Preventative Measures

Ian Ironwood of The Red Pill Room writes:

I lurk at your site frequently, and love the way you write.  My own blog deals with…marriage topics, and one of my most popular subjects is “girl game”.  In these posts I try to explain to my female readers some of the psychology behind why and how men like to have sex, and what they can do to cater to it.  Most of the time I’m actually explaining the usual “why men go see whores” meme in different ways, and I have had some good response to it.  I’ve covered the GFE, the Happy Ending, and a couple of other professional go-to moves, but I was wondering if you had any further ideas in that direction.  What were the common reasons men saw you when you practiced, and how could their wives have countered their decision to go to a pro by giving them what they wanted at home?

The three most common reasons married men see whores could be abbreviated as “She doesn’t”, “She won’t” and “She isn’t”.  The first is wholly in the woman’s court, the last wholly in the man’s, and the second somewhere in between.  “She doesn’t” means the wife just doesn’t provide enough sex, or that the sex she provides is so lackluster it isn’t satisfying to the husband.  “She won’t” means the wife won’t do something the husband really yearns for, whether that be a particular activity (such as oral sex) or a mode of behavior (such as role-play or just being enthusiastic).  “She isn’t” means the wife is simply no longer sufficient for the husband’s desire no matter what she does; either age or weight has made her unattractive to him, or he can’t see her as sexual after having kids due to a bad case of the Madonna/whore duality, or he has a strong need for variety.  ”She doesn’t” and most “She won’t” are completely under the wife’s control; giving one’s husband the kind of good, enthusiastic sex he craves will go a long way toward sapping his desire to see whores.  If the man’s desire is for something the woman actually can’t provide (such as an energetic PSE when she’s over 50 and no longer athletic), a frank discussion of alternatives which might do the trick is in order; if it’s something for which she has a visceral repulsion (such as cross-dressing), he may not even dare to mention it to her and then, obviously, it moves into “She isn’t”.

By definition, there is less a woman can do to circumvent “She isn’t” issues, unless they’re purely dependent on something like her weight.  That’s quite rare despite what you might think; I can’t recall very many cases of a man telling me that his wife was still very interested in sex, but that she was so fat or old or whatever that he couldn’t get interested.  Though some feminists like to rant about male shallowness in this regard, the truth is that in the overwhelming majority of cases it’s a wife’s attitude and behavior which turn her husband off rather than her physical appearance (though obviously, if she pointedly insists that she doesn’t care about her appearance it says a lot about her attitude, no?)  The need for variety is a tough one, but not insurmountable; if a wife comes up with ways to spice things up (or even just responds favorably to her husband’s ideas) his hindbrain can often be tricked into perceiving her as different, and therefore satisfying to his need for variety.  If that’s not enough, there are couple calls and wife swapping, which allow the husband to satisfy his craving for “strange” under controlled conditions rather than acting behind the wife’s back.  Of course, if it’s the illicit nature of trysts with hookers which turns him on, that’s going to present a problem; if he craves sneaking around behind his wife’s back, he’s not likely to be satisfied with activities she attends, arranges or even simply condones.  The same could be said of the Madonna/whore issue, which might require some kind of counseling to help him get over it.  Still, those represent a very small minority of cases; most of the time, an attentive and caring wife can keep her husband from straying by simply taking her own responsibilities seriously, and by helping him to do the same for his.

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I May Sell You Some of Mine

You know three ‘n’ three is six
Three threes is nine
You give me some of yours,
I may sell you some of mine.  -  Billie Pierce, “I’m in the Racket”

It’s time for another collection of hooker songs!  If you have a suggestion for a future column, check the Musicography page to make sure I haven’t featured it already, and if I haven’t please share it in a comment below.  Our first selection today was suggested by Grim Ghost; though it is of the moralistic variety, it’s actually quite catchy so it gets a pass.  In the 1920s popular songs were often recorded by a number of artists, and this one is no exception; this recording is by Ruth Etting, best remembered today for “Shine On Harvest Moon”.

Glad Rag Doll (Jack Yellen and Dan Dougherty, music by Milton Ager)

Little painted lady,
With your lovely clothes,
Where are you bound for, may I ask?
What your diamonds cost you,
Ev’rybody knows,
All the world can see behind your mask.

All dolled up in glad rags,
Tomorrow may turn to sad rags,
They call you Glad Rag Doll!

Admired,
Desired,
By lovers who soon grow tired,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re just a pretty toy
They like to play with,
You’re not the kind they choose
To grow old and gray with!

Don’t make this the end, dear,
It’s never too late to ‘mend, dear,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

Oh, you’re all dolled up in your glad rags,
And tomorrow, they may turn to sad rags,
They call you poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re admired,
And you’re desired,
By lots of lovers, but they soon grow tired,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

You’re just a pretty toy
They like to play with,
But you’re not the kind they choose
To, to grow old and gray with!

Don’t make this the end, dear,
It’s never, never too late to ‘mend, dear,
Poor little Glad Rag Doll!

When I was previewing this video on YouTube, I noticed another appropriate Ruth Etting selection among the suggestions.  It is ostensibly about a taxi dancer, but as we’ve seen previously with “Private Dancer” and “Hey, Big Spender”, that’s practically always code for a whore:

Ten Cents a Dance (Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rogers)

I work at the palace ballroom,
But gee, that palace is cheap!
When I get back to my chilly hall-room,
I’m much too tired to sleep.

I’m one of those lady teachers,
A beautiful hostess, you know
The kind the palace features
At exactly a dime a throw.

(refrain 1) Ten cents a dance,
That’s what they pay me
Gosh, how they weigh me down.
Ten cents a dance,
Pansies and rough guys,
Tough guys who tear my gown!

(refrain 2) Seven to midnight I hear drums,
Loudly the saxophone blows,
Trumpets are breaking my ear drums,
Customers crush my toes!

(refrain 3) Sometimes I think I’ve found my hero,
But it’s a queer romance
All that you need is a ticket
Come on, big boy,
Ten cents a dance!

Fighters and sailors and bow-legged tailors
Can pay for a ticket and rent me
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
Are sweethearts my good luck has sent me.

Though I’ve a chorus of elderly beaus,
Stockings are porous with holes in the toes.
I’m there till closing time,
Dance and be merry, it’s only a dime!

(refrain 1, 2, 3)

Another means of encoding harlotry is by singing about a related type of “fallen woman”; both Joni Mitchell and Mary Coughlan portrayed the narrators of their respective songs as girls condemned to the Magdalene laundries for merely being pretty, and though it is true that there were such cases the laundries were first established for prostitutes and largely populated by unwed mothers, promiscuous girls and even incest or rape victims.  Coughlan’s song was suggested by several readers after I featured Mitchell’s:

Magdalene Laundry (Mary Coughlan)

For 17 years I’ve been scrubbin’ this washboard,
Ever since the fellas started in after me.
My mother, poor soul, didn’t know what to do;
The canon said, “Child, there’s a place for you.”
Now I’m servin’ my time at the Magdalene laundry.
I’m toein’ the line at the Magdalene laundry.

There’s girls from the country, girls from the town,
Their bony white elbows goin’ up and down.
And the Reverend Mother, as she glides through the place,
A tight little smile on the side of her face,
She’s runnin’ the show at the Magdalene laundry.
I’ve got no place to go but the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain) Oh, Lord, won’t you let me, don’t you let me
Won’t you let me wash away the stains?
Oh, Lord, won’t you let me wash away the stains?

