What Hides Behind Closed Doors: A Prostitute’s Life

Condemned in the daylight, worshipped in the night – a prostitute’s life is one of paradoxes. Here’s an account of the life of ‘the other woman’.

It creeps in only at night, after all the voices subside. That is when you hear just you, like a whisper on a cold night that you can see from a distance but never judge. Softly, like warm silk, it grows on you, wrapping you into a comfort sheet. The voice talks to you, it is the same voice that led your heart to love. So misleading, but so convincing.

Sinking and lifting, like waves that break upon the same rock day in and day out. Noises subside, and you watch the world. The world is awake, but mute. In your mind, it is. Your sighing at constant intervals is the only sign that convinces you about you living. That, and a lonely dog, faintly howling in half-sleep, somewhere on an abandoned street on this cold night. Your mind travels there, to that street; that empty street where your footsteps echo against walls on both ends.

You are a beautiful woman, a living goddess inside a dying hearth.

In a shiny Mercedes that parks outside your door, they hoard into your life without a honk. They become a part of you, and in hushed voices that scream obscenity, they climb onto you, night after night. Do you scream? Do they beg you to? Those sweet nothings that they whisper into your ears, do they mean a thing?

But you lie there, stretched out like a sheet upon a carcass, too scared to move, stained in someone else’s blood. The stench seeps in you. If only every man came with a statutory warning, a label that warned women off. But even then, what good would that do? Your life is a Hobson’s choice – take it or leave it. You lay on that bed with no choices at hand. Yet, God has been good. Some kind men have come your way. Coming to unburden the feebleness of their character, they have shed tears on your shoulder.

Rational, strong men clothed in corporate suits, now all laying on your scrubbed floor. The floor, no matter how hard you scrub, still feels dirty to anyone else. “Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!”, Lady Macbeth mumbles while she continues to scrub the dirt out of her. You are another figment of Shakespeare’s creation. The muse for a thousand poems. Dirt within as well as without.

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Your beautiful face is a curse you have carried all your life. Who would have imagined the destruction that beauty brings? Who would have imagined what course life would take because of your moon-like face?

Your beautiful face is a curse you have carried all your life. Who would have imagined the destruction that beauty brings?

The moonlight filters into your room. So serene and chaste. How could anyone compare you to the moon that lies so far away from dirty hands poking every crater? Your craters have been defiled. Husbands and brothers and priests and true lovers, fathers and cons and doctors and lawyers, all have come your way.

Naked they lay on your bed, waiting to pounce like a cornered tiger. Even in their nudity you see the sham, the cover-up of a virtuous life. Those that talk of changing lives and ruling the world, those who cringe at the very sight of you outside closed doors, those that keep their women away from you, those that call you a prostitute without the least bit of realization that you have prostituted them.

A cauldron of lies emptied over hours of sleepless nights when  customers flock around waiting for turns. Each one smells different, and you hide the smell behind your cheap perfume. They make you happy at times, and at times you feel wanted. Behind that door you are a powerful woman. You make them forget the averageness of their mundane sustenance. You rule over many a hearts – which makes you feel important.

At least you give God an excuse to have brought you here. But the moment you step out of your bubble, you find your doom – the other woman. She looks at you and smirks. You watch her, hand-in-hand with the man who begged outside your door the other night. You feel sorry for this woman.

In her righteousness – that lies between the parting of her hair, and hangs around her neck like a noose – she condemns you, but you still win. Her insecurity and your profanity fit in like pieces of the same puzzle. Somewhere you still hear the dog whining in half-sleep. You watch and you wonder like on any other cold night. Your lives, in a funny way are intertwined, like a conundrum without an answer.

Pic credit: Image of finger on the lips via Shutterstock.

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