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Here Comes the Groom

Posted in Call types, Perception, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 20, 2011| 46 Comments »

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t, they’d be married too.  –  H. L. Mencken

June is named for Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage, and so the Romans considered her month to be a particularly propitious one in which to marry.  And just as in so many other cases I’ve discussed in my various holiday columns, the pagan tradition continued into Christian times despite its original reason being lost.  Because weddings are more common in June so are bachelor parties, and since more bachelor parties means more employment for sex workers June was generally the last good month before the summer doldrums for the ladies of New Orleans.

I’m using the general term “sex workers” here on purpose, because I don’t just mean hookers; at least three kinds of sex worker commonly benefit from bachelor parties, namely porn actresses, strippers and whores.  Some bachelor party participants limit themselves (whether due to money, morality or timidity) to group porn-watching, while many others spend some or all of the evening at a strip club; usually the guys will chip in to buy the groom a few lap dances, and a lot of girls have fun really turning up the heat when they know the dance recipient is going to get married the next day.  Other groups prefer to rent a hotel room and have their own private party, hiring strippers from a club or out of the phone book.  There were two girls from the Gold Club who did a very brisk business (at least two per week and more than that in June) with such parties; they had a whole routine involving stripping, teasing the bachelor and a two-girl show, and though I never got to see one of these parties they must’ve been good because they did most of their business by referrals.  I did a few such jobs during my time as a stripper, but not nearly as many as after I became an escort; some guys feel a stripper just isn’t enough, and prefer to hire escorts to put on a show (either solo or two-girl) and/or give the bachelor his last go ‘round as a free man.

I knew a number of girls who didn’t have the nerve to do such shows alone; though a timid whore is rarely a successful one, the idea of being the only naked woman in a room with a dozen fully-dressed guys is just too much even for most escorts.  But it never bothered me; I recognized that as long as I kept to the better hotels and listened to my gut, I could manipulate the group dynamic to protect me just as easily (if not more so) as an evil leader could manipulate it to precipitate a gang rape.  As long as a woman shows herself to be a real person, the “never hurt a girl” training kicks in and guys stepping over the line can be corrected by a simple stratagem such as slapping the offending hand, wagging a finger and saying with a smile and a wink “Naughty, naughty!  Look, don’t touch!”  This of course provokes laughter and good-natured ribbing of the culprit by the other guys, and his behavior is controlled by peer pressure without bruising his ego.  But it was rare that I even had to do that; in over six years of doing bachelor parties, the only large group of men who ever worked together to victimize me were cops, and since I was tricked into attending that “party” I hardly think it counts.

I had a number of fun and memorable bachelor party experiences over the years, but I think my favorite one was from the client side (so to speak).  It happened in June of 2006, my very last month as an escort, and I had already informed the agencies what my last day was going to be.  One of my husband’s friends was about to get married, and his bachelor party was to be held at the club where I had first worked nine years before.  I asked if they needed me to pick them up afterward; I was going to be working (as was my custom) until 2 AM, and figured they probably wouldn’t be much later than that.  But the groom assured my husband that my kind offer would not be necessary, as the best man wasn’t a drinker and had agreed to be the designated driver.  Well, about midnight my husband called from the club and asked if my offer was still good; I of course said that it was and asked what had happened to the best man.  My husband replied that the guy was apparently a wimp whose wife had him on a very short leash and didn’t approve of strip clubs, so he had promised her he would be home by midnight (thus ruining the evening for everyone else by not telling them beforehand).  But fortunately they had me to call on, so I told them to just keep having fun and call me when they were ready to go home.

About two my husband called again and asked if I had signed off yet; when I told him I had, he asked if I would come and hang out with them for a little while.  When I arrived, he explained that he wanted a lap dance from this one redhead and thought it would be really hot if I arranged it for him.  In the meantime, I tipped a few dancers and one of them came down to the edge of the stage to kiss me, which as you might expect thrilled every guy in the place.  The dancer my husband wanted soon became available, and when they went into the private room the groom waxed effusive about how I was absolutely the coolest wife in the world, inspiring me to treat him to a lap dance as well.  After my husband’s dance the girl came back to the table with him and chatted with me for quite a while about how the club had changed since I had danced there; when we got up to go she asked if she could see my tits and I hiked up my blouse, and the scene which followed was pretty much exactly like the one which had taken place on Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras of the preceding year:  she stood there with my tits in her hands while we talked about the surgeon and what a good job he had done, while every guy in the immediate vicinity enjoyed the show.

Bachelor parties are a male rite of passage, a ceremony celebrating a man’s transition from one stage of life into another; the wise bride does not interfere with the proceedings unless she really wants to give her groom cold feet.  Men have their ways and rituals, just as women have ours, and if a woman wants a man to respect her feelings and needs she should set a good example by respecting his first.  I’m not saying you have to buy your husband lap dances and make out with strippers in front of him; what I’m saying is that if you give him opportunities for indulging his impulses in a controlled fashion, he’ll love and respect you all the more and you’ll win major cool points with his friends in the bargain.

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Easter

Posted in Holidays, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2011| 7 Comments »

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.  –  A.E. Houseman

On numerous occasions I’ve written of the way in which Christianity transformed older pagan holidays into Christian ones, but Easter is unusual in that it actually retained the name (in English, at least) and nearly all of the symbolism of its pagan antecedents.  In my column of March 21st  you read of Ostara, and probably recognized its resemblance to the word “Easter”.  Even the Christian rationale for the holiday, the resurrection of Christ from the dead, is clearly related to the pagan celebration of the rebirth of Nature, so the symbols of the spring festival were easily adapted into the Christian one of spiritual rebirth.  Flowers and eggs feature prominently in both Christian and pagan celebrations, and the Easter Bunny is of course merely a softened, stylized March hare.  The association of the Osterhase (Easter hare) with Easter eggs (they were originally two separate traditions) originated in the Rhineland and spread throughout Germany by the beginning of the 16th century, and like the “Groundhog Day” custom was introduced to the United States by German settlers (the so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch”).

Right about now you may be wondering why Easter, if it’s derived from the vernal equinox celebration, occurs so long after it.  Well, it doesn’t always; this year it’s almost as late as it can get (the absolute latest is April 25th), but in other years it could be as early as March 22nd.  The reason for this is that Jesus was crucified on the Jewish Passover and Christians believe he rose from the dead on the following Sunday; the Christian holiday was thus calculated so as to always fall on the Sunday after Passover, and in most European languages the holidays share a name.  Since the Jewish liturgical calendar is lunar (actually lunisolar since it is also calculated from some solar events), the date of Easter is also derived by lunar means.  Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring; if the equinox falls on a Saturday and there is a full moon that night, Easter is the very next day (March 22nd), but if the full moon falls just barely before the equinox (as happened this year), it’s another month before it comes around again.  The first full moon of spring this year was last Monday (the 18th); this was Passover so today, the first Sunday following, is Easter.  To complicate matters even further the date of the full moon is derived from tables rather than observation, and so may vary from the true astronomical event by as much as two days.