We’re washin’ altar linen, cassocks and stoles,
And we’re scrubbin’ long johns for the holy joes.
But we know where they’ve been when they’re not savin’ souls;
What the red wine spilt, the smooth hand pours.
We’re squeezin’ it out at the Magdalene laundry.
We’re scrubbin’ it down at the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain)

Sunday afternoon, the Lord’s at rest,
It’s off to the prom, watch the waves roll by.
We’re chewin’ on our toffees, hear the seagulls squawk,
“There go the maggies,” the children talk,
Through our faces they stare at the Magdalene laundry.
In our eyes see the glare of the Magdalene laundry.

(refrain)
(refrain)
(refrain)

While white songwriters and singers often portray the whore as a tragic figure, black musicians (especially those of the jazz era) generally portrayed her as smart, independent and tough, as in this one from Street Walker Blues:

State Street Blues (Thompson and Williams)

Goin’ down on State Street, that’s where I long to be
Goin’ down on State Street, that’s where I long to be
But those State Street gals make a fool out of me.

Goin’ down on State Street, stop at 3409
Goin’ down on State Street, stop at 3409
Get some bad whiskey and have a wild good time.

I don’t see how you State Street women sleep
I don’t see how you State Street women sleep
Walk the streets all night like Big Six on his beat.

These State Street hustlers sure do think they’re cute
These State Street hustlers sure do think they’re cute
‘Cause they get lucky and get a payback suit [?]

These State Street women sure do have some time
These State Street women sure do have some time
They clown all night, don’t give their man a dime.

These State Street hustlers sure better buy some shoes
These State Street hustlers sure better buy some shoes
‘Cause them old easy walkers won’t give their ankles the blues.

The “State Street” mentioned here is the famous Chicago thoroughfare; presumably the address was the (fictionalized) one of a speakeasy.  I’m not sure of the last phrase in the fourth verse; if anyone has a better suggestion please let me know.  Our last selection portrays Ray Charles’ narrator as the victim of a rather sophisticated cash and dash:

Greenbacks (Ray Charles)

As I was walking down the street last night,
A pretty little girl came into sight.
I bowed and smiled and asked her name,
She said, “Hold it bud, I don’t play that game.”
I reached in my pocket, and to her big surprise
There was Lincoln staring her dead in the eyes

(refrain) On a greenback, greenback dollar bill
Just a little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll.

She looked at me with that familiar desire,
Her eyes lit up like they were on fire.
She said, “My name’s Flo, and you’re on the right track,
But look here, daddy, I wear furs on my back,
So if you want to have fun in this man’s land,
Let Lincoln and Jackson start shaking hands”

(refrain)

I didn’t know what I was getting into,
But I popped Lincoln and Jackson, too.
I didn’t mind seeing them fade out of sight,
I just knew I’d have some fun last night.
Whenever you in town and looking for a thrill,
If Lincoln can’t get it, Jackson sure will

(refrain)

(bridge)

We went to a nightspot where the lights were low,
Dined and danced, and I was ready to go.
I got out of my seat, and when Flo arose,
She said, “Hold it daddy, while I powder my nose.”
I sat back down with a smiling face,
While she went down to the powder place

With my greenback, greenback dollar bill
Just a little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll.

The music stopped and the lights came on,
I looked around and saw I was all alone.
I didn’t know how long Flo had been gone,
But a nose powder sure didn’t take that long.
I left the place with tears in my eyes,
As I waved Lincoln and Jackson a last goodbye

(refrain)

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Struttin’ My Stuff

Now some pays a dollar, some pays a dime
Just to see me strut this stuff o’mine.  -  Lucille Bogan

One of the presents my husband gave me for my last birthday was Street Walker Blues, a collection of old hooker songs; it’s provided a number of good examples with which to round out my next few columns on the subject, but I prefer to split them up and mix them with songs from other genres for the sake of variety.  The rest of today’s selections were suggested by readers in the comments of “Money Changes Everything” and “Savage Breast”; if you have a suggestion for a future column, check the Musicography page to make sure I haven’t featured it already, and if I haven’t please share it in a comment below!  Our first song today is from Street Walker Blues, and though it’s performed by Ethel Waters I’m not sure who wrote it:

Bring Your Greenbacks (sung by Ethel Waters)

Come all you sheiks, and lovers, too,
Listen to what I’m tellin’ you;
I took a resolution New Years Day,
Never to give nothin’ away!
So run along and let me be,
‘Cause what I’ve got I’m holdin’ for me!

So if you want to be my man,
Bring the greenbacks when you call,
‘Cause I’ve just got enough for myself,
And I can’t spare nothing at all!

Don’t depend upon your looks and try to get my dough,
I can look at pretty papas in a movie show!
So if you want to be my man,
Bring the greenbacks when you call!

So if you want to be my man,
Bring the greenbacks when you call,
‘Cause I’ve just got enough for myself,
And I can’t spare nothing at all!

Don’t come askin’ me for my money, ’cause it ain’t no use,
For all you’ll get from me is going to be abuse!
So if you want to be my man,
Bring the greenbacks when you call!

Now, I’ll give you a piece of cake, also a piece of pie,
But not nary a piece of flesh, ’cause meat’s too high!
So if you want to be my man,
Just bring the greenbacks when you call!

Though there are exceptions, most of the ladies in these vintage songs are quite self-assured; they know the value of their favors, and have absolutely no shame about using them to make a living.  And though our next selection (suggested by Annie Sprinkle) treats the subject more subtly, it’s clear that the lady it describes has exactly that same attitude.

Jezebel (Sade Adu)

Jezebel wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth
She probably had less than every one of us
But when she knew how to walk she knew
How to bring the house down
Can’t blame her for her beauty
She wins with her hands down

Jezebel, what a belle
Looks like a princess in her new dress
How did you get that?
“Do you really want to know”, she said
It would seem she’s on her way
It’s more, more than just a dream
She put on her stockings and shoes
Had nothing to lose, she said it was worth it

Reach for the top
And the sun is gonna shine
“Every winter was a war”, she said
“I want to get what’s mine”

Jezebel, Jezebel
Won’t try to deny where she came from
You can see it in her pride
And the raven in her eyes
Try show her a better way
She’ll say, “You don’t know what you’ve been missing”
By the time she blinks you know she won’t be listening

“Reach for the top”, she said
“And the sun is gonna shine”
“Every winter was a war”, she said
“I want to get what’s mine”

Of course, not all working girls are as successful and well-adjusted as Jezebel; all too many songs on the subject are about her exact opposite, the low-priced street girl who just gets by and usually comes to a bad end.  I try to avoid most such songs because these columns are meant to be light, but I’ll make an exception for this one (which was later covered by Bonnie Raitt) because the singer expresses sympathy for the girl and judgment for those who looked down on her.

Louise (Paul Siebel)

Well they all said Louise was not half bad
It was written on the walls and window shades
And how she’d act the little girl
A deceiver, don’t believe her that’s her trade
Sometimes a bottle of perfume,
Flowers and maybe some lace
Men brought Louise ten cent trinkets
Their intentions were easily traced
Yes and everybody knew at times she cried
But women like Louise they get by

Well everybody thought it kind of sad
When they found Louise in her room
They’d always put her down below their kind
Still some cried when she died this afternoon
Louise rode home on the mail train
Somewhere to the south I heard it said
Too bad it ended so ugly,
Too bad she had to go this way
Ah but the wind is blowing cold tonight
So good night Louise, good night

From a small town we go to a big city; this next song (suggested by Ornithorhynchus) demonstrates a different kind of sympathy for its whores, who won’t take any crap from a bunch of stupid young guys who think they’re going to get something without paying.

