Excerpt: Just A Normal Thanksgiving

I wish I could take my brain out right now and scrub those thoughts out of my mind and have them swirl down the drain like all the other remnants of last night. Why I can’t I wash it all away. Why can’t this shower wash it all away. Wash away the horrible stuff I had to do last night just to try and get ahead and life and make a better life for me and my family. Wash away the dirtiness I feel on the inside every time I left some guy use me, when I try to think about my wife sitting at home, living a lie. Wash away all the lies I’ve had to tell myself and tell my family about what I do for a living so I don’t have to deal with their questions and their opinions. Wash away this conversation I’m about to have, and make it never happen. Wash away the past few months and the next few months, so I can get to my real self and stop doing a job I hate so I can go to college and provide a good life to Amber. Wash it all away and become the new Michael, ready to face the world and job market with the degree I so sorely need.

Sigh. If only water could do that. All I want is to try and make it in life. But the things I have to do to get there are dehumanizing. I have to pretend I’m an entirely different person just to stomach it, and then I can go back to my normal self after wards. But that’s a lie, I’m not going back to my normal self. I don’t even know what my normal self is anymore. And I’m not whoever I was before this. Who I was before this would never be so lackadaisical about guys using his body, or being nude in front of hundreds of people at once. He would have thought these kinds of places should be shut down, he would have thought the kind of people who work at these are disgusting. But we’re not - so many of us are only doing this to save up money for something else, or to try and get ahead in life, or are only doing this because they lost whatever job they had before this and have nothing else they can do to survive. But the stigma, but the reality, it’s so disgusting. There’s nothing glamorous about it. I just want to scrub all of this off my body, scrub the feelings of those lips off of me. But no soap, no water, is strong enough to wash this away.

But then I would have to do this again every night this week. I can’t not go in. I have to go back. If I don’t, I won’t make enough money while I’m up here to go back with anything, and then what would we do for food? How would we pay the electric bill? How would we be able to afford anything if I don’t go back in. How would I ever be able to get an education, so I can have a real job and not whatever you can call this - sure, it’s a job because I earn money for performing a service. But its not a real job. Its not something that can be put on a resume and used to further my career. It’s a dead end, means to an end, that can easily threaten to become the means.

But what choice do I have. It’s this or nothing, this or poverty. This isn’t a choice. This is life. There’s not always a choice in life. Despite what some people like to think.