Sex with a prostitute

Until the breakup of my second serious relationship, I've never really given much thought on the availability of hookers, or even paying one. It never came across my mind. You know, it's kind of taboo, and I am young, and I'm not supposed to think about such things. Until last year.

Ka-boom! The end of a long relationship. Due to the distance between us (I was in Cornell, she was in LA), we developed quite a high level of anger and frustration toward each other's lack of time and the attention we gave to each other while we were separated. Why did I even try to preserve this stupid relationship? She was a rich bitch, pampered all her life, and she demanded incredible amounts of attention which I cannot possibly afford, physically, academically and financially. Like children, we continued to live in the past, hating, not forgiving. I don't know why I didn't forget about the bitch and move on, I did that with my first relationship. Maybe it was the pressures of Cornell......

Despite previous temptations to pay for sex (the highest being while I was stumbling around in a drug-induced haze on the streets of Amsterdam and Rotterdam), I had not actually paid for a woman's services. I don't know why. Maybe it was the lack of frustration and the fact that I had a girlfriend at that time. Sex is not free with a relationship. It costs a lot. Time, money, effort; all must be shoved into one person. For what? If the person is your true love, then it is all worth it. True enough.

If that person was not the right one (like in my situation), what next? All that wasted. Last Christmas, I got sick of it. Sexual frustration was starting to build, but there was no chance I would engage in a relationship in Shanghai. All the girls I knew wouldn't think of a one night stand, and I was leaving soon anyways; no point engaging in a serious relationship. Then an idea came to me. Hookers are cheap in China. I had money. STDs are very rare among the more respectable pickup spots in China (especially the places frequented by foreigners such as myself). They're young, my age, some were even good looking. They cost more, but I can afford it. Oh why not? What do I have to lose? Heck, I even went with three other guys (separate rooms and women, of course).

Afterwards, I didn't even really care. I enjoyed the experience (sex is always nice). It had no fine print, no future consequences, no attachments. I didn't have to waste time and money on a serious relationship. I compare it to a college one night stand. Did you waste time drinking with her? A few hours of smoking, talking, drinking, and the next thing you know, you're getting poontang (as a friend of mine puts it). Compare sex with a prostitute. I pay and I immediately get it from an anonymous woman, who doesn't care who I am. In some ways, it is better than the college one night stand, because it is a surefire deal (sometimes college chicks back out), and I get immediate satisfaction. The money paid could even be less than the alcohol costs. STDs? Pretty prevalent in college. The girls at Cornell are too fickle, besides. Here's a good rule for getting ass in Cornell: conform. That's all you have to do.

So I'm a lazy son of a bitch. I see prostitution as a mere exchange of goods and services for money. I get serviced for money. For a hassle-free temporary deal, with none of the "I thought you were going to call me?" bullshit. In Cornell, I have not solicited any hookers. In fact, I did not have sex in Cornell. You want to know why? Because, IMHO, some of the chicks there are dirtier than the prostitutes I've hired. And besides, you have to give them copious amounts of alcohol before they do anything, and by then they are so drunk the sex is not enjoyable.

So here's my $0.02. I have neither the time or energy right now to engage in a serious relationship. So I take the alternative. Yes, I'm horny. Aren't we all? I don't feel like spending the effort in Cornell to woo the fickle bitches there, and I don't know any available female friends in Shanghai, so I take the easy way out. I get what I want, no strings attached. It's quick and easy, no effort on my side. See it as a harmless recreational drug, if you will. Pay, enjoy, leave. As easy as 1-2-3.

Some people might view me differently if they found out about this. Don't. I'm still the same person they've always known. Parents who views their children's night-time dalliances with apathy should not be outraged by this comparable activity, which, in some ways, contains about as much love as those relationships. How is it better to have an alcohol-induced one night stand than to pay the money to the woman instead of the bartender and get it right away? Morally, it is no better.

So I thought about putting this in the daylog. I decided it might not be excellent writing, so I wouldn't node it, but I came upon this write-up and it seems like fate. And it could be good writing, just not artsy. Here's what just happened to me.

I was in a sort of similar situation to DMan, though actually quite different. I did not just break up with a girl. Actually, I haven't been with a girl for a while (read: a year). The problem is me being really fickle with girls and also not staying in one place for more than 3 months, usually a couple weeks. So I have reached that point where you really wouldn't mind waking up next to a beautiful girl.

I, like DMan, am in China. I had been here for a month and a half, I am going to stay for 4 and a half more months. I am living in a small town outside of Nanjing, Bengbu, nothing here really, and especially no foreigners. There are two other foreign teachers, but they are both way too old for me, and one is a guy. I could obviously try my luck with a Chinese girl, but they can't speak English and they all seem to unconditionally love white boys. I guess I somehow find that unattractive.

