[#3Fan]

I think that the desperate need to pay a prostitute, not just for sex, but "for company"--i.e., for companionship, someone to talk to about the stress, etc.--is a sign of just how shallow so many male/male friendships are. These guys go through war together, but they are so incapable of supporting one another that they need to find a prostitute to relieve "stress."

Um, there's a difference between normal male to male companionship and normal male to female companionship. Your father must have missed explaining this to you. :^)

[Arthur McGowan]

No, I know the difference between normal male/male companionship and normal male/female relations. What I am objecting to is the attitude that what happens between sailors and prostitutes is in any way "normal" or that it has anything to do with maturity or masculinity. It is perverse, destructive, sinful, twisted. It is exploitive of the woman. It is infantile behavior on the part of the male--the diametric opposite of the behavior of a real man.