Ep. 72 - The Day I Got Kicked Out of a Brothel

[00:10] A Good Little Indian Girl in the Reeperbahn

Dr. Bawa: Welcome to the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast. I am Dr. Kanwal Bawa, America's favorite sex doctor and host of America's number one sex podcast, and I am here to transform your life. Our discussion today is going to be a little different. Can you imagine a good little Indian girl like me in the largest red-light district in Germany? That's exactly where I was this past summer, and you're not going to believe what happened to me. Joining me to discuss this adventure, or should I call it misadventure, is my friend Dr. Caleb Jacobson, who is everyone's favorite sex therapist. Dr. Jacobson is the president of the School of Sex Therapy and the host of the new podcast Uncomplicated Sex. His books are taught at Harvard and Yale. Welcome, Dr. Jacobson.

Dr. Jacobson: Thank you so much, Dr. Bawa, for having me. And I apologize. I did not realize that business was so bad that you had to spend the summer working in the red-light district. I had no idea.

Dr. Bawa: I know. What can I say? It's been a rough year.

Dr. Jacobson: It's been tough. It's been tough. It's so good to be here with you once again on the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast.

Dr. Bawa: As always, it is my pleasure, my friend. We have done some great episodes.

Dr. Jacobson: We sure have. And I really do want to hear about this good little Indian girl in the red-light district. Tell me about it.

[01:34] Getting Kicked Out of a Brothel

Dr. Bawa: Well, where should I start? As you know, I was in Germany this past summer.

Dr. Jacobson: You didn't want to see me?

Dr. Bawa: Well, you went to France for a conference, my friend, so it wasn't really possible to see you. But because I had all this time on my hands, I went to the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany, the Reeperbahn, as it is called, and I was looking for sex workers who would talk to me on the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast. It is number one because I have these really interesting conversations with a host of different people. I mean sex workers, PhDs, just about everybody. And so I went looking. As I walked into a brothel, they were quite horrified just to see me walk in. They said, “No women! No women!” and I figured I could talk them into letting me speak to somebody. So I tried to play the doctor card. I told them I'm a medical doctor, I have a podcast, it's called Dr. Sex Fairy. I tried to show it to them on my phone, and they're not into it. They're just utterly confused and utterly horrified that I'm there.

Dr. Jacobson: They were afraid you were going to defile and pervert the sex workers.

Dr. Bawa: Apparently, as scary as I am. And so they went and got some manager guy, and he comes and he literally kicks me out of the brothel. I was escorted out like a common criminal. I was waiting for the German police to show up with a siren blaring.

Dr. Jacobson: You're lucky the manager didn't bring you an application.

Dr. Bawa: Well, as you said, it was a tough summer.

Dr. Jacobson: It was a tough summer. There you go. So he came down and told you you needed to get the hell out?

Dr. Bawa: That's right.

Dr. Jacobson: And then you were just standing on the streets?

Dr. Bawa: No, I wasn't standing on the streets. I went looking for another brothel that would talk to me.

[04:15] Hamburg Sex Shops and Making People Nervous

Dr. Jacobson: And, you know, I can understand a little bit about why they would be so shocked that you would go in. It wasn't too long ago that I was in Hamburg myself. I was walking through, and I'm walking up and down the street. I can tell you I'm the only Orthodox Jew walking up and down the street, kippah and all. And I went into a kino. A lot of people go into these types of places and they're very timid and shy, and they don't want the people working there to really look them in the eye and everything. And I go in like, “Hey, how is everybody doing?” I want to know what's going on, how the people are, what they're buying, what's popular, all this other stuff. And it really makes the people in the shops kind of uncomfortable.

Dr. Bawa: Yes, I can attest to this, because when I went up to them and introduced myself as a sexual medicine doctor from the U.S., I was just curious to see what people in Germany were buying. I went to this really beautiful, big sex store, not a seedy little thing with triple X outside. This was a beautiful store with a nice set of window displays and everything, and they were very, very surprised and nervous. Visibly nervous.

Dr. Jacobson: Was it Boutique Bizarre?

Dr. Bawa: I don't know what it was called. They follow me on Instagram.

