Self Control – Laura Branigan

Oh, the night is my world
City light painted girl
In the day nothing matters
It’s the night time that flatters
In the night, no control
Through the wall something’s breaking
Wearing white as you’re walkin’
Down the street of my soul

You take my self, you take my self control
You got me livin’ only for the night
Before the morning comes, the story’s told
You take my self, you take my self control

Another night, another day goes by
I never stop myself to wonder why
You help me to forget to play my role
You take my self, you take my self control

I, I live among the creatures of the night
I haven’t got the will to try and fight
Against a new tomorrow, so I guess I’ll just believe it
That tomorrow never comes

A safe night, I’m living in the forest of my dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something, so I’ll make myself
believe it
That this night will never go

Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh

Oh, the night is my world
City light painted girl
In the day nothing matters
It’s the night-time that flatters

I, I live among the creatures of the night
I haven’t got the will to try and fight
Against a new tomorrow, so I guess I’ll just believe
it
That tomorrow never knows

A safe night, I’m living in the forest of a dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something, so I’ll make myself
believe it
That this night will never go

Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control
You take my self, you take my self control … [fade out] .

Well, guys, it’s story time again…….and NO, it’s not a fairy-tale – far from it!

There once lived a man – a hard and unyielding man – one who was brought up in a very strict and rigid household with an autocratic father. He was a deeply religious man and strongly believed in the wisdom of godly ways. He had wanted to become a priest all his life but that life-long ambition somehow never worked out. Why? How should I know? Anyway, he got married in due course of time and became a mercantile marine instead; he sailed the seven seas and the years rolled by, till he came to retirement age.

When he retired, the man found himself stuck within the four walls of his home and he was, nothing short of bored to tears. He became increasingly cranky, irritable and peevish. He spent his time loitering around the house and criticized every move made by his wife. He was thoroughly getting on his wife’s nerves and she began to think wistfully of how she was so much happier when her husband was out at sea. One day, he made an exceptionally hurtful and sarcastic remark to her and she felt herself losing control over her submissive ways. She screamed at him in a fit of rage and the man was so taken aback that for once he was dumbstruck. She ranted and raged and gave him an ultimatum, in no uncertain terms – ” You’ve become such a ‘crabby sourpuss’ – why, in God’s name, can’t you go out and do something productive with your life? You’ve always enjoyed baking so much, why don’t you set up a baking business of your very own? It would be so much better for all concerned!” The man kept silent but he realized that his wife was right – for once. He soon bought outright a small bakery of his own and he started selling hot, freshly baked breads, buns, croissants, pies, tarts, pastries and cakes. Believe me, they were all delicious! It was a very small establishment and he was the sole proprietor of it. He soon thrilled to find that his business was thriving and he felt that he could not possibly be happier or ask for more. When he shut his bakery at 6 pm sharp, each evening, he made it a point to attend the sermons at the local mission church. He remained in the church for 2-3 hours, at a stretch, either praying or simply meditating. After his daily church sessions, at night, he would take a walk home, to further pass his time.

One day, the man noticed that just next to his bakery, major construction work was going on but he failed to pay too much attention to it, till he found his business going into heavy losses. He began to wonder why so many people pointedly bypassed his establishment, as if on purpose, to enter the establishment, next-door to his shop. One fine morning, whilst walking towards his humble bakery, he happened to look up and noticed that a brand-new name board had been put up prominently above the main entrance of the neighboring shop – which he could have sworn was never there before. When he read the name of it, he became so scandalized that his spectacles promptly fell off his nose. I forget the name of the neighboring establishment myself – what was its name now? I think it was probably, something on the lines of, ” Manic Sex days;” ” Sex-o-maniac” or ” I Love you Sexy, Sexy!” or some such preposterously idiotic name. The man was in a dither – he didn’t know whether he should ignore the tell-tale establishment or whether it would be wiser to go and start just another mundane, boring, working day. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he entered the sex shop, with trepidation – with every intention of rushing out after barely a glance, as if chased by a hundred rabid dogs.  Well, he just couldn’t step out – he was so entranced by all the various sex toys, pornographic magazines and films and with all the other  sexual paraphernalia and with the varied “what-nots” of the shop, that he totally forgot to open his bakery that morning at all. He felt his heart begin to pump; his pulse raced; he felt faint and weak in the knees and felt all the requisite stirrings of lust in his nether-regions. After spending half an hour in the sex shop, he rushed out and sought fervently the professional services of an experienced, young prostitute. After relieving his passions (I think he managed to surprise the prostitute too – she had never imagined that such an elderly, skinny man could be so virile.), he returned home.

