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That Was the Week That Was (#41)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2012| 14 Comments »

Prostitution has a social value, and it’s necessary in a city.– Daniël Termont

Without Let or Hindrance

Those who have dealt with “Child Protective Services” know that they are granted powers of which the Inquisition would have been envious.  They routinely abduct people’s children on the flimsiest of pretexts, often on hearsay and without even a warrant, and once this happens parents may never regain custody; if they do it is after years of jumping through ridiculous and ever-changing hoops, playing endless games of “Mother May I?” with power-mad bureaucrats, submission to outlandish violations of their rights and privacy, hundreds of hours in court and total financial ruin…and that’s not even counting the emotional damage to the children.  On Wednesday, an activist named Kathi Duran began a hunger strike on the steps of the California state capitol to call attention to these abuses; as expected, she was arrested almost immediately.  She asked me to call attention to her protest and share this press release, and I’m happy to do so and will provide updates as I get them.

Updates

License To Rape

This result doesn’t happen nearly often enough:

An ex-Houston police officer [named Abraham Joseph]…was sentenced to life in prison…for raping a waitress…Joseph could have received as little as five years…but jurors chose the maximum sentence instead.

News articles always refer to criminal cops as “ex-cops”, implying they had already been fired when they committed the crimes.

Lack of Evidence

The San Francisco Police Department announced…that [it] will [temporarily] stop using condoms as evidence in prostitution cases…Under current city policy, police cannot confiscate condoms…But…police sometimes broke the policy…A July report from Human Rights Watch criticized San Francisco, along with New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles, for [the practice]…

Spam received by a reader; if this isn’t a hoax, the cops, voyeurs or pimp wannabes who set it up labor under truly mythic levels of ignorance and disinformation.

December Q & A

Sex educator Debby Herbenick on the need for more research on anal sex:  “…In an incredibly short period of time, anal sex has become a common part of Americans’ sex lives.  As of the 1990s, only about one-quarter to one-third of young [Americans]…had tried anal sex at least once.  Less than 20 years later, my research team’s 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that as many as 40-45 percent…in some age groups had…[yet] taboos persist and…the list of what we don’t know about anal sex is far longer than the list of what we do.  This makes it difficult for sex educators to feel truly confident in answering people’s very real and important questions…”

Backwards into the Future

Add Malawi to the list of countries whose legal experts understand human rights better than those in the US; one of them said that “Despite the fact that Malawi has not outlawed sex work…police officers on night patrols pounce on sex workers and…charge…[them] with rogue and vagabond…This is a clear violation of rights of sex workers…”  He also commented on the unsanctioned compulsory HIV testing I reported in TW3 (#24), stating that it “is not recommended by…UNAIDS” and “it is impractical and unworkable and more effective results can be reached by supporting sex workers’…access [to] testing, prevention, and support…”

Housewife Harlotry

No, marriage isn’t prostitution; not at all:

…Several [New York] attorneys have shared the craziest [prenuptial agreements] they’ve penned…[including] items like “no piano playing while the husband is home”, cash bonuses…if either is caught cheating and an agreement to terminate a pregnancy if one should occur…[some include]a weight clause…[another] said [the wife] would never wear green and if she did, her husband [could]…destroy the item…One husband demanded “wife not allowed to cut her hair”…

The article also mentions the wives’ demands, including husbands being home by a certain time and (surprise!) being paid for sex.

Saving Them From Themselves

Amanda Hess adds to our list of good articles about “sexting” hysteria:

When Polaroid inventor Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera…in 1948, he ushered in what Christopher Bonanos …in The Atlantic calls a “magnificent new era” in photography…for “instant, shareable nudie pics”…The new…format for…nude photographs—sexting—[is]…basically the same:  instant explicit photographs, taken under the radar, shared between lovers and friends.  In a recent report on a new study of teen sexting…dating “expert” Dr. Wendy Walsh favored terms like “embarrassment,” “shame,” “risky,” and “pressure” to describe the photographic form.  And negative terms like those permeate the…discussion around teen photo sharing, though for years research has shown that the media-wide concern-trolling is overblown…

Tyranny By Consensus

On November 6th Los Angeles county will decide whether to impose AHF’s “condoms in porn” measure; this video explains the real motive behind the whole thing:

Uncommon Sense

…In Ghent’s red-light district, as in many other cities, prostitutes sit in windows to attract potential clients.  According to the new law in Ghent, women must wear something in addition to lingerie and may not dance or make suggestive gestures…[Mayor Daniël] Termont…stressed that the measures were intended to reduce the nuisance caused by customers…rather than to victimise the workers.

Saint Death

This US Army report on the Santa Muerte belief refers to it as a “death cult” (technically true, but the phrase has false and pejorative connotations), declares that it isn’t a “true” religion and states that “Although not all members of the cult are criminals, all live an existence that is dominated by crime.”  I’m sure that bartenders, taxi drivers and prostitutes (who are not criminalized in Mexico) might disagree that their lives are “dominated by crime”, though cops (another large segment of her devotees) probably wouldn’t.

Umpteen Thousand People Can’t Be Wrong

It’s good to see some journalists finally starting to listen to us:

…Backpage’s critics say they are facilitating sex slavery…[but] all the figures quoted in the media come from a single source, a consultancy called AIM Group…[whose] methodology is shaky at best…they ignore major adult ad networks and mainstream ad networks that accept adult ads…and traffic, revenue and share-of-market numbers, even accurate ones, are no indication of how many…ads…actually convert into…transaction[s]…nor what subset of those…are with a minor or…coerced [person]…Backpage publishes about 3.2 million…ads a month…about 11 percent…are listed in…Adult Services…Backpage removes over a million ads a month…[mostly] for spam and fraud…Only 1.6 percent of the [removed] ads…are from the Adult Category…Only 2 percent of that 1.6 percent, or about 400…a month, are suspected of advertising a minor.  Backpage reports those…immediately (and under no legal obligation) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).  In other words, about 1/25 of 1 percent (.04 percent) of the ads Backpage removes…are suspected of advertising a minor for sexual services, a number that represents 1/100 of one percent (.01 percent) of its…ad volume…

Instead of the usual prohibitionists, the article interviewed folks like researcher Ron Weitzer and Kate D’Adamo of SWOP.

The More the Better

Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie…Lucinda Latimer…whose real name is Jan…was…broke, isolated and almost suicidal…  she had sold her car and had no idea where her next penny was coming from when she saw a documentary on former career women who turned to the sex industry to make a living.  Previously, she had [earned] up to £1000 a night as a graphologist…but ill health and the break-up of her marriage forced her back to Perthshire…[she now does phone sex work and] what has struck her about the men is how normal and pleasant most are and how well educated…Trying to hide her work would have made it shameful and sordid…[so] Jan decided to speak out…she has written…The Diary of a Rookie Phone Sex Floozie, and is about to launch volume two…

The Rape Question

Jezebel’s “sex advice” columnist gives a reader advice on how to shove her finger up a guy’s arse without his consent because she wants “to massage someone’s prostate goddamnit!”.  Take note of the tepid protests to the columnist’s suggestions on how to trick and bully him into it, then imagine the firestorm if a male writer gave a man advice on how to pressure a woman into something because he wants “to fuck some chick in the arse goddamnit!”

