Compromises

One of my oldest and dearest friends has severe rheumetoid arthritis.  She is 33 years old, and it set in at least 5 years ago.  She had been a talented ballet dancer when she was young, having been asked to be a member of the Boston Ballet when she was graduating high school, but she opted instead to be a free wheeling hippie.  She ended up walking around the world with Buddhist monks, driving her VW Bus across the country, travelling all over South America, and backpacking around Europe, among other things, in her 20s.  She bought a tiny plot of land in a tiny town in Western MA and built a cabin on it with her own hands just before the arthritis really reared it’s head.

Realizing that she had what was probably a very serious medical issue, she decided to go to college so she would be employable off her feet.  Her knees swelled to the point where she couldn’t put on pants most days.  She was in extraordinary pain, and uninsured, facing a medical system that was as crumbled as her body.  Still, she excelled in school, and ended up with a full scholarship to Smith College, getting a shot in her ass every month to keep the arthritis at bay.  At this point, doctors couldn’t get a hard diagnosis, a part of the story I didn’t and still don’t completely comprehend.  This post could be about our horrible health care system, but it’s not.

Her health care issues were ironed out recently, and insurance coverage returned.  I guess the fact that she was a student complicated the issue.  She applied for a fellowship that would enroll her in a total immersion program in Egypt, so she could further her studies in Arabic.  The application process takes 9 months, and at the beginning of it she was uninsured so unable to get the medicine she needed to keep her knees from swelling.  She was in a wheelchair.  In the winter, she went to the doctor, crying, telling him that the only thing she wanted in the world was to be able to walk.  If she didn’t have anything else, she said, she wanted to walk.  He informed her that it would take time and patience, but that he thought that she could walk if she took a cocktail of drugs that required getting her blood tested every three weeks to assure that she was not in a state of toxicity.  She agreed.

After three months, she was walking.  At the same time, she found out that she was accepted to the program.  Her doctor, however, refused to write her a three month prescription for her medications, saying that she required constant blood tests to assure her body was processing the cocktail properly.  She had worked relentlessly at school, learning a language at the age of 33 that doesn’t even use her native alphabet, and had qualified for this program after only a year of study.  Understandably, she was devastated.  She once again begged the doctor, saying that she wanted to go to Egypt so badly, asking him to please let her, that she would be careful, and so on.  He sat her down and said that she had sat in his office three months earlier, saying that all she wanted to do was walk.  If she went to Egypt and entered toxicity, she may die.  If she went without medication, she would not be walking when she left.  He refused to advise that she go, and she ended up getting a local internship advocating for immigrants and their families in the Western MA area.

This story touches me because, obviously, this woman is my lifelong dear friend.  It also touches me because I can relate to being bound by circumstance, begging for one basic need, and when it is met, to find another.  At what point do we compromise? Can our compromises really set us free? When do we know that we have found the right one? I am going to write my next few posts about my search for employment, which is a basic need to flourish physically, emotionally, spiritually, and let us not fail to mention, financially.  What circumstances warrant a compromise here? How can what we do in the world be what sets us free?

My American Dream

What could be a big deal about doing taxes?  Honestly.  A couple of forms, basic math, and Q&A.  My public school education at Ralph C Mahar Regional High School in Orange, MA has easily prepared me to complete this civic task.  True to my now ancient Mahar habits, I waited until the last minute.  April 15th.  I thought I’d be in and out of it in under half an hour, but I had a few snafus.  After several hours, three computer programs, two phone calls to the IRS, endless gchat sessions with a patient Christine, and a panicked moment where I actually thought I owed more money than what is currently in my bank account, I actually did the old fashioned thing.  I just filled out the damn 1040 form without any fancy programs, usernames, or passwords.  I owed the IRS $5.03.  It was 5:30 PM, April 15th, 2009, at 1551 Madison St, Oakland, CA.

