San Salvador: Lips, not just for kissing.

by excat
excat@earthling.net


San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, is a busy large city amid seven connecting countries along an isthmus stretch of land connecting Mexico southward to South America. Lacking major natural resources to add to local wealth, the region bears feudal mark and stamp of stymied economic development. San Salvador bears too the scars of civil war between the leftists and rightists, of poverty, and of machismo and marianism. Amid the city, there is an oasis. A spot for relaxation, recreation, and rejuvenation for the mongering males. Its name is Lips.

Some mongers know me already from my trip reports on other Latin American cities, posted on other discussion boards. My last trip was in January 2001 to San Salvador. I may go south again soon, but I have not made any definite plans yet. For now, I can only sit in front of my cable television and suck on a can of suds, gathering strength for my next foray. Why not do something in the land of the red, white, and blue? It's boring, time-wasting, and frustrating. I have had my fill of discotheques, single bars, strip clubs, and streetwalkers in the USA. If I had a thicker wallet, I might try the massage spas and escort services here. But, I don't, so I don't. Then there is the attitude of single American girls that deters me from trying. Don't get me started on this topic.

I got lucky last January 2001. A friend moved to San Salvador for a few months and invited me to visit and stay at his apartment. Naturally, this has pluses and minuses. On the major plus side, I will save on the cost of a hotel room. On the minus side, I will have to avoid bringing a girl with me back to his apartment, because I cannot keep my eyes on her all the time and she could be senorita sticky fingers. But, this would be my fourth trip to SS, first time in 1993 and twice in 1999, and I felt that I was familiar enough with the city to maneuver without much problem and I would probably not overnight a girl since I hardly fall in love any more to motivate me enough into an night of passion.

Flew south, landed at the remarkably modern airport except for its echo acoustics and stifling air conditioning, and took a 45-minute taxi ride from the airport to my friend's apartment along a sparsely populated highway, in earlier times an ideal ambush road for bandits in the dark. The cost was about $16 in local currency and $17 in US dollars. On the way in, add $10 for a tourist card. On the way out, add another $27 plus change for the airport departure fee, only payable in US dollars.

The exchange rate had just been fixed at 8.75 colones to a dollar and the US dollar had just become the medium of currency. However, only the large stores would trade in dollars but everybody would accept colones. My friend provided me in exchange for my personal check some colones, which I used along with US dollars. Colones were preferable, because prices seemed a bit higher in dollars.

I was there for about ten days, although I would not recommend SS for more than a long weekend. If one has never been to Central America, I suggest San Jose, Costa Rica as a first destination. Like all large cities and especially in Central American, be careful of the street crime, which concentrates in el centro, areas where the poor live, and at night near popular monger places. If I had two weeks and had to visit SS, I suggest one week in SS, about $40 round-trip five-hour bus ride, and one week in Guatemala City.

My friend and I went mongering together nearly every night and some afternoons. There were maybe half a dozen daytime places usually posing as estheticas (beauty parlors) and advertising in the daily newspapers in the classified section. Many monger places are located in neighborhoods (called barrios or colonias) near el centro. My friend refused to go with me to those areas. I went because after a few nights I had worn out the better places and was bored enough to venture a couple of times into dangerous areas. In retrospect, I was stupid in going to those areas. Blame it on my glands, inactive from disuse in the USA, which started pumping plenty of hormones to make my myoptic eyes move ambulatoric, my thumbing heart beat humping, and my rusty Sr. Lonely feel lusty.

I had fun in SS. There were some notable moments. One I wanted to recall now was Lips.

For perspective, SS only had (in January 2001, pre-earthquake) three monger places that I would highly recommend. They were: The Best, Titanic, and Lips. The first two places were about three blocks apart and the second was about five blocks from the third. Hardly anyone walked in this area at night, but the street was well lit, buildings set well back from the street, and the road heavy with traffic until about 10pm. So, I felt safe walking this stretch.

THE BEST (formerly known as HOT), Escalon #4346, on the corner of 85th Ave. Sur, and on the same block as the Ramada Hotel. A club-bar with strippers (continuous on the weekend evenings), charged C30/admission and C15/beer, and advertised 20 beautiful girls. The first stage square-shaped was set in a pit with bar stools all around and the second stage oval-shaped had a stripper performing when the place was packed with customers. One has to smooth-talk a girl for a date after the club closes at 3am. Most girls did not go out with the customers. I struck out, but I still recommend it for hanging out. Coming out of The Best, go left and up the Escalon to head towards Titanic.

