Biblical Sense

When I was in graduate school a girlfriend of mine convinced me to audition with her for a topless dancing job.  Just come and watch, she urged.  It was somewhere on 42nd Street; some nights I imagine it was the very stage where I have played bass guitar so many times.  I was maybe 22 and she was even younger-- still had baby fat, she did… but she was sophisticated and read Proust and Kafka, like I did, and she was very sure of herself.  Besides-- I was taking home $92 a week working 40 hours… and she assured me I could make that in one night.  No one would ever recognize me; it was not the kind of place our Dads-- Madison Ave. businessmen-- would prowl.  We went down on a sunny Tuesday afternoon-- but there was like a night curtain in the bar, the way Atlantic City casinos keep you time-blind.  We both liked to dance-- the music was decent… we were bold and bohemian and our boyfriends were bandmates; it seemed safe, in a way… like a sister-thing.  She was less shy than I was; afterward, while the manager was laying out the rules, I covered myself and she didn't.  But it wasn't about the dancing-- it was about getting guys to buy you an overpriced drink, which would actually be ginger ale or seven-up or water… and there was just something so sleazy about the cheap little scam of it… I turned it down.  She, on the other hand, took the gig.  Years later-- maybe 25 years later-- my guitar player went to a strip club in San Francisco, and there she was-- a little matronly but still working it.  No judgment-- I admire her, in a way, and if she writes the novel we both talked about when we were young-- well, hers will undoubtedly sell better than mine.  She friended me recently on Facebook.

On my first trip to Amsterdam, I went with the boys to the Red Light district.  I was fascinated: the working girls were in these little shadow box environments-- they reminded me of those doll-suitcases they made in the 1950's… where you'd open a mini-trunk and there would be this unclothed doll with her wardrobe and little accessories in a compact cardboard closet.  I selected an angelic looking blonde in aqua lace for them-- but the guys went for the slutty ones in red and orange.  I waited in a coffeehouse-- envying the girls, in a way.  No one looked worried or sad or lonely.  It was like a tiny stage-- and they were both the play and the actor.

Backtrack to my junior year in college.  I lived off-campus and our little flat was famous for welcoming transient rock musicians, writers, travelers… one of our regular guests was a prostitute from Manhattan who was hands-down the most fascinating woman I'd met up to that point-- built like a model, the face of a madonna--with style and taste, a razor sharp tongue and an exotic vocabulary of 4-letter euphemisms.  She smoked like a chimney, borrowed money from everyone--  perched herself on our living room sofa for days at a time, generally on an amphetamine-fueled binge-- preferred the company of my gay roommates.  One night a drunk psychotic ex-boyfriend threatened me with a gun, and she stood up and decked him.  It was incredible.  Then she called campus police.  Fearless.  Dignified.  Plus she had carte blanche at Max's and treated me to a few nights at the Chelsea when it was memorable.

I noticed last week's New York Magazine chose the subject of prostitution for their cover article.  Not sex trafficking, but the voluntary kind.  Seems kind of tired and overdone-- especially with lines of sexuality culturally blurring and the constant parade in New York City of old men with fat wallets and their much-younger well-heeled dates.  It's a bit of a yawn, the whole issue.  I was surprised recently to hear a friend of mine acting horrified that someone at our table was on his way to a late-night massage in what is effectively a brothel… I mean-- how many dates, dinners, boring conversations has he paid for-- anticipating… okay, so romanticism is not dead.

But really, what is unromantic about paying for sex?  It doesn't seem bad to me.  In a culture where every other storefront is a spa or hair salon or a specialty food merchant --a photography studio or gym or cosmetic boutique--- acupuncture, facials, massage-- colonics and manicures-- it seems a tiny leap to seek some essential physical pleasure or relief.. or variety.

