A girl once asked me if I thought she was a whore. I asked her if she ever fucked without the pretense of love. She answered that she had. I answered that she was. We all are who engage in such activities. More to the point– we’re all prostitutes.
Georges Bataille defined prostitutes, those who accept money in exchange for sex, as low prostitutes (Erotism– pgs 134-137). The quote is not exact, and neither is the sentiment. Puritanism defines prostitution as one (typically a women) who accepts money in exchange for sexual acts. Not only is is defined in the murk of ambiguity, but so is sex, by former President Clinton, and accordingly, in the realm of our lingering imagination. No one quite defines sex in acceptable terms, but most people accept prostitution as a definitive proposition.
Money has a fatigue that lends itself to the course of popular opinion. If money is in great supply, it is good. If money is in short supply, it is bad. What differentiates the exchange of currency for sexual satisfaction from the exchange of goods for similar satisfaction? On the surface, goods are the bartered entities of determined currency, and there exists no separation of money for sex from, say, dinner for sex. Diamonds for sex, the cost of marriage for sex, a house for sex, an exchange of names for sex . . . What separates the common prostitute from the person hungry for material gain?
Love, as an abstract, has been the cause of poems, songs, science, evolution and ultimately, the manifestation of sex. No one progresses without sex. Even the celibate priest comes into his own through abstaining from sex. The act of fornication defines all. There is no escape. One is heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, transsexual, asexual, or otherwise. Even my stated hierarchy denotes a pretense of preference. Procreation is a result of sex, as is miscarriage. Death does not occur without the instigation of sex.
The span of the average worker encompasses the trading of mind, body and soul for the exchange of currency necessary for the most primitive form of survival in modern culture. The common trading of the whole does not segregate the spiritual faction from the corporeal entity. The declaration of the prostitute is therefore an existential denial of responsibility for the delegating whole.
An animalistic commonality exists for those of us who attempt to deny such a kinship. Standing too near the taboo does not dissolve us from logical pretenses. Embracing the facts only acknowledges the necessity. Holiness is not defined by embracing the separation of the spiritual need from the physical desire, and prostitution is not defined by immediate incorporation. Starving the body in hopes of feeding the spirit orphans the quantifiable whole. Feeding the body in spiritual conquest parents the justifiable need.
Only in the apprehension of means are actions justified. The solitary execution of action is empty and separated from meaning. Music is deliverance of the dynamic. Silence is the grasp of the static. As Goethe wrote, “Architecture is the frozen music; music is the flowing architecture.”
© n10IX Vagabond Lit
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