When the man reached home, he saw his wife in a shapeless gown but he was still so impassioned and lusting that his wife was amazed at her husband’s passionate love-making that night ( and every night that followed from that day on). Unbeknownst to her, her husband never bothered anymore with his baking business, he was totally addicted to visiting the sex shop; he even bought a laptop and kept it hidden secretly in a cupboard of the back-room of the bakery. He used it to watch pornographic films regularly – got himself all fired up and sexually aroused before he went to relieve himself from the services of either a prostitute or a visit to any sex-club or stripper joint in the nooks and crannies of the city where he lived. He never went back to the church at all and frittered away his time that could heave been used productively elsewhere. When he reached home, he made his wife, ever-so ecstatic, with his impassioned love-making, that she started receiving him every night, in a flimsy, transparent and lacy bikini. She didn’t mind the fact that she needed to spend money quite often buying a new pair because her husband was notorious for tearing them to smithereens in his frenzy of sex. In fact, she even went so far as to tell him that she loved it when he visited the church so religiously each evening. She told him, with a glow of pleasure on her face – “Oh, my buttercup, my wonderful cup-cake, you must never miss your evening visits to the church. It is a veritable gift to your Crown Jewels and you are so energetic and vigorous after that, you literally put Viagra to shame. I love every moment of it!” I don’t think that this daily ritual of theirs has ever stopped and actually it brought them closer together as a husband-wife team. Don’t ask about what happened to the bakery – it died a natural death several years ago (you already knew that, didn’t you, you dirty, little p******!)

When you stop laughing, do read the moral of this story. It translates into one, single, irrefutable fact – Sex sells; hot cakes and delicious bread can go take a walk! Sex is probably one of the highest selling commodities and prostitution is deemed as the world’s oldest profession and it isn’t likely to die out anywhere in the near future either. Sex is so addictive and enticing – it probably bypasses the lure of wealth, power, fame, alcohol or drugs, put together. You would do very well indeed not to fall in the trap of sex and believe me it has all the trappings of temptation and attractiveness – if you do, I can assure you that you’ll break one too many bones in the bargain. You’ll live to regret your lust – it’s as simple as that!

Prostitution is one of the branches of the sex industry. The legal status of prostitution varies from country to country, from being permissible but unregulated, to a punishable crime or to a regulated profession. Estimates place the annual revenue generated from the global prostitution industry to be over $100 billion.

Laura Branigan was a  celebrated American singer, song-writer and actress. She is best-known for such songs as, “Gloria,” “Self Control,” “Solitaire” and the adult contemporary hit, “How Am I supposed to live without you.” She was at the height of her popularity in 1982 -1983. She has also contributed songs to notable motion picture and television soundtracks, including the Grammy and Academy Award-winning Flashdance soundtrack (1983), the Ghostbusters soundtrack (1984) and the Baywatch soundtrack (1994). Her contribution to the music industry has been phenomenal and her works have hit the Top of the Charts. Her signature song “Gloria” stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for 36 weeks and became a record for a female artist. She is known, to this day, for her strong, sultry, alto voice. She died when she was barely 47 years old, in her home in New York, of a previously undiagnosed cerebral aneurysm.

