A lot of my dreams are like complete stories. Sometimes I fantasise about writing a novel, but there is always one major problem (not to mention my lack of style and descriptive talent): I feel unable to invent a credible character.
I completed ‘In the heart of the country’ by Coetzee. The characters in that book seem so real. In fact they seem to be more credible than myself. A great writer, I will read more of him.
By the way, dreaming of being a prostitute for a woman perhaps means that she wants to have attention and being rewarded too. Maybe.

Last night i dreamt i had to make dinner for all of you on this website. I was so busy that one of the visitors accidentally killed my doughter by standing on her head.
But first i want to read Coetzee know. I became curious. I have never read something of him. So thank you all for mentioning him.

daughter, i mean

Coetzee

I've read Michael K., now I'm reading Inner Workings (essays). I think I like his essays better.

@Anna Schumlanski
Your dream made me laugh, especially the way you tell it. Sorry, I hope it was not me who smashed your daughters head, sometimes I am so clumsy.

I once had a dream about Arnon, in which he said that if I ever wanted to be a writer, I should write daily. He also said I should complain less. It seemed very real.

There are people who believe they can meet each other in their dreams. So when they are awake they make an appointment in a pub where they will have a drink together, while sleeping/dreaming. And they do! Dreaming!
A few nights ago I had (a dream)dinner with Arnon. Even if he doesn't believe in it, I ought to thank him. It was cosy. Thank you Arnon.

Don't all women sooner or later dream they are prostitutes?

All women sooner or later dream they have dinner with Arnon.

I remember only once my girlfriend and me dreamt exactly the same dream the same night. Anybody noticed some dreams can continue like a sequel over the years, as if we live different life stories?
But I never dreamt of Arnon, yet. I suppose he is a real gentlemen, like in Vera M’s dream.

'But I know that witnessing the happiness of a married couple is for an author sometimes happiness enough.' How carefully worded this thought is!
I am not Freud.

Jan

Taoists believe that this life is just a dream.
Appararently Lau-Tze once said: am I a butterfly who dreams he is Lau-Tze, or am I Lau-Tze, who dreams he is a butterfly?

I fell a sleep last night dreaming that Arnon had dinner at Sant Ambroeus. I woke up this morning dreaming that I started a new career as a prostitute.

was being in a pool of mud, with Arnons legs around your neck, part of that dream?

Let us hope we don't have the same psychiatrist.

Prayer to a prostitute

Mother into thy hands I commend my body.
Erbarme Dich…

Vera

I was reffering to the clip on You Tube.
There's a short clip featuring the mud wrestling contest in Kortrijk.
The lady in the pool is Mieke, right?
Or is it you?

No insomnia over here, i presume.

I dreamt about Freud quickly kissing Arnon after a satisfying conversation about hysterical women and how it affected their own lives. I felt Jung dribbling behind my back as i came back too with a dreamteambook. We all stared for hours at the under cover of the book until Topor woke me up with his inky laughter. Thank God the breakfast was for real that morning!

@ Margot

I haven't seen the clip on youtube yet. Did they put that scene in it? Everything happened so quickly that I have almost no memory left of the fight, but no I didn't dream of the mudwrestling contest.

Dear Mieke

It was so funny to watch. I had to watch it over and over again. When Arnon grabbed your hair I did wonder what the rules were, or if there were any.
You are a brave girl.

youtube

Mieke,
The clip wasn't from the official moviemaker Alexander Koning.
I just noticed the clip from Youtube was removed.

@f.fiddelaar...
can it be the Grunberg-syndrome?

Margot

For a while I thought that I was a Taoist.

Arnon

What made you think otherwise?

@ Vera

I used to have a friend with whom I made appointments in my head while dreaming, day or night, and then we did meet, somewhere in town, in Leuven or Brussels. We did that for a very long time, but it all ended sadly.

Freud and prostitute

I said to a girl friend of mine "I thought of Saskia de Coster, and then I thought of you" but she didn't like it. I mean, it's better than "I thought of you, and then I thought of Saskia", isn't it?

Vera M.

The Grunberg-syndrome? Sounds great!
As i am a syndrome collector by heart.

"But I know that witnessing the happiness of a married couple is for an author sometimes happiness e

How come that witnessing the happiness of other people can make us happy?
Is this because of our own lack of happiness, the recognition of our own happiness or the desire for happiness?

Mieke
Dreams can turn into nightmares, yes.

