\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Another Fallen Angel<\/b><\/p>\n
As I write this, the not-so-spectacular story of Hugh Grant and Divine Marie Brown is all over the newspapers and the talk shows, adding spicy excitement to conversations at beauty parlors and barber shops everywhere.<\/p>\n
Once-adoring women are in tears, as betrayed as teenagers who discover that their damp-making idols are mere mortals after all.\u00a0 A friend reports that when Grant\u2019s name appeared the other day in the opening credits of his current film, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Dame Down a Mountain<\/em>, the audience broke out in loud hissing.\u00a0 A devotee who showed up at Grant\u2019s taping for his appearance with Jay Leno carried a sign saying “I would have paid you<\/em>, Hugh,” implying that now that Grant was a fallen angel she would keep her money and her fantasies to herself.<\/p>\n Status-conscious types everywhere were fleeing from Grant as if from Ebola, verbally dousing themselves in bleach.\u00a0 The fallout threatened to stain even the satin shoes of Grant\u2019s girlfriend, Est\u00e9e Lauder model Elizabeth Hurley.\u00a0 “If he were my boyfriend,” warned an acid Eileen Ford, “I would go out and get another man.”\u00a0 (The rumor as of this morning is that Hurley has decided to do just that.)<\/p>\n Now, everybody loves a good irony, and since Hugh Grant has been launched into stardom as the very embodiment of Mr. Clean sexual innocence (most clearly in Sirens<\/em> where he is both shocked and offended by his Victorian wife\u2019s unexpected sexual emergence), there\u2019s something particularly poignant about him being the guy who got busted for getting a professional blowjob in the back seat of his car.\u00a0 (For the record, Divine Marie Brown, “known prostitute” to LAPD vice, did use a condom.\u00a0 She also furthered her career by selling her story to a British tabloid for a cool $150,000.)<\/p>\n But this is a story worthy of a friendly chuckle, not an outraged scream — if only the nation (England is no better!) were able to get past being 12-years-old about the whole thing.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, it\u2019s not.\u00a0 Brings back memories of the Pee Wee Herman debacle, another designated innocent whose career was shredded by an undistinguished sex crime — in Herman\u2019s case, masturbating while watching a movie in a porn theater.\u00a0 (Anyone reading this column who has not<\/em> done that raise your hand.\u00a0 Not that<\/em> hand, the other one….)<\/p>\n The question that seems to have everyone in a lather about Grant is “Why did he do it?” (more precisely, “Why did he<\/em> do it?”) — “he” meaning Hugh Grant, pretty boy, magically successful Hollywood actor, “magnet for babes,” beau of the lovely Elizabeth Hurley.\u00a0 The assumption, of course, is that only sexually frustrated losers and psychopaths hire prostitutes, a mainstay of sociocultural mythology so far removed from reality that it inevitably keeps bumping into its own ignorance.\u00a0 (The second assumption, also highly questionable, is that having a glamorous lover and being an adored film star means that a person isn\u2019t sexually frustrated.)<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Running for Cover<\/b><\/p>\n Hugh Grant may deserve sympathy as an unintentional casualty of antisexual hysteria, but then again he\u2019s not exactly a heroic advocate of undifferentiated sex-positively.\u00a0 Each apology he makes is more self-loathing than the last.\u00a0 I must have been insane to do such a thing.\u00a0 I have hurt everyone I love.\u00a0 There are right things and wrong things in the world and this is a wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, bad, bad, bad, bad thing.\u00a0 I\u2019m amazed that anyone can love me after what I\u2019ve done.\u00a0 And so on, and so on, and so on.<\/p>\n This is how the myth and the morality tale of the “type-of-guy-who-hangs-out-with-prostitutes” get restored in all their glory, no matter what evidence shows up to the contrary.\u00a0 Who sees prostitutes?\u00a0 Frustrated losers, psychopaths… and occasional nice guys who suffer unexplainable bouts of temporary insanity.<\/p>\n Makes me want to scream.\u00a0 Come on, Hugh, it\u2019s no big deal.\u00a0 Guys go with whores every day — successes and failures, rich and poor, famous and infamous, young and old, pretty and ugly.\u00a0 You\u2019re not some terrible wretch because you had this desire and acted on it.\u00a0 If anybody thinks you are, tell them to take their silly judgments elsewhere.\u00a0 Or, if you must, make some mild, for-show apology, and get on with your life. \u00a0 Leave the self-flagellating to those who enjoy it.<\/p>\n One more time, class, repeat after me:\u00a0 Real sexual desire does not limit itself to what is socially constructed as “nice.”\u00a0 Not because sexual desire is necessarily “not nice,” but because the way we think of “nice” is terribly flawed, twisted, bizarre, and (yes) perverted.