I have already mentioned how easily madams earn money but they do need a considerable amount of money to run their businesses. That is, they have to pay a lot of salary for women who serve food and alcohol. In some houses madams themselves play this role but in most cases, they hire women who work as servers and pay them 25 dollars per week of salary. I should also note that they were strictly prohibited from having piano performances by the authorities but the ban was lifted in the middle of last month. The police attitude was strange—one night someone rang the doorbell of a prostitute cave. This should be a customer, the worker was thinking, who opened the door, and there was a big man as tall enough to reach a cloud. That was the officer whom you know. Women were worried about what the matter was and the officer, in a deeply polite manner, told them that there is no longer a problem with them playing the piano. He just added that they should refrain from singing too loudly. The madam and prostitutes were delighted like nothing else and apparently, they celebrated the fortune like crazy on that night. This was hard work for the officer; he visited each cave to inform them of the news.
On that note, piano players used to be able to perform tax free when they were working at prostitute caves in Chinatown, but this time the police require them to get a license for a five-dollar monthly fee. Normal customers give piano players two-dollar tips, and servers one- or two-dollar tips. Next you may wonder who is responsible for cooking in the prostitute caves. It is usually a Chinese person and they get 40 dollars of monthly salary. As this is a sleepless city from another world, they have a very different meal schedule from one of a normal life: breakfast at 1 p.m.—well, it is strange to call it breakfast as they eat in the afternoon, but prostitutes usually get up at noon and they have the first meal at around 1 p.m. They have their second meal at 6 p.m., and the third, or so-called dinner, between 12 and 12:30 a.m.
It would be too explicit to mention ‘pleasure fees’ but for your reference it is ten or fifteen dollars depending on the time. A short stay is three dollars but for some reason the Japanese is charged only two dollars and are favored over whites. Most likely they are afraid of causing conflicts for being adjacent to the Japantown and offer a special price to the Japanese. Strangely, white prostitutes charge the Japanese two dollars but blacks do not distinguish Japanese from whites. “Every man is the same!” they claim, and charge three dollars equally. Being black like grime on the pots or black kites, their nature is truly what their name suggests: like black kites on the lumber stores in an old joke, they are awfully snobby.