When my son was a baby-- I struggled and occasionally took a few odd jobs-- painting or learning how to prep and tile bathrooms… the money was decent and I kept nursery school hours.  One day my 'boss' asked me to paint his dick.  I laughed-- but then I realized he was serious.  So I did it.  He gave me a $50 and I felt some kind of power.  Okay… it progressed.. no details… but I felt no shame and no  guilt.  I bought things for my son.  Clothes.  Nikes.  The guy was obsessed with me and brought me breakfast and overpaid me for my work.  It was a little fun-- we listened to music.  He had a wife.  I felt 'professional'.  Then after a while it began to feel a little desperate and needy and I was turned off.  Years later he tried to 'hire' me-- I thought about it--  but it turned me off.

Now I'm old.  The idea that someone would pay me for sex is absurd.  But the idea that anyone is paid for sex seems not only reasonable but obvious.  Plenty of women get the on-the-job harassment anyway-- why not put it on the table and get your end-of-year bonus in advance?

It's Easter.  There's a well-believed myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.  I think the Bible nowhere states this; she was a sort of fallen woman, or maybe suffered from nerves or mental illness.  The image of a woman washing Christ's feet is compelling and pious and loving.  Maybe erotic in a chaste way.  Whatever-- in Saramago's version of the Gospel, they slept together.  Sometimes we love someone and the only gift we can really give is ourselves.  Sometimes they want this.  Sometimes they want to pay for it-- guilt, or gratuity.  The act of love is sometimes just sex… maybe the next best thing-- why not make it available… is it not a need?  Are these Craigslist posts and desperate online dating shoppers not looking for some kind of pleasure if they can't find true love and many of us never have this?  We have arrangements-- marriages, affairs, relationships.. a consensual contract and exchange of money seems to distribute the power equally.  And as any divorced man will testify, at least you get what you pay for… in some version… as opposed to giving away what you bought and didn't have.

Anyway, less judgment, more acceptance-- we're human; the lesson of Jesus is forgiveness and mercy.  We do what we do to survive and we are all accustomed to paying for food and shelter… if we could just as easily order take-out physical intimacy, there might be a lot less aggression and anger.  I'm sure Jesus wouldn't mind that.  And I'm not looking forward to debate or discussion-- just airing a bit of slightly dirty intimate laundry...

Women and Children Last

Bianca has mold, the Helmsley has bedbugs, and I’ve got Bear Stearns in the house. Like green slime, these investment banking types have seeped through walls and usurped larger and larger apartments in my building. Surreptitiously, like a growth—they wheeled and dealed, wined and dined the gullible and naïve among us, flipped mortgages until—lo and behold, hocus-pocus three-card Monty—they have a majority, have voted themselves via secret blackberry-driven bloc onto the pivotal seats of the board of this old venerable co-op and now sit there like shiny new Porsches in a used-car lot.

And they are hungry, these boys. They are hungry beyond what is humanly possible to consume in a lifetime. It is hard to imagine what happened or didn’t happen during the adolescence of these people…because where most of us move on to a life and some semblance of maturity, they are stuck in that infantile phase where one cups one’s hand over the testpaper and looks over at the desk beside. Just checking! Or those furtive sidelong locker-room glances. The rolled-towel smack to cover it up. Hmmm…

Good thing we had that nasty Eliot Spitzer scandal to distract us from the version of 3-card Monty played by Wall Street, the Fed, Bear Stearns and JP Morgan who appeared like a fairy godfather to wave their wand over the whole matter. While America downloaded the latest Girls Gone Wild video and rated the Emperor girls alongside their NCAA brackets.

But what really happened? That $2 a share price. Well, seemed like a good deal to me. Apparently only for the bottom half of the totem pole, the meat and potatoes of the firm-- those in operations, salaried workers with pensions who are now unemployed and reeling from having their bear-rug pulled from beneath them. The ‘caviar’ of the firm? The players? The ones who cheat the government by claiming an on-paper salary of $200,000 and receive 7 and 8-figure bonuses even when the billions of dollars is loss? They cut a deal with Uncle JP. Not only were they not punished, but to console the poor humiliated criminals…they received huge bonuses and awards of Morgan stock to seal the deal. In other words, they threw their rank and file under the bus so they wouldn’t miss a single 5-star meal. And of course the stock has risen. God and the Feds smile on JP Morgan.

