lately, since prostitution has been in the news and since debauchette went on diane sawyer, i’ve been thinking a lot about the hooker myth. well that isn’t quite what i mean but it begins to approach it.
there are, so far as i can tell, two main camps in the sex trade. the choosers and the choosees. as in the women who go into prostitution with their eyes wide open and a keen awareness of what they’re getting into and who are generally more educated and less drug addled versus the ones who tripped all unsuspecting down the road or were pushed down it forcefully.
and i remember a man who asked, somehow innocently “are you for sale?” when i was walking down my local ‘hooker alley’ one sunny afternoon. i still find that to be one of the funnier experiences of my life since i was wearing sneakers and baggy track pants at the time.
but i digress…
and i am not in ANY WAY discussing the plight of the thousands of women and girls who are abused and shoved forcefully into prostitution. i don’t condone that nor do i think that it’s healthy or okay. even less okay are the terrifying statistics regarding assault and death that those lost women suffer.
and i don’t call them lost because they sell their bodies. i call them lost because their power of choice was taken from them or lost to them and they can see no way out of the suffering or terror or whatever word they would apply to their own experiences. i certainly don’t presume to speak for them or even to understand them.
but then i think about my friend todd. i think about todd and i think about the profound satisfaction he gets out of his life. i think about his curiousity toward the sex trade and his choice to put his body up for sale and then i think about his ongoing work with pornography and with transsexuals and i start to get that none of this is so black and white.
todd doesn’t need to do drugs to go to work because he loves his work. as far as i can tell neither do debauchette or gillette need the help that drugs or alcohol provide to them unless they just feel like having a drink. that said i suspect they both have policies about work and total wastedness. i’d be willing to bet they don’t mix them.
so here are these smart and together people who have chosen to sell their bodies. gillette considers her work to be a sacred act and i know that debauchette feels liberated in hers and i’m utterly certain that todd is living the best life he can imagine.
and that’s when i start to think.
i start to wonder what might have happened if i had chosen to sell my body to that man who asked so innocently if i was for sale. what might it have felt like? does the hot rush between my legs at the thought of fucking a stranger for money mean anything?
am i turned on by the idea? by the myth of the happy hooker? i’m certainly not a woman who has been pushed to think on these things because of dire financial straits. in fact i’m doing better financially than i have in years.
if that’s the case it must be something else.
where does this hot rush of power and heat come from at just the thought of letting a man have me for money? is it that somehow with the exchange of money i am freed to be as wild as i would?
can’t be that, from all i hear most prostitution that isn’t domination related comes back to some pretty vanilla sex. the idea that the hooker is all-in. that she’s fully present for as long as you’re paying her to be.
i wish i could figure out where the rush comes from… i know it’s a similar rush to the one i get when i imagine my lover selling me at a slave auction… i just don’t quite know what part of me brings that out…
i only know that i’ve met (in person – at todd’s parties…) several people who either make or supplement their income with sex work. and i’ve met a lot of males in the trade which is, i believe, somewhat unusual.
and you know it’s really interesting… the people who choose prostitution? who make the CHOICE to be there? seem universally happy about it.
comfortable and willing and even proud or empowered or excited about their work.
the people who land there? didn’t choose to get there? seem universally saddened and ALL of them seemed (TO ME!!!) lost and hopeless.
amazing the difference a choice can make.