Dreaming and literature

Sigmund Freud, was already occupied with the interpretation of literature and culture. In Der Dichter und das Phantasieren (1908) en Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930). Freud sais there was big part of drifts (impulses) in human perception and behavoir. Because of the socialisation, the humans were forced to repress their drifts. Freud saw man as a creature in which nature and culture are bound on a conlfictual basis. He sais: “Das Ich ist nicht Herr in seinem eigenen Hause” He was fighting the common vision people had in the past of a selfconsious and self-controling creature. Freud said that there are two basical drifts, the Eros and the Thanatos. In his vision human phantasie acts like an exhaust valve: an intermediar between the unsatisfied needs and reality, between the 'principle of desire' en the 'principle of reality'. According to Freud an happy person would never phantasies. So I think thats why maybe we phantasies, or while witnessing the happiness of others it can make us happy to. In his vision the creativity of an artist and a writer kan be take as a process that is like a daydreamphantasie. It acts like a kind of defence for an unsatisfied expierienced reality. In this sense art and literature are unthinkable without a conflict. You can take them as a form of conflict control. This vision accords also on what Nietzsche said: “Wir haben die Kunstdamit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen.” But I think Jung had a better approach: The symbols in dreams evoque a big analogy between a dream and a novel. It offers the reader a large framework to interpretating texts.
Ideas about sleep and dreaming have always been central to man's concepts of mind and consiuousness. Thinking about sleep has followd two lines. One characterizes sleep as an analog of death during which mental function ceases-Hesiod called sleep “ the brother of death”. The other view holds that sleep, like wakefulness, is a special form of mental activity. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, many have viewed sleeping and dreaming less as a suspension of life than as a chance to dream, a chance to engage in a special form of mental activity. In 1900 Freud significally expand the latter view. In the 'traumdeuting' (The interpretations of dreams) he proposed that dreaming might represent an unique avenu by which unconsious motivation could be explored. When waking consiousness is periodically interrupted by sleep, he argued, mental activity is not simply lead to rest; rather, the mental experience of waking is replaced with the even more intense mental experience of dreaming. Freud also sais that, by associating your dreams further, your repressed wish can be reconstructed. Thats why in lireatature you can find many examples of dream scenes.
Liteature is a collective dream: and people find it really interesting.

(What Derrida is saying about speaking in dreams in Papier Machine is also interesting.
Papier machine comes from a dream of Benjamin's in which he declares: "It was about changing a poem into a fichu (some kind of head scarf)"). The idea here is that speaking from the dream isn’t damaging, it expands the idea of enlightenment but doesn’t (as in Benjamin’s fantasy) threaten or destroy it. The possibility of speaking lucidly from within the dream is raised by the fact that its complement happens all the time - we know we commonly sleep while we are awake, sometimes for a lifetime.)

Monica C

I’m not completely convinced that fantasy is a byproduct of unhappiness. It would make more sense to state that sex is a byproduct of unhappiness, although this might offend some of the readers, especially those who are unhappy without a (decent) sex life. I assume the majority of the readers who flock to this site.
And I do admire Freud, for many reasons, but I haven’t read his complete works. The thing that bothered me (and some others) in his “Traumdeutung”, but it comes back in other places as well, is the use of wordplay.
The woman who dreamt about being a prostitute dreamt that she was giving a massage to her customer, but she was not touching him, she was only touching a plastic bag with something in it, and the customer felt it, for some reason unknown to her.
According to my godson’s mother many women dream about being a prostitute.
I don’t know if many men dream about visiting a prostitute. I have visited a few prostitutes in my day, but I have never dreamt about any of them, as far as I can recall.
Once I met a woman who was thinking of becoming a high-class-escort, shortly after she charged me three hundred euros for a night out she dropped the plan. Her boyfriend made her pregnant and we stopped exchanging e-mails.
I object to the idea of literature as a collective dream -- novels are read by mediocre readers (I include myself) and it’s not only for that reason that they are open to many different interpretations. Why not describe democracy as a collective dream? Most politicians repeat a few catch phrases so often that it is impossible to attach any other meaning to the catch phrase than the most obvious one: I give you a catch phrase and you give me your vote.

Arnon

Sorry for boring you with Alice Miller again, but she answers your last question for Monica beautifully. i recommened reading her first three books (the rest of her literture too). i don't have the books with me so i cant tell in which she analyzes Hitler's rise to the throne (by democratic means) but it pours a new light on how massas can be manipulated and why.

