This is my apartment, this was my Christmas, and if I had a picture of my heart...

This is my apartment here in Dubai.  There's a pretty sweet computer table and office chair (off to the right), a not so sweet couch (there are 4 pillows on the sitter-downer part...you know, to save you from any possible nails), and a respectable bed.

When I turn off the lights, I have an amazing string of blue lights which run on the wall across from my bed/behind the couch.

Sometimes when I turn the lights on, this girl is there.  Her name is Jayleene; she is from Ghana.  Her father is dead, her brother quit school, and her two younger sisters are getting married.  Jayleene is a prostitute.  She's wearing my sweatshirt.  She loves ice cream.  She counts to 10 when she tries to go to sleep.  She has someone named "Soulmate" in her telephone contact list.  She has a sweet smile.  The first time I met her, I was really really really drunk; I had enlisted my taxi driver to find me food (we went to an anti-american pakistani joint near Al Garhound...wonderful kebabs and light spicy sauces, surly waiters) and afterward, I said "Let's get a girl."  I'm pretty sure I said something more akin to "Lessgettagurl," and my driver, Iman, laughed and drove.  We found her.





My Christmas looked like this:

 

I had some wonderful people over, and I broke several laws (specifically, transporting alcohol, harboring alcohol without a license, and exceeding the lawful occupancy limit).  That's a great Christmas.  Unfortunately, it was all in an attempt to forget that I was in this foreign place, sleeping on a strange sand and wondering what my friends were doing, what my family was doing.  And I couldn't get rid of that feeling, even as everyone left.

 

I called Jayleene.  She came over, and we talked.  I cooked her dinner on my stove:

Dinner was Ramen noodles and ice cream.  Apparently, being a prostitute in Dubai is not that much different than being a college student.  You know, other than the selling your body part.  After she ate, she looked at me meaningfully.  I looked at her emptily, and said "I just want you to be here.  But before you are, will you go buy me some cigarettes?"  She did.  She came back.  She slept here.  And as I was nestled next to her, I couldn't help but think what I was paying for. 

What WAS I paying for?  Company?  I have company.  I was paying for the opportunity to take care of someone.  But also to have someone to hold onto.  If only for a moment.  Wait...I was paying for the opportunity to hold onto someone for a moment.  Anything longer and I get exhausted.  Anything more and I have to change.  I was paying for the convenience of a perfectly warm body and a steady heartbeat, and more importantly the ability to close a door and say I'm on my own again.

But the deeper truth is that I can't help myself.  If nothing else, I wanted Jayleene to have a night when she wasn't hungry.  I wanted her to feel somewhat secure (she had to, right?  Otherwise she wouldn't have come back...again...and again).  I wanted her to feel as if she weren't judged.  All the things I want for myself (other than the hungry nights).  And I can't help myself.

I want to help.  I want to make a difference, no matter how small or contrived.  I want one person in this world to feel loved.  But I don't want the commitment of that.  I want that feeling to end at 1pm, when I pass over some cash money, give a hug and say "don't call me."

Because I will call again.  At some point.  The hole this "charity" fills, in me, is bigger than the hole dug by its cost.  There may be a mountain built from all this dirt dug out of me, but I will sit underneath it, breathe in the dust and weight and gravity, and say it was all worth it...was it ever worth it. Even as it finally crushes me.