A compassionate prostitute am I. – The Goddess Ishtar, from a Sumerian cuneiform text
Perhaps the loveliest compliment I ever received was from one of my customers. I honestly don’t recall whether it was before or after the act, but I was lying naked on the bed talking to him, with my hair falling about my tits, and he suddenly looked at me with a reverent expression and said in a hushed voice, “You remind me of Mother Eve.” It was in my mind the supreme compliment that could be paid to a spiritually-inclined whore by a modern man, to compare her to the closest thing his religion offers to the Mother Goddess.
That client was not alone in perceiving the aura of sanctity which, apparently, often surrounded me in the performance of my calling, though he expressed it the most beautifully. I always felt, and still feel, a deep connection to the ancient temple-prostitutes of the Dawn of Civilization, those sacred harlots through whom ordinary men might experience connection with the Eternal Feminine. And though the spiritual senses of most modern men are too dulled to perceive it, a sizeable minority clearly did, and often told me so in ways which let me know that these were no idle compliments; sometimes their reverence was palpable. It was very rare that I had trouble with a sober client, because most men treated me with the same respect one might expect them to give to their wives or girlfriends. As I told so many of them (when asked how someone like me could do that sort of work), I genuinely like men and sincerely want to make them happy, and so whenever I arrived at a call I tried to use the initial conversation to discover something in each client that I could truly love or admire and concentrate my erotic energies on that thing. Put another way, I tried on each call to find the nexus through which the God in him could connect to the Goddess in me, and thereby give him an experience which transcended mere copulation. Many people are barely above the level of apes, and so the offering was to them as pearls before swine. But for those men of perception and sensitivity, I was able to conjure that ephemeral union of Madonna and whore which is the core of what is called the “GFE” (girl friend experience), and for a small number something which transcended even that.
Why is it that men divide women into “pure,” asexual, revered Madonnas and “dirty,” sexual, degraded whores? Why do they persist in ignoring the fact that all women are capable of both, and that the well-rounded woman fills whichever role is required by the occasion? The neofeminists tell us that this is a tool of their favorite bogeyman, the “Patriarchy,” intended to keep women under their control; this demonstrates once again the paranoid delusions which characterize the cognitive dysfunction I call neofeminism. They believe, and expect all women to believe, that a monolithic conspiracy involving literally HALF of the human race somehow hides its machinations from the other half. No, a more sensible explanation is needed, one which does not require vast secret midnight planning sessions which have somehow escaped the attention of the entire female population for millennia. Until recently, I myself was at a loss to understand what the psychological root of the Madonna/whore duality might be, but only a few months ago a friend of mine proposed a solution to me. I’m not sure if this was her idea or something she was taught in a psychology class, but I had never heard it before so I’ll give her the credit. Anyway, her theory is that the duality arises in the mind of boys in order to shut out uncomfortable sexual thoughts about their mothers and sisters. So they divide women into Madonnas who must not be seen in a sexual way, and all other women who can. This primitive form of the duality is normal and healthy; perhaps the monsters who molest their own daughters, granddaughters, nieces etc need a little MORE of that feeling. But like so many psychological mechanisms, the duality often gets out of hand, and in the minds of many men grows into an overarching principle, a veritable Iron Curtain across the female population. And when the men with this overdeveloped schism between motherhood and the act which creates it happen to be kings, priests, legislators, philosophers, writers or other influential types, their sickness is impressed upon the minds of countless impressionable followers. No vast conspiracy is necessary, just good old human psychological maladjustment. And its roots in a vital defense mechanism would explain the incredible tenacity with which it clings to the male psyche.
For most modern men, however, there is one figure who straddles the divide; one woman who partakes of both Madonna and whore, and that is the girlfriend. Not the wife (who becomes a Madonna as soon as she becomes pregnant), and not a mere date (who is still just a whore); by “girlfriend” I specifically mean a woman with whom a man is in love but has not yet had children. His sexual attraction to her classifies her as “whore,” yet his love makes her a “Madonna.” It’s a strange and wonderful mixture which has great power over the male mind, enough to make him give up his bachelor freedom and commit to her in marriage despite his knowledge that she will eventually age and lose the sexual appeal which attracted him in the first place. And, I suspect, it is the intoxicating nature of that combination which drives many men to seek the elusive Girl Friend Experience, the whore who gives him not merely sex but companionship, understanding and real affection, yet will never turn into a demanding (and possibly even asexual) wife. Once he finds it, he will generally hire the girl who can provide it again and again, becoming that most welcome of clients, the regular (more on these in a later column).
