Freelance Milieu
When I meet her she was a petite woman with short black hair around a pale face. I wanted to find out more so I asked: what do you do? She didn’t answer, instead asked me: Do you like your job? I said: Yes I do although I often think I am casting pearls before swine. Besides, my life is not that structured. What worries me is that I don’t know how much I earn at the end of the month. She said: Don’t worry it is the same with me. Then I thought: This would be a problem if we both lived together. After a while she said: I would like to have a regular life. I then paid for our coffees and she left.

Why didn’t she tell me her job? But maybe she did a simple job and was embarrassed. But as always when my mind was occupied with something, just exactly in that moment I saw her come out of a popular side street. I mean popular in the way I mean. I followed her and saw her enter a house. The house had countless rooms; each room had a number and a name. After checking more than half of the rooms’ names I found her room. I hesitantly knocked at the door. When she opened I think she more or less fainted. I personally was beside myself: How could such as respectable lady do such a job? She must be in a very difficult situation. Our eyes met and I started: I want you to stop. Please stop it. She couldn’t look me in the eye, turned her face away and said: It is none of your business. Leave me alone. But how could I leave her: No, this face is special. She was selling herself for money. “No”, I said “I wouldn’t let you even if you hit me. If you need money I will give you what you need but just promise to stop it”.

My eyes went from her angel-like face to her slender legs half covered with a woolen skirt and started inspecting her body from her feet to her face. She felt uncomfortable and said: “let me think it over for one week”. “No”, I said “there is no thinking over, you must stop now”. Then I added: “I would like you to be my wife. Please stop it”. She was surprised to hear me say that, never thought that a man like me would propose to her. I said: look I don’t care what you did before, we can go and live at a different place and start a new life.

We didn’t get married, neither did we meet again. I went on doing my job and I suppose she went on doing her job. Both of us were selling our life. I thought Working for money could vary but was in fact two sides of the same coin, we were both prostituting for money. It was an insult, it was indignity. Together life would have been hell for two blind people would beg from door to door.

Jamshid
Bremen, 27 November 2009