Smarter But Just As Stupid

Prior to dating an ex-whore, I was pretty clueless about prostitution. The only prostitutes I knew anything about were those ladies out on the street who stared you in the eye as you drove past. I thought escorts were hired solely as arm candy and went home alone after dinner. I figured the transexuals who advertised in the free weekly paper were some sort of model.

Being in love with someone who had been in the business, I decided I needed more information and set myself a course of reading that varied from memoirs of ex-sex workers to scientific research. But it was my ex who tuned me into the the tremendous variety of forms that prostitution takes. The real eye opener was learning about the semi-pro, part-time hooking going on around me: the ladies who advertise in the paper for "generous" boyfriends, the women who supplement their day job by being doms a couple of nights a week, the guys who hang around the makeup counter at the department stores and are always ready to provide financial assistance if a sales girl can't quite make rent at the beginning of the month. For some women, it's a regular part time job. For others, it's a backup in emergencies, and others do it once or twice in their entire lives. Frequently, girls who retire from prostitution aren't so much retired as doing it on a less formal basis.

As a result of this education, I'm now more aware of clues that someone is trading sex for cash. Whereas before I just assumed that it wasn't happening, now I assume that it is. It would be nice to think that I'm more realistic now, but I have no way of confirming that. There's no independent, reliable source of information I can compare my perceptions with. For all I know, the change in perspective could be making my perceptions more accurate, less accurate, or equally accurate.

What I can say is that the type of error I make has changed. Before, I made the mistake of assuming that it was never happening. Now, in individual cases, I may be detecting indications of prostitution when it's not actually occuring.

That's one of the delusions of knowledge. We always assume that greater knowledge means greater understanding, but it may only mean trading one mistake for another.