\u00a0 As far as I\u2019m concerned, “not nice” refers to the things that result in someone getting hurt — physically or emotionally — in ways that they don\u2019t want to be hurt.\u00a0 Neutral is neutral.\u00a0 “Nice” is what gives people genuine pleasure.<\/p>\n Rape is not nice.\u00a0 Sexual and emotional manipulation are not nice.\u00a0 Excoriating Hugh Grant for being with a prostitute is not nice.\u00a0 But sex, whatever particular form it may take, is generally very nice indeed, once you decant the guilt, the shame, the moral judgment, the risk of unwanted pregnancy, and the risk of disease.\u00a0 Contracting with someone for sexual services — one particular, not uncommon way of having sex — can also be very nice indeed, even if it flies in the face of the moral nay-sayers who want to limit everyone to the minor forms of pleasure they manage to maintain in the leftover crannies of their self-hating psyches.\u00a0 Of course, when we move beyond sexual activity into the realm of simple sexual desire or sexual fantasy, no one gets hurt at all, so boys and girls, brothers and sisters, give yourselves a break!<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Getting Beyond the Whore Stigma<\/b><\/p>\n Why do<\/em> people in happy, loving, fulfilling relationships go to prostitutes, anyway?\u00a0 My good friend Marty Klein, who is both an experienced sex therapist and a thoughtful commentator on sexual matters, tells me he has had a number of clients who have had sex with prostitutes for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 Tops on his list of motivations are a desire for variety in sexual partners; being able to engage in sexual practices or play out sexual fantasies that they feel uncomfortable asking from their regular partners, or that their regular partners just are not interested in; the sexual charge that comes from doing things that are thought of as naughty or sleazy; and feeling more entitled to focus on their own pleasure when they know their partner is being sexual with them for money rather than for sexual gratification.\u00a0 All of which make absolute sense when applied to the case of one Hugh Grant, no matter how rich and famous he is, or how attractive his partner.<\/p>\n To the moralists, the existence of prostitution is a social flaw, something that would not exist in a more perfect world.\u00a0 But prostitution has existed throughout history and across the boundaries of particular cultures, sometimes even being revered as work that is nothing less than sacred.\u00a0 The problem is that in our culture prostitution is stigmatized and criminally punished, and so takes on all the nasty twists of being driven into the underworld.<\/p>\n As Gail Pheterson points out in her enlightening book, A Vindication of the Rights of Whores<\/em>, the existence of this pervasive whore stigma has importance not just for prostitutes, but for all other women and men as well.\u00a0 “The whore as prostitute or sex worker,” she says, “is the prototype of the stigmatized woman or feminized man….\u00a0 Any woman may be designated \u2018whore.\u2019”\u00a0 Women she interviewed spoke of having been called whores for\u00a0getting raped, being smart, having an abortion, being a lesbian, being black, sleeping with lots of men, talking too much, running away from home, getting divorced, leaving [their] children, being an unwanted child, having a child without marrying, hanging out with the wild girls at school, being Jewish, having an affair when I was married, leaving the Catholic church, going to a college that didn\u2019t have a curfew, [and] getting beaten by my husband.<\/p>\n Most commonly, the “whore” is the woman who is too sexual or just generally too independent, and the “whoremonger” is the man who refuses to restrict his sexuality to socially approved channels.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n A Matter of Coming Out<\/b><\/p>\n As Lily Burana pointed out in the Spectator<\/em> interview I did with her about sex work a while back, what\u2019s needed is for sex work customers (as well as sex workers themselves) to move beyond their shame and their fear of misunderstanding and criticism, stand behind who they really are and what they really do, and let people see that sex work customers are regular folks, just like everyone else.\u00a0 Gay people are working, with great courage and mutual support, to destigmatize themselves in the eyes of the general public.\u00a0 People into s\/m are doing the same.\u00a0 Customers of sex workers — people who hire prostitutes, people who frequent strip clubs and lap dancing clubs, people who enjoy watching porn videos — need to join the ranks of the sexually disenfranchised who are refusing to let themselves be designated weird and invisible by the forces of antisexual shame and so-called propriety.\u00a0 As Burana correctly notes,\u00a0historically, sex workers always exist and sexually explicit media have always existed, yet they\u2019ve never been legitimized.\u00a0 Historically, sex workers have been prized and reviled.\u00a0 People want to partake of your services, but don\u2019t want to lend you any support because if they stand up for sex they\u2019re going to be stigmatized themselves.