Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?

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america, Anti-prostitution laws, call-girls, corrupt politics, cowards, Donald Trump, escort ads, FOSTA, fundamentalist Christianity, harming women, hookers, hypocrisy, injustice, lawyers, media-cowardice, Mid-Term elections, pimping, Republicans, scapegoating, SESTA, sex ads, sex-trafficking, underage sex

 

It’s a line by Alexander Pope:

Let Sporus tremble –”What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys…

 

Sporus was a male sex-slave favoured by the Roman Emperor Nero, who also personally castrated him. The wheel is an excruciatingly painful instrument of torture and death.

 

Whenever you hear of politicians banning prostitution it’s always either due to feeble-mindedness or because elections are nigh. You can take your pick with the US Congress’s recent fantastically imbecilic and heartlessly cruel piece of legislation, which targets sex-workers, websites and newspapers running “escort” ads. Habitually gutless and unprincipled, these media immediately jumped when the ringmaster’s whip cracked down, dumping all such personal ads. Who cares? Such is the expected reaction from the housewives of America. Their hypocritical spouses know when to remain silent, even in the face of a monstrous injustice – well, most accept these as quotidian: after all,  they’re Americans. No one cares about the media losing ad-revenues, of course. Why would they? What we all should care about profoundly, however, are the many thousands of women whose livelihood has just been trashed, whose means of safeguarding themselves against psycho johns and intemperate weather has been ripped from under them, and who will now be forced to ply their trade under conditions of substantial danger, ill-health and chronic anxiety. Serves them right; they should get themselves proper jobs, you say. If you do say this, though, you’re a fucking bestial moron, unfeeling and mindless.

 

Prostitution may not be the oldest profession, but it’s definitely been around longer than politics – and it will be thriving long after the greed-heads in their suits and ties are scrambling over the world’s edge to flee society’s wrath. This current fool’s errand is largely an attempt by Republicans to play to their base among the trenchantly unchristian Christians and the immoral yapping moralists. Half the escort clientele in Washington are congressmen and senators – and you can be sure their female stables will be unaffected by the current bitch-hunt.

 

The new laws need to be examined closely, however, because they’re really not very new and of questionable legality. There are States’ Rights and Constitutional issues here, which we’ll leave to the Civil Liberties’ people. The two main prongs of this pincer attack are just anachronistic sheep in 21^st-century wolves’ clothing – the garb being what it usually is: semantics, or language-harassment. Pimping, or “living off the avails of prostitution”, has always been illegal, just as brothel-keeping has in the majority of states. The same is true for sex acts involving minors. These three antiques are now cloaked in the new sex-crime tag that involves something called “sex-trafficking”. This makes it sound like the slave trade, of course, hides it under a cowl of more-frightening darkness; whereas in reality – apart from a few exceptions, statistically very few in fact – these villainous “traffickers” are just the same old low-rent pimps and specious petty criminals we’ve always had. And this is another time-honoured line of work, one that may seem repugnant and objectionable, yet also one that has its indisputable advantages and value for the women involved.

 

Accepting money for sex per se cannot be made illegal without potentially making every housewife a criminal. So what these laws have done is frighten a lot of often desperate, downtrodden women, removing the means by which they conducted business in reasonable safety. We can understand why the media fled in fear. You run a thousand sex ads daily and get charged with “facilitating sex-trafficking”, you’re facing a thousand very tricky law suits. Because you have no way of knowing what lies behind each ad – and you’ll have to prove in court that none involve any so-called trafficking. A nightmare – ruinously expensive too. So you have to shut them all down. Common sense and pragmatism demand it.

 

But a woman charged under this same act only has to convince a court she’s not being trafficked (or pimped) – case closed. Some 85 percent of sex-workers say they have no pimp or coercer. Yet the fear generated by these laws makes it all seem so much worse than it this. The really sad thing is that when you persecute the outcasts and underdogs of any society hardly anyone will step up to defend them. It’s the same with smoking and the “vice Taxes” (e.g. booze and tobacco).

 

These women are thus being scapegoated in exactly the same way as the Jews, gays and gypsies were in Nazi Germany. A conspiracy of silence was the enabler then, and it is now. No one has the guts to stand up in defense of these oppressed ladies. And all it’s about, most disgracefully of all, is winning votes from the prurient, the priggish, the hypocrites, and those self-righteous Sunday-Christians whose knowledge of scripture can be engraved on an eyelash and certainly doesn’t involve the frequent and compassionate attitude toward prostitutes Jesus is recorded displaying. As he says of the woman taken in adultery: “Let he who is without sin among you throw the first stone…”

 

I don’t know what American “fundamentalist” Christians believe, but it’s scarcely fundamental and seems contrary to every core teaching allotted to Christ. “Blessed are… Do unto others as you would have others do unto you…” In all the ranting hyperbole and twisted hellfire nonsense, I don’t see much Jesus at all. Hypocrisy may not be listed by Thomas Acquinas as a “deadly sin”, but it sure as hell is one. And hate is the worst one of all. These church-going, Bible-thumping sinners have another woeful strike against them too: How sad is it that they’re unable to perceive the self-serving machinations of their alleged representatives in the capital? How pathetic is it that these pious prudes think Donald Trump is on their side? God assuredly isn’t.