Dr. Jacobson: This is a lovely shop. Two stories. The top story has just about every sex toy, very well curated, beautiful items. Downstairs, it's more of the kink. That's the largest sex shop in Europe.

Dr. Bawa: Really?

Dr. Jacobson: Yes. And it's beautiful.

Dr. Bawa: It was. And I made them nervous.

Dr. Jacobson: You make a lot of people nervous, Bawa.

Dr. Bawa: Apparently I do. So anyway, do you have any crazy stories to tell me? I'm sure you have.

[05:14] Dr. Jacobson Gets Kicked Out of a Strip Club

Dr. Jacobson: Well, I've never been kicked out of a brothel. I have been kicked out of a strip club.

Dr. Bawa: Do tell.

Dr. Jacobson: So I'm going to tell you. It was absolutely crazy. Now, this was years ago. You know, I played music to pay for college, and so we toured around quite a bit. A friend of mine was in love with a stripper. You know the song, “I'm in Love with a Stripper?” Okay. Well, he was in love with the stripper, and he always said, “We gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go.” So being the good little Jewish boy I was, I went to the strip club. And he was always about, “You have to throw. You have to make it rain. You have to make it rain,” right? So I took all the money I had and I was making it rain. Now the problem was I only had quarters, and they were rolls of quarters. She said I gave her a concussion, and I wasn't allowed back in the place anymore.

Dr. Bawa: Oh my God. Oh my God. You're killing me. Killing me, my friend. But that's funny.

[06:16] Amsterdam's Red-Light District

Dr. Bawa: So let's talk about another famous red-light district, Amsterdam. I was there several years ago, and as I walked down the street with women standing in the windows with the red light shining behind them, it didn't seem very seedy at all, contrary to what one might expect from a red-light district.

Dr. Jacobson: That entire area is really fascinating. I mean, it's a safe area to walk around. In fact, it has tons and tons and tons of tourists. So for the folks listening who think, “Hmm, I want to go to Amsterdam.” And the women are beautiful, right? They have some of the most beautiful women in Europe there who come there to work. There are guys, in Italy particularly, who come up for their bachelor parties, and they come from the UK for their bachelor parties. That's the place to go. It would be a little awkward for me if I was going there for a bachelor party to have a little bit of fun, because for every person who's going there to buy sex, there's probably a couple thousand, tens of thousands of people who are there just to look to see what's going on. So while you're buying sex, everybody's watching you. I mean, that would make me uncomfortable.

Dr. Jacobson: But I'll tell you, I had a friend of mine who's gay, and he was there and he said the same thing you did. He said he didn't think it was seedy. What he was impressed with was how beautiful all the women were. So he would go and kind of stand and look, and he'd wave to the women and they would wave him into the room, and he'd have to say, “Oh honey, you're beautiful, but I'm gay.” But you're right. It is a different experience than what most people would think about when they think about sex work, especially in the U.S., where a lot of full-service sex work is done in more shady parts of town and in the dead of night.

[08:19] Pattaya and the Infamous Ping-Pong Shows

Dr. Jacobson: You know where they do have a lot of gay sex workers is Thailand. Pattaya is one of the largest red-light districts, I think, in the world at this point.

Dr. Bawa: They have a lot of things in Pattaya, including ping pong. And we're not talking about Forrest Gump, folks. We're talking about ping-pong shows. Have you ever been to a ping-pong show?

Dr. Jacobson: No, because I'm always afraid one of those balls will land on me full of vaginal juices.

Dr. Bawa: Well, you know, there have been people who reported things shooting out, hitting them in the face and getting black eyes from them.

Dr. Jacobson: I'll bet it does happen.

Dr. Bawa: I was shocked to find out that it's not just ping-pong balls that are being shot from the vagina.

Dr. Jacobson: A friend of mine reported—now, I've never been to Thailand, unfortunately.

Dr. Bawa: Thailand's beautiful.

Dr. Jacobson: I just have not had a chance to go. But a friend of mine told me that he went and he was shocked because the woman put a bowl of water on the stage and shot a goldfish out of her vagina into the bowl.