Big City Girls (Myles Francis Goodwyn)

Late night hustle goin’ down in the city
A one way street on the wrong side of town
Young and foolish, man don’t you know
All we could see were

Ladies in the night, walkin’ a straight line
Ladies in the night, workin’ overtime
Ladies in the night, doin’ the hustle
Ladies in the night, flexin’ their muscles
Ladies in the night, big city, big city girls

We worked out a deal with some chicks on the corner
Back at the room it was never to be
No one had money and the girls got so uptight

Ladies in the night, walkin’ a straight line
Ladies in the night, workin’ overtime
Ladies in the night, doin’ the hustle
Ladies in the night, flexin’ their muscles
Ladies in the night, big city, big city girls, so tough

Baby I know, it’s just what I see
Baby I know, it’s not what I need
Big city, big city girls

The next thing you know, things got rough, babe
They carved out a warnin’ with a switch blade knife
The message was clear, if you wanna play, you gotta pay

Ladies in the night, walkin’ a straight line
Ladies in the night, workin’ overtime
Ladies in the night, doin’ the hustle
Ladies in the night, flexin’ their muscles
Ladies in the night, big city, big city girls

Our last song for today, suggested by Arum, is more ambiguous than any of the others; in fact, given lines like “picturesque decay” and “finds your heaven, finds your hell”, I think that ambiguity is strictly intentional.  I had never heard this one before I listened to it while making my choices for this post, but I like it; it makes me think of the elaborate and often very expensive brothels of the late Victorian Era.

Baroque Bordello (The Stranglers)

See a picturesque decay there
Something for all time to tell
See the woman of your dreams there
In a baroque bordello

Swing doors and a blind venetian
Keep her in a walnut shell
Has to rub your eyes to bathe you
In a baroque bordello

All the words are written for you
Finds your heaven, finds your hell
Finds your love but keeps it hidden
In a baroque bordello

Seven days and seven nights spent
Sleeping in her wishing well
Climb her rope and find her trailer
In a baroque bordello
In a baroque bordello
In a baroque bordello
Baroque bordello
Baroque bordello
Baroque bordello
Baroque bordello
Baroque bordello

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That Was the Week That Was (#312)

Humanity has a bad track record of selectively appealing to authority to justify our biases.  -  Andrea Castillo

R.I.P. Harry Reems

Harry Reems, the first male porn star, died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday (March 19^th) at the age of 65.  For his role in Deep Throat, Reems was convicted in 1976 of “conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines”, and though that sentence was overturned a year later the stress of the trial drove him to start drinking; he spent the late ‘80s as a homeless alcoholic before sobering up in 1989, then getting married and going into real estate a year later.  Unlike his co-star Linda Lovelace, however, he never regretted his choices or blamed porn for his troubles, and went by his stage name (his birth name was Herbert Streicher) until the end.

Bad Girls

I left out the very rarest, but worst type:  “[Houma, Louisiana] police arrested 15 men…alleging they solicited a prostitute through [Backpage]…one of [two] prostitutes…[was] issued a summons…[but] the other…was not arrested [because she] agreed to be a part of the sting…”  There is absolutely no lower life-form in the whoring ecosystem than a person who collaborates with cops to ensnare others in order to save his or her own worthless hide.

Dr. Schrödinger and His Amazing Pussycat

Andrea Castillo’s “When Science Looks Like Religion” explores the territory discussed in Monday’s comment thread:  When people blindly accept scientific findings which reinforce their irrational beliefs while rejecting equally-valid results which contradict those beliefs, the result is not science but religion.  The last part is doubly germane:  it describes Norwegian social scientists’ knee-jerk denial of all data which contradicts their cultic social constructionism.

Secret Squirrel

A new low in intra-family spying:

…Suspicious moms and dads are hiring trained drug detection dogs to sniff out their kids’ drug stash…the RK Agency…[charges] $350…[to] “discreetly perform a thorough inspection of your entire property”…Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist …[told] the Today Show… “I don’t know if you can [have a relationship with your kids] if you’re bringing in drug-sniffing dogs”…

Size Matters

According to this post from Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Tracy Elise of Phoenix Goddess Temple has been “deemed…’incompetent’ to go to trial…she will be sent to psych ward and forced to take psychiatric drugs for about 15 months until she’s ‘competent’…I feel that if…sex workers…criticise Tracy Elise…we are in a way colluding with the [police]…and…contributing to the problem, which is exactly what the ‘sex negative society’…wants us to do…”  I totally agree.

The Last Shall Be First

[Arizona] legislators…are attempting to pass legislation that forces transgender people to only use public restrooms…associated with the gender…on their birth certificate…in response to a [Phoenix] …bill…which prohibits gender identity discrimination in public accommodations…

Lupercalia

Dr. Brooke Magnanti on the lessons we can learn from Pompeii:

…women in Ancient Rome [married] sometimes as young as 14…[but] were permitted to own land and houses and have jobs.  Women of the upper classes were educated to a high standard…It’s well known that Pompeii…boasted a large sex industry…and…open attitudes about sexuality and prostitution didn’t hold back other women from achieving…

And if you just can’t get enough of Brooke, here’s a short but wide-ranging interview with her in The Age.

A Broker in Pillage

Once again, the British government displays its dedication to literally robbing sex workers of their life savings:

A Chinese brothel madam and her husband have been ordered to pay back £125,000 within six months or she will face another jail sentence and he will join her…Rong Chen…and her husband Jason Hinton…only [have] £125,000 of realisable assets…[namely] their marital home in…Worcestershire, which…will have to be sold or remortgaged…

Note the weird euphemism “pay back”, implying that the money is refunded to customers; in reality it is split between the police, court and Inland Revenue.

Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

If politicians’ minds weren’t befuddled by prohibitionist idiocy, they wouldn’t be so confused by wholly predictable outcomes like this:

…Jakarta…has tried…to offer sex workers ways to escape the sex industry…[for] example…sex workers…[given] a dressmaking course…did not return to their villages…but rather…to their old lives in Jakarta…the income from sewing was just too far below sex work…A high ranking health official…[said] it would be better to legalize prostitution; closing Kramat Tunggak would result in the dispersion of prostitution sites to several unidentified locations — making health checkups impossible…Surabaya…is still trying to phase out Dolly, East Java’s famed prostitution site…

But as this second article from the same newspaper explains, closing Dolly would be an economic disaster:

…Dolly…consists of at least 300 brothels…employing thousands of prostitutes…[plus] numerous supporting businesses — clinics, mini markets, sexual enhancement medicine vendors, parking lots, banks, rented houses, Internet cafes, small restaurants…University of Indonesia economist Lana Soelistianingsih said that…economic transactions triggered by prostitution [alone] could contribute around Rp 1.5 trillion to Surabaya’s gross domestic product…

Oscillation

Family Research Council…fellow Pat Fagan…claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court”…because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse…Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever”…

Real People (TW3 #21)

…Amsterdam’s oldest prostitutes have retired after more than 50 years each in the business.  Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, have decided they are too old…Louise…says arthritis now makes some sexual positions “too painful”…and Martine…admits she finds it hard to attract punters – though one elderly man still has his weekly sadomasochism session…The pair were the subject last year of a documentary Meet The Fokkens and they have written a book called The Ladies Of Amsterdam…

First They Came for the Hookers…

As I pointed out recently, Nevada isn’t remotely pro-whore:  “Two [Nevada] state Senators introduced bills…[to] regulate strip clubs…Mark Manendo…wants to charge …a $10 per customer fee…[to fund] programs related to domestic violence…Barbara Cegavske…would ban anyone less than 21-years-old from performing…”

The Public Eye

Caty Simon of Tits and Sass interviews well-known activist Audacia Ray on the Red Umbrella Project, speaking to the media, condom criminalization, the Long Island Killer and why sex workers need to ally with harm reduction and anti-drug war activists.

