Letters to the Editor
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Somebody to love
I thought fairly seriously about going to Japan and being a host-boy for a while.
Honestly, there are days at the office when it's still tempting.
Given conservative cultural expectations still very much in place, to my knowledge, on married women in Japan (which do not, by and large, involve keeping your job), it doesn't even seem all that surprising that this profession is thriving. We all need at least some human companionship, but not everyone has time for all the baggage it comes with even under optimal conditions.
Also, I don't know if there's a really clear analogue in North America, but I do know that the working girls around here have small but not insignificant numbers of johns who pick them up and pay for their company and conversation as much as (and sometimes instead of) sex. Not a dissimilar phenomenon, I don't think.