Arnon

Sorry, i forgot to mention that she does explain how can a collective subconscious onstaan (develop? grow?). Therefor in my answers to Lila in 'Children' you may find why legislation can be so crucial.
As to Freud and dreams read Alice Miller's "Thou Shall Not Be Aware". It's shocking.

Arnon

Who knows, maybe after reading her, you'll start writing more conscious autobiographies. (i hope this remark doesn't come as teasing, it didn't mean to be).

I am also a great admirer of Freud, for his being a shameless first class storyteller and charlatan. What an imagination! What nerve! For a little introductory survey of Freud's highly imaginative stories, see for instance http://www.skepsis.nl/freud.html (in Dutch).

Monica

It doesn't have to be so, to commonly sleep while we're awake, although your closing line is painfully right. It's like sleeping the pain away (doesn't work). This is a deseased condition that i hope can be changed. The new story of Eros and Id Frued made to cover up truths his generation could not process is misleading and perpetuates neurosis. What Freud did reminds couple of senrences from 'De asielzoeker':

"Beck vraagt niet verder, hij accepteert de realiteit die anderen hem voorzetten, juist omdat hij zelf van mening is dat anderen niet mag lastigvallen met dodelijke waarheid, dat je anderen die moet besparen"

Wrong! The only way to heal is to name (and feel) the wrongs that have been done (and do not be afraid of being named a whiner). Things go wrong when a child must reconcile between two total opposite concepts as 'love' and 'not love' (or even worse, fooling onself to believe that an abussive caregiver is a loving one) just to protect his parents.

The same recommendation as to Alice Miller is good for you to ;) and thank you for your eloquent and serious post .

too

Dear Neria Biala,

What you said about Beck, you're right. Life is not something you can agree with, because life never turns out better than expected. And its easy to flee in to what someone else is making of your life. But I always say that no matter what happend, you should bare the consequences. Better live it the difficult way, and feel that you're alive, than fooling yourself.
I have a friend that can organise his feelings. He would never commit to someone else. Like Beck he lives an other reality for not getting hurt. I think a person must not delude himself. I like to live my life, getting hurt, feeling pain and unbearebal desire as well as happiness and joy.
And I will consider reading Alice Miller. thanks for the suggestion.

Freud's complete works

Arnon, your contribution on Freud, published in NRC Handelsblad a few weeks earliear beared the title: "Arnon Grunberg reads the complete Freud."

Does this say something on the qualities of NRC Handelsblad's editors?

Dear Arnon Grunberg

You really got me there. You are right, it does rely on sex.
Al though Freud is not the touchstone (I didn't read his complete works either) I think the has a point. what I said about: “ In Freuds vision the creativity of an artist and a writer kan be take as a process that is like a daydreamphantasie. It acts like a kind of defence for an unsatisfied expierienced reality. In this sense art and literature are unthinkable without a conflict.” What Mark Schaevers said about 'Omdat ik u begeer' fits to this. “Dit boek intensiveert de vraag naar het werkelijkheidsgehalte van wat Arnon schrijft, zonder die daarom duidelijk te beantwoorden. Arnon maakt van zijn leven literatuur, (...) via voetnoten kan ik tonen waar Arnon de werkelijkheid kruist, en dat is dikwijls ook meteen het punt waar hij aan de werkelijkheid ontsnapt.” I'm not saying that al the experiences in reality you have written about, were unsatisfactory. But I think your correspondances sometimes contains conflicts, and they help you to arrange your reality. Nevertheless Freud was somethimes wrong, and so can I. So let me know if I jump conclusions.
As far as I know, I never dreamt of beiing a prostitute. But I have already fantasised about becoming an escort girl after reading an article about 'escort girls' in Humo. My excuse was that I am a poor Filology student, and that this was a way to gain loads of mony, but I think unconsiously I wanted to expirience what it would be like, if I was beiing payd for sex. I still have not tried it.

Ps: give me some time to figure out the collective dream.

Pjötr

The editors of the book section at NRC knew that they had not read the complete Freud.
This is e very Freudian type, I mean that I had not read the complete Freud.
To read the eleven volumes (the recently published Dutch translation) it would have taken me a year. They didn’t want to wait that long, so we agreed that I would limit myself to certain essays and books that interested me.
When I read the caption that “Arnon Grunberg had read the complete” Freud I complained. You are right to complain as well.

