Tag: prostitution

Book Review: Rose, Rose, I Love You, by Wang Chen-ho

The plot of Rose, Rose, I Love You revolves around the expected descent of American GIs, on furlough from Vietnam, upon the town of Hualien, Taiwan, in the mid-60s. Time to get the female companionship ready! There’s greenbacks to be made!

The book is a 180-page long ethnic joke, in which the Taiwanese people are caricatured, as they frequently are, as charmingly, innocently vulgar. Many of the characters inhabit the underworld, and as they improvise at life, they are shown to be faithfully coping with Taiwan’s much imposed-upon history, speaking a mongrelized pastiche of Taiwanese, Hakka, Mandarin, indigenous languages, Japanese, and now, out of the latest necessity, English. People in on the joke, such as the author, Wang Chen-ho, and his Taiwanese readers, will be as amused as people often are to look into a mirror – perhaps a funhouse mirror – but the book’s Taiwaneseness doesn’t translate very well and in any case would probably get old for uninitiated readers outside the Formosan funhouse.

If there is anything profound about this book, then it would be its focus on what I consider a characteristic of Chinese society, namely, the pretentiousness of the leaders vis a vis the led. If an army of American johns is coming, then it should stand to reason that Taiwanese bed-girls would be the ones best equipped to deal with it. It’s not like they wouldn’t know how. But no. In Rose, Rose, I Love You, it is a cohort of mostly male city councilmen, pimps, doctors, lawyers, and pastors who step forward to manage the shit out of the situation, until it is as expensive, complicated, ceremonial, formal, and grandiose as anything this class puts its hand to. The chief busybody is a despotic high school English teacher who assumes the role of minister of orgies despite being a virgin. Talk about weltfremder herrschaftsanspruch!

Jetting, A Tale of the Upper West side, Part IV (Conclusion)

We arranged for her to come over at one in the afternoon. I spent most of Saturday morning cleaning, and then I ate a light lunch. Trying not to plan seduction scenarios or to think of anything at all besides getting my hundred dollars back – about the only thing I could really count on – I found an Orioles-Yankees game on the cable and watched and waited.

At one forty the doorbell rang and I buzzed her up. She was wearing jeans and a low-neck, black shirt, a rust-colored leather jacket, and her Greek fisherman’s cap. The two latter articles she removed and placed on a chair, and she also took off her boots, in gracious conformity to my no-shoes policy. She was sweetly-smiling and a little nervous.

I made a bit of conversation from what I’d been watching on TV, saying that the Orioles were almost a religious thing for me. She said she felt the same way about the Cardinals, and there it rested.

For our date, I’d selected the French diving movie The Big Blue. I switched off the baseball game and loaded the tape into the VCR. I asked if I could sit next to her on the couch, and she was OK with it. There was no other place for me to sit anyway. The bowl of popcorn I’d set out remained untouched.

As the movie progressed, I asked if she liked it a couple of times, and she said she did. She seemed caught up in the story and in the big blue cinematic visuals, even on my little TV.

About halfway through, I put my arms around her and kissed her on the cheek, marveling at how smooth, young, and firm it was; I bit it with my lips. She was amenable but passive. When I turned her head toward me with my hand, to kiss her lips, she complied and kissed back until I was finished, and then she went back to watching the movie. Three or four such closings and partings took place.

Then I did something I’d never done before and have never done since, with anyone: I rested my head on her chest. I knew nothing (and still know nothing) about breasts or bras, but whatever she came with, it was enough to support the weight of my noggin for the rest of the picture. I curled my legs on the sofa and nestled into her like a pillow. As comfortable as I was, I wanted to switch places on the couch; being left-handed, I would have felt better postured with my left ear to her heart. But I didn’t want to break whatever spell had been cast, by voicing such a request. Besides, she had yet to accede to anything I’d explicitly asked, for the whole of the afternoon, and I couldn’t risk it.

At the conclusion of the video, with neither one of us, perhaps, feeling that we’d gotten our money’s worth, I set up my old turntable and played “Ask Me Now,” the second to last track on the album Solo Monk. I wanted to share something very personal and intense with her. All I could do, though, was to say something cerebral like “This song is the musical equivalent of a Vincent van Gogh painting.” She said she felt the same way about John Coltrane, and so we had a brief discussion about the relative virtues of the piano versus the saxophone.

