Tag: #womenslib

Interview with a Utah prostitute

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Prostitute (image)

The worst part is people just assume the worst about me, you know, as a person, if they find out what I do. 

And what do they assume about you?

I don’t know, that I grew up in a broken home, that I’m a drug addict, that I’m like a depressed and unhappy person. I’m no different from anyone else. 

Do you refer to yourself as a prostitute?

It is what it is. But I prefer the term ‘call-girl.’ I do a little bit of work on webcam also, but I don’t have the patience for that. I hate interacting with people over computers, typing and waiting for chats. I would rather interact with real people that I can see than sit there in my own room chatting to strangers.

So tell me a bit about what you do. I mean, not what you–tell me about the job.

Haha, you’re blushing. 

Be quiet, ha.

It’s not that complicated. I mean, some girls still do the walk the street thing, but with the Internet everything is different. I can find clients online. There are shady places like Craigslist, where you run an ad and see who responds. But I won’t do unsafe. I set things up through more legit websites. Men who join up have to provide credit cards and verify their identities or whatever. They can have usernames and fake names, but the website has the info of the person who paid, so there are extra protections. 

So you basically advertise through these secure websites to set up customers.

Yeah, basically. 

And what kind of people do you see? What kind of rates?

There are all different kinds of guys. Some are just lonely old guys who want some company. Some are businessmen in town away from their wives. Some guys want me for just an hour or two, some for an overnight, some for a whole weekend. Shorter gigs, I charge more, like 200 per hour, but I’ll give discounts for longer rates, at least per hour. 750 for a whole night, 1000 for a day, that kind of thing. And, I mean, they pretty much all want sex, at least some kind. 

And how do you set that up?

I’m clear with them in advance. I like to know what they like, what they are looking for. Safe sex only. I can charge more if they want something less… vanilla. But it’s all pretty standard and straightforward. They offer money for the things they want, and pay for the more rare or specialized things. 

So what do you like about the job?

Thank you for calling it a job. It is a job. It’s what I do, not who I am. And I like it most the time. I get to make people feel good, I get to feel desired, and I get paid really well to do it. It clears up a lot of free time, so I can do the day job stuff less. 

And what are the drawbacks?

It does affect my relationships. Most the people who love me don’t like that I do it. They are constantly scared for me. And I’ll admit, I get a little bit scared sometimes meeting a stranger. And once in a while, it was kind of an unpleasant experience and I can feel a little lonely or gross afterwards. But everyone has bad days at work sometimes. 

Is there a big market for it here?

In Utah? Oh absolutely. I mean, not in the little small towns. But in Salt Lake, Park City, and Moab, especially. And Provo. There is a whole network of local girls and we are all pretty supportive to each other. The only ones who really struggle are the out-of-towners who come in. Girls like from California or New York who try to market themselves here struggle for a while until they learn the local culture. Utah is way different than those places. 

You have a girlfriend, right?

Yeah, she’s rad. She’s a very cool girl. We are totally in love. 

And does your job bother her?

Actually, she’s pretty okay with it. I tell her everything and we communicate really well. We have a good relationship. Her family doesn’t know what I do. They are super Mormon and they wouldn’t get it. I’m not ashamed, but I don’t tell them because I don’t want them to thing negative of me. 

What about your family?

Oh, we don’t really talk. They don’t know what I do either, but that’s because they aren’t really in my life. 

How did you end up here?

I moved here for her. 

If you could go back and do something else, would you?

I won’t do this forever. This is a temporary thing. I’m saving up money and doing things that I love. I don’t love my job, I don’t. I want out of it eventually. We all do, really. It’s just good money for now, and I can do it on my own terms. I want to go back to school eventually, travel, have a family. 

How did you wind up in all of this in the first place?

I realized men like what I look like. Someone offered me money one time, and it was fun, so I started doing it more. I took some risks at first, then figured out how to do it smart. 

Anything else you want to say, to anyone who might read this?

Sex is a big part of the world. Everyone wants it. There is pornography and prostitution out there, and strippers and dancers and all that. And that means there are thousands of girls who work in all of those, and they do it because men will pay them to do it. And it’s not, like, something to strive for, but it’s real and there are real people who do it. We are humans and we are smart. We have moms and dads and, like, pets and hobbies and friends. And if it is consensual and a decision a woman makes, then that is her business, not yours. We all deserve respect. 

my date with mom

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“Don’t worry, sir, I’ll have her home at a reasonable hour.” I shook my step-father’s hand from where he sat in his comfortable over-sized arm chair. He got that mirthful twinkle in his eye.

