It has been said that prostitution is a victimless crime. That a girl-man transaction being a gentleman’s agreement of sorts, neither of them is really a victim. But moralists will tend to differ. To them, prostitution should not judged in isolation but on its effect on the larger social fabric. The man who sleeps with a prostitute has fun, but his family could suffer. What if the girl infects him with a nasty disease, which he passes on to his wife, an innocent party? What if he spends the rent and school fees on the girl? Or better still, the money is stolen from him? Is the collapse of a whole family worth the feeding of a single girl who drinks so much and doesn’t seem to really care about her body? Mmmmm.
Not that the men who visit street girls are blind to the side effects, if any, of their actions. There are many who have not abandoned their families for the street girls. Johns who run happy families and take great care to not compromise them in any way. Men with wives are as good in private as they are in public, but still they visit the street.
From my economics class I can remember some musings on choice and rationality. That one stops doing something only when the incentive to stop is larger than the incentive to continue. On the face of it, there are many advantages to quitting the dilly-dallying with prostitutes rather than continuing. But that is only a quick analysis that ignores the subtle benefits of a session with a girl. Some of which I have highlighted elsewhere.
On the other hand, and from the same economics class, I remember something about irrationality. Not all decisions human beings make are rational. There exists irrational compulsion, which makes people act in ways that are thought to lead to their own destruction but can’t resist it even when there are better alternatives. I doubt visiting a prostitute or being one is a result of irrational compulsion.
These thoughts were triggered by a man in his forties who happened to be one of my first clients this year. The same way I had hoped not to be on the Street this year is also the same way he had hoped not be picking girls. ” Why do you want to quit?” I asked. ” I don’t know. I think I have been doing this for too long.”. But rather than interrogate him on his motives for picking girls, and now for stopping, I turned the conversation to me. I went on and on about how I had planned to quit but failed too.
The sex was plain, perhaps the realisation that we were doing something both of us hated at the time. (I have since thrown myself back to the street without any doubt.). And when we lay on the bed for a few minutes after the romp, I thought here we are two failures who can’t summon enough will to say no. Or here are two Kenyans feeling the pressure to conform to the good of society.
The man paid me Ksh. 3000, double the amount I had asked for. It was not a bonus. For such plain sex, I felt he was giving away all the money he had planned to spend on girls that week. I wish he had on him all the money he had budgeted to use on girls the whole year.
“Will you be back?” I asked, tongue in cheek. “You won’t see me again,” he said.
Silently, I wished him good luck. I am sure he will be back, perhaps a happier man than if he quit.