TITANIC, Condominio Balam Quitze, phone 264-0051, located on the other side of the block of the Escalon. Look for a video store under a 30-foot neon Coco-Cola sign on the corner of about 89th Ave and Escalon and then go to the other side of the block. A high-class nightclub with strip shows, charged C100/admission & one beer, C140 or $16/lady's drink, $600/take-out (yes, six-zero-zero dollars), and has 20 girls. It was the classiest small nightclub in Latin America, has the best overall dancers with athletic skills, and has usually no more than six other clients. Although it was out of my price range, I enjoyed sitting there, fending off the classy-dressed girls, watching skilled dancers, and thinking now this is the way I should live if I had big money.

LIPS, Paseo Gral Escalon #5146, half block east of Redondel [traffic circle] Masferrer, next to Hotel Suky. More of a recreation hall with multiple strippers, opened Mon-Sat and charged C52.5 or $6/admission & one mug of beer, $12/lap dance to three songs. It has a $12/special closet-size cabinet for unknown spectacle, and advertised no prostitution, 60 beautiful girls, and six ugly girls. I did not see any girls eating at any table, so food service available in 1999 may have been terminated. One has to talk the girl into a date after the club closes at 3am. Opens about noon, two shifts of girls, one large stage for three dancers and three side stages, mud wrestling on Tuesdays and Thursdays on a fifth lower-level stage which is used for dancing only when the club is packed with customers, four pool tables, two video game machines, three television monitors with hard-core porn (very common in SS monger places), and one female clothing concession stand. Customers tip the dancers, who place the bills conspiciously in a black garter around one thigh. Lap dancing is common, semi-public, almost totally nude. Definitely a must-see club. (PS: I heard that another Lips club opened up in Guatemala City in 2001.)

Redondel Masferrer is a traffic circle, commonly used in cities where traffic lights are scarce. Around this circle is a large supermarket, bus stops, sidewalk food cart vendors (SS is famous for its pupusa, a kind of corn-meal muffin-sized pancake with a thin layer of cheese or other edible inside), Burger King, and Padrino, a discotheque for the middle-class. One major road off the Redondel is Escalon (or Gral Escalon, which means General Escalon) going downhill. On the corner of Escalon on the block northside and near the Redondel is Lips back set from the street, sitting between a bank on one side and the Hotel Suky on the other side. At night, cars are parked two-deep on the sidewalk in front of Lips and the hotel, with a couple of uniformed guards carrying shotguns and watching. My friend parked his car about a block down Escalon in front of the two-story commercial center and paid the guard ten colones to watch his car. On the ground level of this commercial center is a little sandwich shop, that serves a great turkey sandwich and other excellent $5 sandwiches. Next to the commercial center, there is also a popular bar that has good rock bands, which looked like it served the zona rosa-type crowd. By the way, the zona rosa was a 25-colones, 10-minute taxi ride away.

To enter Lips, one has to walk up a wide spiral staircase to the second floor passed a sign warning against photography and reporters. At the top is a two-window cashier booth where money is deposited into a drawer. The cashier was a short mid-20s local guy with a mustache doing 45-degree angled pushups against the counter. He looked like a body builder with two years of weight training. I deposited my money, rolled up my left shirt sleeve, and threw him a bicep. Of course, my iron-pumping days rode off long ago with that vestal virgin who rode away from me on her milk-white unicorn when she heard my mumbled words of undying love. So, he had to laugh at my bicep and upper arm that could be mistaken for a slim baguette of French bread.

Next came the patdown. The entranceway was blocked by a big local guy and a little chain hanging three feet across. He unhooked the chain to let me in and then pat'd me down for weapons and unlike nearly all SS monger places that do patdowns, he questioned what I had in my back pocket. I pulled out a plastic bag containing my two-ounce tube of KY jelly and condoms. I am an optimist in SS and prepared for action. The big guy waved me in.

In back of the big guy was a large area marked off by a chest-high wall. I saw a large four-foot high stage with a wide walking area around it and ringed with chairs and tables for the patrons. During the week days and early evenings, there was next to no one in this area. But, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, this area got crowded for the mud-wrestling matches between the girls which took place on the stage without its wooden floor covering on top. On the weekends, it was also crowded with customers and strippers.

I passed the big-guy guard and turned left to walk another four or five steps. On this level, there was three pool tables in the middle, a long bar with stools in front on the left, which was opened when there was a big crowd, and an open area on the right next to an open room on the far right. The open area has a fourth pool table and served as a balcony where one can view the mud-wrestling stage. There were chairs and tables around this area, as well as a pinball machine and a claustophobic, closet-sized booth. I never did get a chance to find out what the booth was for. There was always a local guy blabber-mouthing the girl in charge of the booth, every time I passed by. In the open room on the far right were more tables and chairs.

Heading further back towards the rear passed the pool tables was another little area with tables and chairs and a pinball machine and to the right was another flight of five or six steps up to another level. Depending upon the time of day or night, these areas could go from relatively empty to full of sitting guys with almost entirely naked girls lap dancing atop of them. I tried not to stare. But, this was probably as close to a mass orgy as I have ever seen live in the flesh.

