the couple. Once we got in the elevator together and went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I sipped my coffee stealing glances at the two strangers I had intimate knowledge of.
A few years ago we stayed in the antique-filled East Concubine Suite of the five-room Red Capital Residence in Beijing. On its intricately-carved opium bed was a porcelain headrest and a note suggesting that couples take care in their positions so as not to damage the ancient bed.
Soon after we turned out the lights we heard the amorous sounds of our neighbors. Bob was convinced that it was a recording, piped in for realism. Thankfully, the moans and gasps did not continue all night.
What about daytime sex sounds? I hear them about the same way I notice people’s tattoos and rubberneck accidents: with a squeamish fascination of private things exposed. (I know tattoos are not private, but I was taught not to stare—but I want to stare—and at tattoos, I sometimes do, though not without a slightly naughty sense of illicit license.)
On an amusing, tangential note, I used to live next door to a prostitute. While she did not conduct business at home, she did take appointments. Her answering machine blasted each john’s message. “Hey honey, remember me, Jim? I’ll be in Vegas next week. I’m the one who…” And here we were treated to usually unfamiliar, vivid, and sensational details. On beautiful days when her open windows faced mine, it was impossible to ignore the variety of plaintive and seductive messages left by hopeful men seeking Cinda’s services. Compelled to overhear the men’s intimacies, I had this same sense of unwilling spying and illicit knowing.
So here’s my survey, travelers: do you like to hear the sounds of sex from an adjacent hotel room? Yes? No? Comments? If you’ve read this, you have to answer.