 

To all those women whose trade is their own flesh, I say: Chin up, ladies. It isn’t as bad as it seems. When I was a kid we saw postcards in doorways: FRENCH LESSONS FIRST FLOOR, or SWEDISH MODEL – RING BELL. No one thought it was about linguistics or Scandinavia. There never were, or ever will be laws prohibiting advertisements for language-tutoring and freelance modelling. An escort agency only providing dinner companions for ladies or gents alone in a strange city is not responsible for whatsoever their escorts do by themselves on their own initiative, and agents cannot be prosecuted for it. There can also never be a law against anyone in any occupation receiving gifts from and/or having a brief fling with someone they meet during the course of their work or leisure.

 

This most ancient of professions has always found a way – and it always will. But it would help now if someone courageous and principled, ideally a lawyer or legal authority, stood up and fought these two-faced, duplicitous scumbags back into the rank sty where they belong. But when the Mid-Terms are over in November it will all fade away… until the next halfwit or the next election comes around, naturally. In the meantime, America, try a little tenderness, thought and compassion – they work wonders. History attests to the fact.

 

robertspaulwilliam@gmail.com

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Quebec

Tags

death, divorce, family, Laurentians, lawyers, marriage, moving, Quebec

            On New Year’s Eve, 2009, we packed a U-Haul with all our worldly possessions. When I say ‘we’, I mean Kara and her friend, Sandy. I was more fruitfully occupied, buying a firkin of homemade grappa from a friendly restaurateur, under the counter, then a bad but large pizza from the nearest dive on St. Clair Avenue. With 5% vision in one eye, you have to know your routes well and put up with the consequent dearth of choices. I believe a friend of mine came over at some point, and we drank grappa while watching the girls work on the loading. We did share the pizza with them, however. It was a long night, although there appeared to be a brief interlude with champagne to welcome in the year of 2010 (at my age these dates make me feel I’m living in the Roman era rather than the future I had expected from them).

            At the crack of dawn, we left Toronto, with Kara driving a huge truck that I was not at all convinced she would be able to drive. But I had my gallon of grappa on hand, so anxiety soon became low on my chart of worries. Now, if you think Montreal is a long five-hour drive from Metro, try it in a big overladen truck. It was night by the time we arrived at the chaos of ongoing construction projects the city likes to imagine as a highway system, and through which Kara had to find her way to a certain ‘Laurentian AutoRoute’—not that any signpost bothered to identify any such road. By now I had drunk myself sober, and was no longer sure whether I had a hangover or simply poisoning from over-proof bathtub grappa, or possibly both. So I drank some more, which seemed to solve whatever problem there may have been.

            The AutoRoute Des Laurentides, once we’d divined its existence, proved to be the only decent stretch of highway I’d ever seen in Quebec. Although we had stopped once along the unrelievably dismal 401 East to eat some of the shit that seems to be the only permissible food for long-distance drivers, we were both now very hungry, and we also still had a long way to go. The thing about this highway to the Laurentians, as we soon discovered, is that there is literally nothing on it, nowhere to stop, not even a gas station. It was very dark, too, and snowing. By the time we reached St. Agathe it was late, much later than we’d agreed to meet the owner of the house we were renting, in order to collect the keys. Yet I was under the impression we’d now be there at any minute. No. Val-des-Lacs, our destination, is not as near to St. Agathe as I had somehow thought it to be. It is also not easy to find once you have turned off the final strip of highway, especially during what had become a blizzard. The road is nothing but hairpin bends, some of them indicated, others not. It took us half an hour to reach the metropolis of Val-des-Lacs (one church, one store), yet still we were not at the house. This was when things got complicated and our directions proved useless. What ought to have been ten minutes took half an hour, with the snow falling in a torrent of fat feathers, and a total lack of signposts. Eventually finding the right Chemin, we experienced much trouble with the street numbers. Some were invisible, others did not exist. Finally locating the number preceding our own one, we found that there was no other house for about a mile. But this next house did indeed prove to be ours. Kara turned the truck onto a steep driveway, and as we sped up it the rear wheels suddenly slithered off into some kind of ditch. At least we had arrived, though; and the owner, who lived nearby, did not seem to mind that we were three hours late. She even dragged out her aged father, who brought his tractor to drag us from the ditch, and not without some difficulty. When they spoke together (their English to us was excellent) the language sounded to me like Croatian, Moldavian, or some such East European tongue. It takes quite a while to realize that the rural Quebecois actually speak French – but more of this later.

            We loved our new home, although we still had to return to Toronto and pick up our car, besides another truck-load of stuff, which a dear friend, Jamie, was kind enough to drive this time, since Kara had a carload of cats to ferry up herself. Within a week, however, we were finally at home up in the mountains for good.

