Hookers, Hookers, Everywhere and Not A Thought To Think

There are several aspects to this Eliot Spitzer affair that cause me extreme disquiet. The part about high priced hookers in the Mayfair Hotel in Washington, D.C. bothers me not at all.

 

I am certain that it bothers New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s wife, but, really, should we go into WHY Gov. Spitzer spent the money? (Do we know that she didn’t tell him, at some point, “I can’t have sex for [medical reason], but I don’t want you to do without. But please, with a clean, high class call girl”? Do we? More importantly, SHOULD we? And, if not, are we in a position to make a judgment that isn’t, fundamentally, cruel and all schadenfreudey?)

He spent it prudently, I say: If you’re going to give in to temptation — and it’s not like this is new, or novel, or even unusual, politicians and hookers undoubtedly go back to the Pharoah; and Lord knows how much of that pyramid pay went to rent hookers* — then choosing a professional makes a whole lot more sense than choosing an enthusiastic amateur, like, say, a Monica Lewinsky.

Amateurs spend hours on the phone with their creepy middle-aged friends who are trying to sell “tell all” books to Lucienne Goldberg or other bottom feeders. There is a level of professionals — call girls, and not hookers, courtesans in the classical sense of the term — who are professional, discrete and capable. Like any other complex human skill set, there are humans who have worked to master those skills. When one is a governor, and desirous of said skill set, it makes prudent sense to engage a professional.

[* The term "Hooker" comes to us from Civil War Union General Joseph "Fightin' Joe" Hooker, whose camp followers included so many prostitutes that they came to be referred to as "hookers" and now the euphemism is so tainted by that which it attempts to euphemize that a town is seeking to ban the term "hooker" from the legal lexicon.]

Amateurs want you to divorce your wife, wreck your home and family, and marry them instead. Then, if you do, they spend every moment tossing and turning, knowing that you threw over your previous mate for THEM, and, therefore, you can just as easily throw THEM over for someone else.

No. A professional is really the way to go, if you have the additional cash to afford said services.

Which brings us back to this tempest in a tosspot. Or, if you will, this teapot over a temptress.

First, it bothers me that it is in New York, which means that the self-absorbed pud pullers of the Manhattan Media will consider it their personal local private preserve for prurient prudery, parsing pedantry, prissy, passionate perspicacity and pissy punditry.

Alas, allieviated by alliteration, all alien to America’s Alabaster Altar, Nuevo Jerk City, will be forced, yet again, into the insulting mindset that thinks that Nuevo Jerk, Nuevo Jerk — the city so filled with vice they had to name it twice — is the be all and end all of Existence.

Naw. It’s a town. Got some nice museums. Squirrels in Washington Square are completely, psychotically insane, though, which is what the Concrete Jungle of Manhattan does to any lifeform from nature.

Let’s see: Governor of State screws high class prostitutes when he wants to cheat on his wife. (Leaving aside why his wife did not fulfill him, as Dr. Laura Schlesinger rather vilely decided to prudificate on in this afternoon’s radio buffrontery.) Good. Means that his marriage isn’t in jeopardy, if he did, like, say Newt Gingrich (the Speaker of the House) or Rudy Giuliani (Mayor of New York, and unashamed candidate for President of the United States) did with their secretaries, for christ’s sake.

He was also much less likely to catch a venereal disease, or that fatal AIDS, from a high priced hooker. Rudy and Newt were taking a real chance that the chicks they were boffing on the desk of their respective and formerly respectable offices might have been carrying an additional little “perk” in the way of some steveadore they’d hooked up with in a bar the week before.

Got that?

While we (making moral judgments about someone else’s sex life and partnership arrangement that we have NO right to be making) decry the “immorality” of using a hooker, a prostitute, a call girl, a whore, a “lady of the evening” — each term used according to the political spin of the speaker, and each used for specific emotional effect, to either maximize or minimize the foul rooting around in somebody else’s underwear drawer — we must admit that choosing a high priced, beautiful call girl in a magnificent hotel is probably the most prudent and desirable way to go — should one decide to take that route in pursuit of one’s own sexual solution.

You see, kids, NOBODY has an answer about sex. We know the infinite problems, and we assume that somebody else isn’t as frustrated, stymied, mystified and bamboozled by the mating instinct as we are. Nope.

I know whereof I speak.

The sex impulse continues the species, and throughout history, the people who most need to be able to control it can’t, and for some reason, we always presume that THEY screwed up because they couldn’t control themselves.

Consider the history of England, had Henry the VIIIth not been obsessed with breeding and bloodlines.

Well, there but for the Grace of Ghod go we.

NONE of us can control it, except for those who, either because of strange temperament, or, more likely, because of an organic deficiency of hormones have little or no sexual drive.

And we look on THOSE people as weird.

So, every time one of these sex things comes up, we project our own angry mystification at that force that chooses FOR us, rather than allowing us a choice, and toss it all on whoever’s dirty laundry happens to have been aired.

Literally.

I don’t like living in a country where the government watches your bank accounts so closely that you can’t pay for a goddamned hooker without them snooping on you, tapping your phones, and all the rest of it.

There is something TOO Big Brotherish about that. That is something that we expected from the Soviet Secret Police — the KGB — or the East German Secret Police — the Stazi — or from a Banana Republic dictator with bad teeth.

I mean, jeebus: the French President just married his mistress, fer gawdsakes. Prostitution is LEGAL in many European countries. It has NEVER gone away, it will never GO away.

But this business of surveillance of political enemies by the new Spookocracy, and America the Surveilled, THAT is something that we’ve got to nip in the bud, toot suite.

Because I don’t give a damn if the governor or the president is having sex with a highly-qualified professional. I DO give a damn that I live in a country where our Secret Police sniffs around looking for it because they’re monitoring our BANK ACCOUNTS.

The potential for abuse is astronomical, and the guarantee of a reign of terror and a bloodbath in throwing OFF that terror is a virtual certainty.

So: do we focus on the problem (prostitution) that we will never solve, and mostly doesn’t harm us?

Or do we focus on the Police State that stumbles on said prostitution because it’s watching each and every one of us in the bedroom, the bank book, the boardroom and probably the bathroom. (Actually, in the case of Sen. Larry Craig, DEFINITELY in the bathroom.)

Prostitution is as American as apple pie.

Secret Police wiretapping is the antithesis of everything that America stands for.

There are several aspects to this Eliot Spitzer affair that cause me extreme disquiet.

But the last one most of all.

Courage.

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