In connection with her interest in music (just not my music), she mentioned that she wanted to work in a recording studio on the side. I seized the opportunity to pursue one last transaction, telling her that my friend Bob ran a recording studio and giving her his phone number. “And now that I’ve helped your career,” I said in ironic seriousness, “you have to let me lie on top of you for one minute.”

She did. We kissed a bit more.

Of course, I asked her to spend the night, promising that “nothing would happen” except more cuddling, but she said no. Her parents were coming the following morning, in advance of her upcoming graduation.

Speaking of which, I congratulated her, and then she left.

Returning to the living room, to unplug and store the turntable, I noticed the hundred dollar bill on the coffee table, where Lucy must have placed it when I wasn’t looking. I left it there, thinking that I would re-deposit it in the bank on Monday; but as it turned out, I forgot about it, and soon it got mixed in with some junk mail and other papers on the table. A couple of weeks later, I realized that I’d thrown it away.

Jetting, A Tale of the Upper West Side, Part III

Saturday at noon, Lucy was late, and I waited in the unsympathetic company of Lajos Kossuth for her to show up. The usual resentment began to build up in my oft-stood-up heart; but I was pleased to note another advantage of jetting: It mitigated the risk of being bailed on, for even the most unreliable date had a financial incentive to show up. Sure enough, I soon espied Lucy crossing Riverside and waving at me.

She was not wearing her purple tights (I’d have to take that up with Ephraim) but had pulled on some kind of shiny black trousers. Black also was her moleskin jacket, but at least it wasn’t leather. She sported a Greek fisherman’s cap (oh God, isn’t that what Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Woman?), and her hair was curlier than I remembered from the party. She wasn’t particularly ecstatic to see me, but her disposition was sunny, and she struck me as a friendly “girl next door” in a family-channel TV movie. Her slight nervousness was charming in flat-affect Manhattan, and it peaked when, soon after arriving, she asked for her hundred dollars.

Having paid her, I conducted her to a bench overlooking the Hudson, because, after all the negotiation and research I had put into our date, I really wanted to talk to her. She was a Columbia undergraduate (we grad students called them “undies”), now a senior, majoring in psychology. She hailed from St. Louis and returned home each summer to work at her dad’s veterinary practice. She was going to head home for good in a few weeks, after graduation, and resume her customary off-season employment, before beginning a M.A./Ph.D. program in psych right there at Wash U. She would stay at her parents’ place and commute to school.

In my mind, I began to spin a narrative of how she’d bitten off more than she could chew in New York and now wished to retreat to a simpler place, but I was probably just projecting my own experience onto her. In fact, she proved rather unresponsive to my follow-up questions, as I fished for evidence of dissatisfaction – with New York, with men who weren’t me – which was how I sought to identify promising women in those days. Far from evincing any intriguing discontent, she betrayed a singular lack of profundity: It wasn’t that she avoided my attempts to steer the conversation into deeper water; she just wasn’t keen to go there – not with me, anyway, not for that first few minutes, as we sat watching the River.

Thinking that I could enliven our chat by asking “All right, so who the hell is Ephraim?” I was told only the basic facts about him, too. Ephraim had been her head resident during her freshman year, and they had remained friends ever since. He’d escorted her to a few parties over the years, and the role of jetting pimp was easy enough for him to fill, when the fashion caught on. I said something about how quickly she’d sent him over to me at the party and asked whether she always moved that fast, but the subject felt awkward, and she shied away from it.

I would have liked to go walking in the downtown direction through Riverside Park, but we began to notice crowds of people tromping north, and soon a parade began to move up Riverside Drive. Apparently, Grant’s Tomb was reopening after a months-long remodeling, and we had stumbled into the rededication ceremony. Lucy’s interest kindled, and I discovered that she was fond of history, even Civil War history. That sort of enthusiasm counted for a bit, I reckoned, even if it wasn’t quite as attractive to me as existential angst. We enjoyed the parade, and I suppose the experience was romantic, despite the lack of intimate conversation. The high point came when a group of reenactors marched by in black hats and Lucy and I simultaneously identified them as the Iron Brigade. Maybe another history geek would be the perfect girl for me, I thought.

After the parade, I suggested we go someplace for lunch, but she said she’d already eaten and had to study for an astronomy final. Having learned to keep expectations low, in dating and in everything else, I nodded the usual “I see.” I held out no hope for a return engagement, even, for our date, though not unpleasant, didn’t seem exciting enough to warrant one. I wished her luck on her test and was prepared to head off to lunch alone, when she suddenly grew coquettish and asked if I was busy the next Saturday. When I responded with a “What did you have in mind?” she cocked an eyebrow and said in a stage whisper, “Would a hundred bucks get me into your apartment?”

