Crossing the Mirage:Passing Through Youth

"What a way to get cheated!‟ Chandra thought, amused all the same. "For all I know, she could've been a mere passer-by. How smart of the fellow to have devised this ruse to deceive the unsuspecting! It's all due to the hush-hush ways of the paid sex that one tends to give allowances to secretiveness. If only to eliminate the scope for cheating, given that it is no less a crime, isn't that a reason to legalize prostitution? But then, is not cheating a grassroots phenomenon that makes us a nation of cheats, what with the leaders and the led alike cutting corners?‟

"Coming to the paid sex,‟ he thought as he dragged his feet in disappointment, 'what's the hitch if women opt for sex work when it's okay with men making money on the sly? What's wrong if women choose the calling on their own? Let need or greed be the driving force why should that bother any? Why not let them use their allures to make a living or whatever? Won't licensing sex workers dampen the recruiting agents? What with the availability of the willing for the asking, where would be the need for the pimps to go to lengths to lure the gullible? Won't then flesh trade be conducted on a level playing ground? But, sadly the unscrupulous lure the hapless into it to untold misery and depravity?‟

"Well, it won't happen in a hurry in our society,‟ he sighed for the plight of the women he frequented, "for we make a hypocritical bunch of a people. What an irony indeed that the very brothel-mongers assume politically correct postures from the pulpits. What to say about the so-called public opinion? Why, isn't it the biases of the masses stemming from their collective ignorance? Worse still, it is the outcome of the cumulative frustration of the deprived who cannot afford what life offers. Don't all men like to have a fling or two with women and where else can they lay their eager hands on women than in brothels? But then, it's either the lack of the means or the fear of the decease that keeps men away from the whores. And it is they who are at their vociferous best when it comes to condemning sex scandals! Oh, how the indignation of hypocrisy comes to shape the policy of the State! Well, that's what politics is about and so God save the whores. And as things won‟t change in a hurry, it is as well that I'm on my guard meanwhile. But oh, what a woman she is!‟

After a rendezvous or two with the alleged housewives, he thought he discerned the difference between the amour for hire and the sex for sale. "The part-timers enjoy being enjoyed,‟ he reasoned, "and the whores neither enjoy nor give joy.‟