he came early for his class with my Tagalog tutor, and he was interested to meet me. LJ had told him about her first ever female student, and what I am doing in Angeles. he was the stereotypical picture of a sex tourist in this area: white, middle-aged, overweight, and looking generally unhealthy. laughing, he said “so you’re the do-gooder” and sat down at the table next to me. his tone left no doubt in my mind what he thought about me and my work as he said “so you’ve rescued 7 girls, huh?” I corrected him, “we are currently providing services to 7 women who have come to us for help; we don’t do rescues.” I was trying hard to keep my cool, wanting to say only the things that might be challenging his perspective without responding to him in anger or disgust – an attitude that he obviously did not share. I was shocked that he would speak so openly to me about his escapades; I have overheard these things a few times since being here, but that he spoke directly to me without censoring anything made me feel as though the wind had been knocked out of me. with no hesitation he described for me his crazy ex-wives, Filipinas who were for a time one of his many “steady bar fines”. [bar fine is the termed used for the fee a man pays the bar owner in order to take a woman out of the bar she works in, most often in order to have sex with her – bar fine provides johns an innocuous term, but it is simply the prostitution of women.] sometimes men who are long term sex tourists, staying in various locations for months at a time, pay a fee so that they can keep her with them during the entirety of their stay, rather than going back to the bar and paying for her every night. steady bar fines then become the man’s “girlfriend” until he wants to head to Thailand for the next leg of his tour, or he simply grows bored with her. this man told me about his two current girlfriends, and how poverty forced them into the sex trade. one of them had been working as a maid, and according to him she was much happier working in the bars because “at least she gets to listen to music and dance, and she has lots of friends”…(the girls in the bar I visited last week were hardly dancing at all, just sort of shifting their weight from left to right – they did not appear to be enjoying the opportunity to dance.) “most of them don’t want to be rescued.” he spoke of the “propaganda” films he had seen during his days in the American military depicting “dark filthy bars where women are kept locked up and forced to prostitute” but he had never seen any bars like that except in the provinces, and only Filipino men would frequent such a place. maybe he doesn’t know that less than a kilometer from the bars he spends his nights in are brothels fitting that description - the area for foreign sex tourists creates the illusion that these women are free, working great high-paying jobs, because it’s out in the open, bright lights and loud music reminiscent of a theme park. he asked me “what can you do for them?  and what happens when you leave?” in the same breath, he told me about one of his girlfriends whom he will stop “supporting” when he goes back to the States. when I told him about helping our women access education and go to college, he said “my girlfriend would love to go to college, if she could get in.” perhaps the hardest thing for me to swallow was his clear understanding of the lack of true choice. “every single one of these girls would leave the bars if they could make the same money somewhere else. there are two types of girls working in the bars: single moms who are working in order to feed their kids, or girls who are the oldest in an impoverished family whose parents sent them out to find work to support them.” usually I am the one explaining that reality, but those were his words. it is evident, even to him, that this is not the job little Filipina girls dream of…15 minutes later, I couldn’t stay any longer without crying, so I stood up and said “I have to go to work now.” laughing mockingly (or maybe just nervously), he said “to work with those girls you rescued…”  I reached into my purse, pulled out our hotline card, and handed it to him. “If your girlfriend has questions about our programs or wants to find out about going to school, she can call us anytime.” LJ walked me to the door of the school, gave me an understanding look and a hug, and said “ingat (take care). see you on Tuesday.” I walked out into the hot dirty street with tears in my eyes and tried to take a deep breath; I think I had been holding it during our whole conversation. I decided to walk the 20 minutes to the shelter, saw our sweet women and said hello, and then went into the office and cried. I experienced the smallest fraction of what they had to face on a daily basis, and I began to understand just the tiniest bit of what it is that I have been grieving with them…