by Geena Leigh
The owner didn’t speak any English, so we fell into a pattern of waving and smiling when we saw each other. The manager was kind and very respectful, and not much older than me. There were no real house rules—or, if there were, no-one took any notice of them. I would get roaring drunk and dance across the top of the bar Wild Coyote style, and unlike my Athens roommate, the other girls weren’t uptight at all; they would laugh at my inebriated antics, and the patrons would clap and cheer.
The standard of the acts at the Boobie Magic Bar was pretty low, thankfully; this was to my advantage, because I didn’t really have any routine. My striptease show—which consisted of me strutting around, grabbing my own breasts and bending over while shaking my behind in the mirror to Like A Virgin—was met with rapturous applause.
I wasn’t sleeping with any men for money at the time. I liked the attention the patrons and staff gave me. They made me feel wanted, desired and special. It’s like an addiction—to feel validated by compliments and flattery.
•
The owner of the club wanted to promote me more, so we went with the manager to see a photographer. The long car ride was through scrubland, and I had moments of mild concern that they might have their way with me and then bury me out there in the bush. My usual hangover headache was so loud, though, that I was almost beyond caring. The airconditioner didn’t work, and as warm air poured in the window, the bumpy road rocked me to sleep.
I was woken by someone lightly shaking my thigh. Then a car door slammed hard. I opened my eyes and noticed that the car had stopped and I was alone in the back seat. When I looked out the window, I saw two men shake hands with a third man in front of what looked like a run-down weekender. Scattered around the yard were an old rusted car, a pile of timber, some barbed wire, a thick rusted chain and a long roll of opaque plastic (of a type I’d seen in the movies, which murderers used to roll up dead bodies for burial). We were parked at the end of a long driveway that was lined with dense bushes on either side. I had no idea where we were. I had no mobile phone and still had a searing headache.
The man I presumed was the photographer pointed to me in the car and I froze. My pulse quickened. My breath became rapid and shallow. My options were: I could run screaming down the driveway like a mad woman (and hope to find my way through the scrubland to my motel or some kind of civilisation), or I could go and say hi to the guy and cross my fingers that this photo shoot was legitimate. I took a deep breath, got out and waved in a friendly manner to the photographer. He smiled widely and we all stepped into the house.
Inside, the weekender was very different than from the outside. It looked like it had been recently renovated. It was painted white and furnished in a minimalist style that seemed sterile to me. There were lights on metal stands, power cables positioned across the floor and a large white balance sheet clamped to a pole. I smiled with relief. The guys took a seat around a glass table and pointed to a room where I could change.
I didn’t see the point of a change room for privacy when I was going to be semi-nude in the shoot, but I used the room anyway. Dressed in my voluminous blonde wig, lacy G-string and stilettos, I sat on a chair. I was topless and had my legs spread, posing as enticingly as I could, even though I felt on the verge of throwing up. The photographer took a number of shots.
‘Now take off pants.’
‘No!’ I feigned modesty, really only just wanting to go back to bed, and refused to take them off.
The guys then took me back to the motel, and a few days later the boss proudly showed me the ad in the Hellenic Star. It was a 10 x 15cm black-and-white ad, positioned in the sordid section of the paper among a multitude of titillating advertisements. I couldn’t read the words, but I giggled at my breasts—they had superimposed little stars over my nipples.
10
Welcome to hell, age 20
‘Australia passport not okay!’ the officer told me.
‘Eh?’
The police had driven me from Boobie Magic to my motel in order to check my passport. Clearly, they did not like what they saw. ‘Pack!’ the officer ordered me. I threw all my belongings into my suitcase and hauled it into the police car.
That was the only English I heard for many hours, and initially I didn’t even realise that I had been arrested; no-one read me my rights. I didn’t understand what was happening. I expected someone to walk over at any moment and tell me there had been a mix-up, and that they’d take me back to the bar. They brought me before a Greek court, where everyone talked over the top of each other, and I kept saying, ‘No understand Greek,’ and shaking my head when they looked at me.
Every word was in Greek except for one sentence, when the female judge finally asked me with perfect English pronunciation, ‘Did you know that you needed to have a visa to work here?’
‘No, I had no idea!’ I replied.
Ignorance, I soon learned, is not a valid defence in a court of law. The officers then drove me to the local police station and told me to sit at a desk in one of the small interrogation rooms. I had no idea where my belongings were. I didn’t really care, either—I only cared about surviving. After a couple of hours five guards, who all had chunky bodies with bulging stomachs, circled me. One of them placed a document and pen on the desk in front of me and instructed: ‘Sign it. Sign it!’
I looked at the document, which was written entirely in Greek. ‘Eh?’ I said.
He kept drumming his fingers on the paper: ‘Sign it! Sign it!’
‘I’m not signing something I can’t read. Write it in English!’ I replied.
‘No English, no English. Sign it! Sign it!’ I wiped his spittle off my arm. ‘Sign it! Sign it!’ I felt I’d been perfectly clear with my answer, but they kept repeating themselves.
‘Then get me some translation books and I’ll learn to read Greek.’ I was annoyed and managed to sound tough, but I was frightened, and cautious.
