I have a follow-up question to your column of September 11th, in which a male reader asked how he could get an interested woman to accept money for sex. It’s kind of the flip-side: how to get an interested man to pay for sex? I am fine with it being labeled as prostitution, but I think a lot of men aren’t comfortable with the idea of direct payment. However, I’m done giving it away; I have invested a lot into my appearance & intelligence, and loans and hair don’t pay for themselves!
When I was working and a strange man started flirting with me in some public place, I just gave him a card. My cards were very simple, with just the name of my service, its website address and the phone number. They were, however, obviously not cut-rate cards; they were glossy black with purple text, and plasticized on the front side. So though they didn’t actually say much in text, their subtext was obviously THIS WOMAN IS NOT CHEAP. The tactic rarely yielded a completed appointment; few of them called, and most of those who did couldn’t afford it. But despite the low success rate from a financial point of view, it was worthwhile to me because it got them to stop wasting my time with a quiet but unmistakable “put up or shut up.” Or expressed more politely, “your move.”
Now, I have many fine qualities, but sexual subtlety is not among them. When describing my looks people often use adjectives like “stunning” or “striking”, and with good reason: my sex appeal is about as gentle and understated as a brick to the face, and some men have even described me as “intimidating”. So while handing a man a business card and responding to his “Is this what I think it is?” with a straightforward “yep” worked well for me, it might not fit your style at all. Furthermore, since I gather from your question that you are new to this, you’d probably be pretty uncomfortable with the brazenness of my strategy, which (as explained above) is much better at getting rid of would-be Casanovas than it is at turning them into clients. I’ve never had the patience to cultivate individual men; I’ve always preferred to just spin my web and wait for the guests to arrive. So I think the best thing to do here is turn this one over to the commentariat: Ladies, how would you go about letting a flirter know that there’s a charge for what he’s seeking without scaring him off?
I’m sure regular readers already know Aspasia, who is not only a regular reader and frequenter commenter, but a blogger whom I’ve linked on several occasions. In a recent correspondence she told me about Oshún; since I’m very interested in the subject of whore goddesses, I was immediately intrigued and asked if she would do this essay, and she graciously consented without any arm-twisting.
Like so many other young women these days, I began to research the old myths of ancient goddesses from all around the world during my early to mid twenties. I was always drawn to sex goddesses like Oshún, Aphrodite, Inanna, etc. We’re all kindred spirits, if you please. Their personality traits, especially those of Oshún and Aphrodite, are very similar: graciousness and generosity (and you’d do well not to anger them), unabashed femininity, sexuality, and sensuality. They display absolute authority over the power of sexuality, which was understood to be the complex thing it is and certainly not a frivolity as our anti-sexuality culture deems it to be. In the pantheon of ori (divine beings) in which Oshún is a member, she is the third most powerful after the Father God Obatalá and Mother Goddess Yemayá. Like them Oshún has a sacred color, yellow, all her own; all other orisha (spirits or gods) must share colors. Oshún isn’t known to many people outside of the Caribbean, Brazil or the Yoruba people found primarily in Nigeria and Benin (though they can also be found in Ghana and among the Krio of Sierra Leone); however, she is known and revered everywhere in the Latin Caribbean and South America where the Yoruban people were taken during the slave trade. In Cuba, where Oshún has been syncretized with Santa Cecilia (patroness of music) and La Virgin de La Caridad del Cobre, she is known as Our Lady of the Caridad del Cobre with a feast day of September 8th. Cobre means copper in Spanish, and the precious metal figures prominently in the representation of Oshun.
Besides copper, Oshún also favors gold and all things shiny and yellow; this is similar to Aphrodite, who also favors gold and is often (though not always) depicted with golden hair. Tied around Oshún’s hips is a gourd filled with her honey, which she smears on the mouths of men whom she is trying (and always succeeding) to win over; she also smears it upon her own naked body, a frank reference to lovemaking. Similarly, there are stories concerning Aphrodite sharing her goldenness with lucky men she has chosen to be hers…for a time. Both goddesses are sea-born in some fashion with names that reflect those origins: Aphrodite (Greek for “foam-born”) rose from the sea and Oshún was named after the deep “O” sound the Earth made causing a boulder to fall into the water, which made the “shun” sound…or so one patakí (parable) of her naming tells us. She is the goddess of the “sweet” waters and indeed has a river named after her. Oshún is most revered as a goddess of sexuality, sensuality, beauty, love, money, joy, music… la dolce vita. She is the “Divine Epitome” of all that is wonderful about women and femininity, and is renowned for her beauty; in Cuba she is known as La Bella Mulata (“The Beautiful Mulatto Woman”). A patakí explaining the change in Oshún’s physical appearance in Cuba tells us that she changed her appearance to better blend in with the diverse racial mixture found there; her skin color changes from dark brown to golden honey-brown, the latter being another symbol in the representation of Oshún.
But I always noticed something missing from the typical feminist writings on sex goddesses: their whore aspect. All of the sex goddesses, with their consummate love-making skills, also have a connection to money or money-like objects or symbols and yet somehow, following the feminist mindset, never the twain shall meet. Not even within the same goddess! The PC revisions of these goddesses are a disservice to them and to any who want to know about them, even if they don’t feel the same strong pull to their service that I do. Oshún Panchagara is the whore aspect of Oshún. As with Aphrodite, modern-day revisionists avert their eyes from her frankly sexual and overtly whorish aspects and give it a gloss and polish that is absolutely misplaced. I only found out about Panchagara through a book I recently acquired in which a Cuban santero (a male practitioner of Santería; female santera) priest and “son of Oshún” (all followers of Oshún are considered her children) not only mentions this aspect but celebrates it. Baba Raul Canizares writes in Oshún: Santería and the Orisha of Love, Rivers and Sensuality:
In one of her avatars, Oshún Panchagara, she is depicted as a Holy Whore, “La Santa Puta”. This is a controversial aspect of the orisha, rejected as a New World fabrication by modern-day Yoruba revisionists and African-American feminists who feel their goddess is being degraded by depictions of her as a prostitute. These people are actually projecting their own prejudices and morality into the equation. In reality, prostitution has not always been viewed as degrading or immoral. In fact, temple prostitutes, including the famous “vestal virgins” [sic] of ancient Rome, have featured prominently in the history of ancient religions. On and off, prostitution has been legal in Cuba until the late 1960’s. It is only natural that, just as every other profession has a patron saint, prostitutes also enjoy this privilege. In her aspect as Panchagara, Oshún is at her most rambunctious, coquettish, and wild. Panchagara is La Bella Mulata on Steroids, a woman very much in control who chooses who she’ll bless with her sexual favors. Panchagara is in no way a victim, as those who object to her claim, but an empowered female who has chosen prostitution on her own terms and for her gain. Oshún Panchagara has been an inspiration to women who for whatever reason have had to engage in prostitution; she demonstrates that a human being’s sense of self-worth need not be affected by what he or she does for a living.