Easter is the most important event in the ecclesiastical year, which means that in the days when the Church dominated Europe it was the most important date in the year, period.  In New Orleans the Church remained powerful into the 20th century, so just as the police were required to clear the French Quarter of revelers at midnight on Mardi Gras in order to preserve the sanctity of Ash Wednesday, so they were ordered to crack down on all vices during Holy Week (the week stretching from Palm Sunday to Easter, which contains Holy Thursday and Good Friday).  Up until the 1970s bars, strip clubs and the like could expect to be raided at some point during that week, and a great show was always made of arresting streetwalkers and setting up “sting” operations for escorts.  With the advent of more rigid licensing requirements in the early 1980s the bar and club raids largely became a thing of the past (though I am told that a disproportionate number of surprise “health inspections” and the like still occur at that time of year), but the harassment of prostitutes continued up until the time I owned my service (though it was not nearly as vigorous as it had been in past times and may have vanished since Hurricane Katrina).  We were always extra-wary of calls received during Holy Week, which was especially bad since that tends to be a slow week already (times around “family” holidays always are).  Many older girls simply took the week off, just to be safe.

But recently I’ve found myself thinking not about that period in my life, but a much earlier one.  When I was but a nubile young maid who had not yet (as the Bible puts it) known man, we only had access to four television channels and one (WWL)  was owned by Loyola University (which is in turn owned by the Jesuits).  So each year during Holy Week (especially Easter weekend) one could be sure there would be more Bible movies on the air than one could possible watch.  The Ten Commandments, The Robe, Ben-Hur, Sodom and Gomorrah and many others (some broadcast by the networks and others in syndication) filled the schedule, and since I was a certifiable Technicolor sword-and-sandal epic junkie I always watched as many as I could.  Needless to say many of them prominently featured Roman characters or (like The Silver Chalice) took place mostly in Rome, and such is the power of association that around this time of year I often find myself thinking of the Romans.  And that, dear readers, is how Messalina ended up as the subject of yesterday’s column.  To all my Christian readers (and non-Christians who celebrate it as a secular holiday), Happy Easter!

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Mardi Gras

Posted in Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , on March 8, 2011| 8 Comments »

The celebration of Mardi Gras is an episode that never becomes stale to the people of the city, however monotonous the description or even the enumeration of its entertainments appears to strangers. –  Grace King

Today is Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday”; in other parts of Christendom it is referred to as Shrove Tuesday.  Its name is derived from the fact that it is the last day before the solemn fasting season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, and was thus celebrated in Catholic countries with the feasting, drinking and general tomfoolery which eventually grew into Carnival (itself derived from the Old Italian carne levare, “taking meat away”).  As we discussed before, the Carnival season begins on January 6th and ends on Fat Tuesday, and though there were parties, feasts and celebrations all through that time they were especially frequent in the last few days, culminating in the grand party on Mardi Gras.

In New Orleans, Carnival is the season of balls and parades, with the largest number in the preceding week (during which there is a parade nearly every night and even in the daytime on Saturday and Sunday).  But on Mardi Gras, all normal activities cease and the city is thronged with crowds of merrymakers and parade-goers; some major streets are given over to parades and many smaller ones nearby are impassable due to crowds, so anyone wishing to drive in needs to plan his route through areas unaffected by parades, then park his car and walk the rest of the way.  Now that I live in a part of the country where the holiday is unknown except as “something they have in New Orleans”, it always feels strange to me to go into town on Fat Tuesday and see businesses open as usual.

Those unfamiliar with New Orleans often fail to realize that there are really two separate and distinct ways to celebrate the day.  The first is of course attending parades; these run through the wide boulevards of Uptown, Mid-City and the suburbs and the attendees are mostly families, groups of teenagers, organizations from out of town, etc.  The attendees are largely dressed normally and most of them tend to remain in one spot all day while the parades pass by.  They usually bring food and ice chests and enjoy watching the floats, listening to the school marching bands and catching trinkets hurled by float riders.  An attractive woman watching a parade always gets the best stuff, including special keepsakes otherwise reserved for the riders’ friends;  a rider who wishes to bestow such a gift will generally catch the eye of the lady, beckon her near the float while it is momentarily stopped, then gently drop the prize into her open hands.  Otherwise, the baubles are hurled hither and yon to anyone who can catch them.

But the other celebration is a different thing entirely; it is confined to the French Quarter (especially Bourbon Street) and is strictly an adult event.  The majority of attendees wear costumes ranging from the elaborate to the makeshift and from the innocent to the vulgar, and it’s rare to see anyone not drinking.  The crowds are so tight that most women either travel in groups or with male escorts because otherwise one can literally be trapped by the press of bodies and unable to extricate oneself easily.  It’s not dangerous really, but an attractive woman needs to resign herself to the occasional grope if she ventures into such crowds alone.  Here as at the parades a woman easily attracts gifts from strange men, usually the nicer “long beads” caught at parades attended earlier in the day but sometimes even stuffed animals or the like.

The quickest way to attract such largesse is, as I have said before, to display one’s mammae; shy ladies are often egged on with cries of “show your tits!” and I’ve often been amazed at the buttoned-up types who will sometimes acquiesce to the repeated urging, caught up in the wild joy of the day.  But what amazes me even more are the hopeless prudes who moan, “how can women expose themselves for plastic beads?”  These lost souls cannot comprehend that one shows one’s tits for the pure enjoyment of it, and the beads are just the spectators’ way of saying “thank you!” Many girls (myself among them) don’t even bother with much of what’s offered, and some go about all day exposed but covered with body paint.  Unfortunately, the pagan debauchery of the holiday also tends to attract egotistical Christian fanatics who can’t resist using the opportunity to call attention to themselves with signs and bullhorns condemning the “sinners”.  C’est la vie.

Carnival season is the busiest one for the whores of New Orleans; not only are there more visitors at this time than any other, but even the locals tend to be in a festive mood and therefore more willing to treat themselves to filles de joie.  But Fat Tuesday itself presents quite the challenge for escorts; it can take a long time to get from place to place and many of the would-be clients are so inebriated by the time they call that they pass out before the girl can arrive.  During the day I eschewed my usual dresses and pumps for jeans and sneakers, and enjoyed running around the Quarter taking in the sights and displaying my charms.  I don’t recall ever getting a good call during the day, but the night was different for a reason which requires a few words of explanation.

