If you need evidence that Nevada is a different (read: weird) kind of state, look no further than the presents I received for my first birthday back in 1976.
Toys. Clothes. A cake that I turned into a royal mess, getting more of it in my hair than in my mouth. And, from a friend of my parents, what amounted to a gift certificate to Mustang Ranch, redeemable upon my 18th birthday.
I am not making any of this up.
Such a thing would probably never happen in any of the other 49 states and commonwealths. After all, only in Nevada could such a thing be suggested with any kind of seriousness (and while the offer was meant to be a bit of adult humor piped into an otherwise infant event, I learned on my 18th birthday that there was a degree of seriousness to the offer). This is because only in Nevada is such a thing legal. (Read: Nevada is weird.)
I learned how different the Silver State is when I attended an out-of-state college. The images many Americans have of Nevada consist primarily of casinos, cactuses, nuclear waste and whorehouses as common as Starbucks. Of course, being a fifth-generation Nevadan who was concerned about the state's image, I promptly got a brothel price list and tacked it to my dorm room door.
Let me explain: I was 19 years old (read: immature), and my aunt was working for a brothel at the time. ("Working" here means she was doing accounting for them -- not anything else, by the way.) I thought it would be funny for her to get a price list for me. And she did.
Some of my dormmates then spent a good few days figuring out what in the heck some of the terms meant, leading to some highly inappropriate conversations. ("Around the world? That sounds like a trip, not a sex act.") Other dormmates just looked at me as a freak.
But I digress. Anyway, I bring this all up because I have been thinking of prostitution quite a bit lately.
No, I haven't been thinking of it in THAT way, perverts.
I've been thinking of it because of an interesting article I came across a few weeks back that brings up some amazing ethical dilemmas.
The story, from the Dec. 21 issue of The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, Australia, uses only unnamed sources, meaning it must be viewed with some degree of skepticism, but it's entirely believable. It's about a 15-year-old boy, terminally ill with cancer, whose ultimate wish is to have sex with a woman before he dies.
Think about that quandary.
According to the story, the boy revealed this desire to hospital employees, but he didn't want to tell his religious parents about it. This led to a heated debate among the hospital workers, some of whom wanted to just go and hire him a hooker, while others realized that would be illegal and morally tenuous. A psychologist got involved, and determined the boy was competent; clergy members were polled, and came out evenly split on the issue.
The decision the psychologist made: What could it harm? Eventually, a visit was arranged (by friends who thought it was the "right thing to do") with a "sex worker," without the parents' knowledge, without the involvement of the hospital staff, and not on the hospital's premises, so the article says.
The psychologist reported that the boy "was very, very happy and only slightly disappointed that it was over quickly." The boy has since passed away, the article says.
I don't know why, but the story makes me think about that birthday present (the certificate was never redeemed, by the way). The story makes me appreciate this goofy state and all its weirdness. It also makes me feel sorry for that 15-year-old whose life was cut short. And it makes me glad that I have been much more fortunate -- in so many ways.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who lost the price list somewhere during his college years; he suspects theft. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.