@Monica Callens
Our collective dream is a lifetime. But is the only dream we can check out, that is why we call it reality, I think. Nobody can verify the exact contents of our personal dreams.
The experience to be paid for sex, is only the experience to be paid. No big deal.

Neria

There is a book called Against Love – I happen to meet the author every year for Thanksgiving but that’s another story – after reading your comments I deeply feel that it is time for a book called Against Healing.
Nevertheless one day I will go back to Alice Miller, although I’m highly suspicious. Most people who like her are completely absorbed by their own pains. (imaginary or not)
I don’t get your point about Beck.
And writing has always been and will always a partly unconscious progress. Your recommendation to write a more conscious autobiography struck me as unpleasant (because of the suggestion that my novels are unconscious autobiographies) and wrong (because I’m mainly a novelist and I’m not absorbed by my own pain or history, at least that’s what I would like to think.)

Monica

What’s the attraction of getting paid for sex? (Are you afraid that you are not attractive enough, that men don’t acknowledge you as a woman? There is nothing worse than being wanted for your brains isn’t it? I’m not suggesting that you are that brainy.)
Maybe you should ask your boyfriend to pay you. At the end it’s all about role-play.

Jan T

Regarding: getting paid for sex. How do you know?

Arnon

Don't shoot me if i'm not precise. I hate it but i dont have the exact book with me (cause stupidly i lend books to all my friends and the books never find their way back to me). With Beck i was referring to Alice Miller's report on Freud's betrayal. If i recall well (and again i apologize for not being able either to citate or supply exact references). She wrote that when Freud had came to a conclusion as to what causes neurosis he summoned group of people telling them tht from 15 cases of neurosis, 15 cases had experienced sexual abuse in childhood. This was a bomb cause to judge according to the number of neurosis it meant that sexual abuse was the norm in almost every household. At the end of the 19th century it meant that he would be left with no clients so long he will hold to this veiw. Six months later emerged the Eros and the Id theory which basically said that all the reports were merely fantasies. It left the parents intact and made things much more complicated. From then on, a lot of weight was put on symbolism instead on feelings and it took the patients and the therapists away and away from the simple painful truth. It turned to be an intellectual orgy, with real feelings but misplaced. i don't want to continue because i simplify things to the point of harming my cause. i just hope i made the comparisson between Freud and Beck clearer to you now.]

i agree with you that if you only read Alice Miller you might end up cooking in your own pain, and therefor right from the start i recommended reading her first and then to complete the reading with Konrad Stettbacher and Arthur Janov.

Arnon

i'm not an example. i am not yet healed. i wrote you that already in my answer at 'Assistance' (maar was te slordig to put your name on the subject) You can't base your antagonism to healing upon meeting a not-yet-healed person.

Arnon

Not for nothing have i added the sentence between brackets. i knew this might be unpleasent and that was not my intention, i'm saying it the second time now.

Neria

Re: Freud and abuse.
I think I read something about it in Peter Gay’s biography. Nevertheless interesting.
The connection between Beck and Freud is not clear to me yet, unless you want to say that there is a connection between every human being who appears not to be completely happy and Freud.
Re: healing.
I don’t want to prevent you or anybody from getting better or getting healed -- it’s not the only prism to look at human beings -- that was I believe my point.
If you are looking for healing I wish you well. Maybe then you can contact Xargol and start working for me. I’m very much interested in young, devoted people, ready to work for me, willing to be discrete about their services and healthy. No sexual connotation here. In these times there is ample reason to be discrete about sex.

Arnon

re: Freud and Beck
i meant not taking the necessary step further. Not to go all the way. It's ok, it's a survival mechanism (and in another jargon i guess it is called 'defence')

