She�s there every night outside Ramstein Air Base, on the driver�s
side with the interior light on, waving to every car passing by.

She�s eerily automated, programmed to smile and nod to us
while reapplying make-up in the rear view mirror.

Who stops here with a fistful of euros, watching her spray the last man
from her skin? I want to be the one knocking, the one on top, in back of the van.

My friends have done this in Korea and Thailand, where fifty bucks
buys you a lover who doesn�t speak English, who cleans your house

and cooks for you. Where is the twenty year old boy with soft
skin I can buy, where is he, and could I do it, knowing it was a chore

for him, could I bypass the female urge to please, make myself
the center of his universe, forget that he�s on the clock?

Women don�t do this, it�s ghastly and unbecoming, it�s uncompassionate
yet it might be liberating, like the massage I had in Roppongi with the

girl suspended from the ceiling who let her bare thighs split
on my back, and I felt her naked sex on me, and how she kept

twisting my nipples and smiling and asking if I�d like to keep
going, we were oily and she was petting me, petting my breasts

but I was nervous, I grabbed my friend from the waiting room
and talked all day about her squeezing my nipples and what would

have happened if I had paid the 4,000 yen I wonder, because maybe
one day I will. Maybe I�d like to buy it, so it�s really mine,

that I would own a whole person for an hour and I could fantasize
we�re in love, desperately - all those pretty things women must


believe and if there was a young guy sitting in that camper van
waving to me, I would slow the car, drive laps around him, dream.



� 2004 by Jalina Mhyana