An Interview with Briny Dodo, the Fishlike Belgian Brothel Owner

Some people who have read my novel The Imitation of Patsy Burke have wondered aloud whether Patsy was himself molested by a Catholic priest during his youth. I am not going to give a clear answer to that question, but I was reminded of it when reading an interview given to the French newspaper Libération, and published this morning, by Dodo la Saumure, the Belgian brothel owner who, in the past few months, has often been mentioned in the same breath as Dominique Strauss-Kahn.




Dodo's real name is Dominique Alderwereld. 'Dodo' is short for Dominique. The French words 'la saumure' translates into English as 'brine', so a good equivalent for Dodo's French moniker would be Briny Dodo, or the Briny Pimp. To understand this, one needs to know that one of the most common French names for a pimp is derived from the word for the maquerel fish: 'maquereau'. One of the best ways to preserve and prepare a maquerel is to leave it in saltwater brine until such time as you wish to taste it. Thus, we get the information from the name Dodo la Saumure, that he is a pimp, still in the game, not yet prepared to be plucked out of the sea he navigates with ease.





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Briny Dodo has been interviewed quite a few times in the French press over the past few days. This is because he is looking for investors in the Belgian brothel business he wishes to expand. Keeping a brothel is a legal activity in Belgium, where Briny Dodo exercises his trade just a few miles from the French border. He was recently freed, after spending three months of preventive detention, because of his involvement in the so-called Lille Carlton Hotel affair, in which he was accused of procuring girls for friends of DSK.




Before I go any further I will,of course say, in this blog post that DSK is innocent until proved guilty of any charges that have been, or may be, laid against him.




So, where are the possible parallels between the Irish sculptor Patsy Burke and Briny Dodo? Here are some excerpts from the Libération interview conducted by Violette Lazard (who has also included Dodo's email address in her article, should you be interested in asking him a few questions about how best to get a share of his brothel business):




The conversation began in Dodo's brothel in the Belgian town of Tournai.

"I play naive. I ask Dodo about the morality of his business. The question shocks him. So much the better, that's the effect I wanted.

'What morality?' Brothels have always existed, the wife of Pericles ran one. And a woman who waits for her husband to bring the money home, isn't that also prostitution?'

So, he procures girls, and he's proud of what he does.

'I'm not a procurer of girls. I'm a brothel manager. All the girls here are free to do what they want."

Sitting in the back room of the brothel, where the paint is peeling off the walls, sits Rebecca, a beautiful black lady. She is waiting for her next client. She takes her eyes away from her computer screen for a few seconds and confirms, in a soft voice, what Dodo has just told me. 'The people who own the brothel are just there to make sure that everything is running well, from a security point of view, for example. This is a good place to work.'

It would have been difficult for her to say anything else. The conversation with Dodo continues very affably and then he shares a brutal secret, without giving any advance warning.

'When I was twelve years old, I was at a boarding school for poor children, and a priest gave me a blow job.' He says this as if he is putting the final nail into the coffin of any discussion about morality. 'But, don't worry about it, it was just run of the mill,' he said to me. 'It taught me a lesson.'

Dominique never told his parents about it. 'In those days, you didn't talk about things like that.'

So, is the tough-skinned pimp hiding a secret wound?

'No, he didn't even penetrate me, so it wasn't that bad. And all that has nothing to do with what I'm doing today.' End of that part of the discussion.

The discussion was taken up again, a little later, in a small bar in the center of Tournai, where Dodo is the bar's mascot. He pays his round.

'There are 800 brothels here, why close only Dodo's down?' says Edith, one of the waitresses, as she cuts garlic sausage and white pudding before she puts it in front of us on the bar. 'He should never have gone to prison.'

When Dodo was in preventive detention, all the café's customers sent him a letter, and signed it with nicknames worthy of his own. The local doctor signed as 'The Charlatan', Roger signed as the equivalent of 'Beau Brummel', because he has no dress sense. All of the locals burst into laughter as they remember the letter. Except for one, who finds it a little more difficult to make a light joke of everything, and prefers the darker approach. He provokes Dodo by saying, 'If the priest hadn't sucked you off, you'd probably have had a normal fucked-up life, and you'd never have become a pimp.'

Dodo denies this. The other guy won't let go. 'You owe that holy man everything. If I were you, (to thank him) I'd stick a candle up his ass.'

Dodo laughs, and begins to recount the history of brothels down through the ages. A fish who knows how to avoid a fishing net of questions."