Arnon

Translation: i didn't realize i will work for you had i been chosen to be the translator. There's absolutely no relation between my prognosis over myself as not-pain-free to my ability or inanility to translate your text to Hebrew. i thought it is up to Jonathan and Dan only, to decide whether the niveau of my translation is good enough, both linguistically and stylistically. Since this was my very first transltion, ever, it is possible that it is simply not good. i think that that should be the only parameter by which they have to decide whether they want to give me this job or not. You may be fond of somebody else who wishes to do the same job but who has not the feeling for language nor his or her interpretation of the text get even close to what is there, and you may put an ultimatum that only s/he will get this job. Maybe i'm naive but i don't believe this is the way they work. Again i'm saying: i might not yet be ready for this kind of transaltion, although i think i'm not totally lacking any talent for it. Plus, i'm wide open to learn from the editors (or from you if i am welcome to ask questions).
Pondering over your description of me as a 'whiner' i have to agree, now, after a couple of days, that you were right. Whereas my friends, of many years, laugh their heads off over my misfortunes, you only knew me for a very short time and from you it sounded heavily judgemental. Nevertheless, as i admit, you were right. i am therefor willing to consider closing a cautious friendship with you and to go hunting for "De geschiedenis van mijn kaalheid' in Hebrew and give you my (unprofessional) opinion over the translation, regardless my private businesses with 'Tirza'.
i discuss my sex life openly with my friends and family. i have no intention whatsoever to do it over the net.
Lastly, i'm not young.

Do you have fetish for small feet?

Arnon

Obviously my last sentence and many others are not English. i hope you don't get any idea over my Hebrew from my English. Anyway, isn't it up to the editors to decide? Unless i don't know enough about you and you also speak Hebrew? (but then again, whould you need a translator so just as not to waste any time over an already done job? i guess the answer is yes. But you wouldn't need my opinion over another translation).

Working for you

Dear Arnon,

You said: "I’m very much interested in young, devoted people, ready to work for me, willing to be discrete about their services and healthy. No sexual connotation here. In these times there is ample reason to be discrete about sex. "
I have a question then. I'm a 3th Bachelor student from Universiteit Antwerpen, where I study dutch fililogy and Literature -, Film- and Theatre sciences. I have to do a stage (internship) of one or three months at an editorial staff, theatre company, theatre and film directors etc... I have realy set my heart on becoming a columnist or a novelist. That's why I wanted to find a place in the editorial staff of Humo, or De Standaard. But after thinking over, I wanted to ask you if I can be your assistent. This is partly because I want to write my Bachelor Thesis about your literature. I already had my letter ready. Something gullible as the folowing senthences:
“Toen ik onlangs bij Fnac 'Omdat ik u begeer' had gekocht stond mijn besluit vast, ik wil je assitstente worden. Op pagina 49 schrijft u: 'Ieder mens heeft tenminste één slaaf nodig. (...) Er zijn mensen die dat niet begrijpen, die zich niet kunnen voorstellen dat sommige mensen intens genieten van het slaaf- zijn. Dat je ze een plezier doet. De volgende perverse gedachte spookte door mijn hoofd: 'wat als ik nu eens het slaafje wordt van Arnon?' U zou mij er een intens plezier me kunnen doen. Op pagina 70 schrijf je dat je geen slaven hebt, maar het idee van een dienst en wederdienst zie ik ook wel zitten. Hoewel ik er nog niet uit ben wat mijn wederdienst voor u zou kunnen zijn. U mag natuurlijk altijd een voostel doen. Zonder seksuele connotatie wel te verstaan.”

I really hope you will consider my offer. A warm- hearted thank you.bachelore

Monica

Please contact Johannes at johannes@arnongrunberg.com.

Neria

When I said: “work for me”. I was thinking of you as a secretary, not as a translator. You could go from door to door to spread my word.
The fact that you are not young is only helpful in this respect.
No I have no fetish for feet, for small nor large feet

Jan

i agree with you. i think that prostitution is a condition where the prostitute becomes an object (without a will) and is being paid for that. Life indeed force many of us to become prostitutes when we agree to be paid for any activity we don't lie to do. Maybe i'm unemployed at the moment just because of this. Eventually my hunger will force me to forget that i'm a human being and i will concent to work. i think about Coetzee's Michael K, Knut Hamson's Hungered potagonist, and Kafka's Hunger Artist and i wonder what was their ailment.

Arnon

i mentioned 'young' because you mentioned it in the list there. Actually from that list i am only discreet, although many readers here will laugh at this observation (maybe Noa Fenenga too), but it is still true.
Making two phone calls for you does not turn me into your secretary and as i told you, i'm willing to do that purely out friendliness. If however you want me to keep in contact with more than the Israeli publication house then yes, it's a job and you'll have to pay me for it.

Jan

"Then hunger did what sorrow could not do" (Inferno, 33). If one can eat his own children one as well might go to work (or become a prostitute).