There is little about Panchagara online, at least nothing as honest as Canizares’ statement. The PC aversion to her frank sexuality, which Canizares also hits upon, can be found here in this article where a modern-day African-American female follower of Oshún seems to have a bad reaction to the “wrong” expression of sexuality as shown by other daughters of Oshún.
Panchagara completes the totality of Oshún. Unabashedly sexual and sensual, a love for money (she was impoverished at one time, resulting in an aversion to being poor), confident in her beauty and allure…that is Panchagara and most every other sex worker I know! As una bella mulata myself, I have a strong kinship with Panchagara. While I am not a santera, I worship Oshún in my own way. She is an endlessly fascinating goddess and saint. Baba Raul Canizares and Migene Gonzalez Wippler are both Cuban and have a wealth of knowledge of Oshún in the Santería/La Religion Lucumi tradition, which is the one that has influenced my worship of Oshun the most. Panchagara is an aspect of Oshún that must not be left out.
Proper she was and fair…yet delighted not men so much in her beauty, as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry of company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure and not without disport. – Charles Ross, Richard III
All through history, many a famous or important man has met his downfall through careless or indiscreet relations with whores; I’ve featured the stories of many of them in these columns, and I’m sure you can think of a few on your own without my assistance. But sometimes it happens the other way around, and a whore is ruined by her association with the wrong client; Elizabeth “Jane” Shore was one such case, though the beauty and charm which had placed her in harm’s way eventually secured her escape from it again.
She was born in London about 1445 to John and Amy Lambert; her father was a wealthy dry-goods dealer who helped to finance King Edward IV’s wars against his Lancastrian cousins, and so the future courtesan was exposed from a young age to noblewomen from whom she learned courtly manners. She was also well-educated, and though these preparations may seem to have been meant to prepare her for her future profession, it was actually unintentional; in fact, the constant and ardent attention paid her by wealthy and important (but married) men (including William Hastings, later King Edward’s Lord Chamberlain) seems to have inspired the Lamberts to choose a husband for her hastily and unwisely. She was married sometime after 1460 to a wealthy goldsmith named William Shore, but the marriage was a loveless one; in fact, it appears to have been a sexless one as well, because the grounds for her eventual annulment was that the marriage was never consummated. Given his wife’s beauty and the fact that he never remarried, it seems safe to conclude that Shore was a closeted homosexual; he certainly never interfered with Elizabeth’s social life, and sometime soon after Edward’s restoration to the throne in 1471 she became his mistress.
Though Edward IV was a notorious womanizer, Elizabeth quickly became his favorite; he described her as “the merriest harlot in the realm” and after the annulment of her marriage in 1476 he formally extended his protection to William Shore. This favor was probably asked of him by Elizabeth, who unlike most royal mistresses used her influence not to gain favors or gifts for herself, but instead to win mercy for deserving men who had incurred the royal wrath. As Sir Thomas More wrote of her many years later, she “never abused [her influence] to any man’s hurt, but to many a man’s comfort and relief.” Even the Queen, whose name was also Elizabeth, liked and accepted her; in fact, it is likely that she changed her name to Jane around this time as a show of deference to her. This nobility of character won the lasting respect of the King; though he generally discarded his mistresses as soon as he tired of them, he remained close to Jane until his death on April 9th, 1483.
It was after that death that her troubles began, however. She briefly became the mistress of the late King’s stepson, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, but it was not long before William Hastings renewed his two-decade-old suit and she took up with him instead. She also remained friendly with the Queen, and carried messages between her and Hastings. The subject of these messages was undoubtedly her brother-in-law, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had been declared “Lord Protector” over her young sons (and the kingdom) by the dying Edward IV. Anyone who is familiar with Shakespeare knows why the Queen was afraid: Richard immediately imprisoned the young princes “for their own protection”, then had them declared illegitimate and set about destroying everyone whom he thought might be loyal to his brother and the boy Edward V. On June 13th he accused Jane and the Queen of trying to destroy him via witchcraft at Hastings’ request; the women were imprisoned, while Hastings was immediately beheaded in the courtyard of the Tower of London. In some way which is unclear to history, Richard was persuaded to relent slightly on the witchcraft charges; they were never pursued against the Queen, and Jane’s charge was reduced to “promiscuity”. She was forced to do penance by walking through London barefoot in her petticoat, carrying a candle and singing hymns. But if Richard hoped to humiliate her by this treatment, he was sorely disappointed: the crowds who had gathered to gawk were instead struck by her beauty, moved to pity by her condition and impressed with the dignity she displayed during her ordeal.
One of the admirers she won that day was Thomas Lynom, Solicitor General to the newly-crowned King Richard III. After her penance Jane was confined in Ludgate prison, where Lynom visited her often and soon fell in love with her. He asked the King to free her so he could marry her, and though Richard tried to dissuade him from what he considered a foolish action (and even wrote a letter to John Russell, the Lord Chancellor, asking him to persuade Lynom to give up the idea), he eventually gave his permission; Jane was pardoned, married Lynom, and bore him a daughter named Julianne. And though Lynom lost his high position in August of 1485 (after Henry Tudor defeated Richard and became Henry VII), he got a new (though lower) government job, and Jane lived the rest of her days in middle-class comfort. Sir Thomas More met and befriended her in her old age, and wrote that she was still a merry companion with a quick mind and a tender heart, and that one could still discern traces of her youthful beauty.