There was always somebody playing pool. If not a customer, then the girls practicing. One of the girls told me that they took lessons on how to play. Those who played were formidable opponents for the above-average pool player.

Lips advertised it has 60 girls and that was very close to the truth. The day shift had less and some nights had about 40 girls, but some nights and weekends there were more. The next largest monger place in SS had about 20 (30 on a good night) girls. Not only did Lips have the most girls but also it had the best looking girls. Why? My theory runs like this. First, it had the reputation of being the biggest and the best. Young girls who work were concerned about their image and working at Lips has some cachet. Second, there were lots of customers and a lot of lap dancing going on and at $12 for three songs, a girl could make more money in a night than working as a store clerk. By comparison, my friend has a maid three days a week and paid her about $100 a month. Third, the girls were not required to go with a customer.

On the next level up was a large four-foot high stage in the middle. Large enough to hold 70 girls at a roll call about 8 pm one evening. Around the stage was a bunch of tables and chairs. On the left side was a bar. On the far side was a small stage that has the appearance of peering into someone's room. On the far right side was an open room with another small stage. On the near right side was another open room with a fourth small stage, which usually has the water-shower act.

On a weekend night, all stages were in action and a good vantage point was in front of the bar where one could see all four stages, usually with one girl on each of the small stages and three or four girls on the center stage. One little problem though was that the place has so many male clients that they stoond around the center stage blocking view of the other stages. Among all this action of stripping girls, lap-dancing girls, pool playing, guys drinking, there were television monitors mounted on the walls above the heads of the crowd showing hard core porn. This is definitely a must-see place.

I walked into the pool table area and immediately a waitress asked to take my drink order. I gave her my beer ticket for a mug of draft. For fifty cents more, I could get a bottled beer. The music was the latest fad in latin rock. Not playing at ear-blasting volume, comfortably loud to pulse to Ricky Martin's "She Bangs." Looking around, I saw atop local guys the girls lap-dancing like writhing eels caught on the end of erect fishing poles. Here I used my peripheral vision to avoid staring, but why worry. The guys were concentrated on their physical sensation and their writhing girls. The few girls who saw me give me a come-hither-you-are-next look.

With a cold mug of beer in hand, I walked to the back area where the center stage was and did my walk-around surveying the scene and checking out the lovely lasses. excat, he likes the ladies. Pushed my way between standing and sitting locals and some obvious gringos, all hypnotically staring at the dancers. I recognized maybe ten girls from my last visit in 1999, but all the others were new. There were at least half a dozen that I would have liked to pump. Reality sets in. Whatever made me a solitary young guy in la usa made me a solitary mature guy in Lips. In other words, a wink and a smile with money in hand does not make a pretty girl come running to me. So, I have to work at getting laid.

A few guys sitting around the center stage on all sides were tipping the dancers. Just like in 1999, probably the only SS place where tipping a dancer was customary. The girls placed the folded currencies under a leg garter to hang like trophies to display their evident social esteem, on stage and off. Evident waft of the alpha females. Badges of pay-to-play to the customers. Sometimes, the dancers refused to come to a customer waving a bill. Too small the denomination. I continued to jockey around the main room, eyeing which dancers on the center stage and which dancers on the three side stages I wanted to see naked. That meant by the third number when clothing came off, I wanted to be close enough to see my favorites at which stage they were dancing on. In a crowded room, positioning oneself, as in the sexual act, can be a determinant factor in the pleasure received.

After seeing all dancers bared, as the next set of dancers walked onto the stages I walked back down to the pool hall area checking out the other girls. Glanced at the television monitors to see the latin version of hard porn, which looked the same as the gringo version. The same old in-out, in-out. Hardly anyone else was watching, but the very few who did were engrossed and breathing slightly faster. I looked inside the open room and suddenly I recognized Vixin (not her club name and not her real name). She was facing a local young guy, riding his lap with only her g-string on. He had his hand on her taut body stroking and his head nodding in a semi-conscious daze. They were pulsating to the fast beat of the rock music. The usual sequence was two fast songs and one slow song when the dancers would strip.

When I saw her, I could not help but recall when I met her in late 1999. Sipping my wet beer and eyeing her from the corner of my eye, my mind fogged back to our encounter over a year ago. I was in Lips, doing exactly the same things that I was doing now. Drinking, eyeing, and calculating my chances at a shot of passion. I looked at the girls, their healthy bared limbs, their tawny sleek bodies, some heavy pendulous breasts, and mestiza faces ranging from Spanish to Indian. Amid such plenty, I wanted the opposite. That is me. If I was in a room full of blondes, I would want the only brunette there. Amid so many open arms, I wanted the vestal virgin. And I thought I found her.

