Posted by Matiz on January 16, 2001 at 11:35:15:
In Reply to: I'm hoping this post posted by la_dulce_vida on January 15, 2001 at 20:56:44:
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LDV: Your concerns are certainly not uncommon, but, IMO, you make several unwarranted assumptions. First, you assume that romantic love exists, and therefore that there is something beyond affection or caring that a prostitute, or any woman for that matter, can show you. Strictly my own perspective, but I believe that's wrong. For thousands of years, cultures around the world have recognized just two types of "love": compassion (Japanese), or karuna (Indian), or agape (Christian), which is a generalized, non-specific love of others ("do unto others, etc., etc."); and eros, or lust, which is also generalized and non-specific to a particular individual, related to the sex urge. Up until the Middle Ages, the concept of romantic love--amor--for a specific person in the sense that Hollywood now uses it, essentially did not exist. It was only in the 12th and 13th centuries that European troubadors and poets began using this theme, partially as a reaction to the dogmatic tyranny of the church, which had consistently taught that feelings that spoke to the individual rather than the spirit or God were inherently wrong and sinful. Before that time, thoughout all cultures, marriages were arranged for political and financial reasons, and children who followed their hearts in a relationship rather than their families' wishes suffered everything from being burned at the stake as adulterers to having scarlet letters pinned on their dresses. Fittingly, such lovers were the subject of tragedies, not romances, like Tristan and Ysolde and Romeo and Juliet. To comply with church dogma, many writers portrayed "amor" as a weakness that resulted in pain, heartbreak, and ruin, not a strength that resulted in "living happily ever after". Later, the Renaissance and the Romantic movement further solidified the notion of "amor", as did popular novels from as early as the mid-eighteenth century on down to Barbara Cartland. Hollywood, of course, has indelibly etched the concept in the national psyche, and both the church and state now find the concept consistent with their own social, moral, and fiscal goals. Growing up in a culture in which this concept is generally accepted, we assume it exists and has always existed, often without really examining our own lives and experiences to see if it rings true. Although we have a divorce rate in California of around 50% (and the half that is still married is not without their own problems), still we never seem to connect the incidence of failed relationships with the unrealized expectations resulting from the fallacy of amor. This is a rather long way around to your problem, I guess. My point is that it's a total fiction to believe that amor--romantic love--exists as a separate emotion. It is analogous to a medical "syndrome", a collection of symptoms, rather than a separate disease. It's a convenient name we give to a collection, a complex, of feelings that may include deep affection, trust, respect, friendship, and lust. It's measured not by what we feel so much as by what we are prepared to do: our commitment to another, our trust, and our willingness to sacrifice for the other, not by some subjective measure of the strength or depth of a single feeling. How all this actually works in a specific relationship is beyond my ken. But I do believe it is no different for prostitutes than for other women. As has often been stated, they are women first and prostitutes second. They are not immune to emotions or being affected by someone. What's usually missing with working chicas, though, is the prospect that they'll ever commit to you or be faithful (in the sexual sense), two important markers that signal the depth or seriousness of a relationship in our culture. But still, many can and do feel varying degrees of affection for some of their customers, in my experience, a natural reciprocity to being treated with respect, affection, and concern. But if you expect more, or need more, than mere affection and consideration and caring, the very nature of the profession makes that extremely unlikely, although not impossible. Better to enjoy the affection she does show, than bemoan the "love" you think she doesn't. As to your question: what are the girls thinking? Your assumption, again wrong, is that we will ever know or understand women. When I was 25, I was sure that women, although inscrutible to me then, would someday be an open book. They could be "solved", like a quadratic equation or Fermat's theorum, with hard work, persistence, and patience. I don't believe that any more. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Prostitutes, I think, are from the Rings of Saturn. My ex-favorita had been a prostitute for over twenty years. Using her estimates of how many men she had on an average night at various times in her career, I came up with a conservative estimate that she had been with between 15,000 and 20,000 men. I have no idea what that means. It's a number so large, well, it's like the national debt. What does a trillion really mean? I know it affected her. She used to tell me of nightmares she would have where she was surrounded by a group of naked men demanding sex from her. But precisely how it affected her, well, I don't think I'll every truly understand that. I knew that, with her work history, she was coming at me from some far-away mental space that I could never truly visit. Finally, thankfully, I realized that I had to just accept and enjoy the affection, the genuine affection I believe, that she showed me when we were together, without expecting or demanding more. She gave what she could, and that was enough for me. That realization has served me well over time. Emerson once said that the desire for unvarying consistency is the "hobgoblin of little minds". In the larger sense, I take that to mean that one shouldn't expect everything in life to fit into some preconceived formula or set of expectations. Take what comes and enjoy it, live it. It may not come again. That goes double in the zona norte. Just my own two pesos' worth. There are six million stories in the Naked City... Matiz |