Remember, the Catholic Church was always very powerful in New Orleans, and though it was willing to allow the excesses of Carnival for reasons we’ve discussed before, it would not tolerate the sin of such celebration on Ash Wednesday.  So from the very beginning, the city has cleared the Vieux Carré at the stroke of midnight on Fat Tuesday; in modern times, this takes the form of a literal wall of cops moving at walking speed down Bourbon Street, asking people to go home and taking immobile drunks to jail.  Directly behind them comes a massive street-cleaning machine which performs the miraculous feat of clearing literally tons of garbage from the street, leaving scrubbed, wet pavement in its wake; once the cops reach the end of Bourbon they spread out in groups to clear the less-densely-thronged other parts of the Quarter.  And once the revelers reach their homes and hotels, the phones of escort services start to ring and never let up until morning.

Alas, Carnival is not what it once was; Hurricane Katrina accelerated a cultural degeneration which was already underway for years.  Some Krewes (Carnival clubs) now sell seats on their floats to wealthy Yankee tourists, and most of the balcony-equipped buildings on Bourbon Street are owned or leased by big corporations so their guests can look down on the revelers; these package deals usually even include throws so this carpetbagger Carnival nobility doesn’t need to bother with it.  But the die-hard Carnival enthusiast never lets interlopers, whether equipped with bullhorns and placards or with beads and balconies, interfere with his enjoyment of one of the last large-scale pagan festivals left in the increasingly sanitized and homogenized United States.

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Fictional Interlude: Carnival

Posted in Fiction, History, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2011| 6 Comments »

Regular readers know that once per month I publish little tales of heroic whores; if you like this one you might also enjoy the others linked here.

Deputy Leclerc pulled his coat closer about him against the icy wind of early Ventôse; how he hated this time of year!  It used to be that the beastly weather was made more bearable by the anticipation of Carnival, but the National Assembly had banned it as indecent and the subsequent governments had continued the prohibition, so there was absolutely nothing to ameliorate Leclerc’s misery.  Ah, well, c’est la vie; perhaps someday when the chaos had settled and all corrupt elements had been purged from society, the celebration might be allowed again.  He shrugged inwardly; it was best not to think too much about such things, so he turned his attention to avoiding the deeper puddles and quickened his pace a little.

“Why in such a hurry, Monsieur?” came a sweet voice from a doorway nearby.  “Surely you have a few minutes to tarry with me?”  The whore was both young and beautiful, and though her winter clothes disguised her figure somewhat he did not think he would be disappointed when the rest of her charms were revealed.  Well, why not?  His spirits were in need of lifting, and he could blame any delay on the weather.

Her room was small but comfortable, and though her fee was high for a streetwalker she was clearly no ordinary fille de joie; he mused that in less egalitarian times she might’ve made a courtesan.  She certainly had the manners for it, inviting him to remove his boots and warm his feet by the fire while she got him a large mug of bouillon.  She then sat with him while he sipped the hot, flavorful broth, making small talk about all manner of subjects while he enjoyed the music of her voice and grunted a response now and again just to keep her going.  He soon felt a pleasant drowsiness overcome him, and since he was warm and comfortable and in no hurry to return to the winter outside he did not fight it, but instead drifted into sleep.

He awoke some time later on his back in a dimly-lit room; he felt dizzy, nauseated and weak and it took him several minutes to realize that he had no idea what was going on.  He tried to get up and immediately regretted it, then an unfamiliar feminine voice said “I would advise you to lie still for a while, Deputy Leclerc.  The embrace of the poppy is not so easily escaped by one unused to her caresses.”

A wave of nausea engulfed him as he jerked his head toward the voice, which tutted and then asked “Why do men never listen?” as he proceeded to be violently ill on the dirt floor.  When the sickness had subsided he lay back on the straw mat and the strange woman sat down beside him, cleaning his mouth with a wet flannel and feeling his forehead with a soft, warm hand.

“Who are you?  Where am I?  What is going on here?” he croaked, without waiting for any answers.  “Do you know who I am?”

“But of course we know, Deputy Leclerc, which is exactly why you have been brought here.  I am your nurse, here to ensure that you are well for your trial in the morning.”

“Trial?  He asked incredulously; “By what authority do you presume to put a deputy of the National Convention on trial?”

“Why, by the same authority that we all presumed to storm the Bastille and set up our own government, namely the natural right of all men and women to liberty and equality.”

“The National Convention is the duly elected government of the Republic, and only the Committee of Public Safety has the right to administer justice!”

“In the opinions of many, the Convention lost its mandate to govern women when it sent our champion, Madame De Gouges, to the guillotine.”

“Many?  What many?” he scoffed.

“You will see in the morning,” she said, and would not elaborate further.

Leclerc did not sleep well, though neither his nurse nor his accommodations could be faulted for that.  No, it was the reference to Olympe de Gouges which worried him.  Could he be in the hands of the remnants of the Girondist party?  If so, his time on Earth was nearly over; he did not think they would be as averse to bloodshed now as they had been in the past.  He tried to engage his nurse in conversation, to no avail; she had apparently said all she wished to say and showed admirable restraint thereafter.

But the morning eventually came, and his nurse was replaced by a woman who presented a basin and ewer and bade him make himself presentable, followed by another who brought him a generous breakfast.  Soon after he was finished the door was opened and Leclerc wondered if he might not be suffering some aftereffect of the opium with which the whore had drugged him, because into the room came two tall women dressed as Amazon warriors!  He started to laugh but it soon died in his throat because their spears were quite real and the scowls on their faces quite serious.  They ushered him out of the room and though he considered making a break for it he realized that he had no idea where he was and no way of knowing the way to the exit.

In a few moments he realized he must be in some portion of the Carrières de Paris which had been renovated to include rooms and at least one large chamber into which he was now led; the rough walls of the former mine were covered with decorative hangings and the space was ringed with wooden benches crowded with spectators.  A jury box lay on his right, and directly ahead of him a judge’s bench and witness stand.  All of the seats were already occupied; he was the last participant to arrive.  He was astonished to note that he was the only normally-dressed person there; everyone else, from judge to prosecutor to jurors to spectators, were all arrayed in colorful costumes far more suited to a Carnival celebration than to a courtroom.  And as he surveyed the scene, he noticed something far more disquieting; every single masked face he could see was that of a woman.