Change of Heart

I’m never happy to see a sister pilloried, but I suspect the police decision to expose her customers is going to backfire so badly that this may have some positive results in the long run:

[Alexis Wright has]…been charged with running a prostitution business out of her Zumba dance studio [in Kennebunk, Maine] and secretly videotaping her encounters…Police have begun issuing summons to Wright’s customers and will release the names in the weeks ahead.  Townspeople say they’ve heard that lawyers, doctors, law enforcement officials, a television personality and other well-known people in town are included in a detailed clientele list police found.  A lot of people would rather not see the names made public because it will hurt families, children and careers…

So Close and Yet So Far

Another would-be ally undermines her own case by accepting the false claims of prohibitionists:

…In the Netherlands, prostitution is legal.  Nonetheless, over 60% of the women involved in prostitution are involved in the sex trade illegally.  The Mayor [of Amsterdam] and others refer to these as ‘trafficked’ – either because they are exploited and involved in the sex trade against their will…or because they are illegal workers brought to the country to work voluntarily in conditions different from those they expect…the argument for legalization included belief that it would…decrease trafficking, it has had the opposite effect…prostitution has gone from a predominantly home-grown industry to one very heavily dependent on illegal foreign workers…a [recent law criminalizes hiring]…a prostitute who is not registered with the government…But…this…means that…[the] information must be public so that…[clients] can verify that the sex worker is…licensed…[this] invades the privacy of both…prostitutes and…customers…

Prohibitionists intentionally confuse legalization and decriminalization, ignore the bottleneck effect of registration, pretend that correlation equals causation and conflate “unregistered” with “trafficked”, and the author, Dr. Nancy Darling, fails to question any of it.

Metaupdates

See No Evil in TW3 (#24)

Ilfracombe, the English town which claims to be unique in the world by being absolutely whore-free, proves it can be as prudish about lumps of bronze as anyplace in the Bible Belt:  “Damien Hirst refers to ‘Verity’ as a ‘modern-day allegory for truth and justice’…[but hundreds of local residents and law officials]…call the 66-foot bronze statue of a half-exposed pregnant woman ‘soft porn masqueraded as art’…”

Down Under in TW3 (#40)

Australian sex worker activist Christian Vega has more to say on that “end demand” story from St. Kilda:

…As I read through [the article] the stench of bovine excrement almost made my eyes water…street sex work doesn’t relocate itself to another suburb on the other side of town…there is not an itinerant population of these workers who move en masse from one place to the next like migrating wildebeest across the African savannah…It’s more comfortable for people to think that sex work doesn’t happen in their community…and…that street sex workers must board a shuttle from planet Whore to our neighbourhoods under the cover of darkness before disappearing as the sun rises…

I think I like that imagery at least as much as my own.

This Week in 2010 and 2011

A federal judge enjoyed pleasures he persecuted others for and escaped with a slap on the wrist because officials always have different rules for their own class than for others; they’re also hilariously clueless about sex work and are only beginning to realize what a scam the “anti-trafficking” industry is.  I discussed America’s weird love-hate relationship with prostitutes, what a 1947 sci-fi story can teach us about the nanny state, how sex workers arrive at our prices and how prostitution is a much older profession than most people think, and I related the story of a famous whore-obsessed preacher, told some hooker jokes, shared my answers to some amazingly stupid prohibitionist statements and presented two spooky stories for the Halloween season.

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Book Reviews (March 2012)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2012| 6 Comments »

One can never read all the books in the world, nor travel all its roads.  –  Anonymous

In “Presents, Presents, Presents!” I mentioned a few books readers sent me for my birthday and Christmas, and despite being frightfully busy for the past couple of months I’ve managed to read four of them so far.  Also, Dr. Sadie Allison sent me a copy of her new “how to” on anal sex and asked if I’d let her know what I thought, so I figured now was as good a time as any for a new book review column.

All or Nothing:  A Short History of Abstinence in America by Jessica Warner

Throughout history there have been those who abstained from one vice or another, and religious devotees who abstained from all or most of them.  But Protestant reformers like Martin Luther rejected the concept that anything should be abstained from completely as some Catholic religious orders practiced; instead, they preached the virtue of moderation.  But less than two generations after Luther abstinence was back in fashion among the Puritans, and by the 18th century it became an inextricable part of evangelical Protestantism.  Warner traces the development of the notion that moderation is undesirable, which caught on in America as it never could have in Europe because it was based in the sort of misguided optimism we’ve discussed before, the notion that man is perfectible.  She shows how in the late 19th century abstinence went from a personal choice to a thing to be imposed upon society by force (i.e. prohibitionism), and how it eventually permeated  American culture in general and led to modern excesses such as anti-sex laws, dietary fascism and the “War on Drugs”.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Though I had heard about this book before, I became interested in reading it through Satoshi Kanazawa’s discussion of the epilogue to its sequel; I really wanted to read Superfreakonomics, but it seemed silly not to read the first one first so that’s what I did, and I found it fascinating.  Levitt is an economist who isn’t good at math and isn’t interested in analyzing the things one generally associates with economics, but instead wants to explore “the hidden side of everything”.  What that “everything” entails is most easily demonstrated by telling you the names of the book’s six chapters:  “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?”, “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”, “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?”, “Where Have All the Criminals Gone?”, “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” and “Perfect Parenting Part II; or: Would a Roshanda By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?”  Need a bit more enticement?  The star of chapter 3 is Sudhir Venkatesh, the answer to the title of chapter 4 is “Roe vs. Wade”, and chapter 2 (in combination with material from All or Nothing) provided the inspiration for “Circle”.

Harmful To Minors:  The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine

There is almost nothing in this book that will be new to regular readers; Levine’s position is essentially identical to my own.  She points out that only in America is sex in general and sex among legal minors in particular treated as pathological; that sexuality starts at an early age, surges at adolescence and develops throughout the teens rather than springing into existence at midnight on a person’s 18th birthday; that the suppression of teen sexuality is far more harmful than teen sex itself; that keeping kids in ignorance creates a whole host of problems which only barely exist in Europe; that the “predator panic” has caused grievous harm to society in general and kids in particular; that sexuality is natural and involuntary, and that sexual impulses cannot merely be ignored; that normal childhood behaviors, especially in boys, are now pathologized and even criminalized; etc, etc, etc.  What makes the book worth reading is Levine’s backing up her points with exhaustive research, and providing numerous examples which you can be sure I’ll employ in future columns on the subject.  As so often happens with books on sexual topics, the few negative reviews on Amazon actually serve as positive reviews to those who recognize them for what they are.

Tickle My Tush by Sadie Allison

Dr. Sadie has released several previous manuals (covering subjects ranging from sex positions to toys) through her own imprint, Tickle Kitty, and in this new book promises “Mild-to-Wild Analplay Adventures for Everybody.”  I must admit I had a little anxiety about reading it; though I have no hang-ups about my own bottom, “pegging” and prostate massage are just not my cup of tea.  I needn’t have worried; though there’s plenty of information here, Dr. Sadie’s playful, light style presented it in a way calculated to reduce the squick-out factor to approximately nought.  The book is a quick read, divided into chapters and short “subchapters” of two pages or less each, with plenty of illustrations; it’s designed to be perused by couples together, and to be easily consultable later.  After a general overview she moves on to discuss safety, hygiene and anatomy before proceeding to topics arranged in order of increasing “wildness”, starting with massage of the butt cheeks and ending up with positions.  One especially clever feature of the book is two different “FAQ” chapters, one at the beginning (the sort of questions asked by total neophytes) and the other at the end (the sort asked after reading the book or enjoying some experience with analplay).  The only thing I didn’t care for was her use of “cute” words for the body parts and activities, but that’s just me; I totally understand that she was trying to avoid being clinical, and I think most readers will probably be much more comfortable with, for example, “o-ring” rather than “sphincter”.