Dr. Bawa: Really? Oh my God. I've actually been to Bangkok. I just didn't have time to get to Pattaya because I was there for a conference. It was in and out, pun unintended. I was thinking the Golden Buddha was what I needed to see. Hell, I should have been going to the ping-pong shows.

Dr. Jacobson: I am also told that most people who go to these—even though it isn't a red-light district, right, people are selling sex, and you're right, there are a lot of trans sex workers—the people I know who have gone to these ping-pong shows say they're not sexy at all. They're kind of the opposite of that. It kind of turns them off. But it is a curiosity where you want to see, and supposedly these women have a big list of things that they can do with their vagina and shoot stuff out, and you pick and choose what you see on this menu.

[10:19] Sex Shows in Amsterdam

Dr. Bawa: You know, Amsterdam has sex shows, but I never attended any of those either. But I believe you went to one of them.

Dr. Jacobson: So I took a tour of people to Amsterdam. One of the people on this tour was a Catholic nun.

Dr. Bawa: She was a Catholic nun? Oh my God. Oh my God.

Dr. Jacobson: Who is a very good friend of mine. She's a professor in the U.S. now of New Testament. And there's this Catholic nun—it's kind of like a joke, right? This Orthodox Jew, a Catholic nun, in the red-light district. But this is what happened. We were going through this area and, you know, you go through the red-light alleys, and then on the main street they have a sex museum. They have some of these sex shows. Some of them you actually don't go in. The ones you go in, it's like a theater and people are having sex on stage. The other one is like this round booth, and you go and put your quarters in and the screen drops down, and someone's either masturbating in there or there's a couple having sex in there.

Dr. Bawa: Oh my. Oh my God.

Dr. Jacobson: Well, it depends on the couple, Bawa. It depends on the couple. I mean, some people might quite enjoy what they're watching.

Dr. Bawa: You're right. There is this part of society that's very voyeuristic. It's very sexy to some people to watch other people getting it on.

[11:42] Inside Berlin's KitKatClub

Dr. Jacobson: Well, I'll tell you all about voyeurism. In Berlin we have what's known as the KitKatClub. This isn't where you go get a piece of candy, okay? I don't want people to get confused.

Dr. Bawa: No green KitKat?

Dr. Jacobson: No. Somebody's listening to this and going, “Ooh.” If it was me, I would not sit down in this club because there are probably bodily emissions on everything. It's several stories, and it's people bumping and grinding and having sex all over the place. And they even have an area where they do more like BDSM demonstrations while everybody's bumping and grinding and doing sexual acts. You can watch all of this, and it's supposed to be sexually liberating—if you can get in the club. Now, I know a lot of people who have tried to get in the club. They've had trouble getting in because the bouncers will ask you questions like, “What type of music is playing tonight?” Someone told me recently, “I said techno.” And they said, “Well, of course it's techno, but what type?” And they're like, “I don't know.”

Dr. Jacobson: So I don't have that problem. I have free entrance into the KitKatClub, even though I don't use it. It is difficult to get in, and people stand in line waiting to get in. I will also say I'm probably the only person who goes to the KitKatClub fully dressed in a suit.

Dr. Bawa: Why?

Dr. Jacobson: Because usually you have to wear kink clothes or go nude.

Dr. Bawa: Interesting. Very interesting.

Dr. Jacobson: White shirt, tzitzit and kippah. Okay? I stand out in the crowd.

[13:21] Do Sex Workers and Porn Performers Enjoy Their Work?

Dr. Bawa: Now, you work with a lot of porn. Do you think that porn stars and sex workers ever enjoy themselves?

Dr. Jacobson: Recently I did an event in Berlin and had several sex workers speaking at this event. The sex workers ranged from full-service escorts to erotic massage therapists, and they all talked about their experience and how they really felt that they were providing a service to their clients who really needed it, and it really made an impact in their clients' lives. So I do think that a lot of them do enjoy it. When it comes to porn stars, I do think that most of them overall enjoy the work that they do. But there's that element of, you know, you're filming a scene that takes you several hours because there's a cut: “Let's start all over again.” And I am sure that this becomes extremely annoying after a while, and it's hard work. But to be fair, most of us have jobs where there are moments that are unenjoyable for us and we don't like either. So we often think, “I wonder if these sex workers enjoy their work?” But do we enjoy every aspect of our work? Probably not.