To be continued…

Jetting, A Tale of the Upper West Side, Part II

I spent the intervening week trying to learn what jetting was. I only owned a Macintosh SE back then, and so I had to go to the Columbia campus to access the Internet on a school computer. Expecting my Yahoo searches to drag up a lot of sleaze, because prostitution, or at least the trappings of prostitution, seemed to be involved, I was surprised to see smiling, well-groomed, and apparently law-abiding faces on photos among the “jetting” search results. As I came to understand it, “jetting” was an ironic takeoff on “jet set,” a term from the seventies that had denoted the young nouveau riche, also known as “go-getters,” who were often pictured in magazines getting into their private jets or reclining on the decks of their yachts, with gorgeous smiles on their faces. The fact that the members of the jet set were usually shown cavorting in unmarried pairs introduced a sexual element to their joie de lucre, suggesting a unification of romance and materialism. The nineties term “jetting” was a comment on this mixing of love and money, presumably a mockery of it. It followed the American pattern of satire in that it advocated indulgence in something – the commodification of companionship, in this case – as a means of ridiculing it. (Think “Stupid Pet Tricks” on the David Letterman show.)

As I dug deeper, I discovered more about the New York jetting scene which, of course, had surrounded me all along without my being aware of it. The satirical meaning of jetting, I gathered, had over time given way to a social one: It was now used to formalize the dating process, to give it a little structure. Dating in New York had always been a high-stakes game, with success or failure, pleasure or pain, influenced by dozens of variables related to differences in personality and seriousness on the part of its players. Jealous of his (or her) time, the New Yorker worked as quickly as possible to gauge his compatibility with his opposite, determine the type of relationship that was most feasible, and decide if it was worth pursuing. It had always been very businesslike, in other words, and sentiment, as our New Yorker would say, only fucked things up. Live adult chat, speed dating, and, eventually, online dating were then becoming fashionable, each tending to heighten the sense that the individual lonely-heart was but one item on an ever-refreshing menu, like a roasted chicken going around on a rotisserie.

Jetting imposed order on this free-for-all. It established the principle of “pay-to-play,” disqualifying the unserious; and it added a layer of emotional protection, taking love out of the equation, leaving things “just business.” Moreover, it helped daters to rediscover their own value. By saying, “If you want to go out with me, you will have to put up some money,” the jetter refused to be cheapened. This last advantage struck me as especially poignant, for whereas prostitution commonly implied degradation, the simulated prostitution of jetting was actually designed to restore dignity.

Having grasped the generalities via my Internet research, I still needed to know how jetting worked in practice. I queried a few of my New York friends, and they informed me that the one hundred dollar price for a date was de rigueur. However, I would probably not have to forfeit the money permanently. Unless I proved to be an utter lout, my date, Lucy, could be expected to propose that she, in turn, engage my services on a subsequent occasion for the same one hundred dollars, effectively returning her original fee. This custom, I noted, relieved jetting of the opprobrium of sexism, because men and women ended up employing each other. It also guaranteed a second date, giving the parties more time to become acquainted or at least to feel less like the aforesaid rotisserie chicken.

On Friday, I withdrew a one hundred dollar bill from my account at the old Republic National Bank on 96th Street. On Saturday, before noon, I headed to Riverside Park.

To be continued…

Jetting, A Tale of the Upper West Side, Part I

I lived in New York for three years in the mid-90s and sucked at it. I just had no idea what the rules were.

One Saturday night, my friend Lori invited me to a party on West End Avenue and then blew me off to hang out with her ex-boyfriend down in the Village. Having no other plans, I decided to go to the party without her, even though I was unknown to the hosts.

Upon arrival, I noticed that in lieu of the usual vintage punk, some kind of spa music was playing on the stereo, which filled me with the hope that I would be able to converse with someone without shouting. Immediately, I focused on a girl with auburn hair and purple tights, who stood out from the other guests, all dressed in the obligatory black leather. I caught her looking at me too and thought I detected a familiar, searching vulnerability in her eyes. In spite of how often my instincts had led me astray in the big city, I surrendered to them one more time: Across the room I went.

“Hi, what’s your name?” I introduced myself. (New Yorkers are supposed to like directness, aren’t they?)

