This dude is brooookkkeee. He's take his shirt off for money now.
2am on the Reeperbahn – Hamburg's notorious red light district. In a tiny box room with pink walls, a morbidly obese man, dressed in a
I (heart) The Spanish Louvre T-shirt, a black fedora, a pair of dark glasses, and nothing at all below the waist, stares intently into the blue glow of a laptop screen.
Behind him, a narrow single bed is draped with a thin satin eiderdown whose flat stuffing is beginning to emerge from a rent in the seam. Above the door, a painted wooden sign reads:
Keep Calm and Only Fuck with Five Star Days. A cigar has been suspended from the centre of the frame on a length of string, approximately 5ft 3 inches above the floor.
The fat man holds up both fists to the webcam, then rotates them slowly for inspection. The skin on his knuckles is soft and smooth, like a newborn baby's.
“Yah naw it'sa common misconception that fightin' scuffs-up the han's,” he opines in an accent that is steeped in the day-drinking and first-cousin-fucking, swamp shack incest of America's deep south.
“If yo street fightin' 'gainst mul'tple opponents, e'erday, then the knuckles come up polished 'n' brand new, almost like you ditn't fight an'one at all.”
The person who he has been conversing with online – BrownHankey69 – begins to type.
“Awwll sho yu mah gunt fo' two hundert,” says the fat man into the mic.
A few seconds later BrownHankey69 disconnects from the chat.
“Fuckin' alawgs,” says the fat man.
“It's the youn' boys,” he tells me.”They's doin' thangs wit der gunts I can only dream a doin.'”
Ethan Ralph came to Hamburg from Portugal in 2022.
Martim, his pimp, recalls how the pair first met in Lisbon:
“Ralph had, how you say in English?... Some faggy man purse. I told one of my girls: 'Steal this from him.' Ever since that time he has been working hard to buy it back from me. Unfortunately the demand for designer man purses continues to grow. The price has risen faster than he can earn the money. So he must show his gunt on the Internet in exchange for donations. Also he must... how you say...?... Consort with the sex of the ass romancers. As a favour to my uncle who brought you here, I will allow you to piss on him for the sum of $5."
I decline the opportunity to piss on Ethan Ralph, who looks like he has already been pissed on more than enough by life, and by his clients.
“We came here from Portugal because the laws governing the use of anal lubricants in Germany are less strict,” says Martim. “In Portugal there are strict limits on maximum dilation. Here no-one gives a fuck. A man's asshole is free to be as wide open as he chooses.”
As we step out into the cold night air, he hands me his business card. It reads:
Martim Warski
Procurer of man purses
Artisan pimp
Never Knowingly Pwned