She died at last in 1527, at about the age of 82, and was buried at Hinxworth Church in Hertfordshire. Some biographies erroneously claim that she spent her declining years in poverty, but this is not so; it is the fate of her character in an Elizabethan play named The True Tragedy of Richard III, which predated Shakespeare’s treatment by several years. This confusion of historical dramas with history is not unusual; historians are still trying to untangle the historical Richard III from his wholly-villainous portrayal by Shakespeare and other Tudor dramatists. Jane is mentioned frequently (as “Mistress Shore”) in the Richard III of Shakespeare, and is a major character in many other works of the period (plays, novels and even poems). There was also an 18th-century drama about her life, and three different silent movies (though oddly enough, no talkies). But as we have so often seen in the lives of the courtesans, truth is stranger than fiction, and real historical events more fascinating than the attempts of authors to improve on them.
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. – Thomas Reid
In case it has escaped your notice, I use an awful lot of words; I publish over 1000 of them every day in regular columns, and that’s not even counting indexes and other static pages. All in all, that comes to roughly 500,000 words per year, or about 1.5 million since I started. You’ve probably also noticed that I choose them quite carefully; as I wrote in “Nasty Words”,
…words are my tools, and I cherish them and baby them the way a good mechanic cares for the tools of his trade. And just as a good mechanic always uses the right tool for the job rather than trying to make do with whatever happens to be nearby, so I insist on using the right word; if I can’t find it right away I’ll sometimes sit staring at the monitor thinking, or else typing and deleting a number of different ones until I’m satisfied…by the time most of you read any given column, you can be reasonably sure that any word you see is the exact one I wanted to use, even if it’s one that you have to look up (as some of you are fond of teasing me).
Sometimes, there isn’t an extant word or phrase which means exactly what I want it to mean, so I have to invent one; at other times, a word or phrase has a broad range of meanings or variations of meaning, of which I tend to use only one. Inevitably, both of these cause some confusion, especially in newer readers; I therefore think it’s long past time I publish a lexicon of terms I’ve invented, adopted or use in one specific manner. If you notice I’ve missed one, please mention it in the comments so I can add it to the permanent version. Terms on which I’ve published a whole column include a link to that column.
Ad scortum: A logical fallacy in which someone discounts a person’s argument not on its own merits, but rather on the grounds that she is a prostitute.
Archeofeminism: The recognition that men and women are already socially equal by nature, and the only way in which we become socially unequal is by the actions of laws.
Bottleneck effect: The principle that the greater the number of artificial restrictions placed upon any given human behavior, the greater the number and severity of undesirable effects such as violence, corruption, criminality, marginalization, etc.
Clipboard effect: The phenomenon that if an individual behaves as though he belongs in a place (such as by wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard when in a hospital), everyone will assume that he does belong there.
Courtesan denial: The pretense that some or all kinds of sex workers in pre-modern times (including courtesans and sacred harlots) either did not exist at all or were somehow fundamentally different from modern sex workers, so that the latter cannot be validly compared to the former.
Driskill Mountain syndrome: My term for the inability of those who have been blessed with relatively untraumatic lives to recognize that the difficulties they have experienced are far less serious than those of people who have had relatively troubled lives.
Eglimaphilia: A paraphilia in which the chief excitement of seeing a prostitute is derived from the illegality of the act.
Enlightenment police: Those who believe that their ideas about proper living need to apply to everyone else’s personal preferences. See also universal mores, fallacy of.
Ice cream in the hand: A metaphor for female sexual response: “Imagine how a woman might react if somebody…[unexpectedly] slapped a scoop of ice cream into her hand…It isn’t that she doesn’t like ice cream; it’s just that she doesn’t want a nasty scoop of cheap vanilla ice cream slapped into her previously-clean hand by some random stranger when she wasn’t even in the mood for dessert…”
Lawhead: “One who believes that man-made laws are actually based in objective reality like physical laws; he is unable to comprehend that the majority of laws are completely arbitrary, and therefore views a violation of a ‘vice law’ with the same horror that normal people reserve for rains of toads or spontaneous human combustion.” For example, a lawhead believes that because a 17-year-old is defined as a “child”, he actually is a child in some fashion that meaningfully reflects reality.
Myth: A framework or paradigm used to explain and interpret observable phenomena in the absence of (or contrary to) hard data, usually via the involvement of a supernormal force or entity which is not discernible by ordinary means and therefore must be taken on faith. Mythology is a body of related myths and procedures derived from those myths which act together to provide a faith-based world view.
Myth of the wanton: The irrational belief that the sex drive of women is greater and more uncontrollable than that of men. See also slave-whore fantasy.
Neofeminism: The irrational belief that there are no natural behavioral differences between the sexes and that all gender (other than genital dimorphism) is “socially constructed”. Neofeminists believe that if infant boys were “socialized” in the same way as girls they would act exactly like girls, even into manhood. The female standard of behavior is viewed as the “correct” one, thus normal male behavior is considered pathological.
Profession of faith: Nearly all religions have some basic creed statement which believers state in order to demonstrate their adherence to the religion; that of the “trafficking” cultists is, “A lot of people think trafficking doesn’t happen in [the place about which I’m speaking], but it does.”
Pygmalion fallacy: The belief that robot simulations of women could be competition for real ones to anyone outside a narrow segment of the population. Adherents fail to recognize that “any gynoid whose physical form and simulated functions…were indistinguishable from those of a human woman, and whose personality was sufficiently unpredictable and unique to pass as that of a woman in the close interaction of a date, would also be sufficiently human to pass any test a court might devise for granting human rights, and would almost certainly be interested in obtaining such.”
Rhinoceros effect: The tendency for any mass movement, no matter how ugly and destructive, to grow in popularity until many who once opposed it now defend and may even join it.
Secret Squirrel: Any device or procedure designed to ensure secrecy which is so disproportionately rigorous or extreme in comparison to its subject matter as to constitute a parody of such devices or procedures (from the American cartoon character of the 1960s).
Sex rays: The irrational belief that any adult sexual activity is so dangerous to the imagined “innocence” of children (including adolescents), that adults who are known to have been sexual in any way (outside of conventional marriage) must be kept from having any contact with them whatsoever; extreme cases of the belief even demand the quarantine of inanimate objects (including structures) with which sexually-active adults have come into contact.
