Hookers: Never Funny

Last winter I was at a party with my friend JC, and I was telling a story about our time in Bangkok together. As a natural-born raconteur with countless astonishing experiences under my belt, I have a vast anecdotal repertoire, and so I do not remember which story it was. But since it took place in Bangkok, it naturally involved hookers.

I should probably state at this point -- I should definitely state at this point -- that neither JC nor I ever, uh, *partook* during our time in Thailand. But I guess I made a quip implying otherwise -- a transparently facetious quip, but still -- because a few nights later JC called me to discuss.

JC and I are Generation-Y males who live in the same metropolitan area. We therefore never call each other just to chat or “reconnect” or, certainly, to discuss anything of importance. That would be so gay. Our phone calls rarely progress beyond where and when to meet up later that night. Which is why I was surprised when JC called me the following Sunday night. “Homunk,” he says.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Never say the word ‘hooker’ when we are around women ever again.”

Apparently JC had encountered trouble with his previous girlfriend when another girl, a mutual friend of theirs, (falsely) accused him of hiring hookers in Thailand. It took him nearly a week to put out the fire.

Skip forward to last month. I was out to dinner with M. (not her full name), a girl I was dating, and some other friends. The friends asked where M. and I met. “I picked her up on the street down in Far Rockaway,” I said. Funny, right? The guys around me thought so; they laughed. M. did not.

Five or ten minutes later, long after the discourse had progressed to other topics, M. leaned in towards me and whispered, not smiling, “No more hooker jokes.” I nodded, surprised that it was still on her mind, and continued on with my General Tso’s.

[M. and I broke up two days later, though it had nothing to do with the hooker joke, I assure you. She said my intellect, bank account, and penis were too large for her. (She wasn’t the first to complain on those fronts, but what can I say? -- I’m not going to stop being myself just to appease my bitches.)]

Anyway, clearly this is a touchier subject than I would have guessed. Having listened in on conversations in which female friends of mine earnestly discussed whether they could even date a guy who had slept with a prostitute, I am well aware of the stigma attached to men who have partaken. It takes a certain kind of dude to regularly solicit hookers. Lonely, perhaps. Ugly, insalubrious, weak-willed, fiscally irresponsible, or some combination thereof. (Think Eliot Spitzer.) Not the most attractive qualities, to be sure.

Still, it’s not that big a deal. Many men, including many men who possess none of the qualities above, have hired hookers. And anyway, we’re talking about the female side of things here, not the male: namely, women’s aversion to prostitution as a concept. For American women, that aversion seems to present itself as discomfort at best, disgust at worst. As JC said during our conversation, “Girls just look at it totally differently. The idea of it really bothers them.”

So, the question I pose to the ladies out there is: Why? Why do you seem so repulsed by hookers and the men who keep them in business? My own feeling, shaped, admittedly, by a small libertarian streak -- I believe prostitution should be legal, as should drugs, trans-fats, etc. -- is that, as services go, prostitution isn’t all that different from any other. It is the oldest profession for good reason: it’s a service people want. Maybe even one they need, not unreasonably. (Hierarchy of needs: water, food, clothing, shelter, sex/companionship.) And while it’s not a career path I’d recommend to my daughter (too much contact with lawyers and politicians), I recognize that not everyone’s life ends up the way they planned. It’s not like hookers dreamed, as little girls, of becoming hookers. It’s just how they get by, one day at a time.

Homunculus say, show those tarts some compassion. And have a sense of humor about them while you’re at it. Michael Scott once pointed out that there are certain topics that are still off limits to comedians: JFK, AIDS, the Holocaust. (“The Lincoln assassination just recently became funny: I need this play like I need a hole in the head.”) Homunculus say, let’s keep hookers off that list. “I hope to someday live in a world where a person can tell a hilarious AIDS joke,” Michael says. “Still one of my dreams.” Amen to that. And amen to hookers.

A hooker.