In the good old days of true corporate spirit, everyone shared. Everyone took a pay cut. How about Bloomberg at the helm of our city ship? He takes nothing from the till. One has the feeling that if his companies and holdings were bleeding out, he wouldn’t be pouring Drano into the holes the way these Bear Stearns executives did. Can you imagine their version of the Titanic? Fuck the women and children! Save the traders. A little submarine equipped with wireless service and sushi and vodka would have appeared to take them to safety. Of course… because they would have been the beneficiaries of the insurance policy, would have sold the ship the insurance in the first place—no backs! Etc., etc. They may even have been filmed by TV cameras contributing to the Titanic memorial fund once safely onshore and dry, with sad TV faces.

Well, at the moment these peg-head crooks are at the wheel of my building, my home. They don’t even know the place— they just got here. They don’t have a home, they have ‘homes’. They trade real estate and sometimes roost there long enough to turn a profit. When they are bored on Saturdays they smoke a cigar together and plan how to take over the building. Like a merger. First they will bankrupt the small shareholders. They will vote in expensive unnecessary improvements and services. A gym. Yes, a gym, because many of the older tenants are handicapped, have had a stroke, and can scarcely make it to the elevator. A yoga room! A play room! They will even hire their architect friends and receive commissions! Pocket money! Don't forget expensive faux-furnishings for the lobby. Oh such fun to run up a bill the old homesteaders won’t be able to pay. Compulsory manicures? No, that’s silly. That was from one of the attractive wives who is on the nouveau decorating committee. Can she tell real wood from fake? Of course not, silly! But they can also cause massive service inconveniences and refuse to compensate. They can flood and drill and crack old walls and install air conditioning vents in windows of the poorer apartment-residents, so eventually, if they are not dead of stress, they will give up and sell their shares for $2. Just like the corporate model!

They say the meek shall inherit the earth. Well, these are the nouveau meek. The old guard has been driven to a sorry state by this corporate bedbuggery. And this building is a corporation…it is illegal for the government to interfere with the ‘will’ of the corporation, no matter how the old majority hands have been bilked and tied and our mouths gagged. How come the Feds come running in to bail out the banks and no city agency will witness the criminal and reprehensible behaviour of these insatiably selfish people? We couldn't even get a crooked inspector to do battle with the slime because they had already been paid to not return our calls.

My old building had a lending library in the laundry room. When there was a strike, we all manned the elevators, bagged up the trash. When our finances were low, the richer of us bought paint and painted. We cooked for one another and shared Christmas cheer. The green thumbs planted the garden. We babysat and borrowed and loaned our children.

Good Friday. I stopped by the Morgan Library tonight…thought about old JP and looked at some of the Books of Hours on display. Thought about all the great old masters he could have bought instead of the Bear Stearns pretenders. I also thought about justice. “JP”, I said, to that great portrait—“these people belong in prison, not on your staff! They are Judases and Enrons. You know what they’re up to! Sam Waksal is a schoolboy by comparison.”

On the way home I gave my change to anyone homeless even though I scarcely have money for bread tonight because of the pretentious hideous faux-furniture for the lobby which no one will sit on. And has anyone noticed the price of eggs these days? Forget about gas and oil—it’s Easter.

The lobby as I enter now looks like a once beautiful woman in drag with garish make-up. You want to leave it behind as quickly as possible. But there is a God. I know it. His son was crucified on this day. Unforgivable. He rose and forgave. On the other hand, I am not a god. But the Bear Stearns 'heroes'? On Easter these people will eat Godiva bunnies. They are praying to St. Bart's. I will be looking at my drilled out bathroom—the one my new neighbors-on-the-board apologised about and promised to fix the next day, and now basically tell me to shove it. I have the status of a share of Bear Stearns stock. I remember my old building…in my bathroom… ‘Andy was hear’ on the wall. I miss him. I miss everything great. Everything real. Even Andy-style real. I hope Andy rose, God.

Does anyone remember several months ago there were bedbugs in Spitzer’s father’s building? Was this an omen? A plant? An ironic parallel to the bugs and wiretaps on his son? Come back, Eliot. Next to these people, even you are a saint.