Universal criminality: The establishment of so many complex, broad, vague, mutually contradictory and intrusive laws that every single person is in violation of at least some of them at any given time.
Whorearchy: The tendency for sex workers of any given type to imagine that they are “better” than other types of sex workers; the problem is exacerbated by laws which arbitrarily define some kinds of sex work as “legal” or “illegal”.
I Lais, once of Greece the pride,
For whom so many suitors sigh’d,
Now aged grown, at Venus’ shrine
The mirror of my youth resign;
Since what I am I will not see,
And what I was I cannot be. – Julian the Egyptian
As I’ve written many times before, it’s difficult to know which details of the lives of courtesans are true and which are false, and which of the latter are embellishment or exaggeration and which outright invention on the part of the lady herself, her admirers, her enemies or her biographers. And that’s just the modern courtesans; the biographies of those of the ancient world often trail off into legend and myth. But the problem with writing about Lais is simultaneously simpler and more maddening: there may have been two hetaerae by the same name living at almost the same time, whose biographical details became confused with one another; or, there may have only been one Lais who sometimes looks like two because stories about other courtesans became mistakenly attached to her. So though I’ll do my best to straighten things out, I cannot promise to fully untangle a skein it has taken over twenty-three centuries to tangle.
Some sources say she was born in Hyccara, Sicily in 421 BCE, and died in Thessaly in 340. That’s a long lifespan, but not impossible even for the time; however, if she was only one woman the legend about her death – that she was stoned by the native women out of jealousy – would certainly have to be false, since I hardly think even the greatest beauty of her age (as she was reputed to be) would still be capable of inspiring murderous jealousy at 81. If the story of the murder is true, she would either have to have been born at least forty years later or to have been two women. However, I am highly suspicious that it is indeed true, because it sounds a lot more like a tall tale men would make up than actual female behavior; while women are certainly capable of murder, we generally don’t do it in big groups unless there’s some sort of ritual involved. If the death date is accurate, I think it’s much more likely Lais died of old age in her bed…but that makes a much less lurid story.
The account of her origin is no less interesting, but far more credible: her birthplace, Hyccara, was conquered by the Athenians in 415 BCE and its entire population sold into slavery. Lais ended up in Corinth, and as she matured into a beauty won her freedom in much the same way Rhodopis did. Some modern authors claim that the elder Lais was born in Corinth and the younger in Hyccara, but since the town was depopulated years before the birth of anyone who was still young in 340, this hardly seems likely. The two-Lais theory is undermined still further by the fact that though there are solid contemporary references to her in the early 4th century BCE, those which take place later are entirely anecdotal. The philosopher Aristippus (435-356 BCE) was one of her clients and mentions her in two of his writings, and in his play Wealth (388 BCE), Aristophanes states that she was kept by a man named Philonides. By contrast, the accounts of famous men who were said to have sought her out in the mid-4th century (such as Demosthenes and Myron) are unverified by contemporary sources; furthermore, the story that she set an absurd price for one man while giving herself to the philosopher Diogenes for free is also told about Phryne, with Demosthenes playing the part of the King of Lydia.
There is one last factor which makes the one-Lais theory far more likely than its rival: the woman who died in 340 (and was buried in a tomb decorated by a statue of a lioness holding a ram in her forepaws) was supposed to have moved to Thessaly to live with a handsome young man named Hippostratus, with whom she had fallen in love. Now, poets adore the romantic notion of a successful courtesan giving it all up for love, but in truth this rarely happens; most often, it’s older, retired courtesans who take up with much younger men rather than young ones running off with boys their own age.
So though we cannot be sure, the facts of Lais’ life seem to be these: she spent her later childhood and early teens as a slave, and was trained as a hetaera; after a while one of her admirers bought her freedom and she quickly became popular. She charged very high fees and indulged herself in many of the extravagances common to her profession; she even developed her own exclusive perfume. But by her early thirties she began to slow down, allowing herself to be kept by a succession of wealthy men rather than accepting a large number of short-term clients. As she got older still she took up with Hippostratus and moved to Thessaly, and eventually died of old age. But her legendary beauty and reputation attracted stories as honey attracts flies (even stories that were also told about others), and eventually there were too many of them for just one woman’s lifetime to contain…so some not-quite-as-clever-as-they-imagine historians decided to split her into two.
For the first time in my life, a man has is proffering me the opportunity you usually only read about: not just becoming his mistress, but doing so with all the trappings. Delightful traveling, charming bed-and-breakfast accommodations, wonderful lingerie and clothes, my own residence…This man isn’t Donald Trump, but it’s quite a step up from my usual. He keeps telling me that spoiling me is what he enjoys. I find it hard to take such generosity with the easy grace he’s clearly expecting. Obviously, I don’t want to mess this up. Any tips?
Whatever you’re doing, he’s obviously happy with it, so my advice is that you keep doing it. Now, that may seem as though I’m being a smart-ass, but I assure you I’m not; there are two ways women mess up gigs like this, and both of them involve trying to change the situation. The first strategy for failure is to decide being a mistress isn’t good enough any more, and pushing him to leave his wife; the second is the same way wives mess it up, by assuming the man is “caught” and getting lazy. Both errors result from exactly the same cause: a failure to understand the basis of the arrangement. A married man who keeps a mistress is not interested in replacing the former with the latter; he has economic, social and emotional reasons for staying married, and the mistress is his means of making up whatever he feels is lacking in that relationship. So if the mistress starts trying to undermine her gentleman’s marriage, or fails to provide whatever interested him in the first place, there is no reason for him to continue the arrangement and heartache, drama and scandal may follow.
What it boils down to is this: being “kept” is a job. It may be a very nice, pleasant dream job with fantastic fringe benefits, but it is still a means of earning one’s keep, and it needs to be thought of that way. You are following in the footsteps of the great courtesans of old, and you should take the best of them as role models. Keep making your patron happy in the ways you know best, let him know you appreciate what he does for you in return, always make time for him when he calls, and above all else be discreet. And as long as you keep in mind that even the most loving relationships have an economic basis, I think you’ll do just fine.