But even with a man one has never seen before, there is sometimes an instant connection. I don’t mean a sexual attraction, though certainly that happens sometimes. I said above that I always tried to find something I could sincerely love or admire in a client, and though I usually could it was much stronger with some men than with others, and on those occasions created pure magic. I have gently coaxed sexual response from the impotent or inhibited, or those sexually shell-shocked by disastrous relationships; on a multitude of occasions I have provided a man with some sexual outlet he needed, yet for which he could not or would not ask his wife (usually because she had turned him down cold when the subject was mentioned).
I have given much-needed intimacy to men so deformed most women couldn’t bear to look at them, held men while they cried because they were too ashamed to do it before their wives, and played mother-confessor for a host of sins. I have lent a sympathetic ear to clients’ problems, given them relationship advice, comforted them when they were in pain and reassured them when they were overcome by uncertainty. In short, I have for an hour or a night played the role of the understanding girlfriend, calling upon the whore or Madonna aspects of myself as needed, usually in combination.
And I’m not remotely alone in this; any high-class professional girl who was in The Life for any amount of time will know whereof I write. I saw many girls who merely tolerated clients, who did the minimum required and got the hell out as quickly as humanly possible; once I realized a girl was like that I would not employ her any more than was absolutely necessary, because even if I were not going to see a client myself I didn’t want my name or agency associated with that sort of attitude. I’m not trying to insult those girls; they behaved as their psyches and hang-ups dictated, just as we all do to an extent. And really, that’s all the majority of customers are looking for anyhow. But every business has to carve out a niche for itself if it is to survive; it must establish a “brand”, a reputation which will distinguish it from its competitors. And since there were already a number of agencies in New Orleans dedicated to the “get as many new calls as possible and forget about repeat business” approach, I was free to follow my heart and my calling and establish a service dedicated to providing a truly special experience to those gentlemen who wanted or needed it.
Of course as somebody who came of age in the Eighties, my first thought was, “Oh God, are people STILL calling Madonna a whore?”
j/k
I guess there has to be some reason we Americans are worse at this than some (not all) others. Isn’t it strange that “whore!” is considered the ultimate insult to a woman, worse even than “bitch” or “slut?” From the sacred to the profane.
My best friend Grace used to call me a whore when she got annoyed with me, and I would reply with something like “…and you’re a slut, which is worse; at least I get paid for it!”
Ezekiel 16:31: “…and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire; but as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband! They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.” The adulteress is the ultimate abomination in the eyes of the Bible. The slut (women who receives no reward or even pays men for sex) is contemptible. Whereas the ordinary whore, who receives payment from men for sex, is mentioned favorably several times in the Bible.
Ideally, if we lived among angels and in a perfect society, this is what human and social contact would always be like, isn’t it? We would give each other support, companionship, and intimacy (sex as a form of caress, as a gesture of respect for another human being… I remember reading an article by a sexual surrogate who talked about still-virgin adult men breaking spontaneously into tears simply by virtue of undressing and touching or being touched by them…). I had wondered if the best prostitutes — those who like you speak about having a ‘calling’ — are those who feel like men are little boys that they can help grow. (A former girlfriend once told me that one of the things she liked the most about sex with men was how much they looked like little boys when having an orgasm… so defenseless, she said.)
