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Former Madam on Escorts:
"Yes, I did become cynical, jaded and confused. On the one hand I could not deny the basic reality of supply and demand. None of these girls was coerced into selling her body for money. Most of them came from middle-class backgrounds, and many had been accepted to universities. But they dropped out as soon as they discovered that they could make $20-30,000 a month as an escort.
Then they got addicted to the money and the lifestyle. And then one day, usually between the ages of 25 and 28, once they’d developed that knowing, experienced look that clients instinctively disliked, they found that themselves in a classic bind: they were addicted to high living but could no longer pay for it; they had no marketable skills; and years of late nights and lazy days had left them with no self-discipline. What to do? The really smart ones pulled themselves together and, with the help of a sympathetic client, started some kind of a business. Others married rich, cynical, older men in a sort of paid-wife arrangement. Those were the most common stories. I did not inquire into the fate of the girls who sort of faded away. I did not want to hear about their loneliness and poverty.
So the value of the escorts declined rapidly as they aged. Meanwhile, the value of the clients increased because they accumulated more money and more power. I could not make my peace with the power imbalance, even though I understood intellectually that the men would always want to pay women for sex, and there would always be women who wanted to be paid for sex.
But as a modern woman brought up to believe in romance, intimacy, equality between the sexes and monogamy, I had a really hard time dealing with the dawning understanding that the very men I’d been taught to value - my peers, as it were – were pretty atavistic types. They seemed to prefer whores in the bedroom and ladies in the salon.
And so, we come to Spitzer’s wife. Apparently, she urged her husband not to resign. I can understand her. They may have stopped having sex years ago, as many high-powered couples do. If so, she knew he had not stopped having sex altogether – just with her. And if so, she stayed with him because she enjoyed being the wife of the attorney general, and then the wife of the governor. She liked the social perks, and the money. And she may have loved him, despite it all. "
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