She said her name was Lucy, conjuring in my mind a replay of Charlie Brown charging upon the football. I began calculating the advisability of sharing this thought as an icebreaker, but as I did so, I broke off eye contact, which, at this early stage of the conversation, was a fatal mistake. Lucy promptly cast her own attention elsewhere and before five seconds had elapsed mumbled a “Glad to have met you” and retreated in the direction of the kitchen, where she commenced an enthusiastic dialogue with a tall young man wearing sunglasses.

I looked out the window for a minute or so, my no-big-deal smile becoming wooden until it hurt, and then I sat down on the sofa. Only a fresh start in conversation could have saved my spirits, but I was now too gun-shy to initiate one, and nobody came to rescue me. Soon I’d become the proverbial turd in a punchbowl.

I craved escape. I hadn’t lasted ten minutes, a new record.

Just as I was rising to leave, the sunglass guy came over and bade me to sit back down. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. Probably, he was Lucy’s boyfriend, come to warn me away from his girl. I considered dashing for the door but didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself. If he was going to chew me out, at least he would be discreet.

“I’m Ephraim,” he said, with his hand on my shoulder.

“Ah, Ephraim,” I answered, girding myself with sarcasm. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Don’t tell me: You’re Lucy’s boyfriend.”

Ephraim grinned. “Not really. I’m just looking out for her.” He was channeling every baddie from the movies.

“Well, you’re doing a fine job. One can’t be too careful these days. Lot of creeps around here.”

He grinned again. “But you like her, though, don’t you?”

I threw up my hands. “Yep, you got me, Ephraim. Guilty as charged.”

What’s it going to be, Ephraim? I thought. Just go ahead and say your piece, and then I can get out of here.

He kept toying with me, though. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to play this game.

“Don’t be shy,” Ephraim drawled. “If you want something, all you need to do is ask.” He glanced left and right, before fixing his eyes on Lucy, still standing in the kitchen doorway. She smiled back, as if in anticipation.

“In fact,” said Ephraim, intoning his voice upward, “For a hundred dollars, you can do whatever you want to her.”

“What!” I blurted. I exhaled in despair, with my hand to my forehead. A confused tornado of emotions and instincts churned inside me. Desire was a part of it. “Do whatever you want to her” was an arousing set of words; but it was a twisted set of words, enmeshing my desire in wretchedness. One of the worst things about living in New York, I later realized, was just this tendency for the simplest, most natural behavior to be viewed with suspicion, in the most uncharitable light. For instance, when leaving the city by rental car the previous summer, I’d spotted my classmate crossing the street and beeped my horn in greeting. She pretended she didn’t hear me. I beeped again. She ignored me. I beeped again. She ignored me again, by which time I felt like a dirty old man, harassing a pretty co-ed. Here at the party on West End, all I’d done was to say hi to a girl in purple tights, and next thing I know, I’m wenching. I hated the degradation, especially considering how pathetic I felt to begin with.

Now feeling more indignant than guilty, I would have been justified to leave in a huff, yet something changed in Ephraim’s expression, compelling me to wait a bit. He seemed to break character, as though I’d just flubbed my part in an onstage dialogue and he was signaling me with his eyes to get me back on track. As disconcerted as I was, I managed to observe that he didn’t look like a typical pimp. His spiked hair, stubble, sunglasses, and obligatory leather jacket could not conceal – indeed they advertised – his bourgeois background. I pegged him for a barista from Michigan (which is exactly what he turned out to be).

“Take it easy,” he said. “It’s just jetting.”

“It’s just what?”

A couple of tall young women, overhearing this exchange, turned in our direction with knowing smirks.

“Jetting,” Ephraim repeated, the sinister overtone now gone from his voice. “Don’t freak out. Just go with it,” he whispered. “If you want to see Lucy, you can.” He cleared his throat. “All you need is a hundred dollars. Bring it and hand it to her at the beginning of your date. Tell me the time and place, and I’ll arrange it.”

The word “date” calmed me down, somehow.

“Next Saturday at noon,” I said. “At the Kossuth statue in Riverside Park.”

“What do you want her to wear?”

The idea of ordering my date’s costume threatened to rekindle the feeling of degradation, but I bit the bullet.

“Purple tights,” I said.

To be continued…

China Journal: The Hunan Condition

Tuesday, August 24, 1999 – Beijing

Recently, I found myself in Hunan Province for a Ming dynasty history conference. I believe the conference took place in the otherwise insignificant Shimen County because of its proximity to the reputed final resting place of Li Zicheng [the rebel who destroyed the Ming dynasty].

