People would walk over the bridge all night to the gas station, or cast-net fish. One night a drunk rich guy came wobbling north up Biscayne Boulevard on like a $5000 cruiser bike. He shouted at everyone who almost ran him off the road. Right on the bridge, the Miami city police pulled up and arrested him, leaving two homeless people to fight over his bicycle. And then came walking over the bridge the black guy from the second floor of the Royal Motel, and the school girl who said hi to my dogs in the parking lot. They had no idea anyone could hear them. The school girl was complaining passionately in the exact words "They call me the dick-sucker, because I suck dicks raw!" Her pimp reassured her in a gentle voice "Oh come on, you know I never called you that, that you heard." So a drunk guy could not ride a bicycle over that bridge without getting arrested. But a girl I don’t think any older than 16 the first time I saw her, was able to stand in the same place somewhere around 76th and Biscayne, and give blowjobs for money to any guy who drove by, continuously for at least 23 months. I know there are people who think hookers at any age should get the death penalty. The sluts are never victims, no matter how dumb and helpless. My friend Luke the sex addict's best friend Joanie, a girl who is his soul mate, is one of these girls. She can't understand why I would care if Mandi spends her life in prison, after having sex with all these guys. Another is my bartender. She said “A whore is a whore is a whore.” Maybe that is how it is in Iran. The best thing I can say is I have never been to Iran. It may be the place is so fucked up, they have to stone little girls to death just to keep the lights on. But in the US for whatever reason, we have achieved a lower level of human misery. Maybe it is feminism, individuality, or something else. In the US, an old guy who amuses himself, by exploiting and wasting the life of a young girl, with no concern for her future, is a criminal. You may not agree with that. At the very least, an old guy who wastes a young girl's life to amuse himself, is not a victim. Can there be two victims? Not when one is a person in authority and the other is a subordinate. At least none of the old guys in South Beach who whined about getting their watches stolen, were the girl’s boss. That kind of entitlement, that sort of bold lack of discretion, that level of incontinence, is likely to get an old guy shot. But I know, James Mulrenin was a lonely old guy. For some reason he was permanently single. Girls with more sense than Mandi Jackson wanted no part of him. He was a vuhierable man. He was a wily 52-year-old veteran strip-club manager. He knew a 21-year-old girl’s naive psychology, it was his business, his career, his life. Mandi May was girl number 10,000, at which point Mulrenin had perfected his craft. But to people in the alternate universe, Mulrenin was a saint, he was taken advantage of. The man with a racketeering conviction for running a prostitution ring was targeted and tricked, by a little blonde brain patient on meds who never said no. II-40