            But was I happy? Nope. And I was drinking at least a bottle of rum every day. Every alcoholic has his or her reasons for resorting to the hooch, and none of them are valid. Not really. But mine were as follows:

            My ex-wife died in the middle of divorce proceedings, which are generally a waste of time, since the Law states that all assets must be divided equally – end of story. She did not want to do this, alas, forcing me to spend $70,000 on a lawyer. Her untimely death, one would have thought, ought to have terminated this futile squabble. But oh no. Her brother, named as executor of her will, decided to keep it going. Now, this brother, a real mama’s boy if ever there was one (and we know mama’s feelings about me), has done some fairly unforgivable things, yet none was worse than actually hiring a bouncer to prevent me from attending his sister’s memorial service, held in what was still technically my own house. Fortunately, my daughter begged me not to come, so I complied. Had I not, however, and found myself manhandled by some 300 pound thug, I could have simply called the police and said that a stranger had threatened me with violence for trying to enter my own house. Respect for the dead and my daughter’s wishes prevented an ugly scene. Yet the brother – possibly disappointed by missing the opportunity to humiliate me – chose to ask friends of mine to leave the gathering instead, embarrassing them horribly in front of many people they knew well, yet also revealing himself as the ignorant asshole he is. For these friends were not just mine, they were also his sister’s friends, and their son was one of my daughter’s particular friends. They had grown up together. All of us had spent the Millennial New Year’s Eve together. We had vacationed together on numerous occasions for twenty years. And this pompous imbecile asks them to leave! Me I can understand, although I still think it shameless and ill-cultured to prevent anyone, even an ex-husband, from mourning the loss of his children’s mother. This was and is the unforgivable deed. Prolonging the fight over money was merely irksome, unnecessary, and typical of his spectacularly greedy nature. Thus I drank to fend off the anxiety of waiting for the legal solution, since I needed the money that was rightfully mine in order to buy the house we were then renting.

            Mediation was eventually decided on, a process for which we had to return to Toronto. A horrible business it is, too. The brother was there, a Scrooge-like spider hunched over the boardroom table, and even having the temerity to say, “Hi, Paul”. I wanted to kick his balding head, but wisely just ignored him. He had even dragged my kids to this ordeal, for no apparent reason beyond malicious coercion. Both parties are asked to sign an agreement that whatever decision is finally reached by the mediation will be binding, a document that, of course, had to be read to me, my hand guided to the signing line. Then the parties retire to separate little rooms, and the Mediator shuttles back and forth with the offers on hand. I looked to my lawyer for advice on what was fair. My daughter was even sent in once to badger me, an act I consider heinous, and presumably the brother’s brainless scheme. At the end of what seemed to be an interminable day, we arrived at what I was advised to consider a just settlement. Whether it was wise to grant my son $200,000 I doubted as a sound idea – a doubt verified now by the fact that he blew the lot on drugs and whores within months of release from jail. My daughter obtained the same, spending it wisely, however – although I was perfectly prepared to finance her education etc. I was, nonetheless, quite content with my share, leaving that sterile legal hellhole joyously, for it was finally over, and I would never have to deal with that greasy toad of a brother again. I also could not wait to get out of Toronto, a place now only of heartache and bad memories.

            This was in February. I waited for my check to arrive patiently enough, but since we had already concluded an offer on the house my patience could not afford to be unlimited. I began to phone the lawyer daily, asking if the money had arrived. And the longer I waited the more I drank. It was only in April, I think, that I learned the brother had all the money, and it was he who had to issue my check. Knowing his astounding greed and pettiness, I imagined he would hang on to that cash and gather its interest for as long as possible, if not forever. He is one of those people who loves having money but hates spending it, which is really all you can do with it. He will spend it on property, since that is an investment; yet spending it on such frivolities as a restaurant meal is anathema. It would make him ill (like all assholes, his bowels are a major problem, especially under stress). I was quite surprised to learn that the pinched nose, admirably suiting his pinched nature, was actually a nose-job; and that his mother and sister had their noses done by the same plastic surgeon, possibly in a three-for-two deal. Early photos do indeed reveal quite a beak, but each to his own. My concern was that he still had my own. It took legal threats finally to squeeze that check out of him, which was couriered up me in May, nearly four months late, but just in time to buy our lovely little house. I pictured the agony on his face at having to write so large a check to me, of all people. His bowels must have been churning like the fabled ocean of milk, his hair falling out in hanks, the sweat on his brow like tears of Niobe. But I think that is enough of him forever, no? I suspect I’ve made my feelings about the so-called man clear.

            Now we settled into our new house and new life happily ever after. Didn’t we? Well, not quite. First I had to deal with what had clearly become a drinking problem – whereas before it had seemed more like a drinking solution. I had no reason to guzzle anymore, and imagined I could now just stop. I was, I began to notice on country walks, in diabolically bad shape, and the drinking was not so easy to stop. Then the demons emerged, as if annoyed by the fact that my life was no longer so sufficiently plagued. But this will have to wait until the next bloggishness.

I remain, always sincerely,

Paul William Roberts.