I’ve been thinking about Jamie’s essay Peep Show, and for some reason I keep coming back to the question of whether there could have been a real, if not necessarily deep, connection between Jamie and "Sassafras," his favorite dancer at the Lusty Lady. I think the answer is yes, it’s possible that the affection wasn’t just coming from him, and that the humming she did for him (humming is meant literally here; read the post) was something special she did for him, and it was done as a genuine expression, at the very least, of compassion or kindness or camaraderie.
I don’t know if this is a particularly daring thing to say, but I’ve had the argument, many times with many different people, about whether there can exist between a sex worker and her* client any kind of genuine affection, and I’ve always insisted that there can be. That’s not to say that the lust is reciprocated (though on occasion I imagine it is), or that the affection that the ladies have is anywhere near as deep or consuming as that experienced by their devoted clients. My point is simply that, because what’s happening is at its most elemental level an economic transaction, it doesn’t mean it’s only an economic transaction.
To offer an imperfect analogy, the waitress at the Waffle House is flirty or friendly with her patrons primarily because it’s her job to be like that, and she’ll get better tips if she’s liked, but secondarily because she derives satisfaction from friendly/flirty interaction with other people in the world. We’re social beings, and we like to be liked and to like in return. I don’t fool myself into thinking that what’s going on at a peep show, or in a strip club, is as uncomplicated as what’s happening at the Waffle House, or that the feelings of the sex workers for their clients don’t include, at various times, hatred, contempt, disgust, boredom, etc. But it must be true that some of the time, some of the women have warm feelings for their client. Wouldn’t it be strange if it were otherwise?
I don’t know why the point is so important to me, but maybe it’s just because I don’t like the way that a good political insight can be distorted, and therefore sabotage itself, if it’s taken beyond the realm of its applicability. To say that peep shows, for instance, involve exploitation, is inarguably true. That’s a systemic, political point, and a good one, but it’s not an explanation of human psychology. To stop any discussion of the interraction between peep show patron and worker right there (men who go to peep shows are bad; women who strip are exploited; QED) is to avoid probing, as it were, the moral/psychological questions that such interractions raise.
I also suspect that my disproportionately intense feelings on the subject point to something unresolved going on in my head (or in my loins). It’s nothing so direct as in Jamie’s case. He goes to peep shows (or went to peep shows), and so it’s important to him, for obvious reasons, to understand why that is, and to look for some affirmation of, or absolution for, his experience and his objectifying of women. As he writes:
It allows me to feel that, as improbable as this may sound, once in the bluest of blue moons a dancer may actually, conceivably enjoy our wordless interaction. Part of me wants to believe that if I can make even the tiniest connection with a woman in this most wretchedly sexist and commodified environment, I can somehow be forgiven for my eternal objectifying and wanton lust.
But I’m not a regular visitor to peep shows, or strip clubs, or prostitutes. My problem, I think, has less to do with shame about my sexual desire and the things I’ve done or places to which I’ve gone to gratify it than it does with my inability to embrace or experience that desire in its rawest form.
That inability, of course, probably has everything to do with the feeling that it’s wrong to desire women in such an animal, objectifying way, but I experience the shame less as a concrete psychological fact—a burden I need to carry around as a result of the dirty, naughty things I’ve done—than as an elusive but still impenetrable barrier to the connection I’d like to have to my desire.** I don’t need to expiate my sins of lust, I think, so much as I need to liberate myself to lust purely in the first place (and then, maybe, I can worry about expiation). So maybe I’m having the argument about sex workers and their clients, to get back to the main point, because I’m trying to convince myself that it’s okay to desire women in a purely sexual way because they wouldn’t hate me for doing so.
I don’t entirely know if that makes sense, but it’s a start, and this is a blog, so that’s okay.
* Yes, I know that there are male sex workers as well, and if any of you are out there you should feel free to enter the conversation, and to be offended that by writing about sex workers as if they’re naturally women I’m failing to dignify your personhood, but for now it’s easier for me to write as if sex workers are women and their clients are men.
** In case you were wondering, I actually have a very distinct visual image of this troubled relationship between me and my desire. My desire is a like a ball of electricity hovering somewhere in the core of me, and what I’m trying, but failing to do, is tap into that well of vitality, and create a network of conduits of sexual lightning that course out from the ball of desire to all the points of my body. I have a feeling that that image (or metaphor, or whatever it is) bears a similarity to the Indian idea of chakras, but I’m sure I got it from all the fantasy novels I’ve read in which the hero has some magical potential but is unable, until some traumatic, catalytic event, to tap into it. The fantasy novels, however, may have gotten it from the Indians.
