13 There is no such thing as 'Prince Charming'

The next morning, I woke up feeling extremely jet-lagged, as if I had travelled from the other end of the world and landed right here in the suburbs. I had slept earlier than I usually did. I had left at the chime of midnight and arrived at my doorstep barely fifteen minutes later, thanks to the lift by Pablo. I thought of Cinderella, only that I was my own saviour, and my prince was Pablo, the security personnel from the agency.

I used to dream of being rescued by a prince charming who would solve all my worldly problems. As I grew older, I realised that there was no such thing as a prince charming although I could say that there was, in a faraway country, a long time ago, one damsel in distress. She waited and waited, but no one came. That was the artifice of fairy tales. They inhibited the female from being the creator of her own destiny. They all had to wait for the dashing male counterpart to make them complete.

I had waited no more. I had pulled myself together and decided, three years ago, that this life was something I wanted to revisit again, albeit from a different perspective. I was generally content since then. Now at the end of the third year, thoughts of quitting at my zenith had arisen. I could always revert back to my previous job. It neither needed the beauty nor the body. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, the poet Keats declared. Being the romantic he was though, I thought that he overlooked that, alas, the beauty of the human body was bound to age and wither away. In the escort business, a thing of beauty is a joy to go.

I did not want to go downhill from here because I know every peak has a decline. Perhaps there were signs that it started two days ago. Mr. Boardmann was my most difficult client to date, and he, without any inkling to, had stirred up my feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. He was not a friend; he was but a client. Even his name Matthias, ironically, had seemed like a very biblical name to me, but he was more like a devil in distress wondering what was good and what was evil in life.

I had to rid those feelings from affecting me. I wanted nothing to do with him outside our allocated time but I found myself thinking of him. If I could not stop thinking about him, it meant that he disturbed my inner balance. I went back to my Buddhist teachings. I gave myself time to think about him instead of swatting those thoughts away like a pesky bug. I l glanced at the clock. I gave myself fifteen minutes; the exact amount of time I would allocate for a meditation session. During this time, I could think about him in all abandonment. After the time was up, normal routine should resume again without any glitches of his presence into my mind. Those were the days of my not so distant youth when I thought I could rid thoughts by compartmentalizing them in terms of time.

He had devilish wolf eyes, and wolves were dangerous. They howled at the moon. My moonstone did not protect me against him. I did not believe that one in possession of a gemstone would be protected, really. Despite the fact that I had it around my neck and wore it at all times, it was a keepsake from my mother, and I treasured it dearly. I was far too cynical to believe in the magic of the moon, yet I did believe that all around us is the miracle of life. Therefore beyond sight and senses, there must exist something far greater and powerful than each and every one of us. I believed that my fragile cosmic balance was shaken due to his forceful personality which was poles apart from mine. The light of my strength was not strong enough against his brute force.