In any case, the event was hovered over by a cohort of culture cadres anxious to soak up some gravitas from the luminous personages now gracing their satrapy. It was also swarming with reporters trying to do the same thing, although the latter group had special plans for me, the sole gringo, namely: making me appear to be some kind of benighted barbarian seeking Chinese wisdom. I did not comply with their request for an interview, nor did I confirm the rumor that I’d been seen carrying a loaf of bread to my hotel room because I couldn’t eat Chinese food. It intrigues me how opposite assumptions operate on the same plane: Foreigners are expected to be attracted to Chinese culture, but they are not expected to be able to absorb it (not in the form of Chinese food, anyway), due to congenital differences.

The conference proper was inspiring if a little overly formal. All the intellectuals participating identified with their Ming dynasty antecedents. They railed against arbitrary rule and implied that, if only government would recognize true talent, then all under heaven would be pacified. Their class allegiance prompted me to spout off a little about historical objectivity (I remarked that righteous scholars failed to save the Ming dynasty and even had the effrontery to suggest that they might have killed it). I also ventured to observe that their brand of opposition to the government was based on elitism, not democracy. As I pontificated to someone later (boy, was I getting full of myself), democracy, by giving everyone the ballot, neutralizes the power of the Ph.D.

The academic portion of the retreat completed, touring commenced. We visited what was said to be the Peach Blossom Spring immortalized by Tao Yuanming, and I soon found myself having a perfect experience. It was a relatively unspoiled place, and the weather was cool and misty, calling up various Daoist feelings of being one with nature and making me seek to emulate Tao’s fisherman by doing a little enthusiastic exploring. At what was represented to be the actual spring, a pool under a waterfall, I quickly disrobed and took a little dip with the stone turtle they have there. I felt greatly refreshed, and I admit I also enjoyed the notoriety I earned as the crazy young American. It started to rain, which made me even happier, and I got my fortune told at a nearby Daoist temple, which seemed to provide a certain religious meaning to the whole thing.

The next day, our group of scholars moved to Zhangjiajie. We toured the Chinese version of Luray Caverns. This time, I was not quite as alone as I’d been: In standard eunuch fashion, I fell in with a group of four young ladies from Taiwan, hovering on the periphery of their approach-avoidance gravitational pull; and I actually had a pretty good time with the impressive cave and the lovely company. When the ladies slowed down in the shopping area outside the cave, though, I became aware that I was reverting to the role of hungry dog, hanging around, waiting for whatever table scraps of attention they might throw down to me; and so I took my leave of them, bought a dress for Yuka [then my fiancée, now my wife], and escorted [senior scholar] Wei Qingyuan back to the waiting bus.

That night at the hotel, after dinner, I developed a headache and began asking females for aspirin. One of the Taiwanese ladies said she had some in her room. On the way thither, we passed the hotel’s massage parlor, where the pubescent hostesses were scantily clad and the light chaser framing the doorway had already been turned on. Upon reaching the Taiwanese ladies’ room (where the other three waited; it seemed they always stuck together for protection), I received the promised pills, and an awkward moment ensued, as my canine tendency began to reassert itself; but they sent me on my way rather decisively, with a final “Goodnight,” while closing and locking the door behind me.

In spite of the less than voluntary mode of my departure, I was still glad on the whole to be away from their debilitating presence. The problem now, as I returned to my room, was how to spend the rest of the evening in the very uncomfortable hotel. I decided to write a letter to Yuka.

The phone rang. It was one of the young hostesses from the massage parlor, asking if I required any servicing. I demurred. I said I had a girlfriend. She said it didn’t matter. I twisted in the wind for another minute or so, the tenacious young lady refusing to let me off the hook. Finally, I blurted one last “Sorry” and hung up the phone over her protests. Then, I sat down on the bed and repeated, as a mantra, the phrase “Nerves of steel.”

The phone rang every fifteen minutes or so, until around eleven. I didn’t answer.

The following day, we took a nature walk, along a path following a river in the woods. I was very impressed with the park, though the lack of any literary or religious significance kept my happiness from overflowing into euphoria. Also, I made it a point to escape from the group, especially the four Formosan ladies, and to enjoy the place with the peace of mind enabled by solitude. I did bump into the Formosan Four upon emerging from the woods at the end of the trail, and they said they missed my company. Whether they were trying to be polite or cruel, I really can’t say.