"You sound terribly nonchalant."
"It's the telephone," I said. "You can't see over it."
She chuckled and drew in her breath just enough so I heard it and said,
"Twenty minutes."
I fixed up the manuscript and set the bridge table aside. Then I went
into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. "Why?" I said to
myself.
This inquiry may seem to have a connotation of guilt. Such is not the
case. It represented introspection, which I continued as I removed, in
the now-tepid water that emerged from the tap marked "cold," all track
and trickle of the night's labors.
My friend Dave Berne--whom I'd come upon with Marcia in _dolce far
niente_--once quoted Forbisher-Laroche to the effect that there
are fifteen hundred and six discrete reasons for associating with
prostitutes and only nine even potentially commensurate objections.
Dave and I, with an hour or so to spare at the time, were able to
list three hundred and twenty of the fifteen hundred and six and
felt, upon discontinuing the game, that we had every good prospect of
recapitulating the lot from our own joint knowledge.
A degree of doubt was cast upon the Forbisher-Laroche figures in my
subsequent association with Dave, owing to the fact that he quoted
the same authority on so many other matters--the breeding rate of
hamsters, for example, the relative climbing efficiencies of various
kite designs, and the esoteric causes of giddiness. It occurred to me
that "Forbisher-Laroche" might serve my lawyer friend in lieu of the
name of an authority or researcher which he could not call to mind--or
even in lieu of better authority than his own. This, however, was
remarkably good; so the table, even if specious, may be regarded as
sound from the order-of-magnitude standpoint.
Among the nine objections to association with prostitutes were at
least two (Dave said) which could be regarded as obsolete: the dangers
of disease and of pregnancy. Of the remaining seven, only two more
(he claimed) could be regarded as rational by the man of ethical
detachment--one aesthetic; the other, the practical matter of costs.
The rest were mere excursions into "morals"--a contradiction in
itself since, were we to apply any genuine morality to sex and sexual
conduct, we should have to begin by contemplating the field with
simple honesty--a process in which the "Moralistical" objections would
dissolve instanter, so he stated.
Of the two objections worth considering, then, one was the expense--a
matter to be pondered in all deals and negotiations. The other was
that old chestnut which appears in the endless series of candid
books of advice to boys, books advertised as providing "complete sex
enlightenment," books which, in sum, horribly frighten their readers
and leave them, as a rule, incapable of any real enlightenment for the
rest of their lives. "Would you," such books fiercely inquire, "walk
into a cheap hotel, find that the stranger before you had left the tub
filled with his dirty bath water, and immerse yourself in it?" This, in
short, is the _aesthetic_ objection.
It contains certain fallacies. One is the implied idea that sex
relations are equivalent to ablution--that they are designed to
transfer from each individual to the other such foreign matter as may
have accumulated on his or her person. There is the further implication
that such individuals are thereafter unable to cleanse themselves of
the alleged spotting and staining supposedly got in such a fashion.
Carried to its logical conclusion, this thought would force hotels, as
just one example, to discard a bathtub with the checking out of each
guest. Industry could not keep up with such tub-scrapping.
In other words, the question is unfairly put. If cleaning one's self is
to be admitted as a pertinent analogue for love-making, the question
should read, "Would you use the _bathtub_ in a cheap hotel?" And why
necessarily cheap?
"Would you," the interrogator should ask in all equity, "dawdle
voluptuously in the shining, sunken, marble tub of the most gaudy
hostelry on Park Avenue?"
Again, modern chemistry being what it is, and business being ingenious,
it is a safe inference that the tub in the palatial hotel and the
tub in its humble competitor would be made ready by the identical
advertised product--one having the same statistical effect upon the
muck and microbes of the rich as upon the grime and germs of the
impecunious. And, even if such were not the case, the Park Avenue
situation per se cannot be ruled out.
But I fear the bathtub analogue is hardly intended to be examined for
what it is. There is no integrity of thought behind it. Its author
does not pause to consider that millions already do plunge daily into
common tubs--swimming pools, which are, presumably, well chlorinated.
Nor does he go on to inquire as to whether his reader uses the dishes
in restaurants and drugstores and whether, before using them, he
inspects the dishwashing facilities and practices. There is a lack
of fairness in the man. He himself--for reasons he would never dare
to inspect--regards prostitutes as he regards the standing pool of
some rank stranger's bath; and he deems it as his mission in life to
promulgate this obscene and entirely unrealistic simile in the hope
(and the good expectation) that all his young readers will, for the
rest of their lives, upon encountering the flossiest of doxies, think
instanter of stale tub water.
