(Subtitle: Meditations upon empathising in harbouring ambitions of being a junkie hooker for at least twenty thousandth of a microsecond)
If there was anybody who came closer to more than a microsecond of harbouring any ambitions of being a junky hooker, that person might be me. It's crazy, I know, but thankfully, the fever passed as quickly as it gripped me. Before, I had any chance to act out that seemingly insane sort of ambition, which would rank up there with mass murderers and the guy who has to clean the cages in the zoo, it left, as if driven from me like a bad spirit exorcised from the depths of my soul. Despite its terribly limited time with me, I managed to glance some insight into such a lifestyle.
If there was one attractive feature of such a lifestyle it is its sheer simplicity, in essence. Screw people for money. Buy and use drugs. There you go. A complete and total lifestyle in eight words. You cannot get any simpler than that. Of course there is the attendant necessities such as rest, preserving one's physical condition appropriately to be able to carry out such a lifestyle, place to stay, etc. But simplicity in what it is you are all about. Drugs and sex. And by drugs, I mean the hardcore, addictive stuff like heroin. The burn out rate however, I imagine, would be pretty damn quick. Thing about the cake and eating it and then wanting to keep it all applies there.
And this is simple compared to say a typical Malay middle class local graduate who had to borrow money for his tertiary education (okay the last part is fiction). Quickly find a job so that he can pay off his loan, and establish himself by looking for a place to settle down (if he is not staying with his parents, or even if he is, he will soon), get a set of workable wheels, there's his social, familial and love interests to occupy his hours of leisure aside from his own interests. And suddenly things get complicated. He has many things to juggle. Comparing this to the junkie hooker's lifestyle, we see how the latter triumphs the former in terms of simplicity and, as a friend of mine one's described those things, in putting down no 'anchors'.
But the junkie hooker's ultra-simple lifestyle pays the price of limitedness. That choice is one which is very hard to unmake in one sense, and in another, that he will never feel or experience many other things in life other than drugs and sex and the limited range of emotions that lifestyle can only foster (pun intended). And that's what that middle class lifestyle that is progressing would allow, the possibility of the full range and depths of human emotions and possibilities. There is now room for travel, literature, laughter, companionship, for a healthy sort of love to blossom just as they will disappointment, tears and sadness. The point is that there is wealth of experience to be enjoyed and should be.
The horror then of that lifestyle is that a whole world of possibilities and existences is reduced, if not utterly annihilated, to sex, money and drugs, and even that not for very long. There would be little life left in that style. It is the death before death. But I can see how some people who need to escape so far away from everything and simplify their lifestyle so ruthlessly. Sometimes the world gets too great for them and there is no other way. They run, they hide. They simplify. I feel sorry and sad for them now instead of a sense of disgust which I may perhaps feel if confronted with them in real life.
Removes fishnet stockings and thick colourful make up from face.
Say, uh, anybody got a joint or something?
If there was anybody who came closer to more than a microsecond of harbouring any ambitions of being a junky hooker, that person might be me. It's crazy, I know, but thankfully, the fever passed as quickly as it gripped me. Before, I had any chance to act out that seemingly insane sort of ambition, which would rank up there with mass murderers and the guy who has to clean the cages in the zoo, it left, as if driven from me like a bad spirit exorcised from the depths of my soul. Despite its terribly limited time with me, I managed to glance some insight into such a lifestyle.
If there was one attractive feature of such a lifestyle it is its sheer simplicity, in essence. Screw people for money. Buy and use drugs. There you go. A complete and total lifestyle in eight words. You cannot get any simpler than that. Of course there is the attendant necessities such as rest, preserving one's physical condition appropriately to be able to carry out such a lifestyle, place to stay, etc. But simplicity in what it is you are all about. Drugs and sex. And by drugs, I mean the hardcore, addictive stuff like heroin. The burn out rate however, I imagine, would be pretty damn quick. Thing about the cake and eating it and then wanting to keep it all applies there.
And this is simple compared to say a typical Malay middle class local graduate who had to borrow money for his tertiary education (okay the last part is fiction). Quickly find a job so that he can pay off his loan, and establish himself by looking for a place to settle down (if he is not staying with his parents, or even if he is, he will soon), get a set of workable wheels, there's his social, familial and love interests to occupy his hours of leisure aside from his own interests. And suddenly things get complicated. He has many things to juggle. Comparing this to the junkie hooker's lifestyle, we see how the latter triumphs the former in terms of simplicity and, as a friend of mine one's described those things, in putting down no 'anchors'.
But the junkie hooker's ultra-simple lifestyle pays the price of limitedness. That choice is one which is very hard to unmake in one sense, and in another, that he will never feel or experience many other things in life other than drugs and sex and the limited range of emotions that lifestyle can only foster (pun intended). And that's what that middle class lifestyle that is progressing would allow, the possibility of the full range and depths of human emotions and possibilities. There is now room for travel, literature, laughter, companionship, for a healthy sort of love to blossom just as they will disappointment, tears and sadness. The point is that there is wealth of experience to be enjoyed and should be.
The horror then of that lifestyle is that a whole world of possibilities and existences is reduced, if not utterly annihilated, to sex, money and drugs, and even that not for very long. There would be little life left in that style. It is the death before death. But I can see how some people who need to escape so far away from everything and simplify their lifestyle so ruthlessly. Sometimes the world gets too great for them and there is no other way. They run, they hide. They simplify. I feel sorry and sad for them now instead of a sense of disgust which I may perhaps feel if confronted with them in real life.
Removes fishnet stockings and thick colourful make up from face.
Say, uh, anybody got a joint or something?
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