Printing my 1040 was a joy.  I signed the bottom, wrote my $5.03 check, attached the W2s and 1099s, and pranced around with my envelope.  Nothing like feeling like you’re a part of something.  I got to the post office, with change for a stamp in my pocket, at about 6PM.  A few people were there, but no one who worked there.  The mailbox said that the last pick up was at 5PM, and a note outside said that the only post office with late hours was at 1675 7th St.  I started walking toward West Oakland.  It’s a three mile walk through the changing landscape of a city some call violent.  I walked by boarded up houses, freeway overpasses, shabby mexican food joints that smelled absolutely delicious, and public housing with aesthetics that ranged from cage-like to Southwestern chi-chi condo style.  I entertained my latest fantasy as I walked: I will be hired for the job I interviewed for on Tuesday, I will get an apartment in Oakland with an open air porch and paint the walls of my kitchen pale sea green, I will join a yoga studio and have a hanging fruit basket that I also put my onions in, the windows will have gold curtains made with light fabric and the walls will be adorned with my own and my friends paintings.  I will have my friends over for dinner and art and music and games, and I will have a pasta machine and a cabinet where I brew kombucha tea…

I am in love with this daydream.  I return to it again and again.  When I am falling asleep at night, curled on the couch like a shrimp under a sleeping bag, this dream sends me away.  I carry it inside when I talk to prospective employers.  On April 15, it carried me to the post office.

The post office was a highly organized, ecclectic mob scene.  Cars screeched to a stop on 7th St, and a postal employee reached over the yellow tape to grab their envelope and stamp it with a postmark in front of them.  A TV News camera van was parked eskew outside, filming the Prop 8 activists demonstrating for marriage rights and the refreshment tables that sat behind yellow tape under tents.  I had to buy a stamp.

This post office is huge.  It is the Dallas Airport of post offices: with a Passport Center, a Distibution Center, at least 7 counter clerks, hundreds of thousands of post office boxes, and what seemed to be 2 city blocks of space.  I just needed to get over to the stamp machine, get my postmark, and I was toying with the idea of maybe joining in with the Gay Marriage proponents.  It was hard finding a stamp machine.  There were so many people inside the post office.  After about 5 minutes, I turned to someone in the line who was holding unstamped envelopes in her hand.  “Are you waiting to buy stamps?  Are there no stamp machines?”

“You’re kidding me.”

But here I am, at the post office.  I know my taxes will get mailed, they have been done, I am on time, and I want to have sea green walls in the kitchen I will rent in this city someday.  My life is really pretty good.  I will wait.  A postal employee in a suit and tie walked around, directing people to the stamps only line.  He got close and I asked him why there were no stamp machines.

“Company went out of business in December.  Yeaup, the economy got them too.  They were the only company out there that made stamp vending machines.  And we had just been buying parts to fix them ourselves.  They stopped servicing machines back in the summer.”

“Well I wanna know where their stimulus package is! Why did Wells Fargo get bailed out, but the stamp machine company missed it?!”

“Heh Heh.  I know.  A lot of people don’t like it.  But there is nothing we can do.”

The United States of America is littered with vending machines.   To be fair, we don’t hold a candle to Japan, where you can get hot coffee, cold coffee, whole meals, french fries cooked to order for Christ’s sake, beer, sake, small pieces of electronic equipment, and more from the many vending machines littering the country from the swarming streets of Tokyo to the smallest fishing villages on Shikoku island.  But what does it mean for us that we don’t have a functional mailing system?  Standing in line to purchase a fourty two cent stamp to mail your taxes to the IRS because the digital system is outsourced and untrustworthy is a dysfunctional, albeit charming intricacy of our country, and jarring enough to suck me out of my day dream for a minute.

I received a heavy box at the St James Post Office sometime back in late April or early May that contained assorted ancestral kitchen supplies and similarly domestic items on a day when I was meeting my mother in Oakland at my sister’s apartment. Ironically, it was my mother who had sent the items in the box, the fetching of which demanded that I backtrack to my house, or maybe my home, deposit the box, examine the contents, and re-embark to the bus stop to meet my family in Oakland. I cried that day from marvel, or something like it, a framed, somewhat faded photograph of smiling young hippie parents with a baby girl in a flouncy pink dress. The girl is staring straight into the camera, even though we all know she can’t see yet (I am almost legally blind and have worn glasses since I was 3) and the parents are both looking to the side. I see the baby there as the divider, the variable, the point of tension that makes the photograph stand out. And it couldn’t see what was coming, or anything….

I am in Western Mass right now. The forest here is a breathing and living entity that cuddles and curls itself and all of us creatures in a dance that we breathe inside, all of us completely necessary in our roles here. Outside of the forest, within the names, circles, and scenes, our points of tension and release begin with the swell of artificially induced survival.

That’s what I was trying to say when I typed that.