The trial was like a nightmare; he heard his own voice pleading not guilty to the charges, saw himself standing and sitting and answering as he was bidden, listened to the women in their outlandish attire give evidence against him, and heard the damning recitation of his misdeeds against humanity in general and women in particular not merely for the past few years, but stretching back through his whole debauched life.  And as the testimony unfolded a common thread became apparent to him, revealed by the nature of the charges and the details of the witnesses’ accounts:  Every one of them was a whore.  He fancied that he recognized the judge and prosecutor beneath their masks as well-known courtesans, and it was not too difficult to guess that jurors and spectators were all demimondaines as well.  He realized now that he had misinterpreted the nurse’s calling Olympe de Gouges “our champion”; before she had become an advocate for the rights of women, a Girondist sympathizer and an outspoken critic of the increasingly-common executions, the noted writer had been a courtesan.  The demimonde apparently considered her one of its own, and the judge honored the great lady’s aversion to violence by sentencing Leclerc to a peaceful death by overdose of opium.

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Valentine’s Day

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2011| 12 Comments »

To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more. —  William Shakespeare, Hamlet (IV, v)

Most Christian holidays are based on older pagan ones, and Valentine’s Day is no exception; like Christmas, the modern celebration of love has much darker origins in a very ancient Greek festival which involved human sacrifice and cannibalism.  The original reason for the festival of Lykaia is unknown, but it was held in Arcadia sometime in the spring (possibly May Eve but this is by no means certain) from roughly the beginning of the third millennium BCE and involved adolescent boys; it may have been a manhood ritual but also seems to have involved some recognition of the bestial side of humanity.  When the worship of Zeus was introduced to the area, a myth arose (very similar to that of Tantalus)  that the native god Lycaon was overthrown by Zeus after serving one of his own sons to the god at a banquet.  As previously discussed in my Christmas essay, such myths demonstrate the abhorrence of the later Greeks for the human sacrifice practiced by their ancestors.  But in the case of the Lykaia, the ancient habit continued on in a sort of grisly game of Russian Roulette; every nine years one who had broken a taboo by entering a sacred cave was sacrificed and a small portion of his meat was mixed into the meat of a slaughtered goat, and whichever young man consumed this nasty surprise at the sacrificial feast was believed to turn into a werewolf.

In later times the festival became associated with the god Pan, and in this form (without the human sacrifice) it was carried into Italy.  There it merged with the pre-Roman festival Februa (from which is derived the word “February”), a ritual cleansing very much like the Celtic and Germanic Imbolc; the combined festival was called Lupercalia (“Wolf Festival”) and ran from February 13th-15th.  It honored both Lupercus (one of the Roman names of Pan) and Lupa, the she-wolf who had suckled Romulus and Remus; they were invoked to protect the new kids and lambs from wolves in the months to come.  The celebrants were, as in the Lykaia, young men, and over time the blessing conferred by the ritual grew beyond the flocks and was believed to affect human women as well.  As Plutarch wrote in his Life of Caesar:

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea.  At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs.  And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.

The ceremonies were presided over by the Luperci, goatskin-wearing priests of Lupercus (also called Faunus), who sacrificed a dog and two billy goats and anointed younger priests with the blood.  After the sacrificial feast the Luperci would cut rough strips from the skins of the sacrificed goats and then young men of the equestrian and senatorial classes would run around the Palatine Hill swinging these makeshift lashes; girls and young women would line up along the parade route because it was believed that being struck by the whips conferred a blessing which would ensure fertility and ease the pains of childbirth.  This popular celebration was eventually abandoned by the upper classes around the time of Julius Caesar, but it remained popular with the lower classes into Christian times until its observance was banned by Pope Gelasius I in 496.

It isn’t too difficult to understand how a festival of fertility eventually became a holiday celebrating love, but what does it have to do with a Christian saint?  The answer, I’m afraid, is “nothing at all”.  Though there were several early martyrs by the name of Valentine, the only things known about the one whose feast day was February 14th are 1) that he was buried along the Via Flaminia north of Rome on that day in the year 270 or thereabouts; and 2) that Pope Gelausius I established his feast day the same year he abolished Lupercalia.  Legends tell us that St. Valentine married young couples in violation of an (otherwise unheard-of) imperial edict forbidding the marriages, and that his letter to his sweetheart from prison was signed “From Your Valentine”.  But these legends date only to the late 14th century and do not appear in any hagiographies before that.  Indeed, the concept of St. Valentine’s Day as a time for romantic love seems to have largely been the idea of Geoffrey Chaucer, who in his Parlement of Foules (1382) wrote: “For this was on seynt Volantynys day/Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”  Why Chaucer chose to portray birds as mating in mid-February is immaterial; the important thing is that it (pardon the pun) dovetailed neatly with the growing popularity of the idea of courtly love, and Chaucer, his friends and his readers quickly established the day as an occasion for displays of romance.  The French established a “high court of love” on St. Valentine’s Day of 1400, and the earliest surviving handwritten valentine dates to 1415.

By the end of the 18th century English printers were producing valentine cards, and by the 1840s mass-produced valentines were the rule rather than the exception; these valentines were among the first popular printed greeting cards and Valentine’s Day was the first commercialized holiday (by which I mean a secular holiday heavily promoted by merchants as an excuse for gift-giving).  But it wasn’t until the 1950s that American merchants began to sell the holiday as an occasion for giving flowers, chocolates and the like, and beginning in the 1980s jewelers upped the ante by presenting the day as one on which to give diamonds.  From werewolves to teddy bears and from cannibalism to chocolates; what changes a holiday can undergo in 5000 years!

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Josie Arlington

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2011| 12 Comments »

Nowhere in this country will you find a more complete and thorough sporting house than the Arlington…Miss Arlington, after suffering a loss of many thousand dollars through a fire, has refurbished and remodeled the entire place at an enormous expense, and the mansion is now a palace fit for kings. –  Blue Book (Third Edition)

Mary Deubler was born in New Orleans to German immigrant parents on February 8th, 1864, and began working as a prostitute in 1881 under the name Josie Alton.  It is likely that the idea first came from her boyfriend Philip Lobrano, a useless man with whom she stayed until 1890 though they never actually married.  Josie was very attractive, intelligent and industrious and therefore had no trouble supporting Lobrano and several members of her family as well.  She was also, however, notoriously hot-tempered and never shied away from a fight with either customers or other whores, and when she opened her own brothel at 172 Customhouse Street in 1888 (under the name Josie Lobrano), the place soon became notorious for the feistiness of both its madam and the employees she attracted.

Since Josie was a shrewd businesswoman the brothel prospered, but the situation was too unstable to continue for long and on November 2, 1890 a free-for-all broke out which involved nearly everyone in the building.  In the ensuing melee Philip Lobrano shot Josie’s brother Peter, and though he was eventually acquitted she would have nothing more to do with him nor with anyone else who had a reputation for fighting.  Changing her name once again to that by which she is remembered, Josie Arlington, she fired her entire staff and vowed that from then on fighting would not be tolerated in her house; she further decided that only “refined gentlemen” who preferred “amiable foreign girls” would be welcome as customers.  She had apparently decided to operate the highest-class brothel in the entire country, and in the minds of many she eventually succeeded.