A Vindication of the Rights of Whores edited by Gail Pheterson

This volume, published in 1989, provides a snapshot of the whores’ rights movement of a quarter-century ago through essays from a number of different writers and almost five dozen contributors, including a number whose names you already know (such as Annie Sprinkle, Margo St. James and Norma Jean Almodovar).  The second part of the book is comprised of a series of transcripts from the first and second World Whores’ Congresses (in 1985 and 1986), including the World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights.  I found the book especially interesting in two ways:  First, it gives a window onto the very beginnings of “Third Wave” feminism by raising the issue of sexual self-determination and presenting a series of statements from feminists who attended the Second Congress and became convinced that their previous belief in prostitution as “exploitation” or “violence against women” was ignorant and incorrect.  Second, it contains what may be the earliest published statement against “trafficking” mythology, considering that few people outside activism or feminism even knew what the term meant until a decade later: “The ICPR objects to policies which give women the status of children and which assume migration through prostitution among women to be always the result of force or deceit…”

One Year Ago Today

“A Foregone Conclusion” is the story of the short, failed career of Markus, the “prostidude” of the Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada.

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December Q & A

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 28, 2010| 23 Comments »

The question you’re not supposed to ask is the important one. –  Mason Cooley

Our first question was posted in a new comment on an old post by a reader who resides in the Netherlands:  Just today, when we were coming back home from a restaurant, my 8-year-old daughter, out of the blue, asked: “Daddy, what’s a prostitute?”  Before I could answer, my mother-in-law (who went with me, my wife and my daughter to the restaurant) launched into a short description of the standard stereotype (“pariahs…” “dirty…” “horrible lives…” “bad women…”).  Since I don’t think it’s a good idea for adults to fight in front of children, I let her go and kept silent. I’m still thinking about what I should tell my daughter later on… and how long I should wait.  Any advice?

At her age, you might try something like this: “Sometimes men get lonely when they don’t have girlfriends, and a prostitute is a lady whose job is to keep them company for a little while so they won’t feel so lonely.” It’s inexact, but it covers the basics in terms an 8-year-old can grasp. I wouldn’t wait too long; since your mother-in-law has already said something you might explain that some people think prostitutes are bad because they think they’re trying to fool the men, but that isn’t really true.

If your daughter responds with something like “That sounds nice, I want to be a prostitute when I grow up,” you might say something like, “Well, it’s sometimes hard work, and some people might think you’re bad if you do it, so it’s probably best to wait until you’re grown up to think about that.”  After all, you wouldn’t want her going around telling people her daddy said she could be a prostitute when she grows up!

I don’t see escorts very often, but I treated myself the other day; she was a polite and reasonably attractive brunette, a little older than me.  Unfortunately she wasn’t very tight down there, so with a condom on it was hard to get any friction going to keep it hard. I was able to finish but it took A LOT of work on my part.  I’ve never experienced that with any woman before; I know each person is different but when you ran your own agency did you get complaints of  workers being “too loose”?

Everybody is indeed different, and some women are large to start with, but the degree of looseness you describe almost certainly resulted from having babies (especially if they were large or the births were difficult).  Contrary to popular belief no amount of intercourse can loosen a woman permanently like babies can, not even several times a day for years.  The lady you saw could probably have restored much of her tightness with Kegels exercises, and if that proved insufficient there is plastic surgery which can do the trick.  Either way, if she intends to stay in the business she probably should do something about the issue or she’s going to get more complaints than she might like.  I never received any complaints like that on any girl I employed, and certainly not on myself!  But then, I was small to start with, never had babies and perform my Kegels religiously.

I’m a new reader to your blog with a question, and I was just curious as to what you would define as a slut? Is a slut just a promiscuous woman who isn’t a whore or something else? Also, is a slut the same thing as a nymphomaniac?

I don’t really care for the term “slut” myself because I feel it’s both pejorative and imprecise, but if I were going to define it I’d say a “slut” is a woman who is promiscuous without a profit motive.  I think, however, that the average man uses it to mean any woman he wants to insult (regardless of her behavior) and the average woman uses it to mean any woman who is more promiscuous than she is!  Given that, I just don’t feel it’s a really useful term even if it weren’t so judgmental.

However you use it, though, a nymphomaniac is definitely something different; nymphomania is a psychological disorder which causes the sufferer to be obsessed with sex and to have a sex drive so high that it causes her distress and serious problems.  Nymphomaniacs are usually unable to maintain relationships for obvious reasons; the behavior is compulsive and thus results in trouble like any other compulsive behavior.  Therefore, you might say a nymphomaniac is to a slut what a kleptomaniac is to a thief and a pyromaniac is to an arsonist.  Incidentally, the term “nymphomania” applies only to women; the corresponding disorder in men is called “satyriasis”.

What does it mean on a escorts ad if it says willing to see basic plus one or two?

Preferred 411 (P411 for short) is a verification service which does a background check on its male members, so if you’re even a basic member girls know you aren’t a cop or other type of liar.  Whenever an escort member sees a client member she can give him an “okay”; the more “okays” the more girls he has seen who will vouch that he’s an acceptable client (not abusive or scary).  So “basic plus two” means she’ll only see a guy who has two or more okays.

My husband wants to try anal sex but I’m afraid it will hurt.  Is there a right way to do it so it doesn’t?

There sure is; you’ve got to relax.  Ask your man to follow your instructions exactly, and use plenty of lubrication (I don’t care what you’ve read, spit is NOT enough).  Make sure he’s rock-hard; semi-soft won’t work for anal.  Tell him to put it inside you just until you start feeling discomfort, then stop and hold it right there; this is the part where trust comes in, because a man’s natural instinct once he’s inside is to start stroking and if he does it will hurt you.  Remain in that position, breathe regularly, and calm yourself; within a minute or two your sphincter will relax and the discomfort will pass.  Then tell him to start stroking, slowly at first until you adjust to the feeling, then give him the go-ahead and tell him not to hold back.  This form of sex is VERY intense and you won’t want it for more than a few minutes.  Done correctly, it is very pleasurable for both partners and can be an interesting variation on your regular lovemaking.

A note to my male readers:  If your wife or girlfriend doesn’t want to try anal, don’t coerce her because if she gives in just to placate you she will NOT be able to relax and it will be a bad experience for both of you.  Tell her you would like it, ask her to consider it and even show her this column, but beyond that leave it alone.  If she agrees, follow her instructions exactly and don’t hold back once she tells you to start stroking, but climax as soon as the urge strikes you; anal sex is like cheesecake, best enjoyed in small servings.

Would you rather have a guy who was well endowed but so-so in bed or smaller but a studly lover?  I’ve always wanted to ask a lady who knew what she was talking about and I consider you a subject matter expert.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!  It’s hard to answer that because it really depends on so many factors.  I personally am not really a connoisseur of male sexual skills; I just enjoy being “screwed into the mattress” as Amanda Brooks says.  But many other women do appreciate technique.  Plus, if I’m in love with a man none of that matters two cents, and I’m not remotely alone in that opinion.  In the final analysis, only guys with really, really tiny cocks need to worry about the issue at all, and even a man like that could be compatible with a woman who loves cunnilingus above all else.

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November Q & A

Posted in Current Events, Fiction, Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 27, 2010| 26 Comments »

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. –  Oscar Wilde

In the commentary on my column of November 15th, regular reader Susan asked:  Maggie, perhaps you would like to do a science fiction anthology with sex work as a subject which we can all contribute? Well, I just thought that was a smashing idea so I volunteered to tackle the editing if we can get enough submissions.  Regular reader Sailor Barsoom was kind enough to send me information on publishing via Kindle, which turns out to be spectacularly easy so I think I’m officially ready to accept submissions now.

