Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself. – Sign displayed in an office of “The Village”, from the classic TV series The Prisoner
As I stated in my column of September 18th, I sometimes get replies to my “Black Men” post of a year earlier that demonstrate a total refusal to accept my explanation of why a noticeable percentage of escorts won’t see black clients; here is an example I received just a few weeks ago which, ironically, demonstrates the very point he’s trying to refute:
What’s wrong with a man demanding to get what he pays for? You said some want to use up the full time with sexual activity…is this not what the deal is based on? I think many escorts take advantage of kind hearted (a lot of them older men) customers, it’s bullshit. So when a guy comes along and just wants what he paid for they are suddenly put out by this.
I’m afraid not. Demanding that every minute of the time be taken up in rutting is NOT “what he paid for” because the price doesn’t assume that; it’s like going into a restaurant and complaining because every square centimeter of the plate isn’t covered in food. Though I usually gave a price break for multiple hours, I didn’t do so if I knew the client was doing cocaine because the work of attending to him was much more difficult; the same thing could be said of a client who wants 60 full minutes of pumping. Most girls even give a price break for dinner-date type calls because they’re much easier per hour than calls spent entirely in bed.
And even if it were indeed “what he paid for”, that doesn’t address the roughness, the rudeness, the haggling and the attempts at cheating her out of money, NONE of which are part of the deal. What amazes me is why a number of commenters like yourself insist on attempting to defend the indefensible instead of simply not acting that way; this narcissistic behavior is just as absurd and unrealistic as that of women who insist they should be able to get drunk at a frat party and go upstairs alone with a stranger without being taken advantage of. You don’t see me defending the actions of bad escorts or denying that they exist; I understand that they do indeed exist and I did my best when dealing with a nervous client to allay his fears so he would understand I wasn’t one of them. Good customers (and there are many) recognize that poor customers to give rise to a negative perception of the whole group, and they behave in such a way as to let girls know they aren’t like that.
Why haven’t you corrected the egregious factual errors in the Wikipedia article on prostitution? It’s full of Catherine MacKinnon and Melissa Farley stuff!
I know, it’s awful; I noticed it a while back. Though I’ve corrected a little of the wording in the “consent” section I haven’t tackled the article in earnest yet because, frankly, I find it a bit intimidating. I have fixed many minor errors in sex-work related Wikipedia articles (such as replacing the word “pimp” with “escort service owner” in several articles on madams) and even added a section to the “human trafficking” article, but I haven’t tackled the “prostitution” article yet because there’s so much to deal with and adding citations in Wikipedia is extremely time-consuming. I tried to drum up interest in fixing it within a circle of pro-sex work academics, but nobody seemed interested (and I certainly can’t blame them considering my feelings on the matter).
But now that you’ve raised the question it’s going to eat at me, so I will eventually get around to it; in the meantime I’d like to ask my readers to help out a little. Would those of you who have Wikipedia accounts please fix small but important errors (in the main article and all the others) when you see them? Sometimes just changing the wording of a sentence makes a huge difference, for example, adding “opponents of prostitution feel that” to statements making incorrectly declarative negative statements. And if anybody wants to volunteer to help revise that main “Prostitution” article, please let me know!
Can you change the design that appears next to my name when I comment?
No, but you can. That design is automatically assigned by WordPress to commenters who don’t have a gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar), so all you have to do is get yourself a gravatar and the next time you comment it will automatically replace that design you don’t like (even on comments you’ve already made). Just go to Gravatar.com and register, and you’ll have the opportunity to upload any picture you like as your avatar. From then on, it will appear next to your screen name whenever you comment on any gravatar-friendly site using the same email address you registered with.
Where do you find all the quotes you use?
I’ve always been fond of epigrams; I love the way they can set a mood, foreshadow content or provide the source for a title. Edgar Allen Poe used them frequently, as did many other 19th-century writers, and though they’ve largely fallen out of favor Frank Herbert employed them to great effect in Dune (though he cheated by making up his own out of books from his fictional universe). So I determined from the beginning that nearly every column would have one, and I consider them an integral feature of the blog. Sometimes an appropriate quote will come to mind while I’m planning or writing a column; today’s was one of those. Other times I half-remember a quote and Google for the exact wording, or else I’ll search a quote database (I usually start with the one on Dictionary.com) with an appropriate keyword. When I write a biographical or historical column I keep my eyes open for a likely selection during the research process, and when the topic is related to government or law I consult a reference I found last October, which has provided dozens of good ones so far. But every once in awhile I just can’t find anything I like, and then I keep trying all sorts of keywords that seem as though they might work, looking down lists until something finally strikes my fancy. Those are the real pains, and I’m glad there aren’t many of them.
One Year Ago Today
“Think of the Children!” discusses the bizarre Neo-Victorian belief that “children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma”, and looks at two of its notable victims, Paul Reubens and Melissa Petro.