There in late 1999 on the center stage dancing between two other girls was Vixin. She had a chaste look of simplicity and loveliness about her. On the short side, A or B cups, light brownish skin, early 20s, and long dark staight hair that flowed down passed to half the length of her back. A distinctly Indian cast to her face that showed no wrinkles, no beauty marks, no marring. A maiden with no signs of childbirth about her abdomen. She seemed, at least in my eyes, to walk in a radiance that shimmered a bluish glow. Pocahontas. My heart beated a little faster and my loins felt an electric tingling. I was captivated.

I went to her and offered a drink. She accepted -- first base, I ordered, and we walked over to the area where the fourth pool table was. We talked a little in Spanish. I am not especially fluent, but get better with practice and worse when I am in the states where I practice very little. She asked me if I wanted a lap dance. I declined but gave her a 100-colon bill and said that I only wanted to talk with her. Did this impress her? I don't know. Maybe she thought I was a garrulous old fool who paid for mere words. Maybe she thought I was not a lecher and perhaps chivalrous. My intent, an attention-get-her.

Since 11 pm was my usual sleeping time even in late 1999, I knew that I could not wait until Lips closes at 3 am. Also, I figured that she would be tired at 3 am after all her dancing and work. I asked her when was her day off? I got lucky because she said tomorrow. I asked her if she would meet me tomorrow evening? She said yes. I thought secong base, not a homer because many girls have not shown up after telling me they would meet me. Such was my fate, but I left Lips and slept well that night.

The next evening I waited in front of a restaurant for Vixin to show up. There are moments of self-doubt in one's life. For me, waiting for a first date is one of them. With nothing to do, all manner of thoughts flew through my mind. Did I say the right thing, make the right move? Maybe I should of said that and done the other thing? What was the meaning of life? One thought was time. I set my maximum waiting period to half an hour. I shouldn't. But that is my limit. Other guys have told me that they have waited up to two hours and their girls finally showed up. For me, 30 minutes of self doubt is all that I can handle. Lo and behold, just as I turned to walk away when the half hour expired, here comes Vixin. Third base.

She looked a little tired. I guessed she had just awoken. We greeted and took a cab to a hotel. We checked in and in my room, I ordered a Pizza Hut pizza to be delivered and we drank the sodas that I had purchased earlier. We watched a little television and ate. She was very quiet, more tired than shy. After an hour or so, I figured that my time had arrived. I looked for a signal from her. But she gave none. Maybe she was inexperienced for a girl in her early 20s. That would be good, my vestal virgin. I turned off the television and turned on my cassette of diaphanous new-age music-sounds, and holding her wrists pulled her to her feet and walked her to the bedroom.

We embraced and disrobed. Finally, a compliant warm feminine body in my arms. I thought finally I had an all nighter, after all my years of short timers. I was glad to have waited until now that I had a sensuous girl next to me. Relief was only minutes away and then we had the long night to dally and play. We engaged in long foreplay and then my Sr. Lonely raised his engorged head and plunged mightily into a dark crevice. Home, at last, no need to slide and crash into the catcher.

I wished I could say that rockets went off, bells rung, and bedsprings groaned. But, the truth was that the sex was a bust. We were incompatible. Her virginal looks turned out to be a false shield, hiding mental dullness and flaccid enthusiasm. After one encounter, we rolled over and slept immersed in waves of new ageism.

In the morning, I paid her $100 and gave her the rest of the $15 pizza (of 8 slices, we had eaten 3) to take home and she did not react one way or the other. To me, I overpaid for minimal service. I had heard that it was the going price in 1999. In a way, I was relieved to not be obligated to any one girl. I still had my freedom. I would continue my SS visit with pursuits of more short timers. Was this not the sign of mongerism? Of course, returning to Lips for a few days was out of the question.

These memories passed through my mind when I saw Vixin again last January. The way she was pulsating in her dance on the lap of a local guy was false advertisement. I had to smile. She looked hot and everyone who watched would think she was hot. But I knew she was not. As I walked away, an element of self-doubt intruded and said maybe she was not the problem, maybe it was me. It could be. In the final analysis, it takes two people and all systems have to be go.

I walked on and sipped my beer, deep in the thoughts of the typical monger gauging his chances of a shot at a new girl. I looked to my right and looked to my left. How to get close to that nice one? How to outwait that local guy to leave for a shot at that pretty one? So many girls. So hard to decide which one.

I felt a finger tapping on my arm and looked over. It was Vixin. She said, we have to talk. After being away for over a year, she still remembered me and wanted to talk. Years of experience told me that the only time people come to me to talk is when they want money. Cynical, but true. I looked at her, smiled, and said in Spanish the words -- gracias, a Dios (thanks to God) -- which sounds like -- adios (goodbye).

excat left her standing, a hint of a wistful look on her face and he with a slight wince in his walk.

meeeooow.