\u00a0 Nobody\u2019s willing to step up and say, “I am a consumer of that.\u00a0 I support that.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s important — important enough to support the people who do it and to support the industry itself.”\u00a0 The clients need to come forward and say, “I want this.\u00a0 I participate in this.\u00a0 Don\u2019t try to take it away from me.”<\/p>\n According to one report, 11% of women in the U.S. have directly sold sex for money at some time in their lives.\u00a0 (That doesn\u2019t include sex for dinner and the opera, or sex for a lifetime of financial security.)\u00a0 The flawed Janus Report on Sexual Behavior<\/em> reports that 20% of its male respondents have had sex for money.\u00a0 That\u2019s one out of every nine women you pass on the street, and one out of every five men.\u00a0 Think of that the next time you\u2019re out for a stroll and people-watching.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n From the Inside Out<\/b><\/p>\n My own fascination with prostitution and the whole sex for money underworld goes all the way back to my childhood.\u00a0 When I was totally pubescent, the book that all the boys coveted was 79 Park Avenue<\/em> by Harold Robbins, a potboiler of a sex novel about a high-priced call girl and the detective who sets out to bust her only to fall in love with her in the process.\u00a0 It was, as we would excitedly explain to each other, the sexiest book that you could check out of the public library.\u00a0 It was, in fact, very hot indeed (even when I recently re-read it to get a little “adult” perspective on the book), and since I was at that cusp-of-sexuality age, everything in it became powerfully eroticized for me:\u00a0 bad girls; painted women; the whole idea of flaunted, available sex; sex on its own terms, separate from romance.\u00a0 Other things would lead me to devote myself to the kind of sexual fulfillment that comes from deep intimacy, long-term relationship, and deep emotional caring.\u00a0 But the idea of the sex professional — of being able to ask straight out for what you want, pay for it, and get it (at one level, anyway) — was both incredibly hot and remarkably sensible to me.\u00a0 It still is.<\/p>\n When I was in my 20s, I was both fascinated by and afraid of any kind of sex for money exchange.\u00a0 I wandered around the Tenderloin in San Francisco, discovered the early O\u2019Farrell and Palace Theaters, and wandered the streets, curious about the outrageously dressed women flaunting their sexual come-ons, asking me if I wanted a date, promising me a good time.\u00a0 Some of the women were obviously cold and angry, but others seemed more genuinely friendly and human.\u00a0 I would pretend to be more interested than I was, enjoying the tease which was as close as I would let myself get to actually crossing that particular line.\u00a0 I told myself it was because I was afraid of getting herpes.<\/p>\n My first paid sex experience was at a massage parlor where I decided that I could safely get a massage and a hand job and see what that was like.\u00a0 It was a small, homey place and the woman who led me into the massage room was quiet, friendly, unintimidating, and appealing to look at.\u00a0 I undressed nervously, showered even more nervously, and tried to relax enough to enjoy being touched by her.\u00a0 Luckily, as sexual masseuses go, she was pretty attentive.\u00a0 She touched me nicely, gave me time to unwind, and when she got around to playing with my cock, she focused careful attention on what she was doing.\u00a0 I felt much more connected to her than I ever expected as I got more and more excited and eventually came.\u00a0 I remember realizing that she was breathing in time with my breathing, there in the dim red light, and as I watched her stroke my cock carefully, her eyes closed in concentration, I was warmed by her apparently genuine desire to do this bit of tenderness well.\u00a0 I was in fact so moved by the experience that I later wrote quite a gushy poem to her.\u00a0 Wendy.\u00a0 I also remember that after I showered again and came through the living room of the place on my way out, she was completely absorbed watching tv and didn\u2019t so much as answer me when I said goodbye.\u00a0 Whatever momentary connection we had was definitely over.\u00a0 That was a lesson it itself.<\/p>\n Since that time I have had a number of experiences with prostitutes in different situations, some of them quite warm and lovely, others quite cold and empty.\u00a0 All in all I\u2019ve paid for sex maybe a dozen or so times.\u00a0 One time I picked up a pretty hitchhiker in North Beach who got around to telling me that she turned tricks if I was interested.\u00a0 I decided to go for it.\u00a0 She told me she wanted to go first to get an aphrodisiac.\u00a0 I said ok.\u00a0 We drove out to the Sunset District, she took my money, and disappeared around the corner.\u00a0 I sat in the car for a very long time, wondering what had happened to her.\u00a0 After about 15 minutes I decided that I had been taken, plain and simple, and laughed at myself for being so stupid.