The Black American Male Sexual Superman Myth is, I believe, the reason for many Black American men’s rough, rude, haggling, pumping-every-minute behavior toward escorts; they are deeply angry that they have to pay for sex at all, since women are supposed to fall at their feet.
Darling, being angry about paying for sex is not just a Black male problem. It’s just a male one. I’ve seen more White men as an African American companion, and the rudest are White men by far. The FEW Black clients I’ve encountered are by far the nicest. The people that complain about “not getting to business fast enough” would be White clients.
I don’t know about you, but Black men account for less than 5% of my overall clientele in 7 years. Have I had a couple of experiences in communications where I had to turn them down? Yes. In fact, only two. There is no way that I could take a few bad encounters with Black men and rule out the entire race. I’ve had more negative encounters with White men. But because of the way I handle myself, and the fact that I can see certain behaviors in communication, it never goes farther than that.
If I pay for an hour of your time and spend sixty full minutes thrusting away, then I’m taking up more than an hour of your time, because how long does it take me to get out of bed, get dressed, get the hell out or, if you come to me, how long does it take you to get out of bed, get dressed, and get the hell out? And was even one minute between when I/you showed up and the fucking began?
If I want to bang bang bang for an hour solid, I need to pay for an hour fifteen, because of the before and after time. Doesn’t seem that complicated. And yet…
If you’ve been passed by taxicabs, had negative assumptions made about you, for your entire life, and that because of your race, I can see that you could develop a sort of paranoia about being cheated. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody out to get you and all that. You might start to wonder if your plate has less food because the staff decided it was OK to save a buck by giving the black man a little less, or what exactly is behind an hour that’s forty-eight minutes long. Of course, in the restaurant situation you can glance at everybody else’s plate and see if they have more.
I’m not saying this sort of “I payed for three thousand six hundred seconds and no less” sort of stuff is OK, but there are reasons behind it.
I think Maggie explained it very well. I’ve only ever associated with prostitutes overseas but a typical rate for a European escort might be 300 Euro the first hour, 500 Euro for two hours, 700 Euro for three hours …
And this is totally because the escort isn’t planning on you being able to sexually perform for that entire time – nor really desiring to.
I don’t know – for me, I need to know the girl and establish a mental connection – which means I need to spend time talking to her and getting to know her. I like taking them out to dinner – and I pay for the dinner. I just got back from the Czech Republic where I spent a whole day with a girl there. She had a car, and liked to drive it – so she took me all over the Czech Republic – and of course I paid for the gas.
Isn’t that part of the male seduction routine? At least pretending to be interested in the girl intellectually when you know that, if not for the sex – you’d be on a golf course somewhere? LOL
I also think the time helps the girl. I mean – some girls aren’t complete professionals to the point they can enter a hotel room and immediately start providing a great “GFE”. But I think, by spending time with them, they can get to know you also. In that kind of a deal I come out ahead, I think – because I’m a genuinely nice guy and I’m not afraid of the gal scrutinizing me by getting to know me also.
One of the most important parts of it, for me, is I want to feel like the gal is leaving me thinking … “Yeah, he was a nice gentleman and a very good customer – well above average.” It matters to me what the girl thinks about me after I’ve shagged her – call me crazy. I just don’t want them leaving thinking … “what a damned jerk”.
Black men in general are sexually dominant and assertive to some degree, and this is so widespread among different Black cultures that I believe it is natural. However HOW that dominant sexuality expresses itself varies between Black cultures.
It just occurred to me that the Black American “I paid her for sex so I’m entitled to rough sex every single minute of the time for less money than she demanded” might be in part a by-product of American capitalism. Americans usually try to get the best deal for the cheapest amount, and less socialized working class Black American men may not realize it’s not acceptable etiquette to apply that haggling-with-a-street-vendor behavior to a very personal intimate service like prostitution.
Black American working class men are accustomed to easy access to very cheap streetwalkers in their current or former impoverished neighborhoods, so maybe that makes them think access to female sexuality should be cheap and an escort is doing something wrong by charging more.
The Black American working class male clients’ rudeness is probably just the same rudeness they often display in their interactions with anyone.
“It just occurred to me that the Black American “I paid her for sex so I’m entitled to rough sex every single minute of the time for less money than she demanded” might be in part a by-product of American capitalism.”
Then why is this behavior not found with white or Hispanic American men, both of whom are equally — if not more — part of the capitalist system? Or are whites and Hispanics all secretly commies and Socialists?
A lot of girls dislike Middle Eastern guys partly because they’re often rude (which probably has a lot to do with the Madonna/whore thing) but mostly because they have a strong cultural tradition of haggling.