Stories can be either science fiction, fantasy or horror but one of the main characters must be a sex worker, preferably in a positive role; I am only accepting short stories, so submissions must not be longer than 7000 words.  Please copyright anything you send me by putting the date and your name at the end of the text document (I prefer Word format but can convert if necessary) and email them to me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net with the word “anthology” in the subject line.  You may make as many submissions as you like.  Of the purchase price for each book, Amazon keeps 30% and I plan to donate 20% to SWOP or Desiree Alliance (maybe 10% to each).  I will keep 5% as my editorial fee, and the remaining 45% will be divided equally among the published stories (one share per story) regardless of length; I don’t want authors padding their stories just to inflate their word count, and this way each story will be as long or as short as it needs to be.  If you have any questions or suggestions, please use the same “anthology” subject line.  Don’t be shy, y’all; if you have a good idea but feel your ability to express it lacks finesse just write it up and your editor will happily assist you in polishing it.

So if the average age at which a woman enters prostitution isn’t really 13, what age is it?

An anomaly on several levels.

Good question!  A friend of mine who is still a working escort recently conducted a poll of 100 escorts who frequent a message board of which she is a member.  She asked at what age they started the trade, and her results were as follows:

Younger than 15: 3%
15-17: 11%
18-20: 13%
21-23: 18%
24-26: 16%
27-29: 10%
30-32: 10%
Older than 32: 19%

She polled the “older than 32” respondents separately and the average age for that category was 42; she estimated the average for the “under 15” category at 13.  Given these figures, the average age of entry into prostitution for American escorts is 26.46.

It’s difficult to know what percentage of all American prostitutes are escorts, but I would suspect 60% is a good guesstimate; with our standard 15% streetwalker estimate that would allow 25% in brothels and massage parlors.  Estimating the average age of streetwalkers is tricky; I’m going to be really generous and pretend that HALF of all streetwalkers are underage.  Now, by all reasonable estimates that’s much higher than the reality but I want to err on the side of caution.  Let’s presume adult streetwalkers enter at roughly the same times as escorts (average 26); what’s the average for underage girls?  Well, guess what; it still isn’t 13 even for them.  As explained in this analysis, it’s about 16.  If we average the two figures (26 for adult streetwalkers and 16 for underage) we arrive at an average streetwalker entry age of 21, a far cry from 13 even allowing HALF of streetwalkers are underage!  We have no stats on brothel or massage girls, so again I’m going to be incredibly generous to the liars and fanatics and estimate that the average for that group is the same as among streetwalkers, namely 21.  So let’s crunch the numbers:  if 60% start at an average age of 26 and 40% at an average age of 21, the average age at which American hookers enter the profession is 24, which I think everyone can agree is safely into the adult range.

I’m a nurse, and most of the women patients I’ve dealt with in the past who have had anal forced on them stated they couldn’t help but scream when it was happening to them. Some passed out from the experience and woke up after the fact.  Yet neither time you were raped did you do either.  How were you able to get through that?

Well, there’s a vast degree of difference between a hooker who is not remotely an anal virgin and an amateur who fights such an assault rather than bending with it like a willow.  To use an analogy a male might appreciate, your patients stood still and tried to resist punches in the jaw by brute force rather than rolling with them.  Also, some people scream as a reaction to shock; I tend to react with a sharp intake of breath instead.  With all due respect to those ladies, passing out during a violent assault, especially a sexual one, is a good way to get yourself killed.  In my humble (and experienced) opinion, fighting a rape is a good strategy only until actual penetration has been accomplished; at that point it’s best to relax as best one can so as to minimize physical injury and to keep as calm as possible during the ordeal so as to be able to think clearly to plan one’s survival and/or escape strategies.  Unless one is in a place where screaming may bring help, I would avoid it because it may anger the rapist and make him even more violent; rape is bad enough without being beaten or strangled as well.

During an encounter I’m sure sooner or later the condom broke during vigorous thrusting, did some clients “finish” inside you?  If so what did you do about it?

Yes, that happened twice in my career.  Since I had a hysterectomy at 28 I had no fear of pregnancy, but obviously any working girl who is still fertile should be on the pill just in case something like that does happen. Smart hookers don’t rely entirely on condoms for disease prevention, either; the condom is just the “safety net” if something slips through the other two layers of defense, which are 1) catering to a clientele who tend to be clean in the first place, and 2) careful visual checking as I’ve talked about before.  One of my two breakages was with a regular whom I believe saw me exclusively; he was more worried than I was afterward!  The other was just a typical call.  In both cases I douched like crazy with a strong vinegar solution as soon as I got home and then went to my gynecologist for testing; neither accident resulted in any problem.

I was reading in your blog recently that you really don’t desire to sleep with other men?  Doesn’t monogamy get kinda old  for a sexually liberated woman like yourself?

Nope.  As I said in my column of September 22nd, “my sexuality is almost entirely receptive; though I have no aversion to sex whatsoever, it’s pretty rare that I actually crave it.  In other words, if nobody propositions me I just tend to cruise along, not really thinking about sex or wanting it, yet if someone I find attractive or interesting or nice or generous approaches me for sex I tend to get interested quite easily unless there’s some reason I shouldn’t (in which case I can resist just as easily).  You might say my ‘on’ switch isn’t hard to find; it just isn’t equipped with an automatic setting.”  Obviously, cheating on a husband one loves is an act of epic stupidity, so I never allow the switch to go on with any man but him; besides, I’ve had enough stranger-sex for several lifetimes.  I must admit that I’m sometimes attracted to a pretty girl, but since my husband says that’s OK I make no effort to resist it when it happens.

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A Whore in the Bedroom

Posted in Call types, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2010| 158 Comments »

A true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best.  At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.  –  Robert A. Heinlein

Today’s column is for the ladies.  Gentlemen are certainly welcome to read, comment and share the column with the women in your lives (if you dare), but my comments will all be directed toward the ladies and will therefore assume female gender.  I’ve been thinking about doing this one for a while, but a few factors (including some emails I’ve received and day-before-yesterday’s column) have at last inspired me to sit down and actually write it.  If any of my female readers have specific technique questions which I can’t cover herein without being graphic (sorry, guys), I’ll be happy to answer them privately via confidential email.

One night at UNO I was sitting around talking with several other girls, and when one said something about putting out for her boyfriend another replied haughtily, “I would never give a man sex unless I wanted it, too.”

Even back in those pre-professional days I considered that sort of attitude completely asinine, so I asked her, “Do you have a dog?” (knowing full well she did).

“What?” she asked, annoyed at my apparent change of subject.

“It’s a straightforward question,” I replied; “Do you, or do you not, have a dog?”

“You know I do!” she snapped.

“And you walk it every night?”

“Of course!”

“What if you don’t want to?”

“I still have to anyway, or she’ll go on the carpet during the night!”

“What if it’s raining?”

“Then my dad takes her for me!” The dumb bunny had no idea where I was going, but the smiles told me the other girls did.

“In other words, you care more about a dog than you do about a man.”

“How do you get that?”

“When one has a living creature under one’s care, it is one’s responsibility to take care of that creature’s needs, or else to arrange for someone else to do so.  And if you shirk that responsibility, you only have yourself to blame for the inevitable and foreseeable consequences.”

Unfortunately, this girl’s attitude is not at all unusual nowadays; women used to understand that men had sexual needs which it was a wife’s responsibility to provide for.  But as I discussed in my column of July 21st, decades of lies and neofeminist propaganda that men and women are the same and that women should only accept sex when they desire it (and for no other reason) have done tremendous damage to the male-female dynamic; ignorant modern women not only feel that husbands should be satisfied with whatever sexual pickings their wives choose to dole out, however meager or restricted, but also refuse to understand that a starving man will seek food elsewhere if it isn’t available at home.  Every escort hears it over and over again: “My wife doesn’t give me sex any more,” or “after the kids my wife lost interest,” or some other variation on it.  These men have no reason to lie; they want us to understand that they are driven by need, and the sadness in their voices is unmistakable.  The statement that “no woman should have to have sex if she doesn’t want it” ignores the simple fact that in today’s world a woman does not need to marry for support any longer, just as my silly schoolmate did not need to own a dog.  Getting married is a free choice, and carries responsibilities with the privileges.  If you refuse to take care of your dog you should give him to somebody who will, and if you refuse to give sex to your husband you should either divorce him or suggest he satisfy his needs elsewhere with your blessing.  You cannot have your cake and eat it, too; a man is NOT a woman, and if you expect him to respect your choice not to have sex with him, you in turn must respect his choice to get it from somebody else.

