In just under two weeks, voters will be presented with an election that will change the course of recent history: after forty years of mostly Republican rule, they will be able to choose to change San Francisco, the city where the Summer of Free Love was born, into the City of Reasonably-Priced Love. That’s inflation for you.
Part of me wants to decry prostitution as dead tech, much like other ancient inventions meant to titilate us, because I personally have never engaged the services of a prostitute. Don’t get me wrong; the thought’s crossed my mind, but I find that I’ve never been so horny and / or drunk that I didn’t realize that I was no more than one computer and about 20 megabytes of shifted video packets away from being down one kleenex and up one overwhelming sense of relief that I didn’t piss away 200 clams and an hour scrubbing my junk with Dran-O Max.
Frankly, I can’t imagine ever approaching a hooker, because I’m a firm believer in value for money. And even if I were so Goddamned worked up that I could somehow consider a trip to an ATM and a financial negotiation as erotic foreplay, I’d resist the urge just based on the nature of the contract. After all, a deal with a hooker is a Pay To Play deal if you get my drift, and a hundred bucks a minute is only good value for your money if you’re more averse to apologizing than the Fonz.
But at the same time, I recognize that there’s a legitimate market need for hookers, even if I’m not the target market. My tastes in the sack are pretty much plain vanilla; thanks to an adolescence spent in a marching band uniform with a head full of comic books, I’m still just happy if I can convince a girl to touch it, and that’s still readily available within the standard, socially- accepted barter system of a couple of dinners and a movie ticket. So I don’t personally need hookers because my sexual fantasy’s the same as it was when I was in seventh grade: to get laid.
I do recognize that, even though my personal tastes are easy to satiate, there are people out there with more specific needs and desires that could best be met by a paid professional. Even though I’m personally happily monogamous, I understand that everyone’s got their personal kinks, and God knows that I’m not naive enough to not understand that some of them are probably a bitch to fit into wedding vows: “I promise to love our marital furred handcuffs, and to honor your needs when I come home from work to find you under the glass coffee table with a diaper and a roll of saran wrap, and to obey your commands even though even a fool would understand that it would take a speculum and a sty’s worth of pig grease to get the taser’s electrodes anywhere near your filthy prostate…”
(Note: Yes, I realize that by writing the above descriptions that I have consigned this site to visits from perverts with their pants down making the darkest, most vile kinds of Google keyword searches, but fuck you: I need the Web traffic. So in that spirit: CLEVELAND STEAMER. DIRTY SANCHEZ. DONKEY PUNCH. CARROTTOP IN ASSLESS CHAPS BEING MACED INTO SOBBING INCOHERENCE. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)
And when it comes to the other side, look: I would personally never sell my body because… well, have you seen me? I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Giving my body away was an uphill battle for a long time. But if getting the cops off hookers’ backs means that they can organize and get out from under some filthy pimp? I’m all for it. Mostly because hip-hop would finally die, because nobody wants to buy a record about how It’s Hard Out Here For A McDonald’s French Fry Dunker.
Besides, these girls clearly fulfill a social and societal need. Let’s face reality: this is the twenty-first century, and we should be mature and cosmopolitan enough to understand that there are people out there with dark, kinky urges that need filling, even though we may be nauseated and sickened by them. Legalized prostitution gives them an outlet for that need. And if we stick with our failed, puritan policies on prostitution, we run the risk of consigning these poor souls to the dark fate of skulking around in fringe Internet chat rooms, airport men’s room stalls, or the United States Senate.
[tags]legalized prostitution, San Francisco, Proposition K, kinky sex, dark humor, satire[/tags]
