Who's Jessica Cutler?

Biggest downside to this whole affair is that the Sonoma Hooker now thinks I'm a cheapskate.

Also, I'm not sure too many men visit hookers to prove our "Alpha Male credentials."  Rather, it's a complex need woven of lust, intimacy, curiosity, fear, and doubt--not to mention the daily grind displacing that dollop of ever-elusive grace--that propels many of us to open our wallets to a distant phantom, who later is less so, if we're lucky.

She's pretty damn good actually.  I hope she catches a break out of all this.

Some of my best friends have been ho's, and I can say without reservation that they were good people, far more honest and far better human beings than any of the lawyers or politicians I've known.

Becky Sharp, v 2.0

I for one am happy to help any comely young lady looking to further her career through the physical act of love.

ben- Jessica Cutler, if I recall correctly, was that woman with the blog who slept with some mid-level staffers and somehow, in the process, inflicted Ana Marie Cox on an innocent and unsuspecting world.

Billy Yard, if you have a wife, I hope she doesn't know your handle.

Or, if she does, that she's too busy reading Cosmopolitan or Oxygen or something to ever visit tnr.

Larry King had on the guy who owned the former escort service that same guy (dubs himself "King of the Pimps") claims he recruited this lady to in her professional debut.

In any event, King Pimp says it was Spitzer who closed him down and sent him to jail.  But, she wasn't swept up in that.

Lovely justice, from his POV, tht his girl should bring down the Big Spitter.   And King P was rather bemused and did not seem at all embittered.  

Ah, very touching,  Yard.  Thing is,  a disproportionately high percentage of prostitutes are drug addicts, come from messed up backgrounds, and have likely suffered some form of sexual abuse.  

Seems to me that trysting for money is a form of exploitation.  I doubt too many mentally healthy young women would choose this line of work.  And please don't give me the argument that lots of women do it to work their way through medical school.  Can you imagine looking back at your youth and realizing how badly you'd degraded yourself?  And can you imagine having to confess to a non-paying customer that, gee, you were short of cash and all?  

I live in L.A., land of beautiful young women, and I've seen too many of these babes working as waitresses or salespeople in high-end boutiques.  Somehow, they figured out a way to earn money and maintain their self-respect.  

Should it be legal?  I guess if it's been with us this long, and it shows no signs of going away, whatever.  Although you could argue the same for heroin.  But, like heroin abuse,  it's not a victimless crime--the prostitutes you're exploiting (no matter what you tell yourself), the wives and potential STDs, not to mention emotional trauma.  And the Spitzer daughters.  Nice to find out your dad was jacking hos while you're just growing into womanhood.  And let's not leave out the socical stigmatization you've forced on your family.  

Sorry to disillusion you on the subject of frolicsome fun.  And Aaron, how nice you've managed to find those hookers with hearts of gold.  

Channy, no current spousoids, although there are a few ex's circling around out there.

If I were a solar system, I'd have my own "gas giants."

I'm not sold on the idea of prostitutes as healthy and happy businesswomen, but neither am I sold on the exploitation argument either.  Clearly, you are "exploiting" a person when you pay them to have sex with you, but I'm not sure it differs qualitatively from "exploiting" a person by paying them to replace the oil and vinegar salad with blue cheese.  There are lots of professions that are legal but degrading, lots of hobbies that are legal but embarrassing to your family, lots of past experiences that are legal but hard to explain to your current significant other.  Why should prostitution be different?

Ah, Washingtonienne. I thought Cutler was some American Idol finalist.

Molly - maybe it's my lizard brain, as Michelle C would say, at work here but I'm with Mr Y on this.

Eliminate the secrecy and criminality and nearly all of the ills you cite disappear. Legalize it, regulate it, test and publish test results and collect tax revenues. Make it a guild that can restrict entry and adhere to standards of certification, safety etc.

A geisha class wouldn't be such a bad thing. At a minimum it would spare us more than a few atrocious MySpace-launched musical careers.

yeah Mollie, not sure I quite get Michelles point. I would strongly advise any young woman who thinks the can take a shortcut to fame (and a small fortune) to think twice, their looks, fame, and fortune will be fleeting but their reputation enduring. Imagine said young girl marrying, having children and in 20 years in the midst of an argument with a teenage son lecturing him on how to behave is confronted with the far more damaging soul destroying statement worse than the typical "I hate you", but instead, "you should talk, you were nothing but a whore." In that one moment, that teenage boy will also be filled with a lifelong regret at saying those words.

Unfair, sure, and I hope this never happens to this young woman, but she, at least, did not seek it out and did her best to keep it hidden. To actively seek it is crazy.