Dr. Bawa: It's an interesting way to look at it.

[14:36] Violence, Safety and Legalizing Sex Work

Dr. Bawa: Now let's talk about violence with sex workers. According to research, sex workers have up to a 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence. Don't you think legalizing the oldest profession in the world would make it safer for sex workers in multiple ways? Here in Europe, sex work is mostly legal.

Dr. Jacobson: I have called for sex work to be legalized in the U.S. I do think that you're right, that it does several things. One, it allows sex workers to report any type of violence that has happened to them, right? So it keeps them safe and it puts people who cause harm to others behind bars, or at least in the justice system. I also think by legalizing sex work, we do create boundaries around that industry. And there are regulations that are put in place, such as the sex workers have to be tested for STIs and HIV regularly, usually monthly. And I think this is also important for the overall public health and safety. Now, I know some people will disagree with me about this subject, but the truth of the matter is there's always been sex work. There will always be sex work. It doesn't matter whether it's legal or illegal. It is happening.

Dr. Jacobson: And in fact, if we make sex work legal, there are chances that there will be fewer people doing sex work because they don't want to go through the complications of registering and all of that. So for these reasons, I really think that sex work should be legalized.

Dr. Bawa: I'm all for it. I'm not saying that I'm encouraging sex work. I'm just saying that if we can put some guidelines in, it will be safer for the clients. It will be safer for the sex workers, and I think there'll be less violence, God knows, because then they're not afraid of calling the authorities if something does go south. And yes, I do believe that then STDs—or STIs, as you call them—will be lower.

[16:33] Back to the Reeperbahn

Dr. Jacobson: So you gotta tell me, Dr. Bawa, back to the Reeperbahn, because we totally didn't—here we go again, right? You were looking for a sex worker to interview, so did you ever find one?

Dr. Bawa: Well, you know, I was a woman on a mission, so I went and managed to convince a bouncer outside another brothel to let me in. As I was going up the stairs in this dimly lit brothel, I was thinking to myself, “What on earth am I doing?” And I had a friend with me, thankfully. I just felt safer that way because I was in a brothel, in a different country, I don't speak German, so it was just a bad idea. So we're going up this dimly lit staircase, and we go up and there are six women sitting there. I thought I'd meet one woman. There were six. But they were so confused about why I would want to talk to them that ultimately I didn't end up talking to them and I left. I ended up meeting Eve Champaigne, Germany's first all-over burlesque dancer, and I attended her very famous show in the Reeperbahn as well. I interviewed her, and you can listen to our great conversation. It was Episode 32, “Burlesque: Behind the Feathers.”

Dr. Jacobson: Oh, I think that's fascinating. And that's a great episode of the podcast.

Dr. Bawa: So that's how it ended for me. Got kicked out of a brothel, then ran out of another, and then went to a great burlesque show. It was a great night. So, Dr. Jacobson, how can people find you?

[18:05] Where to Find Dr. Caleb Jacobson

Dr. Jacobson: Well, I would love for them to reach out. If they're listening to this great episode of the Dr. Sex Fairy Podcast, they can reach out to me on Instagram at Dr. Caleb Jacobson, and they can follow my new podcast that you mentioned earlier, Dr. Bawa, Uncomplicated Sex. It's available wherever podcasts are found. And, you know, you're our first guest on the podcast, so they can listen to you on there and they can sit back and get a double Bawa shot.

Dr. Bawa: That's right. A double Bawa. Yes. And I'm so honored, by the way, and I'm so glad you've started that podcast because it's time people took the BS out of sex therapy and got down to basics, got down to what people need. Get in. No need for therapy for life. Let's fix the problem and let's move on with life. So thank you for doing that.

Dr. Jacobson: It's my pleasure. And thank you again so much for having me on your show.

Dr. Bawa: Thank you so much again for coming. As I end this episode, I would like to thank you all for joining me week after week and for making this the number one sex podcast in America. You have no idea what this means to me. Share this podcast with your friends and help me spread my message of joy, intimacy, and passion. Until next time.