Chapter Twenty-Eight: Best Little Whore House In New Zealand

Romeo broke his leg in three places

Apr 20, 2024

“So. Romeo fell off the balcony. Trying to climb up, fell off and landed on the front porch. Broke his leg in three places!”

Dee sounded pleased even though she was trying hard not to.

“That is the lesson he learned from his wife. For visiting Dr. Henson’s new ‘practice’ in Coopers Beach.

“Lusty Tupping, Lusty Tupping went to town! When he was supposed to be out on Doubtless Bay all night fishing with his mates! His wife found out where he really went, to The Whaler! New Zealand’s newest whore house!

“And so she locked him out and he decided to climb up the porch to the second-story bedroom at three in the morning. It’s surprising he hurt himself, everybody is saying, because he was so drunk and drunks usually fall relaxed and don’t get hurt all that much. Do you think that is true? About drunks, I mean?”

This was the news that greeted us on our return to Doubtless Bay from our Grand New Zealand Rainbow Tour Recap.

white and red heart shaped paper — Photo by Alina Rubo on Unsplash

There are a couple of things to explain here.

First, Lusty Tupping is not really his name. I’m not going to give you his real name because, just as I don’t want to be sued by the people of Lesbos in Greece, I don’t want to get sued by anybody here at Doubtless Bay.

But I will tell you that his real first name is different from “Lusty” by one single consonant. It’s a fairly common first name, especially in Texas among cowboys. At least in the movies.

“Lusty” however, is a fairly accurate description of this forty-ish-year-old fencer-farmer-entrepreneur who loves to talk about visiting the voluptuous strippers in the Big Smoke, even when the listeners are couldn’t-be-less-interested Gay Yankees.

And his real surname is different from “Tupping” by one single vowel. Change “Lusty” by one consonant, change “Tupping” by one vowel, and there you have him.

If you can figure out who this is, don’t tell anyone that I gave hints.

I should add that the word “tupping” would only be understood by someone who was raised on a sheep farm. Or moved to one from The O.C. and started to pick up all the cocky lingo Down Under, down here in New Zealand. Cocky lingo. As in cow cocky or sheep cocky. A cocky is a farmer.

Tupping is the term used when the ewes — female sheep— are covered by the rams — male sheep. You can guess what the farmers mean by “are covered.”

If you can’t, go ask someone older to explain it to you.

If you believe I am explaining too much and that everyone knows the difference between a ram and a ewe and that everyone understands “are covered,” then think again. Example. When we first moved to New Zealand, my darling Beau startled some neighboring farmers by asking them a question they will never likely forget.

“Are those cows in your field men cows or women cows?”

My city boy. And when Dee saw that I had set out some tomato plants at Whatuwhiwhi, she said she would make us some fried green tomatoes, à la Arkansas.

“No, Ma,” said Beau. “We planted the red ones. We planted the red ones, didn’t we? Aaron?”

“Oy gevalt!” said Dee. “My Mr. IBM, Mr. Deep Blue himself. Maybe we should put him on TV. On Who Wants to Be a Billionaire But Is Too Bloody Stupid. Oy gevalt!”

“Maaa. What?”

“Stop it, Beau. You sound like a New Zealand sheep.”

Anyway, I need to explain another thing about Dee’s local Doubtless Bay gossip. About when she said that Lusty Tupping was visiting Dr. Hensen’s new practice when he was supposed to be night-fishing with his mates.

Dr. Hensen had closed his medical practice in Cooper’s Beach because of some dispute with the New Zealand Medical Board and there were a lot of hard feelings locally. Some people felt he was being greedy and that his former patients were the ones to suffer because there was no longer a local doctor. This was a hardship for some older citizens especially.

To make a long story short, Dr. Hensen, in what nearly everyone in Doubtless Bay referred to as spite and badly directed revenge at the Labour government, remodeled his medical practice. He added some substantial bling to the house, I guess, and opened a whorehouse in Cooper’s Beach.

Best Little Whorehouse in New Zealand. Well, the newest one anyway.

His wife was the receptionist and was in charge of recruiting workers, in charge of finding women to work at the brothel as sex industry workers. Dr. Hensen was the publicist. He and his wife have four children. Their teenage daughter and son became celebrities at the local high school. Or so the son bragged in one local newspaper story.

Now, prostitution was made legal in New Zealand by the Prostitution Reform Act of 2003 so Dr. Hensen and his wife and four kids, I guess, weren’t doing anything illegal in New Zealand. The law narrowly passed in the Parliament and is still more than somewhat controversial but it is the law.

The purpose of the law was to protect the sex workers, mostly in and around the Big Smoke, and to protect the health of those who contract for their services. It hasn’t, however, had much of an effect in New Zealand.