And another thing:

As a teenager I was fortunate to attend an excellent private school (where I met my first love, the English language) because my mother, by then a widow deeply in debt, received a "gift" from one of her gentlemen suitors. It was all very discreet.

I don't have a problem with how Mom was able to afford the tuition, and I can't imagine how anyone reading this would entertain the fantasy that they would have a right to have a problem with it, either.

What is sad is not that someone would choose to regard sex as, among all its other marvelous attributes, an economic transaction. In fact, what is sad is that people who haven't the first clue about the very circumstances of two other people's lives, who have no insight into the paths that have brought the two people together, and who have no interest in themselves actually lending a hand to either of the two, should however suffer the abject fantasy that they have the right or wisdom to tell those two people how to behave.

Tep, geisha class? really? good lord, lets import a feudal Japanese tradition that values women as obsequious servants to powerful men, forced to endure tons of rituals because it makes rich men feel like Samurai.

I will tell you what, lets be all so tolerant of Prostitution when little girls start to say they want to be hookers when they grow up. Hell, a little boy can say he wants to be a mafia hitman and will get more chuckles at a dinner party than the little girl who says she wants to be a whore.

I am not a feminist, nor do I judge any woman who is a prostitute, and if there are women out there who truly enjoy the work and make a great living at it, then I say fine by me, but if no one here can honestly say they want their daughter to grow up to be a prostitute, or wouldn't mind if they were, then they can pass up ever getting father of the year in my book.

oh, and Molly, reading things that guys say about this issue for a moment, just a moment, I can see why so many women get wrapped up so much in Hillary. We men can sure be assholes. I know I am.

Will, as I said this has nothing to do about judgment. If we all had the moral of bonobos where sex is the daily recreation, then your ideal would be fine. I give you a banana you give me a blowjob, what could be more fair. But I gotta believe the vast majority of women who are prostitutes suffer a tremendous psychic toll. Men are pigs, and the reason that scene in American pie was so funny because we all know that men would just as likely has sex with a pie.

Now if you want to advocate the legalization and societal acceptance of men paying for sex with men, and women paying for sex with other women, then count me in. I won't even care. The men on men thing might gross me out, but that is beside the point. I can even accept the legalization of prostitution of women with men. But I am not going to advocate that women become prostitutes.

I have no doubt that your dalliances are suffused with good will and a spirit of fun, and from all the years you have been here you have only referenced one sonoma hooker, so it seems your relationship has certainly attained a higher sphere, not of my concern. But start writing about how you went to Calcutta and popped some 18 year olds cherry and how great it was is not anywhere near as charming and funny.

Apples and oranges I suppose. You view us as bonobos but I view us more as nasty chimpanzees.

The biggest problem, which goes beyond Spitzer and hookers and Clinton and what-have-you, is that Americans have a disturbed relationship to sexual pleasure.  Deep down, we think it's wrong somehow.  Or maybe:  if it's aggressive and sporty and competitive and surrounded by a minefield of guilt, then it's sort of acceptable, but if it's slow and sensual and mutual and enjoyed without psychic wrenching, then we really hate it.

I wonder what would be going on if Spitzer's case didn't have the bleak, neon-lit simplicity of an expensive edgy habit, cold business transactions, and covert infidelity on the Acela schedule.  What would happen if there was warmth, desire, love, and happiness between the governor of a major state and another woman and his wife knew about it and accepted it?  What on earth would we do in this country if we were suddenly confronted with more love rather than less?  Can you imagine the female anchors on daytime TV dealing with that one!?

blackton - Yeah, I've been kinda surprised here lately at how many moral indictments of Spitzer have started with "I personally have no problem with prostitution..."  This is not what I would have expected to hear in a liberal/progressive magazine (now, in a libertarian one, on the other hand...)

I think what most people really mean to say (and how I feel about it myself) is that they have no problem with the concept of sex for money, per se.  However, in practice, the actual business carries too much life-destroying baggage for it to be considered acceptable.  This is true even in countries where it is legal, such as the Netherlands.  (For more on this, see Nicholas Kristof's article in yesterday's NYT.)  So, while I do not judge any one person merely for his or her involvement with it, neither do I think there is a sufficient case for legalization.

Why is it that the woman is the one always considered exploited? I am out my fifty bucks but she still has what she sold me.

There is no doubt a fine line in the moral sense dividing courtesans from kept women, from high end call girls from women who married for money.

But, I suspect that retail prostitution, even in the finest hotel suites, for a very large sum of money, does take a psychic toll.  

Women who ply such a trade for very long do become discernibly hardened and cynical.  You can see it in their faces and hear it in their way of expression.