Monkey Business

Baboons have been observed keeping dogs as pets:

Birth of a Movement (TW3 #39)

French sex workers continue to push back against increased criminalization:

10 years ago, the Internal Security Act (LSI) penalized public solicitation, including so-called “passive solicitation”…[this] has reinforced the isolation of sex workers, relegating them to more remote places where they are…more prone to violence…since the introduction of the LSI, “the conduct of the police deteriorated sharply.  Their attitude is less respectful and humiliation increased…their protective function…has virtually disappeared and [they are]…most often perceived as strictly punitive”…Médecins du Monde demand the immediate repeal of the offense of soliciting…[and] rejects any proposal to penalize customers…

Women’s Rights Minister Najat Belkacem responded in a typically clueless manner; though she promised repeal of the law, she also made the absurd claim that “90% of [sex workers] are victims of human trafficking” and refused to back down on her scheme to impose the Swedish model.

King of the Hill

Portland, Oregon’s bid for the “largest trafficking hub” title isn’t a new one, but now they’re claiming that this is “proven” not only by highways, but by rivers:

…Portland [has]…one of the largest sex industries of any U.S. city…human trafficking…is a growing problem in Oregon due in part to the traffic permitted by Interstates 5 and I-84 [and] the Willamette and Columbia rivers…the problem [is] one that’s inextricably linked to gangs…“When people think of prostitution, their first instinct is a girl walking on the street,” [police spokesman Pete] Simpson says.  “They’re not thinking about the fact that she’s being traded as a commodity, sold as a product”…The change [in strategy] humanizes the victims…

Simpson robs women of agency, then claims he’s “humanizing” whores who were already human before he turned them into things to be acted upon.  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Accredited Whores

Charlotte Shane’s review of An Intimate Life: Sex, Love, and My Journey As A Surrogate Partner, the memoirs of sex surrogate Cheryl Greene (of The Sessions fame), covers much the same ground as my column, and that’s a good thing; the more of us there are speaking out against these artificial lines drawn between types of sex work, the more people will finally get it.

Like a Horse and Carriage

I’m glad to see that others are recognizing that “marriage equality” applies just as well to polygamy as it does to same-sex marriage, and are making good arguments for it:

I’m in favor of leaving marriage to the religious institutions, and registering households in whatever configuration people want to live.  If a same-gender couple, or a heterosexual couple, or an elderly couple who can’t have children, or any couple want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If three people want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  If a gay man and his female best friend want to be responsible to and for each other, let them.  Let’s stop worrying about who is screwing who, and just make it easier for people to be responsible in their relationships.

Still More Mentoring

SWOP-NOLA posted these “Client Screening Tips and Helpful Links from a New Orleans Provider”; I already mentioned a few of these, but she provides many more I didn’t know about.

The Joy of Juxtaposition

One would never know that these claims have been repeatedly debunked:

The Georgia attorney general and other law enforcement officials kicked off a public awareness campaign…[which] bears the slogan “Georgia’s not buying it” and includes a [commercial] featuring professional athletes…”We’ll continue to go after the pimps and rescue the victims, but we know that the only way to truly eradicate this evil is by ending the demand,” Attorney General Sam Olens said…It is a problem throughout Georgia, in both urban areas and in small towns and rural areas…

Georgia is indeed “buying it”, wholesale.  I’m sure millions in federal grants and an excuse to further erode civil rights have nothing to do with all this.

Skin To Skin

An Australian sex therapist argues that disability insurance should cover the hiring of sex workers:

Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human…Decades of research have uncovered the many benefits of sex, which include physical health, quality of life, psychological well-being and sexual self-esteem.  Unfortunately, because of social taboos and hypocrisy…barriers are created to stop people from fully realising these benefits…Some people with disabilities have limited opportunities for sexual relationships because they lack privacy and are dependent on others…

Comfort Zone

The video of the Albany Law School symposium is now available!  If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the whole thing (4 hours), my part runs from minute 170 to 185.

An Ounce of Prevention (TW3 #310)

Earlier this month, doctors announced that a baby had been cured of…HIV…Now…it appears that 14 adults have…been successfully treated…70 people…[received] combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)…much sooner than…normal…[because] all [were] diagnosed…early…they…stuck to the [regimen] for an average of three years…[but then] stopped…for various reasons…Normally, HIV will return when patients stop taking their ARVs.  But this time…14…patients…were functionally cured…

Hard Numbers (TW3 #311)

Apparently, the proposed legislative reform in South Australia isn’t quite decriminalization (though it’s a lot closer to it than anything we’ll see in the US anytime soon):  “…it makes special provisions for sex work such as special licensing, laws about safe sex and possibly restrictions on location…once a ‘reform’ law has been passed the chances of getting better legislation in the near future drop to zero.  So many people feel it’s better to stay with a bad situation and hope to get good reform rather than settle for an unsatisfactory ‘improvement’…”

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Tullia d’Aragona

It is not holiness, but arrogance displayed
to take away the greatest gift—free will—
bestowed by God from the beginning of time.  -  Tullia d’Aragona, Sonnet XXXV

The existence of courtesans is a glaring refutation of neofeminist dogma about objectification, the eternal victimhood of whores, etc; the fact that the most celebrated, successful and highly-paid harlots of all time were often those who were educated and could match or surpass men in intellectual pursuits throws a huge spanner into the catechism that prostitution is a manifestation of male dominance over women, that our clients hate us, and so on.  Whenever possible, neofeminist historians deny that courtesans were prostitutes, pretend that accomplished women were not really courtesans, or describe them with circumlocutions like, “she chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.”  And when all else fails, they simply ignore them.  Fortunately neither male historians nor female ones with less parochial views feel the need to dissemble about such women, and among them Tullia d’Aragona is rightfully viewed as worthy of respect and study.

She was born in Rome sometime between 1508 and 1510 to the courtesan Giulia Ferrarese, who was considered the most beautiful woman of her time.  Giulia was married sometime before that to Costanzo Palmieri d’Aragona, but the marriage seems to have been a family subterfuge to cover up for Costanzo’s wealthier and more important cousin, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona (who was the illegitimate grandson of Ferdinand I, King of Naples); since cardinals of the Catholic Church were not supposed to hire hookers, his poorer cousin’s marriage of convenience to his favorite lady gave him excuses to be at their house often.  Tullia believed herself to be the cardinal’s daughter and he apparently agreed, because he paid for her education and when he died suddenly in 1519 the family immediately relocated to Sienna (though the exact reason for this is unknown).  She was a brilliant girl, and over the next few years her mother trained her to be a courtesan; in Renaissance Italy it was a trade often passed from mother to daughter, with the mother taking over as guardian, housekeeper and advisor once the daughter was old enough to start working (generally in her late teens).