Except, in all places, in Coopers Beach, Doubtless Bay.

You already know what an idyllic spot of natural beauty Doubtless Bay is with its long, gorgeous beaches, diving and swimming, kayaking and fishing galore. A very few small, charming beach communities scattered along its southern and western shores, one of them being Coopers Beach, a lovely little provincial bayside resort and sleepy community.

A drowsy little resort community now with its very own “upscale” — so said Dr. Hensen, as quoted in the BBC report — whorehouse.

Just down the street from the Mobil Service Station, Doubtless Bay Welding and Supply, the Auto Parts Store, Mangonui Haulage, and the Doubtless Bay Equipment and Tool Rental Center. You get the idea.

Upscale.

When Dr. Hensen first redecorated his medical offices, when he hung out his new shingle, well, he did get a lot of attention. He made the news in print and on TV. Stories appeared in the Netherlands and in Germany, on the BBC, in France, throughout Asia, Malaysia, Thailand, etc., and many other countries all around the world.

We started receiving e-mails and phone calls from friends around the globe. Hey! What’s up with Coopers Beach?

For some reason, the world found this story titillating. New Zealand Small Seaside Resort House of Prostitution.

Most local citizens were chagrined and embarrassed. Kiwis are anything but prudish and yet they found themselves chagrined to be the focus of so much international attention because of Dr. Hensen’s new practice.

Because of “rent-a-vagina,” as one local Baptist woman complained in a letter to the editor in a local newspaper. The Penny-Pincher, I think it is called. Something like that. Actually, most locals believe it was the very small contingent of local Baptists and not Dr. Hensen’s genius at publicity that garnered him this worldwide attention.

Once the little congregation began to demonstrate against The Whaler, the international publicity began. “The Whaler” was the name of the Doc’s new establishment, in honor, apparently, of Mangonui’s days as a whaling port and of Russell’s nineteenth-century days past as the “hellhole of the Pacific.”

That’s when whalers, traders, convicts, and missionaries made it more lively than today’s reincarnation as a bucolic little resort town offering whale-and-dolphin-watching tours and deep-sea fishing.

Dr. Hensen was quoted by the BBC as saying that although previously he had never considered going into the sex industry, he saw great similarities between the world’s oldest profession and medicine.

“It’s about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was all about. So it’s not a big leap really. Everything I have ever done is high quality.

“The standards of my medical practice were high and that will cross over to the brothel environment.

“It is totally different to what anybody has done in New Zealand. We’re trying to have an up-market facility in a small town—we’re trying things that haven’t been done before.”

That’s for sure.

The doctor’s new practice, his new entrepreneurial enterprise, went bust after only a few months and the doctor and his family left town once and for all. It appears that he had only one regular customer, Lusty Tupping.

Dr. Hensen only enrolled one University of Auckland student to work her way through college by moving to the Far North for a semester. Local gossip has it that the girl didn’t like this Lusty Tupping customer because he always came straight from fishing —you can almost hear him saying Honey, me and me mates are night-fishing tonight — and he smelled of snapper and John Dory and the diesel that he used to propel his aluminum boat.

Personally, I don’t know this to be true. That’s what everyone says.

In case you think this is gossip that I am passing along, it is sociology. A sociological slice-of-life in a small resort and retirement community in the Far North of New Zealand. Sociology. Cultural studies. Science.

The reason Dee was gloating was not because she was an old-fashioned New Bedford, New England Puritan. She was not.

Don’t forget, she spent a few years in Arkansas — Bill Clinton tupping country.

And then she has lived in the Palm Springs area since 1977. Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert. Playground of presidents and playground of the stars. American celebrity tupping country.

And now home to the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament — lesbian tupping country.

And also home to the Coachella Music Festival. Young people’s live music festival tupping country.

No, a Puritan Dee was not.

Quite simply, she did not like Mr. Lusty Tupping because he had cheated Beau and me out of some money, for fencing, when we first arrived in New Zealand and he had said to our faces that he was going to be a millionaire someday like us.

“I deserve it as much as you two do and that’s for sure!”

For sure, for sure. Obviously, he has watched too much American television. Probably too much The O.C.

We wondered if The Whaler would be listed and advertised in the Far North Yellow Pages or The Penny-Pincher but Dr. Hensen’s new practice went belly-up before that could happen.

There was a local family, R. B. & T. L Whalen who had seven kids. They had to move out of the area because they received so many phone calls in the middle of the night from the European and American press, who seems to have ignored the time difference in far-off New Zealand. And who seemed to have ignored the difference between The Whaler and The Whalens.

The Whaler is gone and so too are the Whalens.

Lusty Tupping is walking again and he doesn’t even limp.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published soon.