When a regular reader in Amsterdam mentioned that his regular escort was a Nigerian immigrant, I asked him to ask her if she would be interested in telling her story. The “trafficking” narrative represents such women as passive victims, so I thought it would be very enlightening to hear her point of view in her own words. She was at first slightly reluctant because she isn’t used to writing, but I think she did such a marvelous job that I did as little editing as possible. I’ve allowed her two full days because her story is not only interesting, but important.
I’m Onioja, a Nigerian migrant. I have serious ambitions to build a good life for myself and for my kids in this wealthy white world. That’s the whole reason why I left my country, fourteen years ago, all by myself. For the first seven years I worked as a housekeeper, hotel maid, babysitter, janitor, dishwasher, kitchen prepper, model, dancer, receptionist, or other odd jobs, and in all that time I was never asked for my story; now I’ve been a top tier escort for almost seven years (at least ten times longer than any other job I’ve had), and I get this request. Why? Not because I’m a successful sex worker, I think, but because doing sex work has made me a successful migrant.
For my first three years in Europe I roved from country to country and city to city, like a lonely animal looking for the best place to build her nest and have babies. I began in Paris and saw cities like Dublin, London, Milan, Berlin, Copenhagen, and others before settling in Amsterdam when I was done with traveling and searching. For the next four years I worked sweat and blood in the same jobs, but now locked inside the same one square kilometer; it made me more miserable and depressed, but I couldn’t afford the traveling to move on. I was just barely surviving, making tiny steps forward, one toe before the other. Like most migrants I felt marginalized and stigmatized, unwelcome and exploited, only useful because we are good at cleaning up after others. I didn’t just feel like a servant, but like a machine switched on and off for one mindless activity after the other. I was a prisoner between other prisoners, black migrants like me, ordered around by mostly white managers and supervisors, with rarely a thank you. Economically and socially, we aren’t much better off than back home; we may live in a wealthy country, but always in a sort of hopeless, energy-draining servitude that won’t allow us to integrate and move upward.
The reality is that a new life in a new country doesn’t start at point zero but somewhere around minus one hundred; unless you’re college educated or well trained and certified in a certain profession, it’s practically impossible to find anything better than menial labor. You don’t know the language or how to get around, and to get any job you depend on people from your own country who’ve lived there long enough that they do, and expect to be paid for their help. But when I looked at these know-it-alls, I wondered why they themselves didn’t have what I consider a good life. Why, after living here for years, didn’t they have a single native friend? Why didn’t they speak the language well? Why didn’t they live in white neighborhoods among white people? Why did I see the same poverty and tribal hierarchies I had left behind transferred to a wealthy country? I soon understood that those guys couldn’t help me, and that staying with my own people in their ghetto would effectively kill my ambitions; so, I said goodbye and made myself untraceable. I cautiously plotted my future, taking great care not to make one wrong step; I found myself jobs and gigs, worked myself into the legal system, got all the papers I could get, began paying taxes so that I was entitled to social benefits, and began learning the language in a program for migrants. After one year I passed the exam as the best of the group and was rewarded with the full restitution of my tuition. But the whole process was grueling, and for seven hellish years it looked as if I would never get another opportunity to be myself; I slowly lost my optimism and energy, and my willpower was slowly eaten up. To force my luck, rescue my spirit and boost my resilience so that I wouldn’t give up, I decided to have a child and be a single mother. I didn’t want to marry and become a man’s possession, which would make things worse, but somehow I found a man who was willing to secretly father my children and then back away. And finally, six months after my first child was born, the Lord came to my rescue.
I’d known the owner of my temp agency for about two years, and he was hot for me; this had been my good fortune because it got me to the top of his menial-labor girls. He missed no opportunity to call me in for things we could have arranged over the phone, and I always went because I depended on his favor. I always played with the sexual tension; over the years I learned all sorts of tricks to get work from guys and keep it, but I never surrendered my one big advantage. Guys wanting to get into my panties never offered me cash but promised me paradise. Sure! Their paradise would make me even more dependent and miserable. So I never surrendered, not because I was a good girl but because I was a shrewd bitch who beat them at their own games. Well, one day when we were arranging my next gig, chatting and flirting as usual, he asked me out for dinner, telling me his wife was out of town (in other words, he wanted to sleep with me). I declined in a way that wouldn’t offend him or hurt his feelings, but then out of the blue, he said he was willing to pay me! Pay me for what? For taking me out to dinner? A voice told me to think it over, so I said I would let him know within twenty-four hours.
That night I couldn’t make a decision, but early next morning he reached me at the prep station in my restaurant; he was eager and said he hoped for a yes from me. I heard myself say, “You’re saying that it’s up to me?” I believe that the good Lord inspired me to say this; it was His sign that He had turned the tables. He flashed my future as a sex worker before my eyes, and it was a good future. Right then and thereI realized I had become an independent free woman, and I also saw why: sex made guys dependent on me. They may control the world, but sex is their Achilles heel; if I played it right, sex work would give me control of my life. The restaurant prepper who now talked to the agency owner was a different woman; she didn’t know yet how it would work, but she knew exactly what to say. I took him to the restroom to talk discreetly, and asked him point blank, “Were you planning on paying to have sex with me?” After two seconds of silence he said yes, and I said, “Okay,” very casually as if it was routine. I knew I was now on top of the guy on who my life depended, no longer the other way around. We discussed his wishes and the services I provide; I dictated my rate and further conditions such as no smoking and for me no alcohol, and he accepted. I said I would meet him at the restaurant of his choice. God knows where this all came from. The following evening when it was all over, he was happy with my services and I was in a kind of shock: three hours of work under my control had earned me as much as almost two weeks of humiliating servitude. Sex work would be the God-given way out of being exploited and pimped, and into a life of freedom and dignity.