“Self Control” tells the story of one such, “creature of the night” –  a prostitute/sex worker, who paints her face with garish make-up; clothes herself in the skimpiest and sexiest wear possible and walks the city streets each night, plying her trade, at the express behest of her all-controlling, dominating pimp. She practices and provides sexual services to another person, in return of payment. She is known to “turn tricks” in dark alleys, seedy motels or brothels, on men who are named variously, including the name “john” (the recipient of the sexual favors  normally being an unknown stranger, like any “Tom, Dick or Harry.”). She is often raped, mistreated and abused and don’t for one moment imagine that she enjoys being publicly embarrassed and humiliated in such an uncouth and callous manner. It seems that one day, this prostitute (in the song) is lucky enough to fall upon a new face of a “john” – he becomes her regular, nightly customer and is surprisingly among the minority of men that treat her with respect and not selfish, demeaning lust, as most of her other clients tended to do. She finds herself, for the first ever, losing her self-control and enjoying her sessions of love-making with this kind, generous and considerate man. However, she knows that one such night will certainly come when this same man will rob her of her “forest of dreams” – she prefers to believe that such a night will never come when he realizes that he has been unfaithful to his spouse and that he needs to leave his lover forever. She prefers not to believe that the end is as inevitable as each, new ‘tomorrow’ – that he will turn out to be as ruthless, as inconsiderate and as selfish as all the other multitude of men that have lusted after her body, used her for their sole, perverted pleasures and then dumped her unceremoniously and without prior warning, when their job is done.

That is the sad and tragic life of any prostitute alive on this planet – never live under the illusion that it is anything better. She is derided by one and all and is kept eternally at the fringes of society – criticized variously as being a “whore,” a “strumpet” or a “tart” – by men and women alike. They tend to live in the poorest of tenements and ghettos of modern society – sometimes they have made just enough money, on any given day, to feed and clothe themselves. Their promiscuous, indiscriminate and dangerous lifestyle is often known to get them pregnant despite the use of various birth control methods and they are forced to undergo abortions – mostly illegally in small, ill-equipped clinics in alleys where the hygiene is so poor and the rate of infection so high that they either die with their unborn fetuses or experience a near-fatal encounter at the hands of “quack” doctors. They are known to become chronic alcoholics or drug addicts – they consider it an effective way of drowning their ever-present sorrows. They fall prey to various sexually transmitted diseases (STD) or venereal diseases (VD) such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital herpes, syphilis or the dreaded, highly infectious and potentially life threatening HIV+/  AIDS infections. Prostitutes are known to be the prime targets of sexual perversions, sadism and sadomasochism. They are often brutally raped, beaten, before being discarded and murdered – and their corpses are left hidden on the outskirts of lonely highways, deep forests or in National Parks where their bodily remains are long expected to be consumed by hyenas and other preying animals, before they will ever be discovered or even be missed by anyone. They become victims to the sex trade &/or escort services when they are barely children themselves – they lose all semblance of innocence; they lose the very essence of their precious childhood and become street-smart, precocious adults overnight. Sex Tourism is undertaken by many people, worldwide, who travel specifically from developed countries to under-developed countries, especially to those countries in South East Asia like Thailand, where they attend sex clubs and engage in sexual activity with prostitutes.

I remember that when I was barely 10 years old myself, I had giggled when speaking about a prostitute. My mum had instantly stopped such callous behaviour & I remember her wise words to this day – “Don’t laugh at prostitutes. It is due to these women that people like you and me are not indiscriminately attacked. Before you pass any derogatory remarks, try and consider the CIRCUMSTANCES – extreme poverty, illiteracy and rampant unemployment that have led these girls and women to lead such a tragic lifestyle, in the first place.” It is from that day that I learned that we should not judge others at all – summarily or otherwise – without having walked at least a mile in their shoes.

So, learn to look beyond the end of your nose – there is life and a world beyond it. Learn to recognize and appreciate its value. Everything in life is NOT about YOU – other people also matter. Learn to be kind and selfless. It won’t harm you to lend a smile, a kind word or a helping hand to anyone – especially to a needy, poor or elderly person – it is probably all the goodness that they’ll ever receive from this world and they’ll bless you for it.

Well, what can I say? I am sure that you already knew all these details. I have only endeavored to put the facts into a better and more comprehensible perspective. I can’t tell if you will heed my words BUT I DO know that I’ll never stop trying.

What I DO know, for certain, is that you’re going to read this blog again…..and again and yet again – that is how enticing sex is!

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