Su chose to be a backlane prostitute.

It’s about the most unglamorous profession for someone like her who is young and reasonably attractive. She has enough good looks - including a very sweet smile - to at least work in a higher class establishment.

Yet she chose to work alongside the mainly old and ugly. It’s one way to attract a wider clientele. But it means her clientele is predominantly ugly and old as well.

It’s hard work. Yet the money is not that great. On bad days, Su barely covers her room rental. She thrives on good days, which gets fewer once her face - and body - becomes familiar on that stretch of backlane.

At first, she didn’t know she made the choice. Like most, probably all, of her colleagues, Su felt she had "no choice". Her family was poor, her father had died, her mother was ill. She was forced into the profession.

Or so she felt.

I got to know Su at a low point in my life. I was feeling really lousy and I can tell you, that’s the main reason why men seek the pleasures of prostitutes. If we want to "have a good time" it is only because we are not having a good time.

And so I met Su. After a while I stopped having sex with her. The most logical reason I can think off is that we had become good friends. I would visit her just to chat whenever I needed to pour out my woes. Occasionally, she would call me when she had woes to outpour. We became buddies.

---

Sacrifice

I began to develop a high regard for women in Su’s profession. The word "prostitute" has so many negative connotations that I rather not use it to describe my dear friend and her colleagues. But that's the common word everyone understands.

I must admit also that I use it here mainly because I know the term "Backlane Prostitute" would attract you to read this story. And read this book.

Prostitutes seem to "sell their bodies for money". What many of them actually do is sacrifice their bodies - and their dignity and ego - to help family members in financial need. In the process, they also help their clients release pent up sexual tension that causes great discomfort. Truly, they are heroines and martyres.

Many times, I tried to convey this to Su, to convince her that she is not "bad" but actually performing a great service to many. Her reaction was always the same: "No choice".

I explain to her that she chose. I point out that there are many other girls, in equal or greater financial need, who chose lower paid, so-called "decent" jobs, because they do not wish to sacrifice themselves for the sake of other family members. Su would only sigh, "No choice!"

All this explanation is done in a mixture of Cantonese and broken English. Su has limited English education while the little Cantonese I know is learnt mainly from her and her colleagues. We have a language barrier here.

It does not help that we are dealing with some abstract, difficult concepts. This idea that we choose our lives is not one that is easily grasped. Spiritual masters and philosophers put forward lengthy, complicated, arguments just to convince a few. Many highly educated people simply cannot understand.

One day, Su did. She was very tired that day, and feeling unwell. The previous day was one of the girl’s birthday and they had celebrated at a disco till 3 am. Su was moaning the fact that her friends had planned another disco outing the following night, this time because one of the girls would be going on a month-long home leave.

"No choice," Su complains. "They force me to go."

"No," I say. "You go because you choose to make your friends happy. You can also choose to take care of yourself and make yourself happy."

"You choose"

She got the message. From that day on, her slogan was "You choose!"

And so Su began to call me teacher, in a casual playful way. She thanked me for having taught her an important lesson and whenever problems cropped up, she would say, "Teacher, teach me how to do."

Thus encouraged, I began to explain to her various concepts that I had picked up from books, seminars and spiritual retreats. Su learnt so quickly that I began to call her my "A" student. Within a few months, she reached the point where she could counsel me. I remark that she would one day progress beyond her teacher and she says, "I also got think that way."

True humility is not self-dismissing, but requires us to also acknowledge our strengths and abilities. I did not not tell this to Su. She already knows it. Now she proudly tells me that her mind is much clearer and that when some problems upset her, "in one or two days I will be okay already."

Ah, but we all have our favourite upsets, don’t we?

In Su’s case, it is her ex-boyfriend who had repeatedly promised to help her with money, but never got round to doing it.

"I so angry with him," Su complains. "I’ve told him, if no money never mind. But he always say he has. He says he will give me, then he never do. Then he says again he will help me. He say he already transferred the money into my bank account, he ask me to go and check. But no money.

"If he say no money, I can work harder, I can borrow from my friends, I can find the moneylender. But he tell me, ‘Don’t work so hard, don’t worry, I will help you.’ Then last minute no money.

"He make me so difficult!" Su cries. "Why he always want to bluff me?"

This has been going on for months. I tell Su that perhaps the man sincerely loves her and sincerely wants to help her, just that he does not have the means to do so. I suggest that perhaps his thinking is not quite straight and that is why he persists in lying even when it has become obvious.

Su would only say, "He make me so angry."

Then the other night, I attended a talk by Jim Nolan, a disciple of the late Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest whose books I enjoy. Much of the talk centred on the idea that nothing and nobody can make us upset. We upset ourselves.

If we plan a picnic and it rains, it is not the rain that upsets us. We make ourselves upset. Because we have programed ourselves to believe that if we do not have the picnic, we will be unhappy. This is a false belief.

This example was very real to me. Just the day before, a friend did plan a picnic to celebrate her birthday, and it did rain. She moved to a restaurant and everyone had an enjoyable party. She was not upset. No one else was.

The next day, I telephoned Su: "Do you want to learn another lesson?"

"Yes," she eagerly replied. "Tell me."

"You may not like to learn this, but your boyfriend cannot make you angry. When he bluffs you, he only gives you the chance to make yourself angry."

"Huh? He give me the chance to make myself angry??? I don’t understand."

"Yes, you make yourself angry." I tell Su about the picnic and the rain. "Can the rain make you angry?"

Su ponders a while and says, "You mean ‘I choose?’ Yes, now I understand. I can choose to be angry or I can choose to be happy!"

In less than two minutes, the lesson was over. What a spiritual master took two hours to expound the night before, Su grasped in less than two minutes.

As a "teacher", I felt a slight disappointment. The thrill and challenge of teaching was no longer there. My "A" student is already enlightened.