“Now see that you do.”

My mom laughed, saying goodbye to her husband as we made our way toward the door. She’s in her early 70s now, and he in his early 80s, and they have been perfect together in  their eleven years together, compatible in every category except one. My mom enjoys a healthy sense of adventure, time to go out exploring and being among people. Her husband is much more comfortable at home in his easy chair, Fox News or the History Channel blaring on the television.

I had him take a photograph of us with my cell phone before we left. “You know, before the invention of the cell phone, we didn’t realize what a world of narcissists we were.” He fumbled with the small screen for a moment. “Now, wait, I can only see myself in this image.” I laughed and helped him turn the screen around. “Now that is a much better view,” he said, as he snapped a photo that cut half my head off in the image.

Out in the car, mom and I began gabbing right away. We talk every other day or so, sharing in world events and community happenings, discussing what I’m reading or researching or writing about, and who she is doing nice things for.

Mom had a birthday a few weeks ago and I had promised her a night out on the town when I came to visit. Now, with my sons hanging out with my sister (their favorite aunt), it was finally date night.
“Well, where are we headed?”

I winked. “I suppose that is none of your business until we arrive. But on the way, I have a series of questions for you.”

And so we began to talk about her life. I asked her about her best day ever, and she told me about her wedding day to my dad when she was 22. She told me about her family gathered outside the Mormon temple and walking out in her wedding dress, being surrounded by family, her dreams coming true. My dad left her that afternoon to work on his family’s farm, where they had sheep and potatoes, and rejoined her in the evening for the wedding dinner and reception. They moved into a trailer on a high hill above the Snake River, a little extended space with two bedrooms. She was pregnant right away, and within a few years had three young children, then four, then five, and they soon moved into a beautiful home where she had been so happy.

“Everything fit,” she said. “We loved each other. It wasn’t perfect, but I loved his family, and he loved my family, and our children were beautiful, and we had the church and each other.”

I asked her about her pregnancies, and the names she chose for her children. While she never went on birth control, she did take some preventative measures to stop herself from having kids, and she chose each time she wanted to get pregnant, even when it began to have wear and tear on her body. She said she had wanted 8 children, or perhaps 10, and she had ended up with 7. 63 months pregnant, with terrible nausea and vomiting each time, and a few very rough deliveries. My oldest sister was nearly lost during delivery, she had a terrible shoulder injury with another, and my delivery itself was a particularly rough one.

We went back in time a bit more as we drove. I asked her about her choice of college major, about the men she dated in high school and college, and how she was proposed to several times but each time hadn’t been quite right. As a young student who first considered nursing and ended up teaching, she had devoted herself to one young man for months before learning he was being unfaithful. She was stunning, and in time she met my father, a handsome returned missionary fresh out of the army, the youngest son of a sheep farmer up the road.

By now, we were out of the car and sitting next to the river, watching man-made waterfalls and currents, the Mormon temple where she had been married across the river for a perfect view. Mom talked about how Dad had been devastated by a crop failure that cost them thousands. They had moved across the country for a fresh start, had two more children, built another home, and a decade later things had finally fallen apart. I had my arm around her shoulder, it was getting chilly outside.

“Mom, I want you to know how courageous I think you are. Growing up in this little corner of the world full of Mormons and potato fields, you built a life on the terms you were taught. You did everything right. You chose motherhood, and to be a wife, yet you worked as a teacher all the way through. You brought seven kids into the world, and we all turned out pretty all right. I know it took a lot of twists and turns along the way, and definitely threw you some curve balls and painful pitches, but you did it on your terms and you came out strong. You are an incredible mother and I love you.”

And minutes later, we walked into a local actor’s studio, set up in an old storefront, and saw a presentation of the Odd Couple while eating hamburgers and hot dogs off a dinner buffet. We laughed and had a wonderful evening.

Back at her home, I walked her in and saw my stepfather sitting in the same spot. “Well, I had her home by midnight as promised.”