They didn’t like that, and all began to shout at me and each other. One guard left and brought back a man with a notably slender frame, who leaned over me and skimmed through the document. ‘It’s a confession,’ he said. ‘It says you worked as a prostitute. If you sign it, you will go to prison for two years.’
I knew watching those 177 episodes of Law and Order would come in handy one day! I was suddenly filled with relief that I hadn’t signed it—and panic because I had no idea what to do next. My mind raced, wondering how they knew that I had done a few jobs after-hours. Had those two Greek Adonis cops informed on me? Two freaking years? ‘I’m not signing it,’ I said firmly.
In addition to shouting at me, the men now began to wave their hands like they were drowning in the ocean and signalling for a lifeguard. It was like a comedy sketch, yet I daren’t laugh. ‘I’m not signing it.’ Now I was the one repeating myself.
A guard grabbed me and hurled me off the chair. My feet hardly touched the dark grey cement steps as they jostled me down the narrow staircase. They unlocked a door to a reception area and pushed me inside. My suitcase thumped on the floor behind me.
There were two long wooden benches against each wall and two old tattered armchairs at the back of the room. The room had an exceptionally high ceiling with one small opaque square skylight in the centre of it. The shadow of barbed wire could be seen covering the skylight on the outside. There were two solid chunky metal doors cut into one wall and both had a small section of bars through which faces were peering at me. There was a third thick door, also made of metal, which remained ajar the entire time. It shuddered when I pushed it open. The door led to a second large room with two more cells leading off it. Both of those cells, I soon discovered, housed at least seventeen men each.
The second large room was where the men were let out to exercise. There was a toilet (a hole in the ground) that was meant to be a communal, but I was the only one who had access to it. There was no toilet paper and no shower. A drip of water intermittently came out of the tap next to the hole; its nozzle was rusted shut and woul
dn’t turn on or off. As I walked back into the main reception area, an African man introduced himself through the bars of one of the cells and gave me a broad smile. I said ‘Hi,’ but I didn’t want to talk.
Many men were brought in and out of the room throughout the day. The only food I received was two cold cheeseburgers, and that was only because I gave money to the guards to get them for me—and I did the same thing each day after that. Luckily I had money, or I don’t know what would have happened. It seemed like this was some kind of holding place for prisoners who were being moved to other locations in Greece. We all just sat on the benches and stared at the floor until we fell asleep.
Three days passed. Every morning I awoke to an unusual style of alarm clock—it was the bench being kicked by a guard, followed by a series of foreign expletives. I had no idea why they even woke me up each morning—it wasn’t as if there was anything to do or I was going anywhere. Sitting and sleeping on the wooden bench had been so uncomfortable on the first night that I chose the least disease- and bug-ridden looking of the two armchairs and it became my new bed for the next ten nights.
All there was to do was to sit around and think. I remembered the raid on the Boobie Magic Bar that had brought me to this place. I was in the dressing room having a snack at the time and the other girls were hanging out chatting or changing outfits for their next show. The manager came in and told us that the police were coming in a few minutes. I had no idea that I was doing anything illegal, so didn’t think anything of it and continued to eat my just-add-water chicken-flavoured noodles. Then I heard a few shrieks and watched two of the girls run out the back door; one even climbed into a kitchen cupboard to hide. I was confused—I just thought that they were crazy Russians. They must have thought I was a stupid Australian, for just standing there. Of course, I later realised that they must have all been working illegally too.
After I’d been there for a few days the police took me upstairs and pointed to a phone. I picked it up.
‘This is the Australian embassy,’ said a man’s voice. ‘Are they treating you okay?’ I looked up and saw all the guards in the next room, watching me through a glass partition and listening to our conversation on another phone.
‘I’m okay. They locked me up with men, though,’ I said.
‘What?! I’ll talk to them about that,’ he said.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘You’ve been arrested for working without a visa. You’re going to be transported to Athens and then deported to Australia.’
‘I didn’t even know I was arrested! Everything is in Greek! I had no idea I needed a visa to work here,’ I protested.
He said they had Australians in prisons all over Greece; some had been in there for years. There was little the consulate could do when Australian citizens broke the law in another country—they had to suffer the penalty of that country. The police had told him that many of the roads had been washed away because of the recent rain and that they weren’t able to take me to Athens just yet. ‘I’m going to call you in two days’ time,’ he said. It was perfectly sunny outside. I thought the guards were holding me in custody either as punishment for not signing the document, or to try and break me so I would submit and sign it.
‘The best thing I can do for you is to phone you and remind them that we know you’re in there.’ I asked him to call my brother in London and tell him what had happened, so at least someone knew where I was. There was no point in asking them to tell my mum—it would only have stressed her out, and she wouldn’t have been able to do anything.
I thanked him, wondering just how much good another call would do. But when I was taken back to the reception area I saw that all the male prisoners had been taken elsewhere.
On the morning of the eleventh day I was woken by the guards in the rough manner to which I had now become accustomed. ‘You go Australia! You go Australia!’ the guard shouted at me.
‘Now?’ I asked him.
