Prostitution

16/7/99 Prostitution

People are prostituting themselves every day. The salesman who tells lies to all of his customers, or pretends to know everything, although he doesn’t. The young ladies who go to Mediterranean holiday resorts and stand outside bars exhorting customers to come in and have a drink. It’s as if they are your very best friend or perhaps they want to make love to you. But it’s all a front. They get paid to do this.

The actor who stands on the stage and pretends to be someone he isn’t. The lady in the bar who sits on your table and after talking for a couple of minutes asks you if you’re going to the bar, and her friends would like a drink too. The hard pressed draughtsman who works overtime and feels his real self died when he took this job on, but he must complete the orders on time or his boss may find someone else to do his work for him.

The guy in the quality shiny car who breezes down the bus lane in rush hour, past all the plonkers like me, who follow the rules, because if we can persuade people to travel on buses by making them faster, it would encourage more people to use them.

Why don’t we give him the horn? Why don’t we make some noise and show him up for what he is? Why don’t we? Is it because we’re too polite and well brought up? Is it because we’ve read about people getting angry and committing road rage? Is it because we’ve done the same thing ourselves on occasion? And perhaps he’s a friendly normal guy anyway.

Is it because we’ve been at work all day and we’re bored and flat and empty and there is no life left in us. Or is it because we’re so used to keeping our heads down and following the rules at work that we no longer feel we can complain about anything? Did we ever complain? Weren’t we too shy when we were younger? Aren’t we too worried that people might laugh at us, particularly now we’re older and slowly losing our looks?