Quote Of The Day

It is really interesting to be putting in some time as a wage slave in America.  I believe it is good for a person to do so that they never get too disconnected from the reality of our culture and it’s institutional and subtle hierarchies.   I feel the need, however, to chronicle some of the experiences so that I can sum it all together at some point and find the words to paint the picture I see of this culture…

RebDog walked into the Breakroom to retrieve her box cutter from her locker.  Several people were sitting at a plastic folding table cluttered with dishes, magazines, and water bottles.  They were eating “lunch” and talking about anything but work.  (At these jobs, you don’t discuss job details on your break.  Doing so is social suicide in this environment.  Unless you are gossiping.)

“DAMN!!!! This is like the worst Four Twenty EVER!”

Edwin is a young man of Mexican origin whose baby momma just gave birth to his first child.  He is in his late teens or early twenties and smokes cigarettes awkwardly.  His weight shifts in a swagger when he walks due to his size.  He recently got a Mohawk hair cut.  RebDog likes him; he carries no pretention.  Unfortunately, his comment struck a nerve with her.  He continued.

“I’m gonna have to work until 12, and then it won’t even be 420 anymore!  I swear, I have never had a 420 like this!”

It is not Edwin that has hit a nerve.  It is Edwin’s pathology that has RebDog reeling.  She has been thinking about the relation of the slaveries of service, addiction, consumption,  obsession, martyrdom, worship, and ritual.

RebDog hopes her least favorite drug is legalized during her lifetime.  It practically is already in California, the state where this scenario played out.  Will April 20 be a holiday in that case?  Will that be like St. Patrick’s Day?  What about cocaine?  Bondo?  Heroin? RebDog doubts there will be holidays in those drugs’ honor.  She also doesn’t really think SPD is a holiday in honor of alcohol.  Which makes her think even more.

It is ludicrous that marijuana, RebDog’s least favorite drug that she has tried, is illegal.  However, a holiday in it’s honor does technically validate some of the irrational arguments about its’ dangers.  RebDog believes those arguments are based in futility, but that the use of a harmless but illegal substance will initiate an adolescently belligerent reaction, like the creation of a holiday on April 20.

Any other thoughts about this little breakroom eavesdropping session?

Lies

At a bonfire party recently a homely and heavyset woman in her late thirties sucked on a cigarette intermittently while explaining in dancing firelight that she really is a woman of power: fifteen years ago, she made out with Dave Navarro after a concert she attended. Do not let the title of this blog fool you, please, because I believe every word she said and I have no reason not to. So, “Jessie” made out with Dave Navarro fifteen years ago, and she has worked for Trader Joe’s now for at least five, enough to know what she is talking about when it comes to not properly cleaning the sink in the demo stand on Saturday nights. Jessie is a woman of power, and Jessie believes this about herself, and although I don’t think she is lying or that she is a liar, I don’t believe the lie.

Trader Joe’s is my current place of employment, and that sentence fragment felt like saying “I’m an alcoholic” at an AA meeting. It is a big purple elephant in my kitchen: I work as a slop at a yuppie grocery store, and I smile like I love it. The truth is that I smile. It is a good place to work for what I needed and wanted at the time that I applied: a way to connect with my immediate community, a way to get benefits like dental insurance, which the company is comparably generous with, and a meager paycheck that will give me proverbial pocket change to pay my baseline expenses. This is what I wanted and this is what I got, no less, no more. I am a slop at a yuppie grocery store. I am a wanna-be yuppie myself, which I presumed is why I was hired at this store back in October of 2007, when I kissed the 08 elections good bye. I like triple creme brie with vintage cab and the fresh thinly sliced organic baguette brushed with first press olive oil garnished with French olives like I saw in the farmer’s markets in Paris before I devour my scalloped sweet potatoes and side of melon and pear wedges with creme fraische and fresh mint, as anyone who has read this blog- the food entries especially- will be able to vouch for. But the modern yuppies- the New Yuppies, as they are, want their slaves to be slaves, and nothing more.

Incidentally, my new housemate, a woman with amazing energy and ZERO pretention, Nicole, said it best. “If these people could have a slave waiting for them outside in their car while they dine at (the restaurant she waits tables at), they would.” Nicole grew up in this valley, in Morgan Hill, which I understand is still somewhat farm land, and I believe her every assessment of my surroundings. She is really smart and a straight shooter, an artist, a talker, and she is really fun too. I like her and I love having her living in my house. She cuts to the chase, which is the opposite of lying.