Now maybe there are a lot of very prosperous high end hookers who are doing fabulously, and I'm not aware of that fact because they have absolutely none of the pyschic symptoms which I describe.

Can anyone here authoritatively testify to that?

I know one thing for sure.  I find myself rooting for the girl labeled as "Sptizer's hooker".  I want to see her get her record deal and turn into a big star and toasted celebrity.

This from someone who thought "Pretty Woman" was a really stupid movie.

(Of course, if the girl does become a big star, she'll be as annoying as Paris Hilton.  Who I semi-secretly like because she is good looking and has a bemused 'tude about her.)

Chan- I've always respected you, but it'll be harder now that you've confessed to finding Paris Hilton attractive.  Really?  Believe me, I'm all about blonde, and skinny, and rich, but the woman looks like a Chihuahua.

On the other hand, I'm impressed that you apparently know a lot of high-end hookers.

ratner, Paris owns a Chihuahua, I believe.  But, looks like one?

And, I usually go for more in the bosoms and ass department in real life.

But, if you didn't know anything about her and just saw a photo, you'd say Chihuahua?

Hey Molly ponder this: My sharply honed street-hooker-detection skills are replenished faster than the live-update features on my computer. No worn-out, neuron-depleted, C-Section-scarred,

needle-tracked, sunken-eyed, toothless, walking corpses for me. I know, instinctively,

almost through telepathy where to go in town to zero in on the newly-arrived, doe-eyed

lasses who could be on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition almost within the minute their habit first compels them to step out into the arena. The just-arrived are preferable but some somehow keep their good looks even through several months of turning 25 tricks a day at $20 a pop. It takes some coaxing to get them to a room to be fully enjoyed rather than the car but if I do get one to my pad I can tell if they’ve been long on crack by employing my own “PSA” test. “P” for the phone that they want to use immediately(obviously to call their dealer and say they’ll be right there with

money). “S” for shower that they ask to take(they don’t have even a dollar to put towards

a motel room-it all goes for drugs). “A” for the apple from my fruit bowl that they ask to

have(they also have no money for food nor do they desire to eat often). Then I deposit

them as directed to their designated spot from which they disappear into a sleazy den to

cop anew, then back to the street.

Am I an exploiter of women? I tell myself that while they are with me at least they are at least not

with someone who will beat, rape, rob, or aggressively degrade them. I treat them with

respect and courtesy.  I  have given many food, clothes, appliances. I have spent multiples

of Spitzer’s 80 grand over the years and at an average of forty bucks-a-pop not four

thousand and my salary is only low five-figures. I have spent much more on sending some

to rehab clinics, paying their fines, bailing them out, buying them cars, getting them jobs,

sending them to school, trying to get them onto the road back to a semblance of normalcy even

bringing myself to bankruptcy. I’ve saved some lives but so many can't be saved and go right back to the street. It’s so sad.

I woudn't kick her out of bed, chan, but that's a low standard.

Lesserliz:   Is this a joke, or are you just a fucking asshole?  Yes, the customer with a heart of gold. Saving women from themselves.  What an angel!  Yeah, you could just do all that do-gooding for no sex, but that would just be throwing your money away.  

lesserliz : "Why is it that the woman is the one always considered exploited? I am out my fifty bucks but she still has what she sold me."

There is the turn. What all did she sell you? And what all did you really pay?

I'd say that's a real big question all encompassed. Seems like two questions but it's not.

Molly, to answer your questions, it's no joke, I ain't no angel, I'm mainly just seeking sex. And oh yes I am an asshole.

So why bother dressing yourself up as St. John of the Prostitutes?  You're a whore monger.  

Not trying to dress myself up-just relating my experiences and impressions matter-of-factly on the topic and trying to show the other non Spitzer, non high class, less glamorous side of prostitution.

Gang, I think lesserliz delivered a really fascinating, very insightful piece of writing here.

I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere.

It is quite silly to sit in judgement of him.  He's telling you his store impressionistically.  This is how he sees his relationship with these street girls.

Don't censor the man.  Let him speak.  Let us see what else is revealed.

But, lesserliz, you didn't hasten to tell me of your good deeds as a Dear John.  What is it?  You can't be both a savior and a savorer of prostitutes.

By the way, I hope you wear serious protection.  I fear your penis may fall off.  

Chan, by no means am I censoring lesserliz.  He is free to expose himself as he pleases.  Just as I am free to judge him.  Though I agree, now that I've moralized, I'd be fascinated to hear more.

