Maybe he honestly believed in his concern when he said this, but it was an ironic request, considering that he -- like all of Audrey's customers -- was doing his best to get her drunk. I think they found her almost unbearably touching when, after ripping through a couple of Janis Joplin songs, she lost consciousness.

Audrey, in the customers' defense, was a willing victim. While Verdor didn't have a drink-back system, girls who introduced new customers to the club (whom they'd usually met while working elsewhere) always got a cut of that customer's bill, and this man was Audrey's customer. That was why she was on her third bottle of champagne.

By the end of the night she had made, in addition to her regular salary, a bonus of $350 -- 10 percent of the customer's bill. But to do this she'd had to consume four bottles of the best champagne by herself. She passed out on one of Verdor's velvet couches and slept there for about an hour, until she was able to walk upstairs to her cab.

Even through this sort of debauchery, one of the best -- and most unusual -- things about Verdor was that the girls generally supported one another. I liked Audrey, so I tried to talk to her. I knew she felt a bond with me, the only other American at Verdor. "You have to stop drinking so much. It's not healthy," I told her.

"Yeah, I know, Berkeley" (she had nicknamed me this after my graduate school), "but they keep serving me even when I'm already drunk."

"Then you just have to stop yourself."

"I know," she said sadly, looking much older than her years at that moment. After two years in Japan, she returned to America last May, a few weeks before me. I hope she stays there.

Besides alcohol, hard drugs -- because of the late hours, the emotional pressure and the women's large disposable income -- are also a popular and accessible option. I wondered at Sandra's shrill thinness until I found out that she snorted cocaine in the immaculate club restroom before returning to the velvet couches to drink with her many customers.

One day I noticed that Mr. Hayashi, previously one of her steady patrons, had stopped coming. "Did something happen?" I asked her.

"Oh," she grimaced. "I had a little problem with him. We haven't talked since I introduced him to my boyfriend."

"Why did you do that?"

"Well ... Look, you can't tell anyone, but Hayashi is really into his drugs. I knew that my boyfriend could get him some coke, so I set up a meeting between the two of them. After that, Hayashi wanted me to party with him, but I'm trying to get out of that whole scene, so I refused."

"And you haven't seen him since?" I asked.

Sandra nodded. I was sorry for her loss of a customer, but at least she was trying to stop her drug use.

In addition to the physical dangers, the stress on looks in the hostess profession increases the likelihood of self-image disorders like anorexia and bulimia. I had suffered and recovered from anorexia in junior high school, and even with that horrific experience in mind, I found myself worrying about my weight for the first time since then -- something I hadn't even done in high school when I was seriously dancing ballet. I'm 5-foot-10 and wear a size 6, and that seemed big to a lot of Japanese men. Some girls, though undeniably thin by American standards, nevertheless started dieting when customers reacted with surprise to their sexy curves -- hips not being a prominent feature of the bodies of most young Japanese women.

What's more, hostesses have to cope with a certain amount of obnoxious behavior on the part of customers. Because they're paying for your company, some of them wrongly assume intellectual superiority. Fortunately, because I became the favorite of several of Midori's most important (read: richest) customers, my popularity protected me against customers who became unruly when drunk or were just generally rude. I had, at least, the option of asking to be moved to a different table in difficult situations, and my request was sometimes (but not always) granted.

The constant competition can also wear on you. At Verdor there wasn't much cat fighting and back stabbing, mostly because the girls were too cash rich, or exhausted by work, to care. (None of us could fall asleep before sunrise, so after work we would often take our customers' tips and go out together for a bite to eat or dancing for the rest of the night.) Occasionally, however, a customer would decide it was time for a switch of girls, often when his most recent favorite was on vacation.

Like other hostesses, I felt some competitive pressure whenever I was seated, at Midori's discretion, with one of my customers and another girl. The other hostess would try her best to entertain him, of course, since that was her job, and even if she wasn't purposely trying to steal him, she couldn't help it if he transferred some of his interest from me to her.

Toward the end of my tenure at Verdor, for example, I was forced to share Mr. Kajiwara, one of my favorite customers, with another hostess -- a loss I registered more on an emotional than a financial plane, as he alternated his dinners out with me and her. Even in a world of illusion, rejection -- on whatever level -- still hurts.

Perhaps the worst-case scenario is of the hostess who becomes trapped in this environment, addicted to the fleeting adulation of men and convinced she can do nothing else. One hostess I knew was an absolutely gorgeous, 37-year-old Brazilian woman who had made a killing when she first came to Japan 15 years before. Now, even her beauty couldn't make up for the fact that she was getting older -- an unforgivable sin in the world of hostessing -- and her salary was fast decreasing. She spoke six languages and had a degree in architecture, yet she still felt like she couldn't leave this job. Maybe cases like this are the reason many customers said to me, "What are you doing in a place like this? Get out while you can."

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