Tullia’s career began when she and her mother returned to Rome in 1526, but unlike most courtesans of her time she preferred to “tour” rather than staying in one place; obviously her stays were much longer than those of modern escorts, but very much shorter than was typical in those less-mobile times.  She is known to have resided for periods in Venice (1528 and 1540), Bologna  (1529), Florence (1531), Adria (1535), Ferrara (1537), and Siena (1543 and 1545), and when she wasn’t anywhere else she was in Rome.  She was able to do this because, though she lacked her mother’s legendary beauty, she had a reputation for intelligence, learning and wit which started literally in childhood, and which had spread throughout northern Italy.  Though she had her share of clients who were nobles, bankers and the like, she was always most popular among the cognoscenti, especially poets and philosophers; she held salons at her residences from at least 1537 on, and her clients and guests encouraged her literary development and helped to popularize her work.  Chief among these was Girolamo Muzio of Ferrara, a courtier who acted as her editor.  Because mind and personality inspire men more than mere beauty (and probably in part because so many of her clients were poets), Tullia’s following was extremely devoted even by a great courtesan’s standards; Emilio Orsini founded a “Tullia Society” of six clients sworn to defend her honor, several men were supposed to have committed suicide for love of her, Filippo Strozzi was recalled from his diplomatic post for divulging Florentine state secrets to her, and Ercole Bentivoglio was said to have gone about carving her name on every tree he could find.

The 16^th century was a time of great unrest in Italy; what is now one country was then divided into a number of city-states who were often at war with one another.  The Pope, several city-states and France were at war with the Holy Roman Empire during Tullia’s first few years in the profession, and this and the growth of Protestantism in Germany had created a climate of fear in northern Italy.  Such times always breed conservatism and usually lead to an explosion of authoritarian laws enacted in the name of “safety” and “morality”; just as in our own era, many of those laws were directed against whores.  At that time, nobody was deranged enough to believe that prostitution could be stamped out, so most of the laws merely intended to stigmatize and marginalize harlots by forcing them to live in red-light districts and wear certain kinds of clothes to differentiate them from “good” women.  In order to get around these laws, Tullia decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps by entering into a marriage of convenience to one Silvestro Guicciardi on January 8^th, 1543.  We know practically nothing about this man other than that he died young and one of Tullia’s few enemies accused her of complicity in the death; the whole purpose of the arrangement seems to have been to make her officially a married woman so she could ignore the restrictions on courtesans.

By the end of 1545, the political turmoil was so bad that Tullia returned to Florence and placed herself under the protection of Cosimo I de Medici; there she once again established a salon and entered into correspondence with several poets.  But the busybodies just wouldn’t leave her alone; in 1547 she was charged with refusing to wear the harlot clothes demanded by a brand-new law.  This time, however, she appealed directly to the Duke and Duchess, and she was granted an exception due to her skill as a poet and philosopher (ah, whorearchy!)  Soon afterward she dedicated her new book, Poems of Madam Tullia de Aragona and Several Others, to the Duchess; later that year, she dedicated Dialogue on the Infinity of Love to the Duke.  The former was a collection of poems by and about her, many by Florentine nobles and respected literati; the latter was the first neo-Platonic dialogue ever written by a woman.

But despite her comfort and literary success in Florence, she felt drawn back to Rome and returned there in October 1548; she seems to have semi-retired as a courtesan at that point, and devoted her remaining years to writing poetry and to hosting an academy of philosophy in her home.  Her son, Celio, was born around this time; like her daughter, Penelope (born 1535), his father is unknown (though some sources erroneously assume it to be her husband, who was already dead).  Her last work was an epic poem entitled Il Meschino, altramente detto il Guerrino  (The Unfortunate, also called Guerrino), a poetic version of the 14^th-century prose tale of a nobleman who is captured by pirates as a baby, sold into slavery, escapes and then wanders the world (even venturing into Hell) in search of his parents.  Despite the fact that this is the earliest known epic poem by a woman and that it touches on many strikingly modern philosophical subjects (including gender identity, homosexuality and “otherness”), it has never been translated into English.  She died of unknown causes in 1556, and Il Meschino was published posthumously four years later.

Even in a staunchly patriarchal country and era, the genius of Tullia d’Aragona was recognized and respected, and her work has been periodically reprinted in Italian (several times since the early 1970s).  She was largely unknown in the English-speaking world until quite recently, however; the only English-language reference to her I could find before 1990 was a chapter in Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance from 1976.  Given her intellectual accomplishments, one would think that feminists would be at least as eager to call attention to her as they have to far less accomplished and deserving women…but of course those women were not prostitutes.  Like the Italians of the 1540s, neofeminists would prefer to stigmatize Tullia and consign her to a ghetto for her unrepentant whoredom rather than to admit that prostitutes are just as capable of intellectual and social contributions as anyone else.

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There Ain’t No Bad Guys

There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.  -  Jim Krueger

A.S. writes:

I’m in a “lukewarm” marriage.  I love my wife and do not want to hurt her, but ever since we had kids 11 years ago, I have been frustrated most of the time.  10 years ago, I started visiting massage parlors, and 4 years ago, escorts; I now meet with an escort I have known for the past 3 years, and after each meeting, I feel happier, better able to work, and happier to see my family afterwards.  I know I am betraying the promise of sexual exclusivity I made to my wife when we married, and that she would be hurt if she found out.  However, I feel it is better for our kids if we stay together, and as long as my wife doesn’t know what I’m doing, everyone will be happier.  Should I try harder to stop seeing escorts, and focus on rekindling romance and intimacy in my marriage?  Or continue seeing an escort and risk discovery and pain later on?

Marriage was designed to serve an economic purpose, not a sexual one; up until the 14^th century absolutely nobody pretended otherwise, and until the late 19^th century the idea of “love-matches” was largely a conceit of the economically-secure European upper middle class.  But about a hundred years ago the rather absurd and untenable idea that marriage should be based only on love and no other reason became the norm throughout Western society; even this wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the “social purity” movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which insisted that men could be held to standards of marital fidelity and premarital chastity which didn’t even work for some women.  Prior to that time, it was universally understood that the average man wanted a lot more sex than the average woman, and that’s what whores were for; prostitution was recognized as “the lesser of two evils”, a practice which helped to prevent rape and lessen affairs with other men’s wives and virgin daughters.  The “social purists” and their political wing, the “progressives” (yes, that’s the origin of the term) insisted that mankind was perfectible, and that laws inspired by “science”, drafted by wise and educated “experts” and imposed on the population at gunpoint under threat of “correction” in “rehabilitative” prisons, could be used to “improve” and “re-educate” people.  I’m sorry for all the scare quotes, but I think all reasonable people can see what this misguided belief-system has done to the United States, the country which (because of its unique sociology) embraced it most wholeheartedly: busybody laws that make literally everyone into criminals, 25% of the world’s prisoners (though we only have 5% of the world’s population), and a war on our own citizens that has resulted in the destruction of millions of lives and the waste of trillions of dollars worldwide.

