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1. >>I arrive in Kolkata each weekend and serve some of my regular clients in the evenings."

   This isn't new, and it isn't restricted to India. I've encountered this phenomenon among male and female prostitutes in a number of countries. Rural people and college students that you'd never expect to see as prostitutes, coming into the city on the weekends, turning tricks for fast cash.

   I really think that it's mostly Americans who see prostitutes as a lower class of people, not suited for any other kind of life. Elsewhere, it seems to be a relatively acceptable part-time job for attractive young people. Not something you'd put on your resume, but you wouldn't necessarily hide it from your friends.

   I don't think it's so awful. Like they say; You have to make hay while the sun shines! When you get older, you can't give it away, much less sell it.

   Posted by: Jay Croce | Jan 3, 2006 5:10:27 PM

   
   

2. Is it too much to hope that Romney’s bind is evidence of the Republican autogenocide to come? I spent much of the holidays in Indianapolis where some rabid Republican city council members are calling for the removal from the party of Lincoln of the couple of Republicans who changed their vote on the Monday night before Christmas and helped pass [by 1 vote] jobs and housing protections for gays and transgenders. [It had been defeated in April.] Over two weeks later, the Indy Star is still being flooded with letters protesting giving “whining” gays “special rights.” The paper, no longer owned by the troglodyte family that helped keep Indiana in the dark ages for decades, is also being condemned for endorsing it.

   Local gays were frequently publicly demonized in 2005, as often covered by Towleroad. In addition to the emotional journey of the Indianapolis ordinance, the state court of appeals rejected a challenge to the Hoosier DOMA; outnumbered gay demonstrators braved cold, snow, and verbal and physical threats by the many hundreds bussed in by area churches to scream their support of a state constitutional ban of gay marriage [now in a pass-repeatedly-go-to-voters cycle]; a rainbow flag hanging in front of a business in Bloomington was torched; a foster child was ordered removed from the home of a lesbian couple; and a state legislator introduced [then withdrew] a bill to prevent gays and lesbians [anyone single, in fact] from “using medical science” to have children.

   All of this, I’m convinced, played no small part in the reaction of the Indianapolis audience with whom I saw “Brokeback Mountain” Friday night. While the San Francisco audience I first sat with obviously really liked it, there was far more laughter [often strangely inappropriate I thought], and, for lack of a better word, “distance.” But the sold out crowd at Keystone Art Cinema [where it’s showing, two weeks before scheduled, on two screens], loud and chatty waiting in line to go in, quickly became subdued and almost reverential once the film started. It appeared that, overall, they might have known less about the plot’s evolution, as suggested by a few seemingingly startled sounds evoked by the Ennis-Jake sex scene, and a sudden, loud gasp by many in the audience when they found out what Ennis does. One person in my row was actually sobbing. [My straight friend said she would have been, too, were she not on Prozac. LOL] While I’m sure such things have happened in several places, I have no doubt that the response to the elemental nature of the film in this reddest of red states was influenced by the yearnings they shared with it being often coldly sandwiched night after night between the latest basketball or football scores and the farm report.

   And, perhaps too many personally knew someone like the Hoosier husband of a friend of a friend who actually said, when “Brokeback” came up in conversation, “I wish Clint Eastwood were dead so he didn’t have to go through all this.”
   

   Posted by: Leland | Jan 3, 2006 6:50:03 PM

   
   

3. wow u blog is amazing ,I was searching for the movie Brokeback mountain when i got to your profile. I checked it out and I think ur blog is very nice. Stay the same and keep in touch
   

   Posted by: djmaghim | Jan 3, 2006 11:42:04 PM

   
   

4. "Elsewhere, it seems to be a relatively acceptable part-time job for attractive young people."

   Yep... throughout here in Europe and even not so attractive ones although isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?

   Posted by: HisHolynessDPope | Jan 4, 2006 12:17:33 AM

   
   

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