That just blows my mind. Two Metro employees are accused of running a prostitution ring out of the Dupont Circle Metro station. According to the July 10, 2008 Examiner article called “Metro manager accused of prostitution agrees to life skills, education program”, station manager Sharon Waters, dubbed the “Metro Madam”, and custodian Pam Goins were accused of “arranging sexual trysts for money”, even going so far as to use the station’s PA system to “facilitate an arrangement”.
You may recall that Dupont Circle is my work station. I go through Dupont Circle station twice a day every day, and have seen both female station managers and female custodians at the station. So now I wonder if it was anyone I know, since I occasionally talk to personnel in the station, especially if I worked late and I know there won’t be a Glenmont train for a number of minutes.
Of course, the PA system part really gets me. Have you ever heard Metro station PA announcements? They’re not exactly the gold standard for clarity. In fact, most of them are downright unintelligible, particularly the ones piped in from Central Control. The announcements that originate from the station manager’s kiosk are a bit better than the ones that come from Central, but still not exactly crystal clear, especially since the primary construction material in most stations is concrete. Too many announcements sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher, i.e. completely unintelligible. Maybe those hooker announcements sounded a little better, but who knows.
Still, all this went on in one of the stations I see every day. Weeeeeeird.
Speaking of hookers, though, I still get a chuckle about the hoax article about the 13-year-old kid from Texas who hired hookers using his father’s credit card. In that article, the kid got a copy of his father’s credit card, and used it to book a hotel room, buy loads of snacks, and hire two hookers – to play video games with. According to that article, when Ralph Hardy was “[a]sked why he ordered two escorts, Ralph said he thought it was the thing to do when you win a ‘World of Warcraft’ tournament.” It’s funny because it seems so innocent, even if the article is a hoax.
Of course, my mother and I both agreed when discussing that article that hiring hookers to play video games with sounds like something that I, nerd that I am, might do. The hell with sex. However, I admit that Super Mario Kart is more my idea of a good time than Halo.
And then to take it to its [il]logical extreme, if we’d known about it before it got busted up, maybe nerdy boys like myself could have used the Metro Madam’s services to get some new opponents for video games. Oh, now that would have been funny. Prostitution service being run out of Dupont Circle station, and rather than selling sex, it would end up being people arranging video game matches with opponents wearing short skirts, high heels, and fishnet tights. Plus you can’t get an STD from casual Super Mario Kart.
I find the taking of the two concepts to their conjoined extreme to be quite amusing. Of course, it’s also WAY too late when I’m writing this, so at this hour, the mind begins to do strange things. Still, funny.