Now, I’ve heard stories, facts and rumors about pimps but have no first-hand experience because in sex work I never dealt with one and never will. I know pimping is illegal here, but isn’t the migrant labor I suffered a legal form of pimping? Don’t legal businesses make the same big profits as illegal pimps by having us work minimum wage under humiliating circumstances? What’s the difference here? Did I have a real choice to refuse a job? No. It is human exploitation and labor abuse at its worst, but socially permissible because local business depends on it; only in the sex industry it’s criminal because sex work is said to be “dirty”. But sex work can be a God-sent gift; as a sex worker I have dignity and command respect, not because I am a good sex worker but a good human being. Also, going through the long, slow process of learning the business by trial and error, inch by inch, has done more for my independence and integration than the work itself. It took a year and a half until my sex career was so solid that I could give up menial labor altogether; I cut back on it gradually and my agency owner really helped me, not only by being my first client (who was loyal for years afterward), but also by handing me jobs I could combine with being a mother and sex work.
Sex work has also allowed me to express my true personality. Back home I used to pretend to be shy and modest; I was afraid to draw attention. But that’s not me at all! I have a very big ego, maybe too big, and the clients I love being with most are powerful men with big egos, because I love being challenged as much as I love challenging them. It makes the game so much more satisfying and fun, and has made my mind more intelligent. Every day I am grateful to God that He guided me to this work and brings me the kind of clients I need to be more and more part of this culture, which is really my long-term goal. Good, challenging clients help me to develop the qualities that help me become socially more and more independent, in particular independent from doing sex work; though I love doing it, it’s only a stage in my life and I have to look ahead to the time I will eventually have to give it up. I may be a successful migrant but I am still vulnerable, so sex work is only part of my long term vision to integrating in Dutch culture to ensure my future and that of my kids.
In tomorrow’s conclusion, Onioja talks about some of the specific difficulties she faced, how she overcame them and her hopes for the future.
[She was] the most elegant of women, having the most aristocratic taste and the most exquisite tact: she set the tone for a whole area of society. – from her obituary
As we have seen before, it’s not unusual for the lives of whores to become the stuff of legend, often to the point where the real woman is either lost under the embellishment or people forget there was ever a real woman in the first place. Such a woman was Marie Duplessis, whose real story was far more interesting than the romantic legend later created from it. She was born Alphonsine Plessis on January 15th, 1824 to a ne’er-do-well Norman father and a mother who was the last of an impoverished noble family which had been reduced to servility; her mother died when she was six and her father raised her alone until she was fourteen, when he sold her to a band of gypsies. Yes, this is her actual story, stranger than the fiction by which most modern people know her, and as you will see it only gets better.
The gypsies took her to Paris and put her to work in a dress shop, but by fifteen she discovered that prostitution was far more lucrative and allowed her to pay off her indenture in less than a year (many “trafficked” women still make the same choice for exactly the same reason today). Her exceptional beauty and charm won her a devoted following, and at 16 she attracted her first important client: Agénor de Guiche, later one of Napoleon III’s ministers. It was at this time she took the name Marie Duplessis (the “Du” prefix connotes a noble family, an honor she felt her mother’s ancestry entitled her to) and wisely invested in tutors who taught her not only to read and write, but also educated her in history, geography and other subjects she needed to converse intelligently with men of the ruling class. By the age of 17 she was involved with Comte Edouard de Perregaux, but because he could not give her all she needed she did not devote herself to him exclusively; another patron, the Count Von Stakelberg (a Swedish diplomat in his eighties) bought her a house in the Boulevard de la Madeleine.
Like so many other courtesans, she established a salon in her residence, and many of the Parisian cognoscenti gathered there; among them was Alexandre Dumas fils, the as-yet-undistinguished son of the famed adventure novelist. The two fell in love in September of 1844 (only a few months after the publication of his father’s most famous work, The Three Musketeers), but the relationship was not to be; Dumas was far too poor to support her, and by August of 1845 she had had quite enough of his jealousy toward those who could. But as we will see, the relationship actually worked in reverse, and Marie brought Dumas far more wealth than he ever gave her. Her next lover was the famous composer (and infamous womanizer) Franz Liszt, but by spring of 1846 he had moved on and she entered into a marriage of convenience with Perregaux. Because this was an English registry-office marriage transacted without benefit of clergy it was not considered binding in France, which suited Marie just fine: she could share her husband’s title without having to observe any of the restrictions that come with matrimony.
Her brilliant career was not to last, however; like so many 19th-century children of poverty she had contracted tuberculosis (or as it was called in those days, “consumption”), and by the summer of 1846 she knew she was dying. She visited every specialist in Europe, but there was no cure. By September she was no longer able to work, and none of the clients who eulogized her after her death did anything to ease her suffering; as Nickie Roberts wrote in Whores in History, she was “abandoned by all her former lovers and friends except her faithful maid Clothilde – and her creditors.” She died on February 3rd, 1847, less than three weeks after her 23rd birthday. And though her lavish funeral (paid for by Perregaux and Von Stakelberg) was attended by hundreds, her possessions still had to be auctioned off to pay her debts.
That was the real story: a motherless young woman, “trafficked” at 14, who paid for her own education and became one of the most successful members of her profession at an age when modern women are still called “children”, then died of an incurable malady which would have claimed her no matter what because antibiotics had not yet been invented. But a spurned lover decided to twist that into a morality play, making Marie – or as he renamed her, “Marguerite Gautier” – a “fallen woman” who dies young as a result of her dissolute life; he also created a fictional version of himself named “Armand Duval”, who convinces her to give up her life as a courtesan and thus saves her “virtue” before she dies. The lover was of course Alexandre Dumas fils, and the novel was La Dame aux Camelias (“The Lady of the Camellias”), published only a year after Marie’s death. It soon made him far wealthier than she ever was; it became a bestseller, then an extremely popular play, then in 1853 a Verdi opera named La Traviata (“The Fallen Woman”). The book has remained constantly in print since then, the play and opera have been performed innumerable times, and there have been three different ballets and a dozen movie adaptations (the most famous being Camille (1936), with Greta Garbo as “Marguerite”). I’m sure most of you have seen or at least heard of one or more of these fictional representations of Marie Duplessis (especially if you read Tuesday’s column), yet I doubt more than a few of you – if any at all – knew anything of her real story before today. Some things never change: today, as in the 19th century, most people prefer to embrace romantic nonsense about “fallen women” and how awful it is to be a whore, than to recognize the simple, unvarnished truth.