Women who actually starve their husbands are in the minority, though; the more typical wife merely offers such repetitive and unpalatable fare that her husband simply loses his appetite for her cooking and yearns to dine elsewhere.  One of my correspondents recently wrote, “I know so many women who say their men are apt to fall asleep in front of the TV or play on the computer all evening; sex seems to be not very high on their list of priorities.”

I replied, “Not to be mean, but what isn’t ‘high on their list of priorities’ is boring, repetitive sex with their dumpy, frowsy wives who sit around in sweatsuits with short hair and only want sex when they’re interested in the way they want it, and everything else is greeted with ‘That’s disgusting!’ or ‘You’re a pervert!’ or ‘I’m not gonna do that!’  Those same men are plenty interested in young-looking, well-kept escorts who have maintained their figures, dress in a feminine manner and will give them the kind of sex they want when they want it.”

When you’re done jumping up and down, screaming at me and calling me a bitch, sit down and listen to what I’m trying to tell you.  I understand that some women’s figures go south after having kids and that it’s difficult to reclaim them, but I’ll bet most husbands understand it as well; that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’ll use my own family as an example; I am the eldest of four sisters who all look much alike and started out with similar figures, though our personalities are all different.  All three of my sisters had two children each; the third sister is most like me in personality and still looks hot at 41, the youngest is athletic and has a very trim figure at 40, and the second is fat and dumpy.  The two younger sisters and I dress attractively and wear our hair in flattering styles; the second wears sweatsuits and “fat clothes” and chopped her hair off boy-short while she was pregnant with her first baby.  Finally, the two younger sisters and I treat our husbands well, while the second won’t lift a finger for hers; though I’m not privy to the details of my sisters’ sex lives, does anyone here have any doubt whose husband is most likely to cheat?  There are no great biological differences between us; it was the psychological differences which caused the one sister to stop trying, and her appearance mirrors her behavior.  Every aspect of her dress and grooming screams “I don’t care whether you find me attractive or not!” to her husband and everyone else with eyes to see.

Just being overweight is not the problem, though many women love to use it as an excuse.  Lots of men like plump women, and I daresay the average man whose wife has put on too much weight would still be happy with her sexually if she made every other effort to attract him.  Don’t believe me?  Turn off the goddamned TV, put down Cosmo and surf the escort sites on the internet for a while; you’ll find quite a few “BBW” (Big Beautiful Woman) escorts, women who are definitely fat but still make the effort to look nice and give men what they need sexually.  Yes, a good figure goes a long way (and for most women is very sustainable with sensible eating and regular exercise), but dress, grooming and attitude go much farther, especially for a woman who has the advantage of already being married to the man she’s trying to attract!

If you want to keep your husband sexually happy the best advice I can give you is, get the word “no” out of your vocabulary!  Any woman over the age of 16 should have noticed that all men are, to put it bluntly, perverts by female standards; as the picture at right reminds us, everything turns men on!  Yes, a lot of what they like is weird or gross or nasty or even funny to most women; so what?  Do you personally have to judge dog food palatable before you give it to your dog?  As long as what your husband wants in bed doesn’t actually hurt you or give you serious doubts about his masculinity, what difference does it make?  You’ve had his semen inside you hundreds of times, so why does it matter if he wants to put it on your butt, tits, stomach, face or hair sometimes?  And trust me, I know better than you how it tastes; if you’re having sex for the flavor, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.  He wants to tie you up?  Let him!  Great Aphrodite, you trust him with your life every day, so why is this different?  Are you afraid you’ll like it?  And why is it too much trouble to wear stockings and a garter belt for him?  We all wore them every day until pantyhose were invented!  You liked playing dress-up when you were seven; reclaim the fun and pretend to be a nurse or hooker or whatever it is he wants.  You might enjoy it!

Even if you’re afraid of something he wants (such as anal sex), would it kill you to at least consider it?  Don’t refuse him out of hand; think about it.  Ask questions and do research on the internet.  Work up to it by slow stages, and ask him to be patient with you; if all else fails, see if you can work out some kind of compromise.  So his fantasy is to have both you and your sister?  I don’t blame you for refusing to do that, but how about compromising by hiring an escort to be the other woman?  Don’t worry, she’s not after your husband!  She’s just there to do her job, which in this case is to allow the two of you to explore a fantasy which would otherwise be impossible.

Even if you already do all this stuff, your husband may still hire prostitutes; the male animal craves variety, and some are unwilling or unable to put that craving aside.  Trust me, sister, this is not something to worry about unless you can’t afford it or it becomes an obsession (too much of anything is bad).  He’s not going to leave you for a whore, and she’s a lot safer than an affair (as I discussed in my column of August 2nd).  So if you do find out your husband has been occasionally indulging in the hobby, do yourself a favor and consider all of your options before having a hissy-fit and doing something you may later regret.

If all of this seems too difficult, you can certainly just keep on the course you’ve set, but if your relationship hits the rocks solely because you couldn’t be bothered to tend the wheel there is nobody to blame but yourself.  In the final analysis you married your husband for a reason, most likely nowadays because you loved him.  If you don’t love him any more, why are you still with him?  And if you do still love him, isn’t making him happy worth a bit of effort?

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Terminology

Posted in Call types, Perception, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2010| 22 Comments »

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” –  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Like all subcultures, whores and our clients use specialized language to describe various aspects of our trade and the specialized activities we perform.  Most of these are just slang terms used to replace a long descriptive phrase (for example, “cowgirl” replaces the rather cumbersome “woman on top position”), but others were originally intended to allow discussion of suppressed activities when official busybodies might be eavesdropping (on phone or internet communications).  Of course, a secret shared is no secret at all, so once a term becomes common enough for a client to be relatively certain that it will mean something to an escort (or vice versa), they can also be sure the term is equally well-known to the cops.  Today I’d just like to give you a brief overview of a few of the more common terms used in and about our trade.  Many of these originated on the internet; some were first used among streetwalkers, while still others may be peculiar to New Orleans (which is the only place I ever worked).

Around the World means oral stimulation of the man’s anus as well as his genitals; as one might expect, the percentage of working girls who will grant this particular request is fairly slim even in the lower echelons.  Even if one chooses to ignore the considerable hygeine issues, the chance of contracting hepatitis A or other diseases is in my considered opinion far too high to risk.

BBBJ stands for “Bareback Blow Job”, in other words fellatio without a condom.  In the days immediately after the discovery of AIDS this was widely considered unsafe, and authorities encouraged people to use condoms even during oral sex.  Almost three decades of research, however, have failed to turn up even one single documented case of HIV transmission via oral sex, and the last figure I saw was 0.04% chance of infection due to blood seepage into an undetected mouth sore.  Since that’s roughly similar to the chance of being struck by lightning while walking in the rain, most call girls and escorts don’t worry about it much any more.  Hepatitis B is transmitted much as HIV is, though probably at a slightly higher chance.  Other venereal diseases (including venereal warts and herpes) can certainly be transmitted via oral sex, but since they have visible signs most of the risk can be avoided via careful visual inspection (as I’ve discussed before), copious salivation (which most men find visually stimulating anyhow) and disallowing ejaculation into one’s mouth.  The latter requires careful monitoring of the client’s progress; I always asked him to warn me but also assumed he would not because unfortunately a lot of men are complete assholes on this particular subject and will not give warning despite the increased risk to the girl.