The Chateau Lobrano d’Arlington soon developed into the one of the most profitable and highly-respected brothels in the city, and though it is highly doubtful that as many of her girls were imported as she claimed, it is unquestionable that they were amiable; Josie had learned her lesson and immediately ejected anyone who caused trouble, whether employee or customer.  So when Storyville was established in 1898, she had plenty of money to build an opulent four-story, sixteen-bedroom mansion with an onion-domed cupola at 225 North Basin Street.  In keeping with her “foreign” theme this brothel, now called simply The Arlington, had a number of parlors decorated in various national styles including the Turkish Parlor, the Japanese Parlor, the Vienna Parlor and the American Parlor; it also had a Hall of Mirrors and several large dens, all lavishly decorated with paintings, hangings, statuary and furniture.  It was, as the Blue Book expressed it, “absolutely and unquestionably the most decorative and costly fitted-out sporting palace ever placed before the American public.”

Josie lived on the premises with her lover John T. Brady (whom she “took up with” soon after dumping Lobrano) and about a dozen girls at a time, although the number could be as high as twenty during Carnival season.  It was one of the most expensive houses, charging $5.00/hour at a time when the average American workman made 22¢/hour.  The Arlington also offered a live pornographic show called The Circus (I shall leave the details to your imaginations) and various specialties, but there was one common request of that time to which its madam refused to cater: defloration of virgins.  Brothels of the day charged $200 or more for a credible virgin, but Josie absolutely refused to participate in this disreputable trade and insisted that no girl ever had or ever would lose her virginity at The Arlington.  But despite this refusal (or perhaps, in part, because of it) the business was incredibly lucrative and within a few years she bought herself a $35,000 mansion on Esplanade Avenue and a country house and farm in Covington (north of Lake Pontchartrain).

Alas, nothing lasts forever; the Arlington was badly damaged in a fire in 1905 and the business temporarily moved to a set of rooms above a saloon owned by Josie’s friend Tom Anderson.  The building soon acquired the nickname “The Arlington Annex” as a result, and Anderson was so pleased by this he actually had the name painted on the front of the building.  Extensive renovations costing about $5000 were carried out and soon the Arlington was even more elegant than before, but Josie’s mind could not be so easily repaired; she had almost died in the fire, and in the years which followed she became increasingly reclusive and morbid.  She retired in 1909 to her mansion, leased the Arlington to Anna Casey and sold many of her other assets to Tom Anderson, then bought a large plot in the exclusive Metairie Cemetery and built an ornate tomb of red marble with elaborately engraved copper doors.  In front of the tomb stands a beautiful bronze statue of a young girl knocking at the door; she is said to represent a virgin being denied access to the interior of the Arlington.  The project was designed by the noted Albert Weiblen and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.

For the next five years, Josie Arlington continued to decline mentally and physically; she became moody and quarrelsome, sinking into dementia in 1913 and dying on February 14th, 1914 – less than a week after her 50th birthday.  She was buried the next day, and though most of the madams in the District sent flowers the actual turnout at her funeral was very poor:  Tom Anderson, Josie’s common-law husband John Brady, her niece (and chief heir) Anna Deubler, regular client Judge Richard Otero and several representatives of the Sisters of Charity, a convent to which Josie had been generous.  A week later Brady and Anna Deubler were married, and though Josie’s father tried to contest her will the couple retained control of the entire estate.

But that isn’t quite the end of the story.  Soon after Josie’s funeral people began to report that sometimes after dark the tomb seemed to burst into flame, with tongues of ghostly, cold fire flickering across the red marble (some claimed it was due to reflection from a nearby traffic light but this could never be proven).  The site soon became a tourist attraction, and before long these visitors began to report an even more terrifying phenomenon:  the statue of the girl at the door sometimes vanished from her post and was said to walk about the cemetery.  Two gravediggers even claimed to have seen her in the act of leaving the tomb!  Naturally, the family was deeply upset and so they eventually had Josie’s remains moved to a different grave and sold the “haunted” tomb to the Morales family.  Though caretakers of the cemetery have been ordered not to point out the tomb to the curious any longer, it is not difficult to find and though no one has seen the phantom fire for at least seven decades there are still occasional claims that the bronze virgin continues her nocturnal wanderings to this day.

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Gilda

Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2011| 4 Comments »

In a multitude of acquaintances is less security, than in one faithful friend. –  Herman Melville

I’ve mentioned Gilda a few times, but I’ve never really told you about her; today I intend to remedy that oversight.  I first “met” her when I worked for Pam; I put that in quotes because, though I came to trust her and look upon her as a friend, I didn’t actually meet her in the flesh until about two years later.  All of our contact before that, and most of our subsequent contact, has been on the phone; I think I’ve only seen her in person twice or perhaps three times.  At one time people would’ve considered that strange, but in our modern world of telecommunications it’s become far more common.  Which is all well and fine except that Gilda was not exactly of the internet generation; when I first “met” her on the phone she was 62.

Gilda was Pam’s day operator; since most escort services answer their phones 24 hours a day, and since most of their business is at night, many small or mid-size agencies keep a day operator to whom they forward their phones during those low-volume times.  The operator works on commission, in Gilda’s case $25 per completed call.  Considering that Pam’s agency fee was $100 this was a good deal for everyone; she got calls without having to answer phones and Gilda made a decent income just sitting at home, especially at busy times like Carnival season.  And she certainly needed it; she’s diabetic and had a liver transplant in the late ‘90s, and the cost of her medications alone was astronomical.  Since her one daughter was selfish and the other caring but poor, that left Gilda to somehow cover expenses herself despite being disabled.  She was referred to an escort service in Florida by a friend and answered phones for them for a while, and was in turn referred to Pam when that agency closed its doors in the autumn of 1999.  And that was where I “met” her, when she phoned to give me calls during the day.

I was impressed with Gilda’s friendliness and efficiency, and also with her open-mindedness; despite being of conservative Catholic stock in one of the smaller Gulf Coast cities and never having been a whore herself, she was unfazed by even the strangest callers.  So when she told me (soon after I had started my own agency) that the increasingly-erratic Pam had fired her and refused to pay her what she was owed for the last week, I hired her as my day operator on the spot and never once regretted it.  Not only did the girls like her, the clients did as well; it wasn’t unusual for her to ask “what sort of girl would you like to see?” and receive the reply, “Are you available?”  That always gave her a giggle, but it was because she was so friendly and has such a sweet voice and charming Southern accent.