The fact of the matter is that the bright and capable girl who engages
in prostitution will be found, on any count, cleaner and shinier,
better soaped, scrubbed, polished and perfumed than the average for all
wives in the land. Statistically, she may be slightly more venereal
than her married sisters, but only slightly--and, since we have given
her brightness and capability, it is equally certain (statistically)
that she will be more likely to be under treatment and so incapable
of communicating afflictions which, as noted above, have themselves
somewhat lost their menacing aspect. In short, were a woman to be
chosen by lot from (_a_) the general married group or (_b_) the
group of alert tarts, and were the criterion to be bodily aesthetic
desirability, there would be no doubt as to which group one should draw
from. Tubs are tubs.
It is at best a trifling matter.
The positive first item on the Forbisher-Laroche list (if you're
interested) and the first which Dave and I set down on our own
impromptu schedule, was "fun." The idea that sexual congress, erotic
play, coition--call it what you will--is _fun_ has very nearly vanished
from Western society. To all persons who approach prostitution with
the standing-tub-water philosophy, even the most faithful and the
most sanctified relations between man and wife will hardly be even
appetizing--since, by their acknowledged images, such people will find
themselves condemned to a single tub of water in which they will be
obliged to bathe all their lives. This, of course, is the inevitable
penalty paid by every denigrator of sex activities: his own, under his
best auspices, will still forever seem vile. Also this is the outlook
of churches. It explains why the churchly so rarely have any fun and
why, if they do, they make sure someone pays for it later--preferably
a heretic, and, if possible, in blood.
But (to go to the opposite pole for reference--a course which is
implicit in all considerations of the well-educated man) even amongst
the heretics--amongst sophisticated, intellectual, emancipated
citizens--the concept of fun in relation to sexual activity is absent,
or nearly so. These people--husbands, wives, bachelors, spinsters,
teen-agers and precocious children--readers of popular slick magazines
and the newsprint digests, subscribers to book clubs, members of frank
discussion groups--rely for their sex facts upon certain nationally
advertised texts which are dispatched through the mails in plain
wrappers. All such volumes are offered as authoritative manuals of the
art of love--no holds barred; rather the contrary.
I have read perhaps a dozen of these treatises with close attention
and I am prepared to agree that their claims are not exaggerated.
They do present, in considerable detail and with never a minced word,
what might be termed the classic figures of love-making. And yet
their readers--persons who are presumed to be doing skull-practice
for an imminent marital event--will not find in any of these works a
suggestion that the subject in hand involves what I have called fun.
The verbal diagrams suggest, instead, that an extremely intricate and
arduous business is being considered--one to be approached in precisely
the same fashion as an inquiry into the manly art of self-defense made
by a nervous weakling who is about to be exposed, more or less against
his will, to an environment swarming with tough, aggressive stevedores
and millhands.
In all these treatises, emphasis is put upon the likelihood of early
failure--the mere hope of subsequent success--and the stratagems which,
if meticulously pursued, may ultimately bring about success. The
directions read like those for boxing, savate, or judo. An encounter
of the most dire solemnity is envisaged. Painful knockdowns and other
traumatizing incidents are constantly described. Yet it is pointed
out repeatedly that a genuine knock_out_ will result inevitably in
Unhappiness, Infidelity, Divorce, Frigidity, Impotence, Neurosis,
Neurasthenia, Psychosis, Premature Senility, Suicide, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera.
Thus the "sophisticated" individual comes to the practice of the art
of love without room in his mind for the thought that it might be fun,
pleasure, joy, glee, and a source of high laughter. He (or she) is,
instead, nerved up for a clash, the outcome of which is most uncertain
and potentially of extreme hazard, and the technique for which involves
a repertoire like that of a concert organist, along with the timing,
muscular co-ordination, and steady nerve of a trapeze performer.
It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader at this point that the
manuals in question here are the works of accredited physicians, which
is to say, of scientists. Their observations are astute, accurate
and complete, from the objective standpoint--and, of course, highly
_reasonable_. All they have omitted is the subjective, or instinctual,
aspect of the matter--and here is as good an example of that phenomenal
but widespread oversight as any.
Some of them even refer to the subject as the "science"--not the
art--of love. Technique is a still commoner term. One can reflect
sympathetically upon the plight of their mates. And, of course, one
can also reflect that, at least in a few instances, these amatory
scientists should be given the benefit of a solid doubt: were they to
describe love-making as fun, and address themselves to the means of
eliciting pleasure therefrom, rather than to the training-table and
Olympiad aspects of the procedure, they would be denied the use of the
mails even in plain wrappers and even if they had fifty university
degrees. The United States Post Office is willing (in a gingerly
way) to disseminate anatomical discourse on sex for the married or
near-married; but it draws an absolute line at any suggestion that
sexual relations are, or could be, consonant with a good time.