Cowgirl we’ve already discussed; the only reason I’m mentioning it here again is because many of my readers are probably unfamiliar with the terms for its variations, reverse cowgirl (woman on top, facing the man’s feet) and Asian cowgirl (as normal cowgirl but with one’s feet on the bed raising the whole body up and down rather than simply rocking back and forth).

Deep Throat means taking a man’s penis all the way into one’s mouth.  With a little practice it isn’t difficult, and since it impresses the hell out of men it’s well worth learning.  The trick is to suppress the gag reflex; I suggest practicing on bananas.  Few men are long enough to actually go down one’s throat, and even those that are can be handled unless they are oddly-shaped (as I’ll discuss tomorrow).

Donation is originally an internet term; it simply means “fee”, as in “how much is your donation?”

Facial means ejaculation onto a woman’s face.  Men who like to do this really like it, but some girls won’t allow it.  Personally I was never bothered by it; it’s not difficult to keep one’s mouth and eyes shut, and since I was blessed with a clear complexion and lovely natural coloring I never needed to wear makeup in those days anyhow.  I could therefore simply have a warm, damp washcloth handy for initial cleanup and then wash my face completely afterward.  I can see how a girl who needs makeup would be averse to clients doing this, however, since it would necessitate a great deal more effort to restore her looks afterward than it did mine.  It also tends to get in one’s hair, but can be brushed out in the short term and thoroughly removed by shampoo later.  Amateurs who say “I would never let a man do that to me!” or “That’s so demeaning!” need to remember those statements when asking “Why does my husband hire whores when I give him plenty of sex?”

Full service simply means intercourse, as opposed to just oral sex or masturbation (the latter being the specialty of Asian massage parlors).

GFE means “Girl Friend Experience”; it’s a highly subjective term but generally means that the escort will cuddle, kiss, refrain from obvious clockwatching or otherwise make the experience seem much more natural and less mechanical.  A high percentage of call girls provide either “GFE” or its converse, the “PSE” (some men believe that the two are not mutually exclusive within a single call, but I beg to differ).  Of late, I have noticed a distressing tendency in internet venues to attempt to define a GFE by mechanistic criteria (such as whether the girl allows intrusive tongue kissing); IMHO this completely flies in the face of the very idea of a GFE, which is determined by how the girl makes the client feel rather than by a checklist.

Greek means anal sex.  It isn’t commonly offered because one simply can’t trust a client to follow the instructions necessary to keep the experience from being painful, but there are always specialists who cater to customers who want it.

Hobbyist is an internet term which means a client who sees escorts as a continuing hobby rather than as an occasional pleasure.  Hobbyists generally frequent internet boards dedicated to their hobby and share information with each other; some of them are excellent clients because they know what’s expected of them, never quibble about money, treat girls well and are scrupulous about keeping appointments.  Unfortunately, the rest of them enjoy the hobby itself more than the girls, and can be nasty and exploitative.  Sometimes the term is used in a broader sense to mean any client, but I think it’s more useful in the strict sense.

John is a term used mostly by police, the media and others outside The Life for a customer, as in “John Doe” since they are anonymous.  The first recorded appearance of the term in print is from 1911, but it is unclear whether it originated among streetwalkers or started as an outsiders’ term from the beginning.  Since I have never associated with streetwalkers or worked anywhere but New Orleans I can’t speak for whether any working girls actually use the term, but what I can say is that I never heard one do so, not even once, not even as a joke.  I’ve heard “client”, “customer”, “date”, “patron” and even (once) “trick”, but never “john”.  I myself always preferred “gentleman”, not merely because it’s polite but also evokes Amanda Wingfield’s “gentleman callers” in my mind.

MSOG means “Multiple Shots On Goal”, in other words the girl allows the man to have intercourse with her more than once if he can.  It’s an internet term, and I must admit I giggled when it was explained to me.  Many girls won’t allow it, which IMHO is rather stupid on their parts since this exists largely in the realm of male fantasy.  What I mean by that is, though a large percentage of men ask for it (by initials or otherwise), only a tiny percentage can actually accomplish it within the time allotted.  So there’s no harm in agreeing to this because most clients will be too spent after the first time even to attempt it again, and a gentle “but sweetie, if it took you 35 minutes the first time how do you expect to do it a second time in ten?” will take care of most of the rest.  And on those rare occasions where the client is both quick on the trigger and able to perform again, why not let him go twice?  It’s his hour, after all, and he paid good money for it.

Pearl Necklace means ejaculation onto a woman’s tits.  This can turn into an unplanned facial if the man ejaculates energetically enough.

Popped means the same as “busted”, i.e. arrested.

Protection simply means condoms.  A lot of people have their own idiosyncratic terms; one girl I knew used to call them “party balloons” and Doug used to refer to them as “dancing slippers” (as in, “get out your dancing slippers, I’ve got a call for you”).

Provider is a neutral internet term for an escort, as in “provider of services”. I don’t much care for this one, as it always reminds me of “The Providers”, those disembodied brains who once abducted Captain Kirk.

PSE stands for “Porn Star Experience”.  This is slightly less subjective than its converse “GFE”, and refers to a very energetic escort who is adept at visually impressive stunts like deep throat and accepting of facials and other such porn-movie staples.

Russian is holding one’s tits together so a man can rub himself between them; obviously, it’s only possible with rather large tits.

Trick is old slang for a session with a client (as in “turn a trick”) or sometimes even a client himself.  It first appeared in print around the same time as “John”, and is still used today among streetwalkers and lower-class escorts in some areas (including New Orleans).  Higher-class girls generally prefer “date” or “call”, and I’ve also heard “job” or “deal”; working girls with musical backgrounds sometimes use “gig”.

Troublemakers is the term I preferred for the nasty, sadistic busybodies referred to by others as pigs, liars, busybodies, blue boys, heat, LE and a number of other things…in other words, cops, the single greatest threat to any hooker’s health, safety and livelihood.

So, there’s a quick explanation of a very few terms; there are plenty of others, but these are most of the common ones which sprang immediately to mind (though I wouldn’t be surprised if I overlooked a really obvious term or two).  As I said above, these are the ones I know from the internet and New Orleans; to list every one from around the world would probably fill a slim dictionary.

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Rough Trade (Part Two)

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2010| 19 Comments »

Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men.  –  George Bernard Shaw

One major professional hazard for whores is the possibility of rape, and though it is much less likely for call girls than for streetwalkers it does still happen sometimes.  In yesterday’s column I defined rape as I use the word and discussed the appalling ignorance which causes many people (including some women) to conclude that whores cannot be raped; I then described the first time I was raped on the job.  In today’s column I will describe the second time and another incident in which I only barely avoided being raped; strangely enough it was the latter incident which was the most frightening of the three, for reasons which will soon be made clear.  For those who missed yesterday’s column I will repeat this warning:  Though I will do my best to describe these events as neutrally and without lurid detail as possible, it may still be a bit difficult for those of delicate disposition or women who have themselves been raped.  If you belong to one of those two groups, you may wish to skip both this column and yesterday’s because I really have no desire to cause anyone distress.  As I said yesterday I would rather not have to talk about it at all, but the only way to combat ignorance is with complete honesty, and that means discussing the ugly aspects of harlotry as honestly as the beautiful ones.

