This is one of the rare times in life where the universe steps up and bitch slaps people. For the longest time, I have preached that it’s far better to get an education when it’s “free” than pay for it down the road in a sad version of the movie Groundhog’s Day when you have to do everything over again.
I was lucky. I paid attention to my education. I worked hard in school, nailed a 3.67 GPA and went to college in a time when a full load, 15 credits was just $83 a quarter, not including books.
Today, I am told, it’s more like $1,400 a quarter. Even if I factor in inflation, that $83 works out to $324 in today’s money. Wow, what a difference.
Unfortunately, I am not as familiar with what it would have cost to see a 1977 hooker, so I can factor in inflation there. While I have paid for an education, I haven’t ever paid for sex, well, at least in an immediate exchange of funds for services rendered (we all know how divorces work out – it’s a delayed form of prostitution where you pay the bill somewhere down the road, and it always cost you more than you thought it would).
But the two are kind of the same, hookers and college.
Let me explain. When you’re in high school, your education is “free.” Taxpayers foot the bill. Outside of the cost of a yearbook, some football games and school pictures, an education, at least to the student, is free.
So is a girlfriend at that point in your life. If you want to have sex, your teenage girlfriend is likely to give it to you for free as well. Even today, this still seems to be the case, though no one ever seems to go out on a date. Instead, they just hang together, texting each other with the one hand while they hold hands with the other. I will never understand this.
Where the high school education is your sleazy teenage girlfriend, college is a hooker.
There is a small problem with the hooker. First, you could have gotten a lot of that action in high school, when the hooker was still your girlfriend. Now that she’s turned pro and you weren’t paying attention when she was free, it’s going to cost you. Second, she will already have a reputation.
A hooker can be the Aurora Avenue kind of hooker, or she can be a call girl or even an escort. There are different levels of services provided and each has a reputation. A lower class hooker, one that will service you for two years, may be perfectly fine for you and your aspirations. But you may want the call girl, the one who offers you the prestige of saying that you’re going to be getting some for four full years.
She may even have an exotic name like Harvard, Yale or Dartmouth. You’ll never have a problem saying you’re hanging out with Stanford. However, this isn’t the case with the hooker. Saying you’re seeing Shoreline or Edmonds? Not very sexy and it definitely won’t get you anywhere when you knock on those Wall Street doors.
You are judged by the company you keep and let’s face it, spending time with certain hookers won’t exactly enhance the old dating resume. Others will give you the old look, wondering why you settled for the hooker on Aurora when you could have gone for the call girl in Cali. Hell, you didn’t even settle for the high school girlfriend and she was free. No, you went with the low-class hooker who charged you for an experience you could have gotten for free all along.
Yes, the hooker will give you a little more service than you could have gotten in high school. I mean, she’ll do things your girlfriend would never think of doing and if you really want to make the grade, you’ll study your ass off, trying to master all those skills she’s willing to teach you – for a price.
Depending on the hooker, you can get a pretty high class education. She can teach you a lot and you may even learn enough to score some time with a call girl. No, not the escort level call girls – the Yales or the Harvards. Instead, you’ll have to make do with a local call girl. The in-state kind of call girl who goes by the name Whitman or Wazzu. She’ll cost you a lot more than the hooker, but supposedly you’ll learn more and your reputation won’t be in the dumper for the rest of your life.
I know, I know. All this time you could have gotten it free from your high school girlfriend and now you’re having to shell out so much money for that education that you’ve emptied your life savings in short order.
Still, you need to feed the ol’ hooker meter. So, where do you go? Your only choice, outside of selling plasma weekly, is to see the pimp. He will gladly give you a loan for that bank of bad habits you’ve developed so you can keep seeing his girl. He will gladly give you lots of money at rock bottom interest rates so that you can continue to get an education in more ways than one. $10,000? $20,000? 30? 40? 50? No problem, they will say. Check’s in the mail.
The pimp wants you to stay with the hooker or call girl as long as you can. He wants to make a wad while you’re shooting yours intellectually.
Eventually, you’ll finish with your “education.” Your hooker will bid you adieu and hand you some sheepskin as a souvenir of your time with her. There will be many times that you’ll wonder if it was all worth it. No one may even ask to see the sheepskin your hooker gave you. No worries. Your pimp will remind you monthly that you got a real education, as you live in your parent’s basement, trying to make ends meet moonlighting Little Caesar’s, watching the hooker across the way – your hooker – take your best friend home with her – giving him an education that he will never forget, at least until he pays the loan of in 30 or 40 years.
In the Emerald City, looking for house that doesn’t have a basement,
– Robb