As a man, Maggie — not that I want to talk about ‘all men’ or ‘man’ in general; for what access to I have to the minds and psyches of other men? all I have are my interpretations of what I see other men saying and doing… — I can relate to the kind of emotion that this client you mentioned had when he compared you to Mother Eve. It reminds me so much of what happened to me the first time I had sex, and how blessed I was that the woman who took my virginity had experience and was therefore kind to me…
Because, I think, one of the first experiences of a man in contact with women is this vision of something he wants — something he misses, he doesn’t have, something he can’t do without, even though he can’t quite articulate what it is; some feeling that all women are good and kind and understanding like his mother, that they are the ones that can give him the comfort that his mother used to give, that something in him is broken without them… this makes them seem to be surrounded by a golden aura, capable of giving a feeling of acceptance, of fulfilment both sexual and personal, of not having to fight for everything… (not for nothing did British science-fiction author J.G.Ballard name his second authobiographical novel On The Kindness of Women), and this is so desirable and so intense…
But also so painful!
Why is it painful? Because it can be withdrawn. Because the woman will not necessarily like you, or care about you. Because the fact that you can see her aura and feel the intensity of the yearning for her embrace, her smile, her words, the need to cry in her lap… doesn’t imply that she will let you do this. Her eyes may turn towards someone or something else, or she may see only your purse, or your social position, or she may be good and kind but to someone else…
And all the time — be it social conditioning, be it biology, be it both — this impression that it is not the same to her; that she doesn’t need you the way you feel that you need her (ah! how Steinem’s “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” felt painful the first time I heard it),,, that your need in the absence of a similarly strong need from her actually hurts, is unfair, is maddening…
As if men were condemned to unrequited love, even when a woman does show interest in him…
I have always wished that I could somehow be a source of light and kindness for women — at least a potential source — just as much as they always seemed to be a potential source of these things for me. I wished I could somehow signify in their lives something similar to what they signify in mine. I felt that, if this were possible, then a beautiful symmetry would be achieved that is the hallmark of ‘perfect’ justice. To some extent I have succeeded — how happy was I to find out there were after all women who were sexually and emotionally interested in me! (ah, there’s an interesting story here too…). Still I keep having the nagging impression that it’s not the same thing; that we men are never needed by women in the same way that we need them.
I even wonder if one of the reasons men felt OK with the inferior social status of women in olden days was that it seemed to them this would neutralize an advantage that women had over them.
That’s a lovely essay, Asehpe; I wish all the man-hating “all sex is rape” neofeminists could read it. 🙂
I’ve said similar things to neofeminist activists or radfem-influenced people before; they simply accuse me of lying or playing the good guy to ‘win a girlfriend’. (The latter came from a YouTube user with a channel ironically called “The Happy Hooker”; a poor girl who said she could not be with a man unless she was turning tricks, because men were all evil and the only way she could have sex with them was by being paid. I felt sorry for her, and she felt angry at me.)
I feel sorry for women like that; hatred is a barrier to understanding and happiness. 🙁
Why the Modonna/Whore dichotomy?
I think it is an essential knowledge for men to prevent cuckoldry. Our ancestor men would not want to waste their resources on another man’s child. Men who could detect female sluts, who were a fidelity risk, were more successful in passing on their own genes.
I think it was Joan Crawford who said, “a woman should be a lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom.”
Interesting thing about Ishtar, before she was worshiped as a goddess of lust, she was the goddess of war. A lot of those early traits remained with her throughout Sumer, giving her this warrior/whore dichotomy.
I wrote a little more about Ishtar in my column of December 23rd. 🙂
Your description of your feelings about your calling reminds me of Tamara Sperling, the hetaera in Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love” (probably my favorite of his works.
You’re not the first who’s compared me to one of Heinlein’s heroines (I get Friday most often), and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Since I’m very fond of his work and his ladies, I consider that a high compliment. 🙂
I’m glad, for I intended it as such – both for you for what I’ve read so far, and for what the best practitioners in your profession can offer. An opinion, I might add, which I’d never voice in church, and would be damned careful about verbalizing anywhere. I guess we all have our degrees of unwillingness to tweak Mrs Grundy’s nose.
Oh – and without additional charge, here’s the close parenthesis I left off the previous comment. ) 🙂
This justifies the existence of a courtesan. What a pity that men have to pay for this. Why are there so few wives that can do this ?
Elaborate on this please. This is worth a post on its own.
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