He pointed to the open door. I grabbed my suitcase and was hustled onto a bus, which took me to a prison in Athens.
The bus drove into a short driveway and parked between two high white walls. I noticed that razor wire was the preferred trimming of the buildings here. I dragged my suitcase inside and was ordered to get out my toiletries. After I’d taken my make-up bag out of my suitcase, the guard lobbed the suitcase onto a large pile of other suitcases, which looked like a multi-coloured Egyptian pyramid. He led me through corridors that winded around like a maze leading to another area of the building.
A female guard now searched my make-up bag. She held up my compact mirror—‘Weapon,’ she explained as she laid it on the counter. Then she held up my nail scissors—‘Weapon,’ similarly confiscating the item—and handed me back the bag. She issued me with a raggedy towel not much bigger than a tea towel and a sliver of soap that had been sliced off a regular bar of soap. My eyes lit up at the prospect of being able to have a shower—after almost two weeks, I did not smell pretty.
The guard took me through some more locked doors along more winding corridors. Cells branched off and the iron-barred doors to them were all open. I glanced in a few, and saw male and female prisoners sprawled out inside. I did not understand how men and women could be locked up in the same cells, but I just rolled with it. I tried not to show my fear. A few prisoners stood in the hallway, leaning against the walls. The guard pointed to the cell which I was assigned. It was about 3 metres by 7 metres, which would have been a generously sized room for one person, but there were already nineteen other women in there. I waved to them and walked to a small section of vacant grey cement to sit down.
It was quickly evident who the Top Dog of this cell was when a woman introduced herself to me as I sat down. She said she was Albanian and was obviously sizing me up. With my non-existent Albanian and her limited English, the conversation soon became frustrating for both of us. I asked if anyone spoke English, and Top Dog pointed to a German woman who was clearly trying to avoid involvement, leaning up against the bars with her hands covering her face. She had multiple bruises on her arms.
‘You speak English? What is she saying?’ I asked her, gesturing towards Top Dog. She turned to answer me, revealing a severely battered face with a deep raw cut down one cheek.
She said, ‘Greece fucked country,’ and then quickly turned away and held her head in her hands once more. I would have loved to have had a conversation with her in English, but she clearly was not in the mood.
‘Yes, Greece fucked country!’ I said to Top Dog. We had a brief moment of rapport, bonded by our mutual contempt—not for the country itself, but for our horrible situation. While momentarily there were nineteen sympathetic women on my side, I knew that the situation could change in a heartbeat, and my face could no doubt end up looking very similar to that of the German woman, so I gave some hand signals indicating that I smelled very bad and needed to wash. Top Dog nodded her head and pointed to the door. At first I thought she was kindly pointing me in the direction of the showers, but then I realised that she was giving me permission to leave the room. Either way, experience had now taught me that prison is a game of survival and that I was going to have to keep playing this game skilfully if I hoped to get out of there in one piece.
After cleaning myself (relatively), I went back to my personal square of cement, awkwardly clambering over the women sprawled around the cell. I could sense considerable hostility in the air. I got out my make-up bag and began applying some of its contents to my face in an attempt to gain some dignity. Either I was doing a really bad job or it was purely out of kindness, but a woman nudged me and handed me a sharp corner that had been broken off a mirror (which was clearly a ‘Weapon!’) to use. I smiled, thanked her and then closely inspected the edges of the mirror; I was looking for dried blood, wondering whether this was the object used on the German woman’s face. There was no blood.
Top Dog seemed to grow increasingly annoyed by my actions, and the women’s voices boun
ced around the walls of the tiny cell. The pace of the foreign dialect was quickening and the volume increasing. I could feel the tension rising and, although nervous about the increasing likelihood of an explosion of conflict, I continued to put on my make-up.
Then, as I pulled out my eyelash curlers, their voices began to simmer down. The rough abrupt sounds of Yah! Yah! Grr! Grr! transformed into the soft inquisitive tones of Ooh! and Ahh! Incredibly, and fortuitously for me, they had never seen eyelash curlers before and were extremely curious. I curled one eyelash and applied mascara, and showed them the difference between the Before and the After look. They were amazed at the results.
I passed around the curlers and, one by one, all of the women (except for the battered German) began to curl their lashes. Then they all got out their make-up bags and, after a few minutes, we were all doing our make-up and hair, giggling like we were at a sleepover. To this day I believe that those $5 eyelash curlers were the best purchase I have ever made in my life. I recommend them to all my friends when they travel overseas.
A man pushing a trolley along the corridor interrupted our mini makeover session. He handed everyone a plastic bowl of green–brown soup/food/mush (who knows what it actually was) that was to be our dinner. The other women gladly accepted it without batting a voluminous thick-lashed eyelid, which made me think that this was about as good as the food got around here. It was barely edible, but nevertheless a nice change from cold cheeseburgers. Showers; food; this prison was freaking Trump Tower in comparison to the other place. I lay down on the cool cement, wearing fresh lipstick and blush, curling up to keep warm. As I drifted off to sleep, someone pulled a warm, dusty blanket over me. ‘Thank you,’ I said.