Notes from Jillian's Diary
I've soaked my whole body in my tiny bath, and for an hour, I've been barely moving in this waterlogged cramped space because of the over all body pain I've been trying to ease from my twenty-two-year-old going on seventy-year-old body.
It's just good that one of my friends own a bed and bath store, and literally sent this bathtub to my tiny apartment when he heard that I live in my bathtub for hours after work, immersed in gallons of water mixed with coarse salt, to loosen the stiff joints and aching muscles of my feet.
The pain doesn't go away, and I look at my feet, and I could see the calluses and bunions getting thicker from being up on my feet for four hours. Ughhh!
My shift ended at 3am, and my usual routine is to go home and soak in my tub and wait until the Goodtimes show of Mo,Mojo and Grace Lee start at 6am. It's the best way to decompress and forget my momentary tiredness from my work.
In the olden days, they called us guest relations officers, but my sense of humor comes to the fore and I call myself a 'Millenial Geisha' because we have so many similarities from the geishas of the past.
Japan's revered geishas' sole purpose is to entertain a customer, be it by reciting verse, playing musical instruments, or engaging in light conversation. I do a similar role and although the nearest I can get to a poetry reading is when I read the words of a Coldplay song, I befriend all my 'Juans' because men who go to our club sometimes just needs someone who can listen to their gargantuan problems, personal or otherwise. Most of the time, all they need is a few spins around the karaoke, belting out some classic Frank Sinatra and Barry Manilow songs (now you know how old they are.)
The 'Millenials' (those born between 1975 and 1995,babe) do everything different, in case you've noticed. We are more attuned to the harsher realities of the modern world, and we are practical. We need to make money, but we don't sell our bodies to the first hokey customer's lurid proposals.
Like the geishas of old, I am not a prostitute. Those who are historically-challenged might not know that the real geishas do not engage in paid sex with clients. In the club where I work, selling one’s body to earn a living on the side is strictly discrouraged, although what one does outside the workplace is our own personal business. Some of my ‘sisters’ have done this out of necessity (perhaps one’s parent is in a hospital, usually a sibling’s tuition fee is due), but I’ve observed that once you start that road, it’s very difficult to turn around and head back to the old route. I’ve noticed that something changes in my friends’ eyes when they sell their bodies. In a few months they look like grandmothers - something has died in their eyes. Is it hope?
Many people ask why I work in these places. I ask myself the same question every day. I could work as a sales assistant in one of those high priced luxury stores, but I don't. I guess it's because I earn very well here, and while I'm finishing my studies, this is the best way to earn a living.
God gave me this beautiful body, this probing mind, street smarts to elude preying maniacs and doddering old fools, so might as well use it for some good. I plan to leave this place in two years. As soon as I’m through with school, I’m through with this gig.
And so one day , in one of my innumerable bath days, I was quite surprised when Grace Lee mentioned on the radio that she wholeheartedly trusted her boyfriend to go to clubs like ours.
When I heard it, at first I was disappointed with her. Then I became sad. Her words kinda felt discriminatory. She bunched all of us who work in clubs in one box. Name the stereotype – whore; dumbass; uneducated provincial lass, morally loose women, and the label fits.
It’s quite unfair because some of the nicest women I’ve known in my life work in these clubs. Many are bright, and very intelligent and majority go to school to finish their university studies. They might not have gone to hoity-toity schools like Grace Lee did, but we’re educated enough to know what’s right and wrong. In fact, and this might seem hurtful to Grace, many of us are more beautiful than her, and sexier too.Did she not think that perhaps the boyfriend could not fall in love with one of us?
If the boyfriend comes here often, since he is encouraged by Grace Lee, chances are that in a few months, there’ll be no boyfriend to speak of. One caller advised Grace that if she encouraged the boyfriend to go to clubs when he is single, he’ll develop such an appetite for this kind of entertainment that he won’t stop when he is married.
I agree. If I have a boyfriend, I’ll break up with him if he goes to a club without me. I’ve been inside the snake pit, and I know how its venom could kill.
I’m not naïve, as Grace is. I looked in the dictionary and naivete is defined as the state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical. It’s all this and more, I think.
Being naïve is like wasting one of God’s greatest gifts to human beings which is awareness, mindfulness – of one’s surroundings, one’s physical reality. Naiveté smacks of inattentiveness to human nature; specifically in Grace Lee’s case, especially if she's purposefully in denial that her boyfriend will not stray if encouraged to be surrounded by beautiful, usually half naked, nubile women.
But that’s her reality, and I can not judge why her viewpoint is this way.
In my case, if I operated on naiveté, I’ll be dead in a week. Being unmindful of my physical reality is not an option at all. I’ll be exploited by my ‘Juans’ as soon as they smell that they can take advantage of me, perhaps kicked out from school if I’m naïve enough to believe that winking or showing my booty to the prof will bring me nearer to graduation.
I started to shiver, and realize belatedly that my bath has turned into a turgid, pool. The water is cold and my half naked body is immersed in it for more than half an hour. I look at the clock and realize that the GoodTimes show has come and gone, and I spent my whole bath time going round and round on one sentence uttered by Grace Lee. What a waste of time. I look in the mirror and I look at my reflection. I look younger, more refreshed. Is it because of the bath? Or is it because I realized one thing that even Grace Lee could not fathom at all?
I laugh at the mirror in front of me. Yeah babe. I smile. This Millenial Geisha can teach a trick or two to Grace Lee. We’re not dumb, not dumb at all.
(Postscript: There was a lot of vehement reactions during the GoodTimes show today, when Grace Lee mentioned that she was allowing her boyfriend to go to girly clubs, trusting that nothing bad will happen to the relationship if she encourages this nocturnal activities. One of those who fervently held the opposite view is surprisingly the Twister himself, who hammered on man’s baser instincts to stray when surrounded by nubile, beautiful, half naked women.
I noticed that many people sometimes call Grace Lee as naïve, and these comments led me to want to explore what naiveté really means. Is it really innocence, or is it insidiously just plain inattentiveness, or a lack of awareness to the reality around you? What will harm you more, innocence or its complete opposite? Goodtimes!)