I refused to take calls after 2 AM myself, so at that time I would take my shower and then send Grace off to bed, and I stayed up with the phone until 4 AM.  I would then forward it to Gilda, calling her if necessary to let her know if anything was going on (girls on the way to calls or already checked in, that sort of thing).  Even at that ungodly hour it was rare to find her asleep; she went to bed early and rarely slept more than five or six hours, so she was ready to go at 4.  And when I awoke about 11 AM I always called her for a report and generally found at least a couple of calls had been completed while I slept.  She kept the phone until we finished dinner, usually about 6 PM, but on occasion she kept it even longer if we needed her to.  As she said, “I’m just sittin’ here watchin’ TV anyhow, I might as well make money while I do it.”  Sometimes on slow nights I called Doug and was surprised to hear Gilda answer his phone; he knew her as my operator, and trusted her enough to employ her when he wanted to go out for a few hours.  And every Monday I wrote her a check, $25 per completed call; in some busy weeks these checks crossed over into four figures.  Not bad for an elderly, disabled lady sitting at home!

The good times, alas, could not last forever; after the events of September 11th, 2001 the escort industry in New Orleans slumped badly, and though it recovered things slowly worsened after that.  Several new agencies (especially Luke’s) took a bite out of the shrinking business, as did the steady rise of independent internet escorts, and though we experienced several excellent months after Hurricane Katrina (as described in my column of August 3rd it was all over by the summer of 2006.  When I closed my agency Gilda went to work for Doug’s former partner (to whom he had sold his share of the business), but his greedy wife eventually forced poor Gilda out of a job and she has since resorted to “catch as catch can”.  We’ve helped all we could; until 2008 I paid her rent every month, and we found an online source for her medications which saved her enough money that in conjunction with her paid rent allowed her to subsist on her disability check.  My husband, Goddess bless him, never once complained about my paying out hundreds of dollars a month to help a woman who was essentially “just” a former employee, because like me he knew that she couldn’t have made it without our help.  Fortunately, in autumn of 2008 her good daughter remarried and her new, equally good husband insisted Gilda move in with them, which was a big relief for me both emotionally and financially.

We don’t talk to her as often as we used to, but we do keep in touch and I send her a little help at Christmas every year.  She calls on birthdays and holidays or when she’s upset about a medical problem (of which, needless to say, she has plenty).  I wish there was more that I could do for her; she’s a wonderful person and one of the most appreciative souls I’ve ever known, and she’s one of those people I have fantasized about helping should I ever win the lottery or something.  According to her I’ve been too generous already, but that’s nonsense; she’s been at least as faithful to me as I have been to her, and though I don’t support her any longer she told me just last week that she still says a rosary for me every week at mass.

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King Day

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| 6 Comments »

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. –  Matthew 2:1-2

In the Catholic calendar today is the feast of the Epiphany, popularly called “Little Christmas” or “King Day” in some places because it is the observance of the visit of the Magi, also called the “Three Kings”, astrologers of Persia or Babylon whom Matthew described as coming to visit the infant Jesus.  Though Matthew only refers to them as “wise men”, the legend grew until they became kings in accordance with Isaiah 60:3, “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”  The tradition eventually assigned them the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar; these appear to derive from an early 6th century Greek manuscript composed in Alexandria.  Because Matthew describes them as bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh many Christian countries shifted their Christmas gift-giving to this day.  This was the prevailing custom in Christendom from the Dark Ages until the Reformation, when it returned to Christmas Eve in most countries (though Spain and former Spanish colonies such as Mexico and the Philippines still give gifts to children on the eve of this day).  Indeed, in some countries the traditional gift-givers are the Three Kings themselves rather than one of the many versions of Saint Nicholas/Father Christmas, and children in those countries fill their shoes with straw on the eve of the Epiphany so as to provide fodder for the kings’ camels.

Italian children also receive their gifts on Epiphany Eve, but not from the Three Kings; the traditional gift giver is instead a witch named Befana, a Christianized version of the Roman goddess Strenia (who was associated with ancestral spirits, forests, and the passage of time and identified with the Greek Hecate).  Some authorities claim that her name is derived from an Italian mispronunciation of the Greek epiphaneia (epiphany), but if that is the case it is likely in combination with the word Bastrina, the Latin word for the gifts given by Strenia.  Like Santa Claus she flies, enters through the chimney and leaves presents for good children and coal for bad ones (even good ones receive a lump of black rock candy because all children are bad sometimes).  It is also customary to leave her food and wine just as Santa is left cookies and milk (or sherry in England).  But while Santa has a sleigh drawn by flying reindeer, Befana flies on her broom and often sweeps the floor of a house before she leaves.

In Russia, today is not Epiphany but rather Christmas Eve; the reason for this is complicated.  The Gregorian calendar was developed in 1582 on the order of Gregory XIII, a Roman Catholic pope, so the only countries which adopted it immediately were Roman Catholic ones.  Protestant countries took longer; Denmark and her possessions adopted it in 1700, and the British Empire in 1752.  But Eastern Orthodox countries took longest of all; Russia remained on the Julian calendar until the revolution of 1917, and Greece until 1923.  In 1582 the accumulated error of the old calendar was ten days; by the time the British Empire switched the error was eleven days, and by the time Russia adopted the new calendar it had grown to thirteen days.  But though the new Communist regime had accepted the Gregorian calendar for pragmatic and scientific reasons, the Russian Orthodox Church would have none of it; Orthodox Church leaders saw no reason to use a calendar developed by Roman Catholics and endorsed by atheists, and so remained on the Julian calendar despite its 13-day error.  Pre-revolutionary Russians celebrated Christmas on what their calendar said was December 25th, but the rest of the world called it January 7th and so it is today.  And unless the Russian Orthodox Church adopts the Gregorian calendar within the next 89 years, Russian Christmas will after that time occur on January 8th.

In New Orleans, King Day is the official beginning of Carnival, the season between Christmastide and Lent.  The last day of the Carnival season is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French), so called because it is the last day of normal eating and drinking before the fasting season of Lent begins on the next day, Ash Wednesday.  The latter changes from year to year; it is always 40 days before Easter, but Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring and can thus vary by as much as four weeks.  Since Epiphany occurs on a fixed date, Carnival season is of variable length.  It is a festive time in New Orleans, dominated by parades, Carnival balls, private parties and the eating of king cakes (see yesterday’s column for recipe).  Carnival is the most lucrative time of year for New Orleans whores; locals in a celebratory mood spend more freely, and since no other part of the United States has such a tradition tourism sharply increases as well.  Best of all, the police are far too busy with crowd control at parades to have any time to spend on harassing prostitutes.  So though I did not realize it at the time, January 2nd was a very advantageous point at which to start my career; I think I made more money in the next two months than I had in the previous six as a stripper.