Fast Forward, or Rewind, or both. I am wearing my black Trader Joe’s sweatshirt, with my red oval “REBEKAH” “CREW MEMBER” name tag. Can you believe it? It’s true. I am also wearing a denim mini skirt with striped stockings and the funky strappy high black moccasins I bought in Paris. I am working in the demo, or free sample, stand in the Trader Joe’s on Coleman Ave.

A man, a very non descript, San Jose-ish man, approaches. I am holding an entire French Apple Tart in one of my exceptionally large and latex gloved hands. The other hand has a pizza cutter in it and is slicing the edges of imperfectly cut pieces of tart that must be put on plates so there is room for the fresh tart, the one that just came out of a 475 degree convection oven and is currently being balanced on my slowly burning latex gloved left hand, to be placed on for cutting and serving to the Royalty. I smiled at the man, who I assumed was going to take a piece of tart with sharp cheddar cheese that was placed out for him. He had an air of urgency.

“Excuse me, could I PLEASE have some of the blueberry soda?!” he said instead.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME??? The blisters were forming on my fingers, I was sure of it. Well, maybe not. But it was a good 45 seconds before blueberry soda would even make sense to the rhythm I live with in that station, and this is MY show, but here we have someone who doesn’t let such a thing exist. We have someone who lives in ‘”Well, what if I wanted—” Instead of swearing at him, I decided not to be remotely like Jessie, who I think is the picture of slavery. I wanted to teach this well meaning yuppie what his presentation looked like. Maybe he didn’t get it.

“Oh, OK, I’ll just stop what I’m doing right now so I can cater to your immediate, imagined and whimsical need. No problem. You wanted what did you say? Blueberry?”

“Please.” The man replied.

That tart set before it got the sugar sprinkled on it, which it is supposed to have right away, and after he sampled three kinds of soda and many other people didn’t get tart even though it was right in front of them, that man complained about me to the 24 year old overweight and overserious man who is IN CHARGE of ME, and that man, named Rickie, who has the POOREST managerial skills I have seen in my career, (whatever that is) ordered me “outside for a cigarette”

I don’t smoke. I don’t lie. Get it?

“Did you really say, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll drop everything and cater to your imaginary need for a sample’ to a customer?” Rickie said to me, holding his pack of Parliaments out as he did.

“No thanks, I don’t smoke,” I replied, “I don’t remember exactly that, I mean, is there a problem? Because, I’m cool, I mean, I don’t know what that’s about. If someone wanted to have a bad day then I really don’t have the personality that is going to assuage that, you know? That means to soothe them, sorta. Sorry. Yeah. If they want a bad day and they want to shit on someone, well, they’ll get it. You and I both know that.”

“Well, lets not have anyone else complain about you, OK? Let’s just walk on eggshells for the rest of your shift, OK?”

“You and I both know that if someone complains about me it is because they wanted to complain about something. I am not promising you anything.”

“Let’s just not have anyone complain. Just walk on eggshells, if they complain to my boss, he will make you apologize personally to them. I have seen it happen.”

HA!!!!! “Well, I mean, I love ya Rickie, but you know, I would just hafta say, I love you, and, I would never do that, you know?”

Rickie looked shocked, and hurriedly pulled on his cigarette. “

So, we both know he wanted a bad day, and no lies, let’s just get back to work…”

I need to call the Stagehand’s Union

And go back to school.

Art is Alive in San Jose?!

Last night I went downtown to the VooDoo Lounge to check out a band that, according to legend, started in the basement of this house, called the Shitkickers . I had planned for several weeks to meet my up and coming roommate there after we both got out of work, and was looking forward to doing something in California that I used to do regularly at home.

So the VooDoo Lounge has some cool lighting and artsy, creepy ecoutremants that make it live up to it’s name. I approved. What really got me though, was the monstrous painting that was being painted by five artists on a little catwalk as the show was going on, to the side of the stage. Backs to the audience, these katts in the Pacific Art Collective were working independently and as one on this big, long painting in the style of Loruh Golden’s intense pencil paintings, only with paint and marker and as a performance of itself. This was something I had envisioned for the Shoestring Players way back before it became, well, what it still is. Wow. I was so inspired by and turned on to this, it almost didn’t matter that the band ROCKED!

Shitkickers are a punk band with a bluegrass jig going on. There is a washboard, a banjo, a fiddle, and some yelling. It reminded me of the Drunk Stuntmen Days in Western Mass. I am happy to see that art is still alive and well, in proximity to me, and something I can still relate to.

Tired and Dehydrated and

Coming Back To Life.

