She did not want to see her clients any more than she wanted to return to work as a staff psychologist in a high security prison on the outskirts of Ithaca-a good job that she had taken upon graduating from Rice University and had brought her here. Eight months doing that had been enough. Eight weeks in a following job as an assistant director of a girl's home babysitting "women creatures" who, gaining their freedom at the age of 18 perpetuate the "classless undergrowth of society" had been worse than the prisoners. Girls and prisoners were often like comparing rotten apples and rotten oranges. There were times when she thought that the prisoners had been worse. Their sexual man-on-the-make innuendos had often frustrated parole assessments. In contrast, eight weekends with her clients (give or take a weekend) was a lesser prostitution. By the fifth ringing of the doorbell she decided to answer it so that it would stop ringing. Two of them stood there: men. She knew she had an appointment with one client, but here were two of them. She gave a seductive smile and then informed them that she would only allow one of them at a time into her domain. The other would have to wait in the vehicle until his buddy came out. As one of them came in she thought to herself that she was really performing an important social function. Being a prison psychologist or a girl's group home supervisor had been paperwork jobs. The positions had not helped anyone. Here, at a discount since she was not beautiful, she relieved men of aggressive tendencies and stress. They were less likely to beat up on their wives or open fire in a McDonald's Restaurant as a consequence. She even argued to herself that by her service she was a bit like the Buddha who claimed that one should take the middle of the road. To her, that was the Buddha's tacit endorsement that a little bit of prostitution was needed to sustain oneself physically although it should never be taken to excesses. Chapter Eighteen Within the relationship he had not even been tempted to wander in the labyrinths of dark hallways of bathhouses in the hope of stumbling across that perfect form. There had been less discontent even if the passionate response had been the same. The suicidal risk-taker drawn to darkness, that relinquishing to the self-consumption of shadows, had been somewhat tamed. But now with this partner gone Sang Huin's mind was slipping back into decadence. Meandering and not feeling that the ground one walked on was the least bit stable, desperate yearnings prompted him to find pleasure and hope in appetites that swelled as obsessions, burst, and were quickly gone no different than the instinctual promptings that were within the dumbest of animals. He hadn't yet gone back to his desperate habits of bathhouses and the R- rated petting in the gay movie theatres of conservative Soul but he could still sense himself slipping away.