SSSHHH!! You’re giving it away! 😉
Days of Broken Arrows, did you pay attention to the rest of that paragraph? My point was this: I have often observed that working class Black Americans (and to some extent, working class people in general) often don’t realize that behavior that is perfectly acceptable in one context can be totally unacceptable in another context. Hence they may not realize that the haggling behavior that is acceptable when dealing with street vendors and other informal sellers is not acceptable when dealing with an escort.
White Americans are less likely to make this mistake because in general they are more socialized than working class Black Americans. As for Hispanics, I haven’t had enough opportunity to observe them to have an opinion on that.
And by working class I mean anybody who grew up working class, regardless of their current economic situation which makes it possible for them to afford an escort.
Interesting. In my experience, for some services, working class white people are better about tipping. Even if it’s only $5, it’s probably their last $5. Upper middle class and above have different expectations and for some services, don’t bother to tip at all. I can’t add anything about blacks or Latinos.
You used square centimeters instead of square inches! This warms my heart. Do you prefer the metric system overall, or were you choosing the smaller unit of measure to make the point a bit differently?
I prefer the metric system, and use it in every way I can; even my thermometer is calibrated to Celsius. Unfortunately, in the U.S. one is stuck with a stove set in Fahrenheit degrees, bathroom scales marked in pounds, etc, so it’s impossible to use it for everything.
I did change my GRAvatar some time back, and now don’t seem to be able to do anything with it. Since I’m OK with the tall, green, and handsome pic, I don’t really mind.
Never mind. It was a password problem, all better now.
I just read the Wikipedia article on prostitution a few days ago, and I certainly noticed the horrific bias in places. I was actually thinking of mentioning it to you.
I figured you’d be just the one to be able to supply all the necessary references and things. You certainly do a lot of that here. But I can definitely understand your reluctance to take on such a job. (I don’t even know how one goes about changing a Wikipedia article.)
If it helps any, you don’t have to fix it all at once. You can just re-write parts of it at a time.
Yeah, I’ve started. It’s just that adding citations is such a pain in the arse over there. 🙁
And just wait until all your hard, careful work is undone by the next biased person(s) to come along. That’s what is wrong with Wikipedia; that’s always been what’s wrong with it. I used to contribute a lot. I haven’t done so in years since I saw a great deal of my careful, accurate work succumb to revisionist nonsense. Some articles are so subject to battles over viewpoint (like the one on atheism) that the article gets locked, and too bad if it is chock full of infoturds at the time. Wikipedia isn’t worth your time. Sorry to say it — really — but your work will literally slip away beneath the pressures of those who disagree with you; you could have spent that time petting the cat and been better off. Your blog… you have positive control. Never forget that with Wikipedia, there is no such control worth mentioning.
If you look down the thread, you’ll see Dr. Laura Agustin also warned me against bothering. Since then I’ve come to the conclusion that, while Wikipedia is a good resource for uncontroversial topics (especially obscure ones), it’s worse than useless for anything controversial. The only time I ever edit it nowadays is to correct some small detail in an uncontroversial article; otherwise I just stick to my work here, where as you point out no idiot can wipe out my work because it offends her.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again- If you’re not getting the session you want, you’ve probably booked the wrong woman.
Not all whores are comfortable, or feel able to provide every type of session. But if you do your research, then, unless your desires are totally outlandish, you are likely to find someone who does exactly what you want.
But expecting someone who has established herself as a great GFE to do sixty minutes of rough, pounding sex is like expecting lobster Newburg on the menu at the local fast food burger joint, or a value menu at a four star restaurant.
I know what I’m talking about, because I was the fill up the hour with action type. I found it easier for me, that’s why I did it. I was well known for “religious” sessions, if you were capable, you got a second coming in the hour.
I never had a “no black men” policy, although I knew many who did, and many had good reasons. If you’re putting your body on the line, you tend to err on the side of caution. One bad experience is good reason to draw lines.
Another thing, if you’re not getting the session you want, maybe you’re expecting the woman to read your mind. Once comfortable with each other, I always liked it when the client let me know exactly what he wanted.
There will always be bad hookers, just as there will always be bad any other sort of occupation. And the solution is the same. Know you you are dealing with, their reputation, and be clear about expectations. Of course, decriminalization would help a lot.
maggie, you should know that wikipedia’s prostitution entry has a history going back years of being a battlefield for points of view, and virulent, to the point that wikipedia editors closed it down for years – at least it seemed like years. and the process for suggesting a change became highly annoying and the whole thing just sat. i don’t recommend attempting anything serious there because it will only get changed quickly. i think my own name doesn’t appear anywhere in that article now because of the fighting.
Ah, thanks Laura; that certainly explains it! I just couldn’t figure out why nobody had bothered previously. I’ll keep my changes very small so they aren’t easily noticed. It’s a pity, really, considering how many people use Wikipedia as their primary go-to source.