in an SUV with five other scantily-clad twentysomethings and a glove box full of parking tickets. Jerry picked me up on a Wednesday night around 10 p.m. My first time out, I was elated at the ease of it all. I joined her "company" and started working the next night. Getting hired was as simple as texting a few pictures to Jerry, her driver/manager.
She said all she did was look pretty, drink, and hang out, and she made an easy $400 a night, cash-in-hand. Finally, in what seemed like an intervention from above, a coworker told me about her night job as a doumi, a gig she got through a Craigslist ad. Asking for money from my family was not an option (I tried). After paying bills, I had $25 left to eat for the month. The cost of living was three times as high as I was used to back in my hometown of Las Vegas, and my student loan grace period was over. I struggled between waitressing and office temping to pay for a shoebox apartment in Koreatown. Some of the girls wore Kate Middleton-esque nude pantyhose, which they called "Vagina Protectors," so they could show some leg while also warding off unwelcome stray hands. After three months of interviewing and résumé-tweaking, my writing career consisted entirely of food orders at a local cafe. I was certain that my six-month internship at a local newspaper was all I would need to break into publishing. I was 26 years old and my degree in journalism was proving useless. It was good money, and the men were usually pretty generous, but it depended on how generous I was with what they wanted, and that's where the trouble began. I was a doumi for my first summer in Los Angeles.
#Japanese karaoke boston plus
If the men want to extend their visit with her, it's another $60 per hour, and she keeps $40 of that, plus the entire tip. If she does get picked at all that night, she gets paid $120 for two hours, of which she keeps $80. If a girl doesn't get picked, she moves on to the next room, or back in the car to the next club until she gets a seat. The men, usually middle-aged Korean businessmen with lots of money but little swagger, observe the line-up, maybe ask a question or two, and either wave the girls away to see the next round, or pick their favorites to sit next to them. Late at night in LA's Koreatown, girls file into karaoke rooms rented by men who request female company. This tradition is alive in the heart of Los Angeles, though a touch shadier. The men use the karaoke rooms to let loose or impress potential investors, the way Americans would use a steakhouse with a craft beer bar.
Somewhere along the spectrum of women-dominated professions, hovering between a mid-level escort and an elementary chorus teacher, there is a doumi.Ī doumi (sometimes spelled domi), in Seoul and Hong Kong, is a karaoke hostess, a woman hired by clubs to cavort and sing kitschy tunes with overworked (and often repressed) businessmen.
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