“Oh, honey, we had a wonderful time.” She said and I left as she told him about our evening, feeling grateful for this amazing woman, this force of nature,+++++++++++++++ who brought me into the world.

 

The Misogynistic Merry Widow

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merry-widow

The colors were astounding.

As Lolo, Dodo, Jou-jou, Clo-clo, Margot, and Frou-frou exposed their ankles, lifted their frilly skirts, shook their bosoms, and danced gaily around the stage, I was most astounded by the colors of the set. At the evening performance of the Merry Widow, an opera with a full symphony, I sat in the center balcony absorbing the music and color, the very spectacle of the impressive show.

I tend to rate productions in multiple categories, my internal critic going down the checklist. It makes it easier for me to sort it out. A movie, for example, may be brilliantly filmed yet have terrible actors, or may have beautiful imagery and a terrible story.

I surveyed the Merry Widow carefully. The costumes and sets were stunning. The actors were top notch, selling their characters with full commitment, silliness and seriousness, lust and love, and I had laughed out loud many times. The vocal performances and the symphony took my breath and raised gooseflesh on my arms and neck; a few of the soft high notes in the operatic solos left me gasping, my hand on my heart in pure fulfillment. And the show itself, written over a hundred years ago, was, frankly, hilarious and relevant, for the most part. This was a top-notch production, and I was having a blast.

I sat next to my colleague and friend, Kara, and we made comments throughout the show, poking fun at the roles of the women in the show. It was written in a different time, when women were seen as acquisitions, annoyances, or trophies. So when Valencienne sings about being a virtuous wife even as she cheats on her husband, it’s easy to smile and laugh. And when the dancing girls strut about the stage, singing of how they can woo married men away from their wives, it was easy to laugh.

But I had to grimace in discomfort when a group of male characters sang about women in politics, and how men generously gave them the right to vote yet women still grew discontent and had opinions. I still laughed, but I grew a bit more uncomfortable.

And then came the song about women directly. A group of male characters (all hilarious) step on the stage to discuss the problem of women in their lives.

“It’s a problem how to manage willful women when the bloom of youth is gone”, one sings. Then, in song, the men pontificate on all of the different ways women can be impossible. One likes fashion too much, another is too focused on romance, another is too moody and inconsistent, another frigid and opinionated. After they finish classifying the women in derogatory categories, the men decide, as a group, that they can never do enough to possibly satisfy a woman, but that women have enough assets to be worth the aggravation.

The production ends when (warning: 100 year old spoilers!) the wealthy widow, Hanna Glawari, who has an untold fortune left to her by her deceased husband, finds true love with Danilo Danilovitsch, a whiny drunkard statesman who has spent the entire production espousing his philosophy of making love to many, proposing to some, but marrying none. And although Danilo likes Lolo, Dodo, Jou-jou, Clo-clo, Margot, and Frou-frou all very much, he decides to marry the widow. But wait! The dead husband’s will states Margot loses her entire fortune if she marries another. Oh well, they will marry anyway, because she needs to be with a man more than she needs riches.

Kara turned to me, shock on her face. “Wait. Why couldn’t they have just lived together and shared the money?”

We shared a good laugh as we walked out of the show, delighted with the production and yet disgusted with the utter patriarchy of it all. “Wow, that was awfully… misogynistic.” I said. My mind raced to early Disney movie productions, where each princess finds love in the arms of a man before her destiny is fulfilled and happy ending written. More modern Disney productions feature women a bit more liberated and complex.

Then I thought of watching the old 1950s musical movie, Gigi, with friends a few weeks ago, when Maurice Chevalier, then an older man with a cane, walks around a promenade looking at little girls and singing about how they will all grow up to be beautiful and complicated women.

I wonder how many songs have been written over the years about how aggravating, impossible, and difficult women are, only to decide in the end that they are beautiful enough to be worth it. There must be dozens.

Kara and I had a good laugh, then headed our respective ways. Later, I told a friend about the production.

“How did you like it?” he asked.

I smiled, the music still playing in my head. “It was fantastic, but perhaps slightly mistitled. Maybe they should call it the Misogynistic Merry Widow.”

