Whores & Booze

It's not a poem, (and I totally knew you were teasing) but you know, I can write something about whores & booze. So here ya go.

About the same time as the McDonald's man incident, my mother had a friend from the bar she worked at who was a prostitute. She was a beautiful dark-skinned black woman with that short curly fro that was popular in the mid-seventies, and I called her "Aunt Gracie." She babysat me a few times when my mom couldn't get anyone else, and I would play with her little 1 year old baby boy on a blanket pallet spread out on the floor of her small kitchen. I remember when he was asleep his eyelashes would curl so tightly they were like little tiny springs resting on his fat cheek. His eyes were such a dark black you couldn't see the pupils and he laughed all the time. Her kitchen had one of those thin aluminum diner-style kitchen tables and I remember watching her drink coffee and read the paper in the morning, her husband coming out to kiss her on the cheek and her distractedly smiling at him.

I suppose Aunt Gracie is one reason why I've always been very interested in the idea of sex workers' rights. Gracie was not a druggie; she was a good person who was truly trustworthy and kind. She just happened to do for a living something that our society says is wrong, with which I disagree.

I wish that prostitution would be legalized, like it is in Las Vegas. I do not think the act of sex for money is, in itself, degrading. Not in the least. If legalized, it would no longer be a degrading thing if the women who did it for a living chose to do so and could actually make a safe living off of the work. Being licensed would make sure they were healthy, and they could control their money without the assistance of a violent male who hurt them and took a huge cut and perhaps forced them to do drugs. Now, I'm not talking at all about kids who do this, or the people who are on drugs. I'm also not talking about people forced into the work in an abuse situation. But if there was a legal form of prostitution, then police would have more time to go after the truly harmful types of prostitution rings and protect children and those who cannot protect themselves, for whatever reason. Basically, the way it works now, predatory sleezy people (mostly males) control the industry, and they have a way of making it degrading and hurtful. It's only a leftover Puritan morality that tells us women should always be ashamed of sex and that anything outside of married sex for the purpose of procreation is wrong, and it is something that our laws uphold because it's very controversial.

I realize a lot of people disagree with me-- but I wonder if they realize how much better they would actually make the world if they changed this law. Criminalizing prostitution, which just is NOT going to go away, forces it into a seedy underworld when it could be a job just like any other.*

I've gotten into this argument with people in the past, especially people who grew up wealthy and never had to struggle for anything. I asked one girl if she really thought it was more degrading to make a decent living as a prostitute or a stripper than it was to clean someone's toilets for far less than the poverty level. She believed in her heart, and I'm sure many people do, that it was less degrading to clean toilets. I have to disagree, and I have in the past hurt some feelings when I explain my reasons for this (Aunt Gracie being one of them). The rich girl just didn't get it-- she had never had her water turned off because her family couldn't pay their bills, or been forced to move out in the middle of the night or face eviction. Or been homeless.

Now that I've started to realize the extra fears one gets when it's your own children you're trying to protect and provide for, it's even more obvious to me that you will do whatever you can to protect them. And if you personally don't have a problem with sex, then what's really wrong with making good money at something that doesn't have to take a 40 hour work week, and leaves you potentially more time to spend with that family? Especially in a world where you could control your situation. I am sure that the Heidi Fleisses of the world are not degraded by their lifestyle. They live it up, and have a whole lot of power.

I was telling someone recently, that because of an article on my academic website, I received an email from a man who was basically trying to find women to set up "in a business pleasing southern gentlemen." Essentially, because the article on my website is written by a woman who works at a brothel in Nevada, he figured, I guess, that we were all just waiting for his wonderful opportunity to work as his whores. It was sort of funny, and sort of creepy. I had to tell the clueless email writer to stop writing to me (which he did, thankfully). As the guy who I was telling about it said "I guess that means all the great pickup lines are now taken".

As for booze, well, that's an entirely different post altogether. I'm all for it too. But I could compare the time when booze was illegal in the U.S. to prostitution. Didn't having liquor illegal create a seedy criminal underclass that was put out of business for the legitimate, tax-paying businesses that arose after liquor was re-legalized? Prohibition doesn't work if it's a "vice" that people refuse to give up.

For now, I just have to watch longingly while my friends consume chocolate martinis near me. I have a bottle of my favorite champagne waiting in my fridge for after the babies are born and I can pump the breast milk and store a dinner for them and have my Veuve Cliquot and chocolate for dinner. (Maybe I'll also have some actual food, then, too. But I dunno. Champagne should be on the food pyramid.) That'll be a while, though. Until then, booze is more taboo for me than whores.

*It's also a different issue entirely on the men who frequent prostitutes--and I think the reason prostitution is still illegal is much more because powerful people want it kept this way to control straying spouses than for any real "public health" welfare.