Human beings are not perfectible; we are flawed, human and individual.  Even if we were perfectible it could certainly not be achieved through coercion (either through state violence or via the sort of emotional blackmail favored by manipulative wives).  And even if some foolproof method of coercion could be developed, who gets to decide what “perfection” means?  Some ruling elite selected by birth, doctrinal orthodoxy, wealth, physical strength, education or skill at winning popularity contests?  Such a system would destroy the souls of its subjects and reduce humans to automata.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with your question, I’ll spell it out.  In a perfectly-matched marriage, the husband would be able to focus all his libido on the wife and she in turn would be excited enough by his interest to want sex every time he did, or else be wise enough to provide him with it every time he wanted it simply because she loved him and/or understood that it’s part of her economic contribution to the marital arrangement.  But no person and no arrangement is perfect, and that includes you, your wife and your marriage.  It’s not unusual for women to lose interest in sex after several children; it’s just biology, and your inability to just settle for what little boring sex she chooses to dole out is likewise biological.  Neither of you is the “abuser” or “victim” as feminists and MRAs both pretend; it’s simply normal, imperfect, frustrating human life.  You could have attempted to badger your wife into more sex, or displayed your frustration through constant arguments, or turned it inward so you could become mentally and physically ill and possibly lose your job or be arrested once your judgment was eroded enough that you did something stupid. But you instead did the wise thing: you hired professionals to deal with the issue, just as you might hire a guy to cut your grass if you couldn’t do it or day-care people to care for your kids if your wife had to work.  Because that’s what sex workers are: professionals.  We’re not “homewreckers”,  or criminals, or the pathetic victims of evil men who dare to commit the sin of having a sex drive higher than that of their wives; we’re caring professionals who help human beings to deal with the necessities of mortality.

My advice to you, then, is to be as careful as you can so that your wife doesn’t find out.  Keep trying to get her interested in sex, enough to let her know you still want her but not so much that you annoy her.  Make sure she knows you still love her, but only to the extent you sincerely feel it; excessive displays are not only deceptive, they’re suspicious.  Of course, she may find out despite your precautions; she may already know but is simply wiser than you give her credit for, and understands that what you’re doing is for the best.  You mention “the risk of pain later on”, but that will exist no matter what path you choose; all of our lives are full of sorrow, pain and disappointment, often from those we care most about, and all any human can do is to try to minimize the harm his actions cause others…which is exactly what you’ve been doing for the last ten years.

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Cora Pearl

I have never deceived anybody for I have never belonged to anybody.  My independence was all my fortune, and I have known no other happiness; and it is still what attaches me to life.  -  Cora Pearl

Those of you who have read many of my “harlotographies” have probably noticed that few of the great courtesans were astonishingly beautiful.  To be sure, pictures often fall short of reality; some women’s beauty is based less on body contours and facial structure than on personality, style and presence, none of which can be captured by the camera.  In courtesans there is also a further component of sexual magnetism which, though impossible to depict on film or canvas, is equally impossible to ignore in person.  And what separates the fantastically successful courtesans – Les Grandes Horizontales as they were called in Cora Pearl’s time and place – from the merely successful ones was then, as now, marketing.  And though Cora was lovely, it was her ability to create an image which won her fame and wealth…and her inability to sustain that image which precipitated their loss.

The details of her birth are a litany of “probablies”; she was probably born in Plymouth, England on February 23^rd, 1835, but that may be the date of her christening and she later claimed the year to be 1842.  Her birth name is usually given as Emma Elizabeth Crouch, but her death certificate calls her “Eliza Emma” instead.  Her father was a cellist named Frederick Nicholls Crouch who was the composer of “Kathleen Mavourneen”, a song which was extremely popular in the United States during the Civil War period.  Unfortunately, Crouch was a “one-hit wonder”, but never learned to live within his means; he fled his creditors in 1847, abandoning his wife and six daughters and moving to America (where he is known to have remarried several times before dying in 1896).  Lydia Crouch was an attractive woman and soon found a live-in boyfriend who was willing to support her children, but Emma did not get along with him and so was sent to a boarding school in Boulogne, France to be educated by nuns.  After eight years (and numerous lesbian relationships mentioned in her memoirs) she returned to England in 1855, moved in with her maternal grandmother and went to work for a milliner in London.

Emma chafed under the strictures imposed upon middle-class Victorian girls and one day she ditched her chaperone, accepted a man’s invitation to have cake with him, and drank a bit too much gin…with predictable consequences.  In the morning she found he had left her a five-pound note (about £250 today), and though she later claimed to have been “horrified” by the experience, the truth is that she used the money to rent a room for herself and immediately began hooking.  It wasn’t long before she started working at a brothel called The Argyll Rooms, whose owner Robert Bignell soon recognized her potential and asked her to be his mistress, moving her into a suite of her own.  Within a year he took her on holiday to Paris, and she so fell in love with the city that she decided to remain; she adopted the stage name “Cora Pearl”, took a cheap room, and made her living as a streetwalker until she met a pimp named Roubisse who set her up in better quarters.  He paved the way for her future success by teaching her the business and insisting she develop her professional skills, and by the time he died of a heart attack in 1860 Cora was already well-established with Victor Masséna, Duc du Rivoli (later Prince of Essling).

It was the Duc who first introduced her to extravagance:  besides the money, jewelry and servants (including a chef), he gave her funds for gambling and bought her the first horse of the sixty she would eventually own.  She quickly became an excellent rider, and her equestrian skills attracted the attention of many a French noble.  Though the Duc remained her primary patron until 1862, she had many other clients including the Prince of Orange, the Duc de Morny (Emperor Napoleon III’s half-brother) and Prince Achille Murat, grand-nephew of Emperor Napoleon I.  In 1864 she bought the gorgeous Chateau de Beauséjour and began to hold the parties for which she became renowned, including the one at which she had herself presented to diners on a huge platter; she was fond of dancing naked before her guests, and even had a custom-made bronze bathtub in which she would bathe with clients in champagne.  And when she wasn’t naked, she wore only the finest clothes by Charles Worth, the first superstar designer.

In 1865 she became the mistress of Prince Napoleon, the Emperor’s important and fabulously wealthy cousin.  He supported her for nine years, usually for about 10,000 francs per month, and also bought her many expensive gifts and several houses (including a small palace, les Petites Tuileries).  And though he frowned on her seeing other clients, she secretly did so anyway and charged them that much more for the risk.  It isn’t that the Prince didn’t give her enough; it’s just that she was incredibly extravagant and regularly sent money to both her mother and father.  She became a very popular celebrity and was well known for wearing heavy makeup and dying her hair outlandish colors to match her wardrobe.  In 1867 (the same year a cocktail was named for her) she took the role of Cupid in Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, dressed in a costume which consisted of little more than a diamond-studded bikini; she only appeared twelve times, but the jewels brought 50,000 francs at auction.

Cora’s downfall began with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, during which she allowed her homes to be used as hospitals and paid for doctors and medical supplies for wounded soldiers out of her own purse.  But the disastrous defeat of the French meant the end of the Empire; Prince Napoleon fled to England along with the Imperial family, and though Cora went with him the Grosvenor Hotel refused to let her stay for fear of scandal (ironically, the hotel’s modern management has capitalized on the incident by unveiling a “Cora Pearl Suite” last year).  Within a few months she returned to Paris, but the postwar mood was no longer conducive to the social climate in which a courtesan thrives; so, when the wealthy young Alexandre Duval became obsessed with her, she did not discourage him despite the fact that she despised jealousy in her patrons.  In less than a year he had spent literally his entire fortune on her, and when his family refused to give him any more she refused to see him any longer.  On December 19, 1872, he went to her house with murderous intent, but the gun accidentally discharged while he was trying to force his way past her servants, shooting him in the side.