 

 

Women in Hot Water

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“A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.” –Eleanor Roosevelt

EleanorRoosevelt_640x400

Christopher Columbus sailed around the world with a ship full of men, and hundreds of thousands of men followed, each seeking to stake a claim in a new land. America was founded on the principles of a fresh start, escaping poverty and oppression and building a new life in a new world. Civilization spread over the next two hundred years from coast to coast. Men came, men conquered.

And eventually, an organized civilization formed in the name of revolution. Wanting freedom from other men, these men declared war and, in time, won, declaring independence. These men formalized a government, wrote a Constitution, elected a president, put a court system in place, and began to govern the people. America was a nation of immigrants, unified in the cause of governance.

The land of the free, they called it. The home of the brave, they said, where all men were created equal. Except for the Native Americans, slaughtered, given diseases, and eventually shoved onto small pockets of land to contain them. Except for blacks, gathered on ships and stolen from their homes, then forced into slave labor for generations. Except for Mexicans, killed and manipulated in the need for acquisition of more land. And except for women, who were expected to bear children, serve in the home, and not participate in governance.

It took ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ until 1920 to give women the right to vote. Around 135 years after the formation of the country on the premise that all are created equal, the other fifty per cent of our citizens got their most basic right. (Keeping in mind, this was after we went to war to end slavery, decades before the Civil Rights movement, and nearly 100 years before same-sex couples would be granted the right to marry).

In 2016, population wise, there are more women than men by several million. Men make up most of the prison population, commit nearly all of the violent and sexual crimes (including, obviously, rape and murder). Men run most of the American businesses (around 85 per cent) and are paid more than women in nearly every position, often including fields where women dominate the work place (like social work and nursing). Men run most of the religious organizations in the country, almost exclusively.

And perhaps most shocking, men dominate in nearly every category of elected officials in the United States. A recent study showed that the United States ranks number 69 in the rankings of the world’s democracies in elected positions for women. In fact, Afghanistan has more women in government than the US. As does Pakistan. And Uganda.

In our presidential running this year for the Republican and Democratic primaries, we saw a bit more racial diversity among the candidates, though it was still dominated by white men (though some of them had racially diverse spouses), and one female candidate on each side. One. Carly Fiorina for the Republican party, and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic.

I, personally, am saddened and a bit horrified at the idea that we are still so far from having equal representation in our government. Men have been making mistakes in our government for  a very long time. And the only way women can break in is by playing by the men’s rules in the men’s systems, with men as their peers. And the country is still, by and large, very patriarchal and misogynistic, and makes it very hard for a woman to succeed.

It is with this awareness of history and focus on social justice that I went about researching Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. Clinton was raised in Chicago by a hard-working father who taught her self-reliance, and a courageous mother who had been abandoned by her parents and abused by her grandparents before staking out life on her own terms. Hillary’s mother raised her to believe in herself, treating Hillary and her two brothers as capable in every capacity. Hillary was raised with an awareness of privilege and social justice, and knew very young that she would make something of herself someday.

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Hillary married the handsome young Bill Clinton and moved to Arkansas, building a life for herself there as a successful attorney as Bill ran for various government positions. Hillary is now nearly 70 years old. During her life span, she has been the First Lady of Arkansas for nearly 15 years, the First Lady of the United States for 8 years, a Senator in New York for 8 years, and the Secretary of State for 4 years. That is a total of 35 years in public, over half of her life. She has also run two Presidential campaigns. She has championed education, women’s rights, children’s rights, LGBT rights, free information rights, and health care. She has survived public scandals and inquisitions, media feeding frenzies, and decades in the public spotlight. She has shown up time and again with courage, clarity, and strength in the face of opposition at every turn. And in my opinion, she has done so with grace, strength, and openness.

As Secretary of State, Hillary traveled the world, interfacing with male world leaders, many times as the only woman in the room. She negotiated with men who weren’t allowed to shake her hand because she was a woman, due to their own customs. She was courageous and strategic in each instance, and she stood for social justice in each encounter. She has a deep sense of history, change, initiative, and responsibility.

I don’t thank that any presidential candidate is spotless. But Hillary Clinton has my vote for three primary reasons: 1. She is simply the most qualified candidate up there. 2. She knows, first hand, what being president entails. She has, quite literally, lived it. 3. It is long past time we had a female in office.

Centuries past time.

It’s time to put more women in hot water so we can see how strong they are. z47