It was perhaps a year after the first incident that a regular customer of mine who was a wrestling promoter called me for one of his professional wrestlers, a champion from Honduras.  The man spoke almost no English and I only half-forgotten high-school Castilian Spanish, so the details were arranged by my regular.  The hotel wasn’t nearly as fancy as the Windsor Court but it was by no means cheap, and my regular was going to be in the next room, so even though I had a slight sense of foreboding I went ahead with the deal.  As in the other call the first part went as usual, but soon after the client was inside me my true predicament became apparent.

The first sign of trouble was that he wouldn’t stop trying to kiss me.  As I mentioned in my column of July 24th most whores never kiss our clients because of the desire to maintain emotional distance, and though I sometimes broke that rule if I felt some chemistry with a friendly, clean client, I certainly never did with men who seemed unable to  kiss without being disgusting (which I will discuss in a future column).  This guy I most definitely did NOT want to kiss; he had a huge, wet mouth and was a heavy smoker in addition to just generally being gross.  But despite my protests and fighting he continued to kiss me roughly, biting my lip and sucking on it so hard it throbbed.  When I finally succeeded in getting him to let go by biting him back, he started laughing like an idiot and sucking on my neck.  Again I fought, pushing him off, and he moved to one of my tits, then the other, laughing and keeping me down in a wrestling hold so I could not escape.

Finally, I got my opportunity; he withdrew from me, reared up on his knees and announced, “No like condom!” and proceeded to pull it off.  My legs slammed shut like a steel trap and I rolled off of the bed and dropped to the floor so quickly it almost made me dizzy.  This seemed to take him off guard, so I quickly got up and started pointing at my watch, trying to make him understand that his time was up.  It wasn’t, of course, but I managed to confuse him enough to cause him to hesitate while I started to get dressed.  The next five minutes or so were like some grotesque comedy; he kept trying to hug and kiss me while I was trying to get dressed, then actually lifted me off of the floor several times and turned me around in his hands, talking to me in thickly-accented Spanish I couldn’t quite make out.  If I hadn’t been so concerned for my safety it might’ve been funny.  At last, though, I managed to get out the door, only to find my regular coming up the hall from the bar where he had been for the last twenty minutes, oblivious to my noisy struggles next door.  It was the last time I ever saw him, needless to say!

I raced straight home and took a hot shower, then examined myself in the mirror; my lips were swollen and purple, and I had ugly bruises on my neck, chest and nipples.  I was utterly furious and frightened at the same time, and I cried for some time before I could explain to Grace what had happened.  I did not go out again that night, and the next day the bruises were even uglier so I had to take the night off; not even makeup would have covered them.  By the second day following, however, I had figured out a makeup combination which would hide the marks until they got pale enough to ignore.  I think the reason I was affected so much more strongly by this abortive rape than by the completed one was that, while the Frenchman had been very quick and nonchalant and even seemed to think he had done nothing wrong, the wrestler clearly recognized that he was hurting me and obviously took sadistic pleasure in it.  In addition, the Frenchman did not remove his condom; I shudder to think what disease I might have contracted from the wrestler had he succeeded in penetrating me again after removing his.

The one factor these two calls had in common was obviously the language barrier; I do not believe that the problem with these men was their ignorance of English, but rather my ignorance of their languages.  Many people have a tendency to perceive people who don’t speak their language as stupid; think of the stereotypical “ugly American” shouting at non-English-speaking people as if increasing the volume will somehow help them to understand.  Perhaps it is easier for some people to dehumanize those with whom they cannot communicate, to think of them as somehow lacking human feelings and rights.   I believe that is what happened in both of these cases; because I could not speak the language of either man it was easy for him to dismiss me as stupid, even subhuman, like some kind of animated sex doll.

The third (and last) client who violated me to that degree didn’t have the excuse of a language barrier; he was just completely fucked up on some drug I could not identify.  It was at a big Super Bowl party; a group of eight men had hired eight girls (four strippers and four escorts from two different agencies) for three hours, but the negotiated fee just covered our being there (dancing, socializing, and the like).  As is usual in this sort of arrangement, the escorts were picking up “side bets” and entertaining them in the bedrooms off of the main room.  These rooms weren’t locked or anything, so while I was engaged in one such deal there was actually another girl (whom I did not know) in the room changing clothes or something.  The client was taking me from behind, then without warning it was like the Frenchman all over again; he bore down on me with his full weight and switched holes too quickly for me to stop him.  I of course protested and tried to move away, but he was far too heavy for me to move and far too stoned to care about my protests (I’m not sure what he was on but it wasn’t pretty); I therefore went into my usual rape-defense mode, relaxing as best I could with this moron resting his full weight on my arched back.  As with the Frenchman, I was perfectly calm and my thinking was absolutely crystal-clear; though I could easily have attracted attention by shouting, I realized that to do so would probably blow a multi-hour deal not just for myself, but also for seven other girls.  So I kept quiet and resolved to endure it, but I think the other girl realized what was going on because she left the room immediately and apparently summoned one of my girls, a fiery redhead called Karla, who came into the room and asked if I was OK.  Now, picture this bizarre situation; there was a big party going on in the next room, and here was this guy holding me down and raping me, completely oblivious to the fact that another girl was there talking to me.  He was high, all right.  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I gasped.

“Is he doing what I think he’s doing?” she asked, visibly bristling.

“Yeah, he is, but I’ll be all right,” I replied.  She seemed to be getting angrier, so I added, “really.”  And bless her heart, she stayed right there until he was done (which wasn’t much longer) and collapsed on the bed, at which point she took  me into the bathroom and cleaned me up with a warm washcloth, cursing him all the while.  I was really touched by her solicitude and told her so, explaining that I didn’t want to mess things up for everyone (including her, who was saving up to buy a car).  She said she understood, but stared daggers at the stupid ape when he stumbled out of the bedroom an hour or so later.  As with the Frenchman, things worked out for the best because I collected several more “side bets” and when the guys decided to keep four of the girls for another two hours, I was one of them; altogether I went home with over $3000 cash in my purse for five hours of work.  As before, my “pushing past” the ordeal rather than dwelling on it got me through, though I still remember the episode with complete clarity down to the smallest detail.

These three incidents, the only ones of the kind I ever experienced while working, demonstrate the value of establishing oneself as a real person in the eyes of the customer.  Whenever I had the opportunity to talk to the client, to let him see me as a normal woman like his sister or daughter or mother, I automatically invoked the protection of the social conditioning which encourages a man to treat a woman with respect and to refrain from harming her.  But in these three cases I was prevented from doing so, twice by the language barrier and once by a drug-induced neurological haze, and so the old Madonna/whore duality came into play; unlike the vast majority of my customers these three men saw me only as a degraded and even subhuman creature out of the age-old propaganda of the false moralists, and therefore merely a thing to be used rather than a businesswoman who had come to perform a service for him.  If I could believe that these men were just freaks, part of the small criminal element which has no compunction against harming others for their own gratification, it wouldn’t be so bad.  But when I look at society as a whole and see cops violating our rights and persons, the media presenting us as pathetic addicts, legislators treating us as legal incompetents, neofeminists portraying us as damaged psychotics and judges ruling that we don’t even deserve protection from violent assault, I realize that the attitude which allowed those men to violate me is still that of the majority.

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Rough Trade (Part One)

Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2010| 22 Comments »

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

Every profession has its dangers, and an omnipresent one for whores of every level is the possibility of rape, though obviously it is much more likely for streetwalkers (especially at the hands of cops, but we’ll talk about that another day).  Because call girls deal with a much higher class of clientele in much more controlled settings, our chances of being raped are far lower than those of our sisters in the street, but those chances still exist and if a girl works for long enough the possibility of rape becomes a virtual certainty.  I was raped twice in my career, and one other time I barely avoided it; strangely enough it was the latter incident which was the most frightening of the three, for reasons which will become clear when I talk about it tomorrow.  In any case, I feel compelled to issue this warning to my readers:  Though I will do my best to describe these events as neutrally and without lurid detail as possible, it may still be a bit difficult for those of delicate disposition or women who have themselves been raped.  If you belong to one of those two groups, you may wish to stop reading now (or at least when you get to the paragraph starting with “the first time I was raped on a call”) and skip tomorrow’s column altogether because I really have no desire to cause anyone distress.  I would rather not have to talk about it at all, but the only way to combat ignorance is with complete honesty, and that means discussing the ugly aspects of harlotry as honestly as the beautiful ones.