Oh, there ain’t no rest for the wicked,
Money don’t grow on trees,
I got bills to pay,
I got mouths to feed,
There ain’t nothing in this world for free. – Cage the Elephant
It’s time for more songs about working girls, and as usual I’ve tried to get as much variety as possible in both the type of lady (from streetwalker to courtesan) and the musical genre (from jazz to opera). We’ll start with one suggested by Chester Brown, about a sailor visiting a brothel. He seems to be one of the type I’ve mentioned before, who are overcome with shame after orgasm: He jumps up and rushes out, then feels his passion was “wasted” on “love [that] was but a smile”. Nonetheless, it’s a lovely song.
Pleasures of the Harbor (Phil Ochs)
And the ship sets the sail
They’ve lived the tale
To carry to the shore
Straining at the oars
Or staring from the rail
And the sea bids farewell
She waves in swells
And sends them on their way
Time has been her pay
And time will have to tell
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
And the anchor hits the sand
The hungry hands
Have tied them to the port
The hour will be short
For leisure on the land
And the girls scent the air
They seem so fair
With paint on their face
Soft is their embrace
To lead them up the stairs
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
In the room dark and dim
Touch of skin
He asks her of her name
She answers with no shame
And not a sense of sin
Until the fingers draw the blinds
Sip of wine
The cigarette of doubt
The candle is blown out
The darkness is so kind
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
And the shadows frame the light
Same old sight
Thrill has blown away
Now all alone they lay
Two strangers in the night
Till his heart skips a beat
He’s on his feet
To shipmates he must join
She’s counting up the coins
He’s swallowed by the street
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
In the bar hangs a cloud
The whiskey’s loud
There’s laughter in their eyes
The lonely in disguise
Are clinging to the crowd
And the bottle fills the glass
The haze is fast
He’s trembling for the taste
Of passion gone to waste
In memories of the past
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
In the alley, red with rain
Cry of pain
For love was but a smile
Teasing all the while
Now dancing down the drain
‘Till the boys reach the dock
They gently mock
Lift him on their backs
Lay him on his rack
And leave beneath the light
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
And the ship sets the sail
They’ve lived the tale
To carry from the shore
Straining at the oars
Or staring from the rail
And the sea bids farewell
She waves in swells
And sends them on their way
Time has been her pay
And time will have to tell
Soon your sailing will be over
Come and take the pleasures of the harbor
Let’s speed things up a bit now, with two from Street Walker Blues. This first was very popular with the big bands, though originally written in 1924; it describes a young man who is disturbed by his encounter with an old girlfriend who is now a sex worker. It’s thus thematically similar to the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold”, written over 55 years later.
Nobody’s Sweetheart (Kahn/Erdman; music by Meyers/Schoebel)
You’re nobody’s sweetheart now,
There’s no place for you somehow,
Fancy hose, silken gowns,
You’d be out of place in your own hometown!
When you walk down the avenue,
Some just can’t believe that it’s you.
Painted lips, painted eyes,
Wearing a bird of paradise,
It all seems wrong somehow,
That you’re nobody’s sweetheart now!
Though we can’t be sure exactly what sort of sex worker “nobody’s sweetheart” was, there’s absolutely no such ambiguity in our next choice:
Down in the Alley (Memphis Minnie)
I met a man, asked me did I want to pally
Yes, baby, let’s go down in the alley
Take me down in the alley
Take me down in the alley
Take me down in the alley
I can get any business fixed all right
I met another man, asked me for a dollar
Might have heard that mother fuyer holler
Let’s go down in the alley
Let’s go down in the alley
Let’s go down in the alley
You can get your business fixed all right
(spoken) Let’s go
When he got me in the alley, he called me a name
What I put on him was a crying shame
Down in this alley
Down in this alley
Down in this alley
Where I got my business fixed all right
You got me in the alley, but don’t get rough
I ain’t gonna put up with that doggone stuff
Way down in the alley
Way down in the alley
Way down in the alley
Lord, my business fixed all right
(spoken) Oh, it’s so dark
Can’t see no light
Got to feel my way out this alley
I’m sure gonna stop walking at night
You took me in the alley, you knocked me down
Now I’m gonna call every copper in this town
You got me down in the alley
You got me down in the alley
You got me down in the alley
Now you got your business fixed all right
(spoken): Boys, I’m sure gonna stop walking,
walking late at night.
Memphis Minnie knew whereof she spoke, because like Edith Piaf she started as a street singer who also turned tricks. Even once she became part of the Memphis blues scene, she still made more from hooking than from music until she married in 1929. This sort of casual prostitution by women who don’t primarily identify as whores was probably the most common type throughout human history (and may still be, considering that ten times as many women have taken money for sex than have worked as full-time hookers); it’s always been especially common in the entertainment industry. A century before Minnie’s time French girls of this type were called grisettes, and this song from The Merry Widow portrays a group who are dancers, B-girls and whores:
The Grisettes Song (Franz Lehár; French lyrics by Viktor Léon and Leo Stein)
On the boulevard we’re strolling,
Trippel-trippel trippel trapp!
When the gendarme’s out patrolling,
Drop a copper in his cap.
Drop a copper in his cap,
And the gendarme takes a nap!
It’s so cheap to keep him sleeping,
Drop a copper in his cap!
Every night we come to Maxim’s,
Where the night-owls congregate!
Every true insomniac
Is glad that Maxim’s stays up late.
We’re Maxim’s favorite dancers,
We’re cabaret entrancers,
Lolo, Dodo, Joujou, Froufrou, Cloco, Margot. Et Moi!
Ritantouri, tantirette
Eh voilà les belles grisettes!
Les grisettes de Paris,
Ritantouri tantiri!
Will you buy a poor grisette
A flower or a glass of wine?
Life is not an operetta,
Here you get a check to sign.
Paris isn’t Liechtenstein,
Here you get a check to sign!
We rely on you to buy
A flower or a glass of wine!
We grisettes, we stay so merry,
For you men, you like us so!
Every night the necessary
Glass of sherry, then the show!
We’re Maxim’s favorite dancers,
We’re cabaret entrancers,
Lolo, Dodo, Joujou, Froufrou, Cloco, Margot. Et Moi!