Thus we see that the churches, on the one hand, and the cognoscenti, on
the other, rule fun out of sex and are supported in the matter by the
government.
The first good reason for associating with a prostitute is, however,
unmistakably--pleasure.
The pleasure is reciprocal--self-evident for the gentleman, and
frequently for the lady also. In cases where the gentleman is something
less than that, the lady still has the pleasure of pecuniary profit.
This is not a matter to be taken lightly in an era in which the United
States is regarded as the last stronghold of capitalism--and the
"money-incentive" is recognized as one of our chief Ideals.
There are, it is true, certain nigglers who claim that, since the
prostitute lends her person to an act from which she may receive no
particular direct pleasure (owing to surfeit or to disinterest) the
profession itself is immoral--a violation of that American Ideal which
regards sexual relations as permissible only for the Consummation of
Romantic Love. Let all such note, then, that fully half the wives in
the land report that they seldom or never enjoy consummation, and
rarely even intense pleasure, in their relations with their husbands.
Must we say all these wives are therefore prostituting themselves?
A similar question may be asked of those who are finicky about the
straight cash aspect of professional cohabitation. Our magazine
fiction, radio, motion pictures, and other media are engaged in a
uniform campaign to indoctrinate Miss America with the theory that her
best possible operation in life is to marry a man with millions, or
with wealth in his background, with a good income, or--minimally--good
prospects. Hardly one heroine of these legends in a thousand marries
an oaf manifestly doomed to poverty. Money is an American Ideal--and
the plain inference to be drawn from our legends is that sexual
desirability occurs for the acquisition of money.
The nation is elaborately stratified according to the amount of money
obtained by each young woman upon marriage, or by other means. Of the
girl who gets a rich husband we say (even though he has the manners of
a gopher and the countenance of a quince), "Oh, well, she can own a
convertible and sleep on percale." Advertising, of course, is wholly
directed to this association of ideas: one never sees a homely girl
displaying a fur coat or a roadster or even pop. With such massive
duress visited upon her from every direction--with women marrying and
divorcing wealthy men one after the other and remaining the while on
elective lists of America's Leading Ladies--a girl cannot conceivably
be criticized, on grounds logical or grounds emotional--for slightly
short-cutting the standard technique and employing her fresh, gay, sex
appeal to obtain the money directly, by a somewhat greater volume of
relations at a lower net charge per unit. This is, after all, no more
than the translation of another American Ideal--mass production--to a
different field.
One associates with these young ladies, then, for one's money's worth
of fun, as I have said. But, lest the reader doubt Forbisher-Laroche
(as I do in a sense, myself) I set below, at random, a few of the
putative 1,505 other reasons:
_Company._ A man often finds himself alone--as I did that evening.
_Need._ It has been pointed out that the so-called sexual drive of
young men, at least, is on the order of five times as great as that
of young ladies of equal age. This is a circumstance which, for some
generations, our imbecile sires have endeavored to deny or conceal.
Obviously, their absurd activities in that direction lie at the very
heart of the insane condition of the modern mind. Since men have five
times the passion of women in their youth, our sex mores must be
revised, and soon, five hundred per centum, or we shall all go wacky.
It may have happened to us already, in fact.
It has been pointed out that, with the increase of age, this enormous
sex discrepancy tends to diminish. The woman of thirty-five will
have undergone an augmentation of desire--her mate a decrease. In
an unpublished work, I tentatively suggested that--this being the
biological fact--a new sex convention might be devised whereby
relations between all women of more than, say, thirty-five--whether
married or single--and all unmarried males of less than, say,
twenty-one, would be publicly regarded as rising out of "innocent
necessity" and not counted as in any way unchaste, or unfaithful, or
otherwise compromising. The notion seemed inspirational to me. It would
at once provide a remedy for a truly desperate situation now existing
unrecognized among both sexes at certain diverse ages--and it would
give useful and socially beneficial occupation to a slew of wives and
single women in America who at present have nothing to do at all.
It would provide boys and young men with experienced tutors--women
who knew what was in the books but were able to enjoy themselves, to
boot--and it might, indeed, revive the now-drooping flower of love
in the whole land. My friends, however, after reading my feuilleton,
advised me not to publish it, on the fantastic grounds that it would be
regarded as frivolous!
But to go on with the random reasons:
_Variety._ It is a point upon which I feel no comment whatever should
be needed.
_Obedience._ This term has its limitations for the intended meaning.
The word "command" might serve, but it also has connotations not here
intended.
In a marriage ceremony, it is true, the wife agrees, as a rule, to
"obey" her husband--and he, her. However, in perhaps half of American
marriages, obedience drops out of the relationship the moment the
preacher closes his prayer book. In perhaps a quarter, the husband
becomes the serf of the wife--who has customs galore and the weight of
American advertising to back her in her commands of what he must do,
earn, obtain, provide, and so on.