Now this week the other English teacher (two of us are like teaching partners, the other guy is on his own) got really sick. She couldn't teach. I had to take her classes. This meant I was teaching like 35 classes a week and getting up at 7 am as opposed to 11 am. I did it without complaint.

My boss had earlier made plans with us to go out to dinner today, and a couple days later he insinuated (read: said) he wanted to take me out to a karaoke bar to get a call girl. I said I didn't want a call girl. Now I was in a position. My boss owes me, and he wants to pay me back with a call girl. Would I do it?

I gave it real thought. I have always thought that I shouldn't make decisions based on society. I should not think that 'this is wrong' without first thinking through it, seeing for myself if I really felt it was wrong. I thought about prostitution.

There were feminist arguments for and against it. The patriarchy selling woman's bodies versus women's right to do what they want with their own bodies. I realized that from a women's rights perspective I was at a standstill. I did not approve of pimps, but I did not disaprrove of hookers.

Now I thought what about uncommitted sex? Is that ok? Well, yes, I've always thought that if both parties know its uncommitted and want to, then there's no problem. I don't see sex as something inherently sacred. Love is emotional, sex is physical. We're all just mammals, after all, and what's wrong with screwing who you want when you want, if there are no psychological drawbacks?

So here comes the rub, I've always said to myself 'you should never pay for sex or water'. It just sounds nice. If you're paying for one of those things, you're doing something wrong. It doesn't really work, I buy bottled water sometimes, but I don't really have to, it's just out of convenience. More importantly though, my boss was paying for the call girl. Ok, so this is kind of creepy in and of itself, but I know him pretty well, he had no real intentions besides trying to get me laid as a thank you.

I thought about it for a while. Like a week. There were times where I was down, but in the end, I realized, I did not want to have sex with business. I did not want to have sex with someone I did not know for sure wanted to have sex with me. I did not want to have sex with a prostitute.

So the dinner rolls along. Before the dinner I pull my boss's assistant aside and explain to him I wasn't going to do anything with a call girl. He actually insults me. He laughs about how I probably couldn't really get it up anyways, or something, his english is bad. I think he was insinuating I am too young. Regardless, I thought to myself, it doesn't matter if I insult them all. I'm not going to do it.

We eat our meal. The Boss and assistant get kinda drunk. I'm tipsy. My boss calls a hooker. She comes to eat with us, the assistant continually makes me blush by trying to get me to flirt with her, I'm obviously not interested. Humorously enough, while she's eating dinner with us, the Boss (who the hooker's actually for) calls his girlfriend to say he can't come over tonight. Even funnier, he doesn't call his wife.

Now after the meal, I say I'm tired (I've been teaching since 7 this morning) and that I should probably head out. Then my partner-teacher (Shelly) comes back and they ask her if she'll go to the karaoke bar with them. She agrees, and of course, I have to as well.

We get there and it is obviously a whorehouse. I've never been in a whorehouse, but it is as tacky and obvious as my imagination could've thought. They put on karaoke and yes, they order girls. They ask if the one they pick is ok for me, saying I can change her if I want. I say that I don't want a hooker. No one in this country seems to understand 'don't want'.

So I withstood 2 hours of karaoke brooding and blushing in my awkward silence. I went to the bar (don't misunderstand me, in a Chinese karaoke bar every group has their own private rooms) on the condition that I wouldn't sing or dance. I just wasn't in the mood. I was tired, grumpy, and well, I can't sing because of smoking and can't dance because of nature (I'm that guy that claps on 1 and 3, I wish I wasn't, but I always am). I spent two hours explaining to them that no, I wasn't going to sing, no, I didn't want to dance with the hooker, no, I didn't want to go talk to the hooker in the corner, no, really, I'm really not going to. I actually had to fight them off. They tried a couple times to physically make me get up and dance with the whore in the corner. Straight up, like I had to beat them away. I think at one point they were offering money to go with the hooker. Utterly ridiculous. My partner just sat and laughed.

I actually asked her to leave with me. See the thing about it is I couldn't leave on my own, really. My boss would lose face. I would be obviously mad, that wouldn't work. If me and Shelly, my teaching partner, left together, then no one would lose face, we would be two tired foreigners, two tired english teachers going home. But she said no, she thought it was too funny.

He did lose some face in the end, but there was no avoiding that. I didn't have sex with a prostitute, and there was no avoiding that either. Altogether an incredibly strange experience.