Ritantouri, tantirette
Eh voilà les belles gristtes!
Les grisettes de Paris,
Ritantouri tantiri!
Translating songs is not easy, and these lyrics are different from those in other English-language versions of the operetta; some of the ones I found online were considerably more coy than these. That video and the one below were suggested by Dean Clark, with the comment “For your hooker song files. Opera is full of them.” The most famous of these is probably La Traviata, from which today’s last selection is drawn; it was adapted from the theatrical version of La Dameaux Camélias (known as Camille in English), Alexandre Dumas, fils’ novel based loosely on the real life of Marie Duplessis, whom we shall meet this coming Thursday.
Sempre Libera (“Always Free”) (Giuseppe Verdi; lyrics by Francesco Piave)
Violetta: Free and aimless I frolic
From joy to joy,
Flowing along the surface
Of life’s path as I please.
As the day is born,
Or as the day dies,
Happily I turn to the new delights
That make my spirit soar.
Alfredo: Love is a heartbeat throughout the universe,
Mysterious, altering, the torment and delight of my heart.
The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside. – Homer, Iliad (III, 65)
Every June I’ve published a story of Aella, a young Amazon warrior of the mythic past; the first one was “A Decent Boldness” and the second “A Haughty Spirit”. And though you might be able to enjoy this one without having read those, you’ll probably understand what’s going on a lot better if you get to know the lady’s previous history first.
Asteria send me guidance tonight, for I am afraid.
I who alone of this living generation travelled West to the very end of the Earth, bathed in the waters of Keto and returned to tell the tale; I who walked in the ancient places of our people, rescued my dearest friend from the hands of barbarians and protected us both from the beasts of the wilderness; I who lived among strangers for five years and brought much of the learning of the Outer World back to the Motherland: I am more frightened than I have ever been since earning the title of warrior. For tomorrow, I must face the Council of Elders, thirteen grey old veterans of battles fought before my mother was born, and defend my conduct before them.
But for the life of me, O Blessed Goddess, I cannot fathom why what I did should have shocked the others so. True, it was a new idea, but what of that? Why was I brought home through so many dangers if not to share the knowledge and the ideas of our sisters across the sea? Harmothoe says my mind was addled by my time in Man’s World, but she’s simply jealous because I returned from my journey with enough wealth to buy a farm and enough slaves to work it, while she’s stuck toiling on our mother’s place. I offered to lend her my slaves this winter to clear new land, but that won’t win her the respect and admiration I’ve enjoyed since my return, nor an invitation to visit the Queen’s palace next month so that I can tell her of my adventures. Of course, if the hearing goes against me tomorrow I may see her sooner than that, though as a prisoner rather than an honored guest.
And all this fuss over something so completely stupid. Are not health, strength, beauty, wisdom and skill at arms gifts of the goddesses? And are we not to use those gifts to improve our places in the world? Don’t the more beautiful and distinguished among us have greater choice among the Scythian men at the Spring Festival? After all, our Princess Penthesilia is the daughter of their King Arius, not of some lowly tradesman; our Queen sought out the best sire available when she was ready to bear the child who would succeed to her throne. And though I am not of noble blood, yet my company was highly sought by the men this year for the same reason my Amazon sisters have sought it since my return: though men and women differ in many ways, we all love a good story and many of both sexes seek to borrow prestige by association when they cannot win it for themselves.
But all that attention was a mixed blessing; with so many men competing to mate with me this year, how was I to choose one? I’m no mere girl to be impressed by a handsome face, and my experience in Man’s World taught me that many a great athlete is also a great fool. I thought on this as I watched the games and partook in the feasting, and it occurred to me that the best approach would be a practical one. After all, our motives for mating with the Scythian men are wholly pragmatic in the first place; it stands to reason a pragmatic means of choosing a mate is in order as well. And one can never have too much wealth, so what could be more sensible than simply announcing that the man who gave me the most generous gift would be the one who could lie with me? I thought it was a wonderful idea, and the men responded with enthusiasm; the winner gave me six snow-white kine and an equally-beautiful bull. But to hear my sisters, one would’ve thought I had drunk myself silly and puked on the banquet table. The next day it was the talk of the town, and by the end of the week…well, here I am.
Goddess, I suppose You know all this already, but it never hurts to summarize; besides, I want You to understand how I saw the matter. Mother says I’ve disgraced our family, and Aunt Laomache says it just goes to show why Amazons shouldn’t associate with outsiders any more than is strictly necessary. Granny is the only one who was helpful; she says what this demonstrates is that long periods of peace aren’t good for us, because when there isn’t anything real to fret about people make a big deal out of nothing, and in the absence of an actual enemy they invent imaginary bogeys to get worked up about. She also said that the council only summoned me to shut up the prattlers, and that if they were truly concerned I would be spending the night under guard rather than lying in my own bed. Also, Elder Dioxippe is Granny’s best friend, and Granny told me that she had talked it over with her and at least several of the Council were equally unimpressed with the gravity of my so-called sin; she predicted they would direct me to apologize to my family and sacrifice one of the kine to Astarte, and that would be the end of it.
I certainly hope so, but I can’t help worrying. And that’s why I’m praying about this to You instead of Themis or Metis; there’s no justice in this situation, it seems like thinking logically is what got me into this fix, and perhaps divine inspiration is what’s needed to get me out. If my punishment is as light as Granny thinks it’ll be, I’ll make a special gift to You; I think I might have conceived by the generous one, and if it’s a girl and I name her for You, she will be a constant reminder of Your grace.
And also of the fact that most people have no respect for pragmatism.
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When I was working and a strange man started flirting with me in some public place, I just gave him a card. My cards were very simple, with just the name of my service, its website address and the phone number. They were, however, obviously not cut-rate cards; they were glossy black with purple text, and plasticized on the front side. So though they didn’t actually say much in text, their subtext was obviously THIS WOMAN IS NOT CHEAP. The tactic rarely yielded a completed appointment; few of them called, and most of those who did couldn’t afford it. But despite the low success rate from a financial point of view, it was worthwhile to me because it got them to stop wasting my time with a quiet but unmistakable “put up or shut up.” Or expressed more politely, “your move.”