\u00a0 Just then she came back.\u00a0 She had scored some heroin with my money.\u00a0 We went back to her room in North Beach and I watched her cook the heroin and shoot the dirty brown liquid into her arm.\u00a0 It was both fascinating and disgusting.\u00a0 She kept apologizing for taking so long and thanking me for my patience.\u00a0 After the fluid was in her vein she said, “Now you wait for the click.”\u00a0 There was a minute or so of silence while we both waited.\u00a0 “Click,” she said with a smile.<\/p>\n She came over to where I was standing and we began to kiss.\u00a0 She reached down and took my cock in her hand.\u00a0 Just then the clock at the church outside chimed six o\u2019clock and I remembered that I was supposed to be meeting my wife, her brother, and our six-month old son, for dinner.\u00a0 I explained that I had to go.\u00a0 For a moment she seemed sorry to be interrupted in her routine, and then of course she was fine.\u00a0 She told me I could come back to see her the next day, no additional charge.\u00a0 That night I told my wife the story, which she heard with no apparent judgment.\u00a0 The next day, I went back and knocked on her door, but when she answered she was obviously with another client.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t recognize me in the least.\u00a0 I explained who I was and that I had come back to see her as she had said.\u00a0 She told me I\u2019d have to come back another time.\u00a0 I never went back, but I did write a song about how easily experiences come and go.<\/p>\n I had another wonderful time with a lovely transsexual woman named Diana, who I met at the old Black Rose on Jones Street.\u00a0 I would go there regularly, fascinated by the outrageous drag queens, the scene, the sense of community, letting people come on to me, buying a few drinks, but not “going” with anyone.\u00a0 Diana came up one evening and struck up an easy, low-key conversation. She was very beautiful, with smooth black skin, a sensual way of moving, and voluptuous breasts.\u00a0 We talked about tropical fish, which she raised as a hobby.\u00a0 Eventually she asked very gently if I wanted to go to her place, which she promised was very nice, clean, and just a block away.\u00a0 I was nervous, but I decided to go with her.\u00a0 At her place she talked me through my nervousness.\u00a0 I played with her silky body while she sucked my cock quite nicely, and then I sucked her cock as she got very excited and then came.\u00a0 It was the first time I had ever sucked a cock in more than a tentative way and it was very hot, even through the latex.\u00a0 Afterwards she laughed and said, “There, that wasn\u2019t so bad, was it?”\u00a0 As we got dressed she warned me about the other hookers at the bar, about fights and screaming drug scenes.\u00a0 “Watch yourself,” she said, “they won\u2019t all be as nice to you as I am.”<\/p>\n I left on a cloud, very pleased with the world.\u00a0 About a year later I saw her again.\u00a0 She had no idea that she had ever seen me before.\u00a0 I went with her to a different apartment, this one very rundown.\u00a0 She had become addicted to crack — accidentally, she said, just from fooling around — and then broke down in tears telling me how her mother “hadn\u2019t raised her for this.”\u00a0 There was a guy there who wanted her to go do some drugs in the hallway before we got started, and I got scared that I was going to get rolled.\u00a0 I told her that I was feeling too nervous, that she could keep the money, but I was going to go.\u00a0 She got very upset and kept saying that I was leaving because she was such a terrible person.\u00a0 I assured her that I didn\u2019t think she was a terrible person, but she wouldn\u2019t believe me.\u00a0 I held her face in both my hands and made her look into my eyes while I told her that she was a beautiful person but that I was scared so I had to leave.\u00a0 For about two seconds she got it, then lost it again in a wave of bad feeling.\u00a0 She was sobbing in her bed, pleading with me to stay and have sex with her, when I closed the door and found my way out to the street.<\/p>\n The nastiest and scariest prostitute experience I\u2019ve had was with a woman who talked me into a peep show video booth so she could give me what turned out to be a very perfunctory blow job.\u00a0 Before I could even pull my pants back up, she was out the door of the booth, telling me to wait a few minutes before coming after her, so as not to raise any suspicion.\u00a0 As soon as she left, I realized that she had taken a lot of money out of my wallet which was on the floor.\u00a0 I ran after her, and caught up to her on the street, just as a vice sweep came by.\u00a0 The cops asked what was going on.\u00a0 I told them, told them exactly how much money it was, which they found in her purse.\u00a0 Then they busted both of us, putting us in the back of a paddy wagon with a couple of other detainees while they swerved through the streets of the Tenderloin, whooping like cowboys, harassing transsexuals on the street, all the while pounding the metal van with their nightsticks to drive all of us inside crazy with the noise.