This whole Eliot Spitzer affair has gotten me thinking about my own past adventures with hookers...
Thirty years ago, my father died at forty-nine of an illness you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
After the funeral in the Midwest, I came back to NYC--back to my small room in a residential hotel, a few friends, little money, and a struggling career.
Life felt pretty bleak.
I started to visit a small apartment brothel on the East Side. I got the phone number out of a sex tabloid. It wasn't the first time I'd gone to a hooker--it was a pleasant adventure, usually, and so I got into it again. I met a friendly girl named Katie at this apartment and went to visit her for about six months. It was cheap, so I could afford to go back frequently without breaking the bank.
She was a pretty girl, Jewish, from Brooklyn, nice sense of humor, a petite blonde who wore Candies slides--those backless high heels first popular in the late 70s--I remember them well on her pretty feet--and I enjoyed hanging out with her. I treated her with the same respect I would treat any person--I may be cranky, but I have good manners--and knowing her got me through a bad time.
Eventually it played itself out, because I liked her and it began to feel weird paying for her time. Yeah, I fell for a hooker. I told her I wasn't going to be coming back because of this, and she understood. The way she looked at it, our relationship was born in, and belonged in, that apartment. I guess she didn't like me enough to want to see me in any other way, on the outside. That was the way it was.
To allay my anxiety that I would "catch' something, like a cosmic punishment for having sexual fun, I took my share of VD tests. Not fun...but gave me peace of mind.
It made me sad that it came to an end with Katie, but I accepted it. Eventually I went on to having "normal" "non-commercial" long-term relationships which irrevocably scarred me because the women I chose were critical, self-centered, uncompromising, and manipulative in the worst way. Unfortunately I most frequently found myself attracted to that type of narcissistic female. I've told you how I like the dominatrix type...do I have to give a reason for this? It's Oedipal, baby--nine years of therapy taught me that--blame it on my early conditioning while growing up with an ultra-narcissistic mother. Anyway, by the time I met a girl who wasn't selfish or narcissistic but a good person, I was too damaged to appreciate her--or maybe my true desire by that time, or my fate, was to be alone. Or to be free. In the late 1980s, I shifted my focus instead to the world of stripclubs and fantasy.
As far as I personally am concerned, when it comes to sex, women are best taken in small doses, and I relate to them best erotically when I pay for their company, whether it's a lapdance or something more. And a lot of men feel the same way without necessarily saying it aloud or, in my case, blogging about it.
See, in the clubs, I can be with the narcissistic women who turn me on, and after I stop paying them, they go away. Which--surprise!--sometimes is a relief.
Nothing in life is perfect. But sometimes things are pleasant, compromised though they may be.
Thanks to the Spitzer scandal, there's so much bushwah about men and hookers out there right now, especially on the editorial pages of the New York Times--so I thought I would put in my two honest cents.
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Your candor is bracing, Cranky. I've also been following the media commentary. All I've seen are recycled commonplaces of armchair psychology about powerful men, testerone "poisoning," and the like. These are times when I miss Norman Mailer. He would have been willing to kick over received opinions and venture some thoughts similar to yours. In any event, it would be refreshing to see someone with a major forum start from an unconventional place and praise call girls, dominatrixes, strippers, all the personae of the sexual subconscious. As I see it, Governor Spitzer made a nervy choice to actualize a fantasy, not of sex, so much, but of imagination. With the bonus that he could make the girl disappear when he was done and start fresh with a full head of steam the next time the urge took hold.
It's too bad we can't expect our wise men -- the commentators and moralists -- to have much insight or honesty. It'll probably take a comedian to say something thoughtful about this episode and cop to the envy that a lot of guys feel but would never admit.
I think it's America's puritan past that is so bizarre about sex as an energy release and just for fun. I've always thought it was great recreation myself. Avoiding the vulnerability, intimacy, and heartbreak is a very good thing, IMHO. I think many hookers like their work because they have the closeness or attention they perhaps didn't get from dad when they were young. But they can say 'no' and manage to stay detached and in an emotionally safe place. There are very few ways a woman can achieve the kind of power and independence a hooker can with men due to the nature of her relationshps with her clients instead of lovers. And the money can be good... I had a friend who went into it after high school. It went well for her until her photo was on the front page of the local newspaper because the house she lived in was busted.
For the person paying, the adrenaline rush of doing something "naughty" without getting caught, or nearly so, is a great natural high. I am sure that more than a few sex workers have had sentimental feelings toward one certain kid or guy, too. "I wonder whatever happened to ________?"
Eliot Spitzer was caught by the administrations data mining, pure and simple. You and I, and most others are in those records somewhere, too. They drag the net and see what comes in. Spitzer had made many corporate enemies among Wall Street and Washington. Once someone realized the name attached to the transactions, they must have fallen to their knees in praise of 'their Lord'. Too bad he made himself vulnerable. (Do we think anyone in Washington DC is not involved in this kind of thing? All the names have been mentioned.) He had recently written about the part the lenders had in the sub-prime loan tragedy and where the administration fit into it.
I thank goodness that I grew up in the flower child (free love) days and have never felt that I missed out on anything. I have the fondest memoriest to grow old with! The experience, as you know, is of inestimable value as we age. Nothing like living it to know what it's like. The disease part is a drag, true.
Prostitution shouldn't be illegal. It's a personal thing in a relationship, too, not to be gossiped about and fraught with 'shame'. Nothing to be ashamed of if someone has more fun than most others are allowed.
I'll most likely post some astrological things about the Spitzer situation, too. Very uncanny ties with parties involved.
Take care,
Lulublue