birds fly over the rainbow...

This post is about prostitution. So if you don't want to read about that, you can stop now.

I hate prostitution. I certainly don't hate prostitutes, but the whole idea of the system, and its all-too-often heinous circumstances, puts it on the list of things I would want to obliterate before I wished for world peace.

Like most other people, I have dreams about compromising situations. Being naked at church, being chased by drug lords, the list goes on... And includes dreams about me being a prostitute. Those are the worst. But it's also usually a Les Mis sort of prostitution--terrible, but put to song. Literally. I'm usually doing some sort of song and dance with the other prostitutes when I have this dream. Also, I never actually prostitute myself. Even my subconscious doesn't want to test drive that experience.

But last night, my prostitute dream became oddly hopeful at the end. And that's mostly why I'm sharing it. Opening scene: midnight on a scungy street, dirty people were everywhere, the street was filthy and the air was dank and murky. So, I was a prostitute, and my mother, Susan Sarandon, another prostitute, was brokenhearted that I had sunk to prostitution. We were both like Sonya from Crime and Punishment. Go read that book. At any rate, we were not morally broken--just forced beyond our circumstances into our situation. Susan had other children to feed, and I wanted to go to college (THANKS REAL MOM AND DAD FOR NOT EVER ENCOURAGING PROSTITUTION AS A VIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME). But after our one big song and dance with the rest of the prostitutes, I had to run away to take care of my brothers and sisters. They told me they were starving. I didn't know what to do. So we all started singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on a street corner, and it was miraculously beautiful. And a convent hear about our situation, and then all these nuns came to rescue all the children in the neighborhood. I was allowed to come with them. And the last scene of this dream was full of yellow and orange blankets and smiling nuns in cream dresses and hope and love.

I wish it was that easy. If I have any one calling in life, I feel like it has more to do with saving my sisters than anything else. We'll see what I can whip up in my lifetime.