<\/p>\n At the police station, they their best to humiliate me verbally and to scare me into testifying against the woman for prostitution, even though I insisted that all I wanted was my money back.\u00a0 At one point they threatened to take me into a back room and beat me if I didn\u2019t cooperate with them.\u00a0 I believed them but I still refused, more because they were pissing me off than because I was feeling heroic.\u00a0 At that point they relented and let me go.\u00a0 Eventually I was subpoenaed and had to testify in court, trying not perjure myself while keeping the woman from getting into more hot water than she was in already.\u00a0 The prosecutors were very gentle and solicitous with me, while the public defender kept trying to embarrass me with unnecessarily questions of detail like, “Were your pants around your knees or around your ankles while this was happening?”\u00a0 I got over my nervousness early, and even had some fun before it was over (asking the very stern judge whether I should say “oral sex” or “blow job” in answer to one question), but the whole experience shook me up for a very long time.<\/p>\n There have been other times, other scenes, that make less interesting stories.\u00a0 That all this time I was in happy, fulfilling relationships seems entirely beside the point.\u00a0 My reasons for enjoying these adventures — and I have to say I\u2019ve enjoyed even the empty and frightening times in their own ways — are probably not far from Hugh Grant\u2019s.\u00a0 I\u2019m just glad that I\u2019ve chosen a lifestyle that allows me to be more honest about what I do and what I like, both in public and in private, than Hugh can.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Which Brings Us Back to Hugh…<\/b><\/p>\n On the America Online movie actors bulletin board, there are 112 postings about Hugh Grant as of this morning.\u00a0 The debate is in full flower:<\/p>\n “AAAAAAHHHH!!!!! Why?\u00a0 Why, I ask you?\u00a0 Is there not a God?\u00a0 We thought we had found the ideal man in Hugh Grant.\u00a0 What is this world coming to?”<\/p>\n “Why couldn\u2019t it be someone else, anyone else?”<\/p>\n “How could any heterosexual guy give up someone like Elizabeth Hurley?\u00a0 Hugh — you\u2019re just out of your gourd.”<\/p>\n “What a stupid prick.\u00a0 Always using the little head instead of the big.”<\/p>\n “This just goes to show that males are never satisfied.\u00a0 How pathetic.\u00a0 Dump him Elizabeth!!!!!”<\/p>\n “What if he had gotten AIDS from the prostie and given it to Liz?\u00a0 Saying sorry doesn\u2019t make it all right.”<\/p>\n “Why does everyone act as though Grant was caught molesting children or something?\u00a0 He was with an adult woman who did more than consent.\u00a0 Let these guys act and take them off their pedestals.”<\/p>\n “So he went out for a little fun.\u00a0 Stupid, but not the end of the world.”<\/p>\n “Hugh Grant hasn\u2019t done anything different from many other guys.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the oldest profession exists.”<\/p>\n “So what if he fucks a woman and pays her?\u00a0 She\u2019s doing a great service.\u00a0 I support him 100% for doing what he wants to sexually with a consenting adult.\u00a0 I\u2019m sick of this country judging and shaming people for doing what is part of us.\u00a0 Sex, glorious sex, I recommend it for all.”<\/p>\n “Life isn\u2019t a candy store.\u00a0 It owes you nothing and you can\u2019t always have what you want.\u00a0 This whole \u2018if it feels good, do it\u2019 mentality is out of the sixties and about as immature and unrealistic as you can get.”<\/p>\n “I can\u2019t help but hope that he and Liz have broken up.\u00a0 He\u2019s a better fantasy when he\u2019s single!”<\/p>\n “Doesn\u2019t he look absolutely fabulous in his mug shot?\u00a0 I have it hanging up in my room.”<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n The beat, as they say, goes on — about Hugh Grant, about this thing we call sex, about what to do with the perplexing and unexpected things that feel good even when we think they shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n As e.e. cummings, the greatest poet of the 20th century, once said, “humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it\u2019s there and sitting down on it… humanity i hate you.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 28, 1995<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1995 David Steinberg<\/p>\n Another Fallen Angel<\/p>\n As I write this, the not-so-spectacular story of Hugh Grant and Divine Marie Brown is all over the newspapers and the talk shows, adding spicy excitement to conversations at beauty parlors and barber shops everywhere.<\/p>\n Once-adoring women are in tears, as betrayed as teenagers who discover that their damp-making idols […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comes-naturally","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/loveandlust\/davidsteinberg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}