Prostitution in the Gulf

Where the mange dogs go to die or toying with prostitution

Prostitution has always been something I have had a natural aversion to, it just doesn't seem right to me either as a potential buyer or seller of services. It seems (in best pompous voice) grubby and corrupting and unimaginably degrading for both parties yet it does appear to supply a type of need. However, grubby and seamy as it may be I once lived in a flat overlooking a street in the red light district of a deep Spanish town it provided great street theatre for me and my pals up on the balcony with a glass or three of Rioja watching the amusing comings and goings. It also helps being on friendly terms with the genial women and and gypsy runners and minders in the local scoring bar watching genial whores hustle and the hustlers whore - the majority of clients seemed to then be nervous virginal conscripts who would then, a fleeting and unsatisfactory orgasm later, reappear with a cheesy grin and go and score a hunk of dope and a beer and then shuffle out with their pustulous pals. As outsiders we were treated well and were doubtlessly unaware, possibly wifully,  of any ugliness that may have been going on...

So I am well aware that the foul temptation of a quick trick does occasionally hit upon many a man good and true, especially in this part of the world in which new thrills and excitement are always sought and needed for Expatland, or at this soulless part, can indeed be a conscience free zone. Eyes can easily be turned by an exciting and tempting short deal with particularly dirty and filthy, certainly amoral folk. Yes, I held my nose and put in an application for a post to sell my undoubted talents, modesty and soul, definitely my soul, to some particularly nasty military carpetbaggers in Saudi a place I swore I would have nothing to do with, a place that is Yemen or Afghanistan with money and some medieval magic rocks, governed by superstition, a fucked up version of a messy religion and rich inbred men with beards. A candidate for the worst country in world. Yes, the Big Company - big in guns, oil, torture equipment probably too, like all Big Bad companies they had controlling shares in the appalling criminal Bush / Cheney gang. 

Lest we forget

Attractive eh? Of course,  as they and you and I know, it's only about the Very Large Salary, and great conditions - albeit in the modern Middle Ages - paid for teaching of the very lazy rich, uninterested people laced with an odour of in-breeding...and then I would be surrounded, in a luxury compound with the delights and frolicsome fun enjoyed by other well paid low life whores. It is the place where the dead mange ridden dogs go to scratch, rut, and die...I know I have met many. Refugees in the EFL world, once on the outside they tend to have a dead eyed glassy stare brought on by the soul shredding hell-Horrors they have seen and the contortions of conscience they have made, and many, most disconcertingly, are called Colin.

Whither the idealism of career entry in education? Well, everyone has their price (yes YOU do)...do I? I have done the maths and (wistfully) most tempting and tantalising I could never need to suffer the indignity of being an economic migrant, being an educational wage slave again after three years. I would never have to consider the possiblity of walking into a secondary classroom again or have a McJob in an EFL languish school......it's a tax-free temptation that's for sure. Mucky and grubby all the same.

It might be a laugh, it might indeed be worthy, I might even touch a few lives. It does happen in teaching. I have been around, seen some mostly amusing but despairing things, I have survived the worst of over-promoted incompetent micro-management  (that's you Rachel), feral students, unsupportive, failed parents and of course useless education ministers that prat Gove being the latest dangerous incarnation. I can keep my mouth shut and my head low, I can keep my face straight now when folk get all Bronze Age religious on me and try to convince me their fairy tales are true and that their god is better than the other guy's god. I can usually find the good things in a culture and people and always meet good folk on the EFL circuit who are not cat lovers, sports bores, terminally lonely, or need those special holidays in the Philippines but perhaps my biggest advantage is not being called Colin.

Choices choices....