Yet the sexual deed itself is one which, if there be command or
obedience, requires that the command come from the male, the obedience
from the female. (Male aggression, female passivity, the scientists
insanely term it.) This circumstance, however loathsome to feminists,
is--again--a simple fact of nature: a man is physiologically incapable
of being commanded to make love. He cannot simulate. In acts so
fundamental to his heart, mind, spirit, and soul as those related to
sex, it is therefore not only psychologically evident, but physically
plain, that a certain degree of obedience, or receptivity to command,
or, if you prefer, co-operation, is necessary on the part of the woman.
Without it, love-making, when possible at all, is at best a mere reflex.
Such is the condition of millions of women today, however--and not
surprising, either, in view of the times and the customs--that they are
inclined to refuse male address, and to whine, scold, heckle, disobey,
begrudge, demean, belittle, routinize, particularize, censor, evade,
scorn, shame, humiliate, et cetera, before or during or after sexual
relations. This leaves the male relentlessly insatiate. Geared by
Nature for cohabitation with a willing--nay, an enthusiastic--partner,
he finds himself bedded with a cold and prissy marmot of a woman. It
drenches his self-esteem, decays his manliness, and either reduces him
to the shy, stammering estate of millions of our Milquetoasts or else
sets him in a permanent rage against life so that he is ready to turn
communist, or Ku-Kluxer, to take to drink, or to beat his children.
Prostitutes provide the only dependable respite from this dilemma,
which man currently even somewhat allows himself. Inasmuch as they are
sexually in the employ of the man, they will, if worthy of their hire,
not critically submit to, but genially participate in his caprices.
By this method, millions of otherwise lost men keep alive somewhere
within themselves at least a flicker of honest, male self-respect. Now
and then--if only a night a year--and only for a price--they are obeyed
by a woman.
_Whim._ This is related to the above. As I pointed out to Yvonne, the
norm for the human approach to sex relations is the mammalian. Yet all
forms save one specific approach are today prohibited. State dungeons
await even husbands reported by their children as abed off the parallel
and with angular deviations of more than a very few degrees. This is
called "bestiality"--a term devised by no animal lover.
Being animals, we hunger to be harmlessly animals. Being forbidden
by parents, schools, church and state, millions are confined in the
domestic arts of love to that one simple stratagem which propels
locomotives. But amongst ladies of easier, nobler virtue, the parched
mammal may discover some surcease.
_Beauty._ This, too, is self-explanatory.
_Relaxation._ Ditto.
_Peace._ Also.
_Health._ Also.
_Kindliness._ Many lack it at home.
_Warmth._ Another occasionally marked domestic deficit.
_Mirth._ See above.
_Femininity._ Look over the wives and look over the trollops.
_Youth._ Who does not age?
_Favor._ Some say all women are masochistic and many wives surely are;
for these, a slight indiscretion may be a pleasanter thing to suffer
than the painless boredom of impeccable fidelity. Whoring as a favor to
the frau may be a rare form--but it must not be overlooked.
_Information._ Whole books could be written on this topic alone.
_Practice._ Here, again.
_Courtesy._ Helping worthy girls through college, and the like.
_Testing._ The litmus of another woman.
_Tradition._ No comment.
_Courage._ In these days, it takes a lot.
_Conversation._ A degree of candor is found among filles de joie that
is elsewhere rare.
And so the list goes--to the alleged length of fifteen hundred and
six excellent reasons for associating with hired damsels. They hardly
furnish a good brief for the sexual slum and erotic underground of
harlotry today; but they surely show the sores and shortcomings of the
pure, the purulent, in heart.
Hence, when, at the beginning of this dissertation, I asked myself
"Why?" I was speculating upon which of the multitude of possible
motives governed my assent to Gwen's proposition.
Beauty, to be sure; she was a handsome wench; Loneliness and Fun;
Relaxation; Information and Conversation, perhaps; and perhaps, also (a
reason Forbisher-Laroche himself had never thought of) the Imminence
of Death. It is said that the imminence of death on any large scale
historically produced mass orgy--that, for instance, the Roman streets
were littered with connected couples whenever the plague closed in upon
the city during medieval times. This urge--sired doubtless by Nature's
command to beget in every eleventh hour--may have had its dark and
archetypal image within me somewhere.
11
These ratiocinations occupied me while I dressed, picked up the
premises, and ordered from the Knight's Bar a supply of ice in a
thermos jug, some whisky, Coca-Cola, glasses, and carbonated water.
The waiter had brought them--a waiter wet and odoriferous from a day's
running through the high temperatures, but cheerful withal--and held
the card for my signature, and departed, before she called from the
lobby.