I don’t live in New Orleans any more, and I must admit I miss it most at this time of year.  Though I was never all that fond of parades, I enjoyed the high spirits and festive atmosphere of Carnival despite the hassles caused by parade traffic and blocked streets.  Still, you can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can’t take New Orleans out of the girl; I always make our first king cake of the year on this day, and while it’s rising and baking we put away the Christmas decorations and take the tree down, just as most New Orleanians do.  And at some point in January, we always take a trip down to New Orleans to visit and exchange presents with Frank and Olivia and with Denise, to eat at a few of our favorite restaurants and see a few of our favorite places, and to stock up on some of the foods unique to the Crescent City.

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Twelfth Night

Posted in History, Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 11 Comments »

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle-doves
And a partridge in a pear tree. –  Traditional Christmas carol

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas and tonight is Twelfth Night, traditionally celebrated with parties and feasting.  It is the eve of the Epiphany, the day on which Christian myth holds the Magi arrived to give gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus.  Because of this it was the custom in medieval times to exchange Christmas presents on that day, and Twelfth Night was the celebration preceding the exchange.  Even after the gift exchange moved back to Christmas Day proper in the Renaissance, Twelfth Night continued to be celebrated as the transition between Christmastide and Carnival (which starts tomorrow), and in some countries children still receive their presents tonight (as we’ll see in tomorrow’s column).  And though many Americans take down Christmas decorations by New Year’s Day, all good New Orleanians leave them up until Twelfth Night and remove them on Epiphany.  In modern times a bit of confusion has arisen, so that many (especially in New Orleans) believe Twelfth Night to be the 12th night after Christmas rather than the 12th of Christmas, i.e. the night of January 6th.  But whatever terminology one prefers, tomorrow is the first day of the Carnival season and today the last of Christmas.

Remember the old Saturnalia inversion of the social order we talked about before?  In Christian times this portion of the festivities was shifted to Twelfth Night celebrations.  The masters waited on their servants and everyone shared a cake which contained a bean; whoever got the bean became the Lord of Misrule, the ruler of the feast.  This went on until midnight, when Christmas ended and the world returned to normal.  But the cake survived and in France became much more elaborate; eventually the bean was replaced by a figurine of a baby representing the Christ Child.  These cakes, called “king cakes”, are in New Orleans eaten throughout the Carnival season; every bakery in New Orleans sells them by the thousands at this time of year, and a few die-hards like myself bake our own.  New Orleans king cake is actually a species of brioche, and as such is related to the German stollen and the Italian panettone; it is generally decorated with sugars of purple, green and gold, and whoever gets the baby must host the next king cake party.  In offices, this tradition has devolved into “he who gets the baby buys the next king cake”, so as you can imagine a cheapskate might attempt to hide the fact that he found the tiny doll by shoving it into an uneaten piece when no one is looking, but if he is caught in the act considerable social censure results.

I’m sure at least SOME of you bake, and since you can’t buy a king cake in a grocery store outside Greater New Orleans I’ve decided to give you the recipe.  Remember, you can ONLY eat this cake between tomorrow (January 6th) and Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday), which falls this year on March 8th.  If you can’t find a plastic baby, just use a bean as they did in the Middle Ages.  I’m afraid all of my measurements are Imperial, so international readers will have to convert; in the US butter is typically sold in pounds, with each stick equal to ¼ pound, but I have seen half-size sticks in California so please check your carton carefully.  DO NOT use margarine; modern margarines are an emulsion of oil and water with very different chemical properties from real butter and the yeast will not rise properly if you substitute.  Since the dough must sit overnight, you’ll have to start your cake this evening if you wish to serve it tomorrow.

King Cake

4¾ cups flour
1 cup sugar (divided usage)
1½ teaspoons salt
2 packages rapid-rise yeast
¾ cup milk
½ cup water
½ cup (1 stick) butter
2 large eggs
¼ cup (½ stick) melted butter (used on second day)
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (used on second day)
1 recipe powdered sugar glaze (see below)
Colored sugars (see below)

1) In a large bowl, combine 1½ cups of the flour, ¼ cup sugar, and yeast.  In a small saucepan heat the milk, water, butter and salt until very warm and butter is almost completely melted; DO NOT omit the salt, because the yeast needs it to grow.  Add the milk mixture to the dry mixture and beat on medium speed of an electric mixer for two minutes, then add the eggs and another ½ cup of flour and beat on high for two minutes (I always sing to the yeast to encourage it to grow, but I’m silly that way).  Stir in the remaining flour, then cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (8-24 hours).

2) Punch dough down and remove it to a lightly floured work surface, then combine the cinnamon with the remaining sugar and mix well.  Divide the dough into three equal pieces and roll each into a 28” long by 4” wide strip (I find it easier to roll it into a 14” x 8” strip, then cut it lengthwise and join the pieces end to end).  Brush the rectangle with a third of the melted butter, sprinkle evenly with a third of the cinnamon-sugar mixture and roll it up tightly to form a long rope; don’t forget to put your baby or bean at a random spot on one of the rectangles before rolling it up.  You’ll probably need to pinch and manipulate the ropes a little to get the edges to seal.  Braid the three ropes together, then bring the ends together and pinch to join them so the cake is an oval.  Carefully transfer to a greased baking sheet (I find it’s easier to do the braiding on the sheet) and let rise in a warm, draft-free place for one hour.

3) Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes (finished cake will sound hollow when tapped).  Carefully free cake from sheet and slide it cautiously to a wire rack to cool; meanwhile prepare colored sugars and powdered sugar glaze.  When cake has cooled slightly spread the glaze over it and then sprinkle the colored sugars on as in the picture; there is no way to do this without making a huge mess so you may as well just enjoy it.

Colored sugars:  For each color place ¼ cup of sugar into a Tupperware-type sealable container, add food coloring, seal container and shake vigorously (make sure you use a container with a trustworthy lid!)  For green sugar use 4 drops of green food coloring, for gold use 4 drops of yellow, and for purple use 4 drops of blue and 8 of red.  Unused sugars will keep indefinitely if sealed tightly in a cool, dark place.

Powdered sugar glaze:  Combine two cups of sifted powdered (confectioner’s) sugar and two or three tablespoons of milk; stir until smooth and use immediately.

Don’t forget to start the cake the night before you plan to serve it to company; the rolling and braiding may sound complicated but actually takes only about half an hour.  This cake is best enjoyed in good company with a tall glass of cold milk or a large cup of strong, hot café au lait.

Since most of your friends probably don’t bake and king cakes probably aren’t commercially available where you live, you’ll have to start your own tradition about the baby or bean; just make sure it’s something fun and in the spirit of hospitality.  And if any of my English readers has a recipe for wassail (a traditional punch drunk throughout Christmastide and especially tonight), please feel free to share it!

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Who Did Your Tits?