He Got Me

I hope that people have time and inclination to watch this, the whole thing.  I’m on board now.  I don’t care if they are just words; they are the words of a human- a smart human- and not the political machine.

Royal Stir Fry

My mom is visiting from the East Coast right now… staying with my sisters in Oakland, and actually came down to the old San Jo yesterday for an afternoon of walking around, gardening, eating at Good Karma Vegan Cafe on S 1st St in San Jose (please go there) painting, and reading articles aloud to me from the various Philosophy magazines that she enjoys. It was great to see her and I was so thrilled that she made the trek down the 880 to chill because I really like my scene and I could tell she did too.

Good Karma is the hippest thing going in Downtown San Jose. Ryan and Elise are friendly, in the honest real love kind of way, and you can taste it in the food. The balance of flavors in the Lemongrass Tofu is perfect, and I like that they always have some brown rice available, along with perfect salad (try the vegan chipotle dressing) and they also serve beer and wine now. We had the house ale on tap (my mom had two, I had one) and enjoyed the brightly colored nudes on the wall as part of the current show. Good Karma always has some kind of art show going on. They have a little bar where you can sit and talk to Ryan or Elise while they are behind the counter putting your food together, and I saw a guy in there with a laptop so I wondered if they have wireless. So yeah. I like the lemongrass tofu and the stuffed tofu rolls also.

Today I got to Oakland a lot later than I wanted to. After going to my nephew’s gymnastics practice with my mom and sister, Marjorie , my mom and I went back to Marj’s apartment where dinner happened. Making dinner is the arena where my mom will put her hands up in the air and say that I know more than her, although she decided it would be a tofu stir fry, her favorite thing. So she was an amazing help and there was lots of fun. Thought I would share the recipe with you, whoever you may be.

1 package WildWood Extra Firm tofu. please use this brand. It is ridiculously firm cubed 1/2 in

1 large yellow onion, chopped small

1 smallish head of garlic, minced

1 1/2 in ginger, minced

1 leek, chopped/sliced

1 red pepper, cut in 1/2 in pieces

1 bunch fresh basil, stemmed and rinsed well

3/4 cup peanut satay sauce (embarrassed to have not made it myself, lol)

dashes tamari

juice of one fresh lemon my mom picked from my neighbor’s yard

olive oil

curry powder

hot pepper-ness optional

mix the satay sauce with a little extra tamari and olive oil. let the tofu sit in that glop as long as you can muster. in a 10 ” cast iron skillet preferably, heat the onions in plenty of olive oil til they are yellowy-see through, and then add the garlic, ginger, and curry powder. reduce heat and have mom stir. after 5-7 min of this nonsense, add leek and tofu. return heat to medium/medhigh, and add the pepper. three minutes later add the basil and lemon juice. turn the heat up full blast and make sure mom stirs. ours started to get a little dry and i mentioned that i thought we needed more moisture. she had just handed me a beer (Stella Artois) and went for the water in the tea kettle, but i dumped 1/4 of the beer in there instead.

Also we had fresh asparagus from the Farmer’s Market. I trimmed it and took the juice of 2 lemons (mom picked from my neighbor’s backyard) 1/8 Cup olive oil, salt, and pepper. bake at 400 degrees for 5-6 minutes.

Hell yeah people.

Salad and Running and Paints, Oh My!

I am totally glowing right now because I got back from a 2 1/2 mile run, stretched, and made and ate the most delicious salad.  Dennis even licked out the bowl.  The red and yellow tomatoes in it are from the still life of tomatoes I painted for my kitchen yesterday.  Oh, I should explain.  I am reading and following (to some extent) the Artist’s Way, which I refer to as the Artist’s Gestapo.  Part of what I have observed from the lessons I almost always dutifully follow is that my house is devoid of expression.  Thus, I have committed to painting ANYTHING, just something to make the house have some pizazz… so right now it is vegetables for the kitchen.  This is partially responsible for the salad I created tonight.  I would love to babble more but I am feeling the need not to look at this computer any more so here we go:

DK Lickin Salad

1 5oz bag of Organic baby spring greens

1 1.75oz package of Organic Micro Greens from Trader Joe’s

1/4 cup slivered almonds (more if you like it real nutty)

1/4 cup dried turkish apricots

1 organic red medium round tomato

1 organic yellow medium round tomato

1/3 cup organic  extra virgin olive oil

2-3 T Seasoned Rice Vinegar

1 T Toasted Sesame Oil

2 T pureed garlic

Ground Black Pepper

you want to cut the apricots with kitchen scissors into teeny tiny bits, and mix with the rest of the dressing ingredients and let it sit for a while, or as long as you can wait, before putting on the salad.  Chop the tomatoes into 1/2 inch cubes, preferably with a fancy pants serrated knife like the one Dennis and I bought with our Macy’s gift cards from his Mom… yup, excuse me, tee hee.