Though he eventually recovered the public disapproved of the way Cora had handled the affair, and the government ordered her to leave France.  She spent some time with a friend in Monaco, and after a time returned discreetly to Paris.  But the party was over for good; in 1873 she started to sell off her properties, in 1874 Prince Napoleon sadly informed her that he could no longer support her, and by 1880 she was down to just her chateau, which she finally sold in July of 1885.  In 1883 she rented an incall on the Champs-Elysées and returned to middle-class harlotry, then published her memoirs in 1886; unfortunately she was too discreet for her own good and the tame result with disguised names did not sell well.  By that time she was terminally ill with colon cancer and died on July 8, 1886.  She did not end her days in abject poverty as some accounts claim, but neither did she have anything put aside for a funeral; her meager plot and small service were paid for by some of her old clients.

After her death she passed into obscurity, and would barely be remembered today if not for a curious epilogue which occurred almost a full century after her death.  Apparently, Cora wrote an earlier version of her memoirs during her slow decline in the ‘70s, containing real names and many juicy details; it was released by a British publisher in 1890.  The few who knew about it assumed it to be an English translation of her bland 1886 memoir, but when a modern collector named William Blatchford got ahold of a copy he realized that this was not the case.  Blatchford publishing the find in 1983 under the title Grand Horizontal, The Erotic Memoirs of a Passionate Lady, and its vivid, on-the-spot  descriptions of the gay life during the Second French Empire rekindled interest in its author and has given her, albeit posthumously, another chance at the fame she so enjoyed in life.

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Oimelc

As the light lengthens, so the cold strengthens.  -  English folk saying

This day has a number of names; to the Celts it was Oimelc (“ewe’s milk”) or Imbolc (“in the belly”), both referring to the fact that ewes are heavily pregnant by this time of year and will soon lamb; in Christianized Ireland it became St. Brigit’s Day in honor of the goddess of healing, fire and smithcraft who (like so many other pagan gods) was made into a saint in order to convert her worshippers.  The association with fire survived when the day was celebrated as Candlemas throughout most of Christendom, and the belief that the day could be used as an inverse weather predictor was brought to the New World by German immigrants and survives in the modern tradition of Groundhog Day.

Though the old European tradition saw this as the first day of spring, that’s rarely true in central North America; where I live February is often the coldest month, and the lowest temperature I’ve ever recorded here was in February.  So though the folk saying in my epigram was perhaps meant to apply to January, it usually holds true well into February for our continental climate (though not this year, I’m afraid; the signs point to an early spring, which is bad if we get another cold snap in late March or early April as sometimes happens).  As I explained last year, we celebrate the holiday with a feast whose main course is a big pot of chicken and andouille gumbo; if you’d like to make some yourself, I shared my sister’s peerless recipe last year (complete with photos to illustrate technique).

I pray that all my readers, no matter what your individual beliefs, find renewal in your lives at this time; I ask that negative things die away like weeds in winter, and that positive things appear and grow for you like leaves in the spring.  Blessed Be!

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Savage Breast

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.  -  William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (I,i)

A month ago I published a list of all the questions I’ve previously answered, and this month I’m doing something similar again with music.  Every time I publish one of my “hooker songs” columns, readers make suggestions for the next one; that’s great, and I’ve used many of those suggestions in later columns.  But as in the case of the questions, I’ve been doing it for so long now that newer readers are starting to suggest ones I’ve already done.  So today, I present a hyperlinked catalog of all the songs I’ve presented so far; I’ll duplicate it later on a static page, and then every time I do a new song column I can link it for the benefit of those who are just coming in.  I’m not sure how many more of them I’ll be able to do, but I suspect it will be at least a few.  Just for the sake of completeness, I’ve included a second section with all the songs for which I’ve featured videos, even if they aren’t whore-related; and to make it more visually appealing, I’ve also embedded a few videos of songs that I featured before I started embedding videos.

Call Me  (Blondie)
Candy’s Room  (Bruce Springsteen)
Cross-Eyed Mary  (Jethro Tull)
Down the Road Tonight  (Bruce Hornsby and the Range)
Dulcinea  (Leigh/Darion; sung by Simon Gilbert dubbing Peter O’Toole)
867-5309  (Tommy Tutone)
Everything’s Alright  (Webber/Rice; performed by Yvonne Elliman, Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson)
Family Man  (Oldfield/Cross; performed by Hall and Oates)
Fancy  (Bobbie Gentry)

Farewell To Storyville  (Clarence Williams; performed by Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong)
Fire Down Below  (Bob Seger)
Hey, Big Spender  (Dorothy Fields; performed by Sweet Charity cast)
Hot Child in the City  (Nick Gilder)
The House of the Rising Sun  (Traditional; performed by Dolly Parton)
I’m Tired  (Mel Brooks; performed by Madeline Kahn)
It’s All the Same  (Leigh/Darion; performed by Sophia Loren)
Jacky  (Jacques Brel; translated and performed by Mort Shuman)
Killer Queen  (Queen)
La Grange  (ZZ Top)
Lady Marmalade  (Crewe/Nolan; performed by LaBelle)

Love for Sale  (Cole Porter; performed by Ella Fitzgerald)
The Magdalene Laundries  (Joni Mitchell)
Maggie May  (Traditional; performed by The Beatles)
Mexican Blackbird  (ZZ Top)
Midtown Asian Sex Spa  (B.B. Wye)
Minnie the Moocher  (Cab Calloway)
New Orleans Ladies  (LeRoux)
Next  (Jacques Brel; translated by Blau/Shuman; performed by Walter Willison)
Private Dancer  (Mark Knopfler; performed by Tina Turner)
Raised on Robbery  (Joni Mitchell)

Roxanne  (The Police)
Santa Baby   (Javits/Springer; performed by Eartha Kitt)
The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp  (Dallas Frazier; performed by O.C. Smith)
Strange Thing Mystifying  (Webber/Rice; performed by Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson)
Sweet Cream Ladies  (The Box Tops)
Sweet Georgia Brown  (Bernie/Pinkard/Casey; performed by Ella Fitzgerald)
The Taxicab  (Jacques Brel; translated and performed by Mort Shuman)
Texas Has a Whorehouse in It  (Carol Hall; performed by Dom Deluise)
Trick of the Light  (The Who)
A Woman’s Story  (Tempo/Stevens/Spector; performed by Cher)
X Offender  (Blondie)

Other Songs

All For the Best  (Stephen Schwartz; performed by Victor Garber/David Haskell)
Cult of Personality  (Living Color)
Disney Princess Leia
Dumb Ways to Die
Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury  (Rachel Bloom)
The Grinch Song  (Hague/Geisel; sung by Thurl Ravenscroft)
Holly Jolly Christmas  (Johnny Marks; sung by Burl Ives)
The Lees of Old Virginia  (Sherman Edwards; performed by Ronald Holgate)
Me Ole Bamboo  (Sherman/Sherman; performed by Dick Van Dyke)
Munchkinland  (Arlen/Yarburg; performed by Judy Garland and cast)
Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom (Parry Grip)
Prince Ali  (Menken/Ashman; sung by Robin Williams)
Pure Imagination  (Bricusse/Newley; performed by Gene Wilder)
Put One Foot in Front of the Other (Laws/Bass; sung by Mickey Rooney)
Take Off With Us  (Lebowsky/Tobias; performed by All That Jazz cast)
This is Halloween  (Danny Elfman; sung by Nightmare Before Christmas cast)
We Don’t Need a Man  (Rachel Bloom)
What a Wonderful World  (Thiele/Weiss; performed by CDZA)
The Yellow Rose of Texas  (Traditional; performed by Mitch Miller)

