Excerpt from a letter Jack wrote while working as night clerk in a motel:
Incidentally, remember the sort of fat, loud lady, scraggly hair and bad teeth at the Conoco? She checked in the other night with a drunk cowboy–paid for the room–wanted a suite if we had it-wanted a whirlpool INSIDE the room if we had it. She must have been pretty horny. (In thinking about this man/woman relationship thing, it’s really weird–night before last Olivia, night clerk at the hotel across the street was arrested for turning tricks during her shift at $25 a pop…seems I always find these things out too late. Actually, fact is I couldn’t afford it I guess. Can’t help wondering why she didn’t guard her interests by screwing the cops–seems too obvious to be overlooked).
But the issue brings to mind the weirdness of the entire issue, that females are walking around on a commodity that is actually marketable–that males in this reality are blessed with a driving need which can only really be satisfied by an entry into the female vagina–that females by their nature have kept the monopoly sound enough to exact a monetary value for spreading it around. A guy pays a prostitute willingly to avoid the ancillary entanglements involved in just satisfying the needs of his vehicle. Part of the cost of routine maintenance like inflating tires, changing oil, and winterizing. It says a lot about the male vehicle, but it says more about the female gender as a whole. Also says something deep and subtle about the entire reality. All the old adages about soft-hearted whores are balanced by the phrase, “harder than a whore’s heart.” All that discussion about logic in decision making goes away with that. I’d imagine Olivia was charging what the traffic would bear–the traffic was paying what they had to–there isn’t a glut on the market that I know of, but maybe there is, in a way. A guy knows he can hit the bars, lie a little, bullshit a little, buy a few drinks, maybe, and stand a pretty good chance. But in that equation his time is worth nothing.
So at the Comfort Inn the guys plunk down 25 simoleans, Olivia comes to a room they had anyway–no beer, no bullshit–Olivia takes the load off and vanishes, no secondary repercussions, no flack, no whines or phone calls.
There’s a body of opinion out there that says the whole ball of wax of the great game is nothing but an elaborate ritual of prostitution. I’ve heard a lot of men argue the case over the years, and if you assume a cynicism and male awareness, even consciousness, that you expect in any male, but assume is absent in most females, prostitution is really the lowest common denominator in most male/female interactions. We turn a blind eye to the male paying for meals, theater, gas, roses, candy, perfume, jewelry, and the implications thereof.
And so!!! You will not be popular for bringing this up – but I have always called marriage a prostitution of sex for favours.
And then we can call men – johns. paying for it