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2010| 24 Comments »

Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it’s quite the opposite: A woman having large breasts makes men stupid. –  Rita Rudner

I can thank my mother for a small waist, but unfortunately the tits which came with it were equally small.  And though lots of people of both sexes told me it didn’t matter, to me it did; I started wearing padded bras in high school and over the years tried every herbal supplement and exercise I heard of to make the damned lazy things get bigger.  But it was no use; whenever I took a shower I would stand there looking in the mirror at what looked like two fried eggs stuck to my chest, and more often than not would sigh, try to convince myself that they really did look OK, or even scream “Grow, damn you!  Why can’t you GROW?”

I eventually stopped shouting at them and resolved myself to the fact that as happy as I was with my figure in every other way, I was going to be stuck with these absurd little-girl titties until I could afford a boob job, which wasn’t going to happen on a librarian’s salary.  A stripper’s income is far more generous, however, and eventually (after I had paid off all my outstanding bills) I realized that I had enough spare cash to finally buy the Holy Grail I had not-so-patiently awaited for some 15 years.  So I looked through the plastic surgeons’ ads in the phone book and called a few board-certified ones for quotes; though I am thrifty to a fault I wasn’t just going to pick the cheapest one for something like this.  I asked questions and consulted my gut, and the one I got the best feeling from actually was the least expensive of the really good ones; he achieved the savings by performing his surgeries at a surgery center on the Northshore rather than in a hospital in Greater New Orleans, which resulted in my saving over $1000 even though his own professional fees were comparable to those of the other surgeons.

So I plunked down my $3900, picked my size and scheduled my surgery for the following week; my friends all thought I was insane for choosing to go up SIX cup sizes, from not-even-A to DDD.  But I ignored them; I had spent plenty of time padding up my bosom, then putting on tops and looking at myself critically in a mirror, and I knew it would look good and right.  When the big day came Grace drove me across the Causeway before dawn (why do surgeons insist on operating so damned early?) and then went to breakfast with a friend; it was my idea, since there was little point in her waiting around until I woke up.  Anesthesia does not agree with me; I was as sick as a dog all day long, but though I faded in and out of consciousness and periodically stumbled to the bathroom to throw up, I couldn’t help but be stupidly happy.

Even the pain (which wasn’t so bad except when I elected to breathe) couldn’t ruin my mood, and as the weeks went by that quickly lessened.  My friends all admitted that they had been wrong, and that I had picked the perfect size for my figure; my new tits balanced my hips and bottom perfectly and made my waist look even narrower, and my clothes looked spectacular.  I had never had so much confidence in my physical charms, and I’m sure it was projected to the men around me because I honestly feel as though I was more attractive to them during that year than at any time in my life before or since; I’ve always been described with words like “stunning”, but now people were using terms like “drop-dead gorgeous”.  And I’m sure it was almost entirely due to the fact that I was at long last truly comfortable with my body.

I say “almost” because I must give credit where it is due; my plastic surgeon, Dr. S, is an absolute master of his art, and he felt that he had outdone himself in my case; he even asked if he could use my “before” and “after” pictures at a conference (I of course agreed).  He gave them a beautiful, natural shape which IMHO has only improved over the past decade as gravity causes them to settle into a less globular form and the scars faded into total invisibility.  Indeed, their appearance is so natural that I’ve actually had men take them for the home-grown variety.  But I’m nothing if not honest, and whenever a man made such a statement I always corrected him.  Nor would I lie when asked, though I must admit I had fun with the question; I answered “Are they real?” with, “Well, they certainly aren’t imaginary!”  My reply to “Are they natural?” was “Well, they aren’t supernatural!” and my favorite permutation, “Are they yours?” was answered with, “They had better be, I sure paid enough for ‘em!”

Most men of course recognized them for implants for the simple reason that, as natural as they look, no woman over the age of 16 could possibly have big hooters which are as perky and firm as mine are.  The dead giveaway is that when I lie on my back, they don’t droop to the sides as unaugmented mammaries do.  But with rare exception, men don’t seem to care; artificial or not, they drew plenty of compliments.  The most appreciative audience of all, though, were physicians; they not only enjoyed them as men, but also appreciated the surgical skill which crafted them.  New Orleans has been called “the biggest small town in the world” with good reason; everybody knows everybody, especially in professional communities.  So when I disrobed in front of a client who was a medical man, the first words out of his mouth were often “Who did your tits?” and of course I told him because I knew he might end up purchasing a boob job for his wife one day and I wanted to give Dr. S the advertising.  Once I did a bachelor party for a doctor; the only non-physician in the room was his brother, and after I had finished my dance and show I was of course confronted with the inevitable question, followed by a number of the guests asking if they could examine them (for purely professional reasons, of course).  I just agreed and rolled my eyes while being groped from both sides, and everyone laughed and complimented me on being such a good sport.

It wasn’t just men who appreciated them, though; wives in couple calls were often fascinated by them, as were strippers or other escorts whom I met in multi-girl calls.  And at Mardi Gras of 2005 I had a particularly memorable encounter with a beautiful nurse.  I was there on Bourbon Street with my husband and a friend of his who had never been to a Mardi Gras before, and as usual I was flashing my tits at every opportunity.  I’m always amused by the bluenoses who simper about how awful it is that “women expose themselves for a set of plastic beads” on Fat Tuesday; it never occurs to these lemon-suckers that we flash our tits because it pleases us to, not to get the silly beads!

Anyhow, I had just put my top down after one such showing and a lovely woman walked up to me and said, “Excuse me, but when you flashed a minute ago my boyfriend missed it; would you mind showing them again so he can see?”  Well, I wasn’t about to let such feminine coolness go unrewarded, so I of course repeated the performance.  They both complimented me on them, and she asked if she could touch them; I agreed and the intake of breath from fifty male spectators was audible.  Again she told me how beautiful they were, then came the classic question: “Who did them for you?”  It turned out she was not only a nurse but worked at the very surgery center in which I had the operation, and when I told her my surgeon’s name she exclaimed, “Oh, I love him!  He’s so nice, and I’ve always said if I ever had mine done I would want him to do them for me!”

“Well, I can definitely recommend him; you can see what good work he does,” I said.  Now, picture this scene; here are two beautiful women standing in a crowded street in broad daylight, the first with her blouse pulled up while the second holds her tits and the two carry on a lively conversation oblivious to several dozen appreciative male onlookers.  Only in New Orleans!

After a few minutes, she let go of my boobs and I dropped my top, and we hugged and kissed and I wished her and her man a happy Mardi Gras.  And as we turned to go, my husband’s friend said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes I wish I were a woman.”  We laughed and I assured him that I understood.  Though neither prudes nor neofeminists comprehend or accept it, there is a power and joy in unashamed female sexuality that is like nothing else I know on Earth, and I thank Dr. S and his masterful technique for giving me the confidence to experience it.

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