Fair warning: This is going to make some of you uncomfortable. If it's any consolation, I'm a little woozy myself.

I was in Las Vegas for maybe a year when I was stopped at a light on Paradise Road, somewhere north of Flamingo Road. My two sons, then 6 and 4, looked up to a billboard. There was the signature pose of the "Crazy Girls." Arm in arm. Bare backs. Big hair. Thongs. My children erupted in gales of laughter. "Look, the butt sign," they said gleefully.

Uh, yeah, boys. The Butt Sign. Not much arguing with that.

Now, I promise that I'm whatever the opposite of a prude is. As a student and observer of history and anthropology, I have tried to wrap my mind around the phenomenon of the modern, um, professional naked person? From nude stage shows to strippers to actual prostitutes, who are these people? In one form or another, they've been around since the dawn of civilization.

Is it mere debauchery? Does that explain it from top to, uh, bottom? Or is it possible to enter this work as a true vocation? Is there such a thing as choosing a career in corporate erotica? Can it ever be art? Ever be a contribution to humanity? Or is it only pathology?

No matter how I try to open my mind to a deeper picture, there are disturbing realities. A ton of the women in these professions are childhood sex abuse victims. A ton. Are they celebrating erotica and human sexuality or are they acting out the drama of their own psychic wounds? If it is the former, that's one thing. If it is the latter, I'd feel a little creepy participating.

Is there a scenario in which I could be relaxed and accepting -- let alone proud and admiring -- of my daughter as phone sex worker or stripper or prostitute? (These women are all somebody's daughters.) Does this industry make for joy and vitality in the human race? Is it ever a real celebration between a man and a woman? Or is it a ceremonial hostility, an expression of an ancient fracture between the genders?

And then I had lunch with a mutual acquaintance of a dead friend.

Ray (not his real name) was born bright and strong and full of life. At age 12, Ray was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. By age 15, he used crutches. By age 19, canes. Well into his 20s, he walked bent over, looking at the ground. The disease ravaged him without mercy.

Somehow, Ray managed to acquire a master's degree. He worked steadily throughout his adult life. He was a football fan. Learned a little guitar.

Ray died right around his 38th birthday, alone in his home. His father found him. It was over. In the end, he had arthritis in his eyes.

It was two years later I caught up with Ray's close friend. I don't know why he told me what he did. But he did. He said that, in the last years of Ray's life, a woman came to visit Ray now and again. Two, maybe three times per year. The same woman. A professional woman. The woman attended Ray's funeral.

It caught me off guard. But then, what's even more startling is that I would be startled. A never-married man, a man who never had a real dating life, a man trapped by a senseless disease inside the tormented shambles of his human form -- what in me had so easily and automatically dismissed and forgotten this man was still a sexual being?

But my final surprise was my thoughts and feelings about the woman. I imagined meeting her. And the words that would pour out of my mouth startled me about me. The words would not fit my acculturated values, or even the majority of my experience.

I would thank her. I would thank her for being nice to my friend in his short and too-cruel life. I guess I would be saying I was glad for her and her chosen profession, the way you'd be glad if you found just the right plumber, or doctor, or barber, or mechanic.

And I don't know what to make of that. Sometimes life just won't fit into any given box.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. Contact him at skalas@review journal.com.