First of all, what is rape?  There are probably a dozen ways to define it, but there are things that are legally called “rape” which are not, in my mind, rape; chief among these is statutory rape.  I lost my virginity on my fifteenth birthday to an eighteen-year-old, and I’m sure that at least a few of the guys I had in the next few years were over the imaginary line which separates “child” from “adult”.  By law, all of those experiences were rape, to which I reply “Bullshit”; I was completely in control of every one of those encounters, even the first one.  What’s more, few of the men I slept with had any idea how young I was; though I look much younger than my real age now, as a teenager I was the opposite.  Throughout my late teens people consistently estimated my age as 25, and I was “carded” for the first time in my life in 1996 (at the age of 29).  But despite all these facts, any of the men who enjoyed me when I was 15 or 16 could have been prosecuted for “rape”, which IMHO only dilutes the strength of the word.

Conversely, there are people who would claim a hooker cannot be raped because she has already consented, and many of these ignoramuses are actually in positions of power.  In 2007 a municipal judge in Philadelphia, Teresa Carr Deni, dismissed the case against a group of men who raped an escort at gunpoint, charging them instead with “theft of services” (read story here).  What makes this even more reprehensible is that though local feminist organizations reacted to the story, the response of national feminism was lackluster at best; I’m sure if the judge had been male or the victim a teacher they would’ve had a field day.  Note that the girl was rescued by a fifth man who was invited by the rapists to participate, but realized what was going on and instead rescued her; note also the first response to the linked story, in which a neofeminist uses the incident to argue for the abolition of sex work.  A man recognized rape when he saw it while a “career woman” and “feminists” used the victim to further their agendas, and that is nothing short of disgusting.

I would define rape as “the taking by force of that which a woman cannot be persuaded by other means to give.”  So yes, we can be raped.  Consent to one act does not equal consent to ALL acts, and once force is used all bets are off.  I must also point out that deception is a form of force, since the fraud tricks a woman into giving something she would not otherwise have given; if any of you men out there have ever paid an escort with your credit card and then charged it back when your wife discovered the bill, YOU ARE A RAPIST.  You took her favors after agreeing on a price, then stole the money back.  That is rape, no less than drugging a girl with Rohypnol and fucking her while she is unconscious.  In fact, it’s probably the sleaziest and most cowardly form of rape.  It is, however, not violent; the very few times I’ve had a credit card chargeback that actually stood up (they can usually be successfully challenged) I felt angry rather than violated.  This column is not about such collection-plate thieves, but rather about bona fide, hands-on violence.

The first time I was raped on a call was not the first time I had been raped in my life; that was five years earlier, long before I became a professional, and was both more brutal and far more frightening.  I don’t really care to discuss the incident right now, and I may never do so in this column; suffice it to say that there were three men in positions of power, and that both guns and a massive violation of trust were involved.  But I was a tough little bird even then, and by the time of the incident I am about to describe I had largely dealt with it.  I was enjoying the freedom and money that goes with being a call girl, and sometimes I was even enjoying the sex.  The nightmares and flashbacks had become fairly rare; my experiences with boyfriends in my youth and customers in the preceding months had been so overwhelmingly positive that the trauma was largely drowned in a sea of good experiences with men, both before and after the rape.

There was no way I could have guessed what awaited me that night; I had already done five calls and was high on the knowledge that I had already made a large profit, with another fee on the way!  The customer was at the Windsor Court, New Orleans’ only five-star hotel, which I always enjoyed visiting because it is so beautiful and the staff so friendly and respectful.  The only oddity about the call (though it sent up no red flags at the time) was that I had not spoken to the customer myself; the arrangements had been made by Doug, the best agent of the several I worked with.  This was necessary because the client was from Paris and spoke no English, nor do I speak French.  Doug does, and so was able to set up the call for me.  I trusted Doug’s instincts (and still do; this incident could not be blamed on him as you will see), the customer was in a very expensive hotel, and just before I arrived Doug gave me ANOTHER call to set up for afterward at the hotel next door, which would bring my total to seven if it went through! The client seemed very nice, smiled at me and paid as soon as I came in; I had absolutely no sign of possible danger, no indication that this was not going to go smoothly and quickly.  Things went as they usually do on a call of this type (except for there being absolutely zero talking) and after a bit of foreplay he indicated he wanted to enter me.  After a few minutes of that, however, he suddenly pulled out and attempted to change orifices.

I was not remotely an anal virgin; I had experienced and enjoyed such sex many times with boyfriends and with my ex.  But I never did it with customers for the simple reason that it can be excruciating if done incorrectly, and a stranger simply cannot be trusted to take his time and follow instructions so as to make the experience pleasant for the woman.  So when he started probing there, I said “No” firmly and squirmed backward to get away from him.  Since that word sounds the same in French as in English and my body language was unmistakable, what happened next can only be called rape; he grabbed my shoulders, dropped his whole weight down on me, and rammed into me in one rapid motion.  I started to scream but he put his hand over my mouth, also getting my nostrils in the process so that I couldn’t breathe.  At that moment my brain focused instantly; I felt utterly calm and realized that if I stopped struggling he would probably let go of my face, or at least relax his hand so I could get my nose free.  The pain was at that point secondary to survival, so I went completely limp.  As predicted, he loosened his grip enough for me to twist my nose clear of his hand, and then I was able to concentrate on willing myself to relax so the rest of the experience would be something less than agony.

Fortunately, it didn’t take him long after that, and when he withdrew the pain subsided fairly quickly, though of course the soreness persisted and would for some time.  He went to the bathroom to clean up and though it took me a minute or so to compose myself I soon followed him, silently going over to the toilet; a warm washcloth removed the blood, and when I was fairly sure I wouldn’t stain my underwear I got dressed in silence.  He didn’t seem to think he had done anything wrong, and he smiled and said something in French; when I slung my purse over my shoulder to go, he even spoke a cheery “Au revoir!”

“Adieu,” I replied, and went on to my next call.  I was not exactly in the mood to continue working, but since I had already made the appointment professional ethics and greed combined to get me over there.  As it turned out, it was the best thing I could’ve done; both the next customer and the one after him (I did eight calls in all that night, a record which stood until December of 2005) were very nice, very gentle, and were looking for nothing out of the ordinary.  I have often thought how lucky I was that it happened that way; it’s like the folk wisdom that if one is thrown by a horse one must immediately get back on if one wishes to avoid being afraid of horses forever afterward.  I did indeed get right back on, and as a result suffered no lasting ill effects other than a sore anus for a few days.

I didn’t understand then why it was apparently so easy for him to do what he did; men had tried unwelcome things with me many times before, but had always stopped when I asked them to.  The body language of “no” is impossible to misread, and I didn’t believe there could be such a cultural gulf between France and the U.S. that he would ignore my wishes.  Besides, I had seen plenty of European men before, including Frenchmen, and nothing like that had ever happened.  So I put it down to his simply being a complete asshole and went on with my life, and it wasn’t until the second incident many months later that I figured it out, as I’ll discuss tomorrow.  For that second incident bore a striking similarity to the first, and thereby demonstrated in no uncertain terms the value of forming a rapport with clients.

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