By the way, I liked your thoughts on their not being a clear line between prostitute and courtesan.  

ironyroad - you probably have a lot of first dates. Nice dream, all of us XYs share it, but I've never met a woman who wasn't insanely jealous and ready to kick me out over infidelity (alleged or real). And no, French women and other supposedly blase continentials are _not_ cool with it, either. Except for teh echangistes, they all view it as cheating.

mollysimon, what I ought to have said instead of don't censor him is don't chastise him.  

I think lesserliz is very self-aware.  He writes like a poet-- a Kerouac, a Ginsberg, a Henry Miller.

You're hearing something original, something literary.  Don't try to embarrass the man for what he's telling you.  You may not like it, but it's his truth.  And I'd be intrigued, like you, to hear more, not drive him off the stage.

By the way, lesserliz' tale brought to mind Somerset Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE.

All that money and concern expended on street girls.  Only in Maugham's novel, it's an obsession with just one girl.  who returns all his kindnesses by pretty much torturing him.

tep -- as usual you are right.  Or wrong.  But in any case I agree with your experience as it's yours and I sense something inarguable in it.  I didn't particularly mean anything French, however, and moreover having lived in Germany a longish time, I know that German women too could be exactly as you say . . . . I meant more that America has a lot more realities than the consensus is willing to admit.

And I kind of like that about us.  And also that sometimes we can make an issue of it.

So the question before us, really, is what encompasses the definition of love? By what realms does it live or die? Projection, ownership, power, intention and manifest effect. What can be controlled and what is the stewardship of such a proposition?

Pretty deep shit if you ask me. Anything so utterly simple and profoundly complex is really worth the time spent in consideration. In fact within is contained the entire gist of Judeo-Christian contemplation. Yeah. A pretty big subject.

boxo, I think anything pursued only for money and not for passion takes its toll and corrupts us with cynicism, despair, a sense of a life with no meaning.

So, sex, only for money is by long observation soul damaging.  But, you see some of the same symptoms of hardened outlook in people chronically working at a job they hate, flacking for a politician they clearly don't respect.  etc.

I guess I don't buy this "exploiting the high-end call girl" argument.  Spitzer's partner had other options.  She wasn't forced into the route she chose. However, she made an informed, rational (for her) choice that prostitution worked for her. That's her decision, not ours, and there is nothing wrong with it, in my opinion. In any event, I don't see her as a victim in any meaningful sense, given the alternative choices clearly available to her.

Now, the drugged-out girl on the street is a different story.  She has long lost her ability to make coherent decisions and those who take advantage of that are little more than predators.   Lessliz sounds like a good soul, and I commend for the things he says he does, although I guess I would prefer that he recognize the girls he's seeing are forced by circumstances to service him.  I would think if nothing else that would curb his desire, to some extent.

Sweden has embarked on an interesting experiment in this area.  Providers are not prosecuted, or even arrested, but are given housing, food and other subsidies to redirect them into other professions.  Meanwhile, pimps and johns are prosecuted as felons.  The result, so far is that the international sex trade exploiters (e.g. the exporters of Ukrainian girls, etc.) largely avoid Sweden.  I applaud this development, of course, but I do think that prostitution serves as a release valve on the male sexual pressure cooker, particularly among immigrant workers who are separated from their wives and girlfriends. We'll have to see if Sweden experiences a rise in sexual assault due to these policy changes.        

This whole business is out of my league. I can barely afford the gas in my car.

Michelle and Molly,

It seems like you think that, because prostitution is exploitative to the woman, the man is motivated by a desire to "prove his alpha male credentials" or by some similarly un-PC impulse.

I think that the motivation for a lot of men is as innocuous as horniness, or loneliness.  That doesn't excuse the fact that exploitation is a byproduct of these men indulging their desires.  But it is often a byproduct, rather than the goal of the exercise.

These men are kind of like the yuppies who are getting great deals on hardwood furniture these days.  They are not motivated by a desire for the jungles of South East Asia to be deforested, but they are not considering that that is the consequence of their consumption.

Yo Channy. Yeah. When boundaries cease to exist the potentials for intimacy become less available. Thus jaded and cynical.

As you say, one can witness and experience a similar kind of dislocations simply by living in urban areas. You pay some for having availability to the collective. At once ennobling and reaching and demeaning and diminutive. Accountability becomes lost among the myriad of transactional rationalizations employed just to get by and/or over.

It seems country folks don't much suffer the same degree of confusion about motivation and propriety. Personal boundaries are more measurable and accountable to self and others. That is changing too though. This world is getting closer all the time given our technologies.

All of these pounding fists hard on the table of our individual/collective proposition. Divergent convergent swimming in the soup of our alchemy. The holy and profane demanding equal time. It has been sufficiently proven to me that intellect is not enough to measure the expanse.

Bless her little heart and may she find love rather than illusion.