This salad was enjoyed this evening with Foodie’s Merlot and Light Rye Wasa Crackers with Organic Whipped Earth Balance spread on it.

Thanks to Trader Joe’s, World Market, and the Japanese Grocery between 5th and 6th Streets on Jackson Street in San Jose, CA.

Bon Apetit!

Emperor’s Club VIP

Eliot Spitzer, sexaholic. He likes to do things that “like, you might not think would be safe.” Wow, Eliot, what does that mean?! No one can tell me that every human who read the article with that quote didn’t speculate. Why? Because we all like sex! Every one of us! And it doesn’t cost us our jobs!

Of course, the point is that Mr. Spitzer, to hide his soirées from his family, the IRS, and his constituents, paid for them by depositing monies into “shell” accounts, in order to make them look like business transactions. When a high ranking government official does something like this, it looks to the IRS like political scandal, and you can bet your lippy they will investigate. So Eliot could be looking at 5 years in prison, not because he saw a prostitute, but because he tried to hide it.

I am so sorry for Eliot Spitzer and all men and women who feel they need to hide their sexual escapades. It sounds like Eliot was not really the marrying kind of guy: an ambitious thrill seeker with a wandering eye. Capable of governing a state? Absolutely. Capable of monogamy? Obviously, No. In American culture less so than in European culture, a person is not trusted by the public unless they are married for the first time (How many single high rolling politicians out there?) straight, religious, blah blah. But the whole field of politics, and breaking industries like biotech, etc, is unstable and requires the energy of men and women who are free thinking risk taking thrill seeking workaholics. And how do these people get a release? Not by going to church with the wife and kids and then to a home cooked supper afterward, followed by the bimonthly missionary style quickie with the lights turned off, I promise you. But still we hold these guys accountable to piousness, and it is part of the theatrics for them, I suppose. So they have to lie to cover up their human nature, and sometimes they inevitably get caught. Stupidity? Absolutely not. The stupidity is that they have to conceal it in the first place.

Something the media is not talking about is the Emperor Club VIP staff (actually I guess they are independent contractors.) Notice I didn’t say “girls” which is really the right term. I am really interested in the Emperor Club VIP because their claim is that all of their ICs are beautiful and educated. I wondered how many of them are trying to pay off student loans while making 77c for every man’s dollar. The blogs are just balking at these women right now, as if any educated and truly beautiful woman with class could not be a call girl. I say to you all: BULL SHIT. Women are thrill seekers sometimes, too. Women who are beautiful and intelligent can be swept up like Silda Wall-Spitzer by men like Eliot who break promises they never should have made, or they can take the upper hand and the road to the bank.

Let’s look at the money. We really don’t know what Kristen’s rating was, but we do know that Eliot’s activities were being investigated for the last year+ due to large amounts of money being dropped into the shell accounts. Let’s assume Kristen had the highest rating in the Club. That means that the Club receives $5500 per hour for Kristen’s services, and Kristen receives a little more than 50% of that. (Kristen is gypped her in my opinion, but let’s continue anyway.) Let’s be liberal and assume that Kristen gets $3000 per hour. That means that Kristen came out of 24 hours of being at Eliot’s service with $72,000 take home. My friends, that is about $10,000 short of two years of tuition and fees at Smith College, where there are many educated, classy, beautiful young women. Even if Kristen had the lowest rating, she still earned between $650-$1000 take home per hour, which is a good amount of money to keep up in the man’s world.

In case you can’t tell, I am pro-prostitute. I think that lying is shameful, disgusting, hurtful, and deserving of the line “dug my keys into the side of his pretty little souped up four wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats….” But I don’t think that the problem is the John or the Girl. The problem is that people are ashamed of sex and afraid of independence. Most people should not be married right now; divorce rates and the billion dollar sex industry prove this. So I say, Go Eliot! Hell Yeah, Kristen! They both deserved to have their needs met. Maybe someday it won’t take a millionaire to provide a decent education to a young woman, and a wedding ring to make or break a career.