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My Favorite Movies

In our family we don’t divorce our men; we bury ‘em!  -  Stella (Ruth Gordon)

In common with most people, I like movies.  I don’t pretend to know much about movie criticism, I’m painfully ignorant about directorial techniques and I probably couldn’t recognize a “great” film even if I had a cheat-sheet.  I do, however, know what I like, and can often even tell you why I like it.  I’m not going to claim that any of these films are “great” in the artistic sense, and though I’ve seen several of today’s selections on “great film” lists I don’t like them for that reason.  Despite today’s title, these are not actually my favorite movies; I already listed those in my very first “Favorite Things” column over a year ago.  Other columns have discussed my favorite horror movies, musicals, short films, obscure movies, Christmas movies and monsters and horror stars; this one lists 16 more of my favorite movies that don’t fall into any of those categories (though I did mention #8 in the “obscure movies” column), listed in my usual reverse chronological order.

1)  Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)  What I like best about this movie and its sequel is that they’re unrepentantly dumb.  In other words, they make no pretense to be anything other than good, clean fun.  And while most time travel movies defy logic due to poor writing or failure to think things out, I get the feeling the writers of this one made a list of time travel rules and then broke every one on purpose.  My love for these flicks has rendered me totally unable to take Keanu Reeves seriously no matter what role he plays.

2)  Highlander (1986)  Truly unique movies are rare in modern Hollywood, but this was one; the aesthetic failure of several moronic sequels and a TV series ripoff prove that.  If you’ve never seen it, the trailer is a decent introduction, though I have one major quibble with it (and with the film itself):  the hero’s modern love interest is completely unbelievable and pales into insignificance besides the beautiful depiction of his first marriage, which never fails to reduce me to tears.

3)  Dune (1984)  Yes, I’ve read the book, and I’m aware of how the film departs from it; I’m also aware that Herbert was satisfied with it.  There are three cuts of this movie: the theatrical cut, which leaves out far too much exposition; the extended television cut, which includes the additional material but removes important scenes that were deemed too intense for broadcast, and a combined cut from a region 2 DVD (of which I own a bootleg) which has all the scenes from both theatrical and TV cuts.  The best part about this film is that there were no concessions to modernism chauvinism; the culture is depicted in all its strangeness and political incorrectness.

4)  Star Trek:  The Wrath of Khan (1982)  As I’ve stated before, this and The Undiscovered Country are IMHO the only Star Trek movies truly worthy of the legacy; Khan is the only one which feels directly connected to the series, and in all of Hollywood history it may be the sequel which surpasses its progenitor by the greatest margin (though you’re welcome to make other nominations).

5)  Time Bandits (1981)  Terry Gilliam’s visions are always baroque and usually tinged with darkness (except when they’re absolutely immersed in it), and Time Bandits is no exception.  Though the movie is absolutely hilarious, its portrayal of a chaotic universe ruled by a rather cold and disinterested God is rather like Monty Python meets H.P. Lovecraft, and can be disquieting if one thinks too hard about it.

6)  Serial (1980)  This little-remembered satire of Bay Area ‘70s nuttiness is probably best appreciated by those old enough to remember the time period, and though it doesn’t bear quite as much repeated watching as most of the other titles on the list I still enjoy it every time I see it.  Bonus for horror fans:  Christopher Lee in a very unorthodox comedic role.

7)  Bedazzled (1967)  This isn’t the only film on this list who memory has been sullied by a shoddy remake, but it may be the only one so completely eclipsed by that remake that almost nobody seems to remember the original.  And that’s truly sad, because this one is very funny, very clever, very wicked and very, very British.  Dudley Moore plays a hapless and rather silly short-order cook who sells his soul to the Devil (Peter Cook) for seven wishes and learns about the proverbial “long spoon” over and over again, but the bits between the wishes are actually the funniest.

8)  Lord Love a Duck (1966)  One of the blackest of all black comedies; it would not be out of place on a double bill with Dr. Strangelove, though this one prefers to take pot-shots at a large number of cultural absurdities (often in drive-by mode) while Strangelove is a sustained attack on one target.  The trailer isn’t lying; Roddy McDowell’s character really does commit mass murder (during the opening credits!) and the rest of the movie explains what drove him to it.

9)  Goldfinger (1964)  In a sense, this movie is here as a representative of all the Sean Connery Bond films, but I also feel it would stand on its own merits without the others.  Everything that is right with the series is exemplified in this one, and its problems less apparent here than in other installments; even some of the series’ conventions are lampooned here, but without devolving into self-parody as the later Roger Moore films did.

10)  Bell, Book and Candle (1958)  The lovely Kim Novak is a modern witch who casts a love spell on her neighbor in order to get back at his awful fiancée, an old schoolmate of hers…then finds herself falling in love with him for real.  Though this film was one of the inspirations for Bewitched, the witches here are not semi-godlike but rather just people with an extra talent (stronger in some than others).  The supporting cast is fantastic; of especial interest for readers of this blog is Ernie Kovacs’ character, a writer whose utter ignorance of the witchcraft on which he claims to be an “expert” calls to mind certain self-proclaimed “experts” on prostitution.

11)  Twelve Angry Men (1957)  One set.  Twelve actors.  No special effects.  Virtually all talk and no action.  But if you’re anything like me, it will rivet your attention from start to finish.  One conscientious holdout juror (Henry Fonda) in a murder trial eventually helps the others to recognize the gaps in the prosecution’s case that they at first ignored or did not want to see.  One of those movies that’s more timely now than when it was first filmed.

12)  Rashômon (1950)  The story of a rape and murder in feudal Japan, told from four points of view:  that of the murderer, those of the two victims, and that of a witness the others did not know was there.  This device has since become a trope, and the film’s name practically an idiom, but none have ever done it as well as the original.

13)  Mighty Joe Young (1949)  Though the movie was a conscious imitation of King Kong (and even shared a writer, star and special-effects director), I must admit that I really like it better than its more iconic predecessor.  Joe is a character rather than simply a monster, and thanks to the wizardry of the young Ray Harryhausen his personality really shines through; the audience cares about him in a way we never really care for Kong, and later incarnations of the King have included more than a little Joe in him.

14)  Rope (1948)  An underappreciated Hitchcock adaptation of a 1929 play based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case.  Like Twelve Angry Men, it’s a very “pure” drama: one set, a small number of characters, mostly talk with little action, and designed so as to resemble a stage play as closely as possible.  Beside the masterful buildup of suspense, one of the things I like best about it is its use of very long takes (up to ten minutes each), cut so as to appear like one long, seamless filming.

15) Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)  You’ve probably noticed that I like black comedies, and here’s another one:  Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) discovers that his elderly maiden aunts are bumping off lonely old men with poisoned wine and burying their bodies in the cellar.  And then there are his two brothers…as Mortimer explains to his new bride, “insanity runs in my family…It practically gallops.”

16) The Thief of Bagdad (1940)  Though I love Arabian Nights movies in general (such as The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, which just barely missed the cut), I have an especial love for this one.  It has been remade several times, but this one is by far the best; if you’ve never seen it, you’ll be amazed at the extent to which Disney plagiarized it for Aladdin.

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