"Age of Consent" New Order

Last night before Memoirs of a Geisha, I saw the trailer for Marie Antoinette. Sophia Coppola, that weirdo, chose to use this song and a punk-Pretty-in-Pink-new-wave font to push what will inevitably be a stylish but meaningless movie.

It was utter perfection.

I know somebody who used to be a hostess at various Chinese bars. There, she learned how to engage men for hours, and to manipulate them out of their money. She confessed this to me over pizza. She put her two younger sisters through college, paid for one of them to go to Europe and sends her two kids to private school. She now makes shitloads of money in the business world and negotiated two raises within her first year on the clock. What respect I felt for her ability to play-the-game or do what-a-girl's-gotta-do or some other hyphenated cliche was outweighed by this question: How can I trust anything she says?

Geisha create a fantasy that envelops you; making you believe that you are the architect of this world is their most dangerous illusion. Efficient manipulation is marked by the willing participation of the victim.

Ever since I got back from traveling over a year ago, I have been different. I'm not sure how, exactly, but I feel I am watching things very carefully. It is not the awareness of a curious mind, nor the vigilance of a paranoid-schizoid; it's something else, like I'm preparing to meet something head-on.