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PENAL CODE
CHAPTER 43.
PUBLIC INDECENCY
SUBCHAPTER A.
PROSTITUTION

“Ok. So this is what you do. First you put on foundation, then blush, and make sure it looks good. Natural. Then you put on eye shadow and mascara, but don’t put on too much because then you’re going to look like a hooker.” At eleven years old, I now knew the fundamentals of how to put on make-up. After all, I was in middle school and I was noticing how the boys looked different, but I wasn’t sure why. I thought to myself that if I was looking at boys, then they were probably looking at me. The need to look good was beginning to embed itself in my young unconscious mind. As the years when by, I wore less clothes and compensated for it with a lot more make-up. Life is easier when other people think you’re sexy. How much you use it to your advantage is whether or not society will classify you as a woman, or turn their backs and call you a whore.

A few summers ago, a friend of mine was hanging out with the kind of people that could buy him stuff. His “buddies” pretty much consisted of bums who didn’t mind buying a pack of cigarettes or a brew or two, so long as they got a share. One day, I went to go visit my friend. Within five minutes of my arrival, we left to go to the low-key bar across the street. He had befriended one of the bouncers, who conviently gave him free shots of liquor throughout the summer. We had gone there in hopes of practicing a daily routine. When we got there, there was a plump woman with dirty blonde hair guarding the door. She wasn’t really that pretty, but it wasn’t like she was ugly either. It was her face, so worn down, with deep lines from heavy cigarette smoking, dark circles, and a raspy voice, again probably from all the years of smoking and drinking. She smiled with stained teeth and greeted my friend with an open hug that drove his face straight into her chest. She turned to me and said,
“Hi darling. I’m Brenda.”

Meeting Brenda just like that, I would have never known she was a hooker if she hadn’t told me. I didn’t see cold sores all over her lips, and it didn’t really look like she had AIDS either. But still, I thought to myself, “who in the hell would want to bang this broad?” Later, after I had actually talked to her, I felt disgusted with myself for my initial thoughts about her.

When I met Brenda, she walked me through the trials and tribulations of hooking. She talked about her occupation so freely, so openly, like she was doing nothing wrong. Hooking was just her second job and she believed she was doing a service to the community, to all those unsatisfied men so they could go to bed at night feeling like a man.

“It’s completely natural. Think about it. I’m a woman and I can make myself be any kind of woman, and that takes skill. I satisfy the needs and desires that everyone has. That is what I do. Honey, it’s a job. Once I’ve made my cash for the night, I’m going home to take a shower, eat a little, and sleep so I can wake up and come to work all over again. Believe me if it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t do it. I enjoy having sex, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that when it’s something you do day and night, when it’s not about how you feel, unless my client wants to be submissive, is when it gets hard. But that’s life. I’m a strong woman, and I’ve got to do what I need to do. Honey remember, you’ve gotta get yours ‘cause believe that I’m out getting mine.”

Just like when I learned how to do my make-up when I was eleven years old, there I was, a couple of years later, understanding what it really took to be a hooker. She wasn’t some skanky nymph that really wanted to have sex all the time. This was her life. She had to do what she needed to do and that’s all there was to it. Others view those with her lifestyle as part of the scum of society. But what harm had she really done? The infidelities that the Jon’s committed were not her fault. She didn’t go into peoples’ homes and destroy their families. All of her clients came to her, and that’s exactly what they were: clients, nothing more, nothing less. I realized all of the crap that she had to deal with from society, only because she was resorting to what she essentially was: a sexy woman.

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