@Neria
To be able to eat your own children is not a condition sine qua non, for becoming a prostitute. I actually know some prostitutes who are quite good mothers.
If you become a prostitute if is preferable not to lose your will, otherwise you will never get paid or loose all your benefits.
For me the main difference between a ‘normal’ job and prostitution remains: if my girlfriend was for example a restaurant keeper I could recommend her to my friends, but I would hesitate to do that if she were a prostitute. I think I am not really fit for a pimp job but if one is hungry, who knows.

@Arnon
Regarding: getting paid for sex. How do I know?
Did you forget about my life story some weeks ago? I was a close witness, is the least you can say. Of course one can never be absolutely sure about what you hear and see.

Jan

i don't know if i silently giggle at your respond because it is funny or because i'm puzzled at about what you were trying to say. Ok, maybe i do. As i said i still agree with you that there's no difference between being a prostitute an a secretary if you utterly wish to avoid doing these jobs. And no, i wasn't comparing prostitution to canibalism but just saying that hunger may overcome your wills, enough to push you to work. Here, i've got the idea, we both agree again.

@Neria
If in doubt you can always ask.
Nevertheless it is nice to see one giggle. This is also part of my happiness. I share your admiration for Alice Miller (OK I agree, it can be difficult to go into A. Miller if your father and your boss were admirers too, in the case of Arnon – for example, I still dislike my fathers taste of music) but sometimes if you mention A.M. again I simply like to tickle you and chase you around the table, for some unconscious reasons again, I suppose.
But have no fear, just say stop and I crawl back to my shell.

Jan

You're sweet, and i hope my sweetheart doesn't read this blog ;))

Jan T

Please, refresh my mind.
How come you run into mothers who happen to be prostitutes?
I forgot this part of your life, or your life story, whatever you wish.

@Arnon
A time ago, my girlfriend then owned three brothels (about twenty girls worked there in shifts). I helped her to manage the paperwork - I like paperwork – so I got to know the girls and their life stories very well too. I still know a few ‘working’ girls.

Jan

Why the inverted commas? Wasn't it agreed that prostitution is a work like any other?

Jezus also had a weak spot for prostitutes.

Noa

Jan is going to shoot me for this answer but Jezus was very loved as a kid.

Noa and Jan

My remark about Jezus meant to say that maybe one's readiness to aknowledge others' pain has to do either from having in his past someone who aknowledged his pain and maybe even helped him to alter it, or , in case of a lack of such witness, coming later in life to the realization of past pain.

Jan T

You former girlfriend was a madam, yes now I remember.
It’s romantic.
But you as the brothel’s bookkeeper is even more romantic.
How long can a working girl survive as working girl without losing her mind do you think? I know this is hard to say, I don’t ask for statistics, just for some personal observations.
And were the girls with children better at surviving than the others?

Prositution

@ Neria
I said, I never could recommend a friend to visit my girlfriend if she were a prostitute, hence I do not consider it a ‘normal’ job, although it can surpass other ‘normal’ jobs of pure exploitation and humiliation.

@ Noa
Jesus had a weakness for the

@ Arnon
Please not you. You are very well aware that there is nothing romantic with prostitution nor with bookkeeping a brothel. Ok, sometimes there is romance and sometimes there is tragedy too, but most of all there is a lot of rejected, I assume, namely the prostitutes but also the dreadful tax men…boredom. The ‘happy hooker’ is only another pose. The sex business is not so different from the ‘normal word’ and the people in it neither.
Most of the ‘working’ girls are already damaged, it is no secret, and the longer they work in there, the more danger there is for them, there is no cure in that work. Having children or not has no relation to their survival, as far as I can judge.
I would prefer no boy nor girl has to work as a prostitute, but then I would prefer there is no slave labour too , nor child abuse etcetera….

(Another cut and paste error)

@ Noa
Jesus had a weakness for the rejected, I assume, namely the prostitutes but also the dreadful tax men…

more errors...

@ Arnon
Please not you. You are very well aware that there is nothing romantic with prostitution nor with bookkeeping a brothel. Ok, sometimes there is romance and sometimes there is tragedy too, but most of all there is a lot of boredom. The ‘happy hooker’ is only another pose. The sex business is not so different from the ‘normal word’ and the people in it neither.
Most of the ‘working’ girls are already damaged, it is no secret, and the longer they work in there, the more danger there is for them, there is no cure in that work. Having children or not has no relation to their survival, as far as I can judge.
I would prefer no boy nor girl has to work as a prostitute, but then I would prefer there is no slave labour too , nor child abuse etcetera….