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Diary of a Married Call Girl ~~~ My Next Event: Manhattan Reading/Signing/Reception Sat., May 13, 2006 6:00-8:00 PM at Eyebeam 540 W. 21st Street btw. 10th + 11th Aves. Panel Discussion from 4:00-6:00 pm ~~~ Dip Into Chapter One |
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| Sunday, May 14, 2006 The Aphrodite Pickle A big thank you to all the terrific people who came to Eyebeam yesterday! You're extremely wonderful. I really enjoyed the panel. Melissa Gira's take on technology was very thoughtful. No longer in opposition to the prostitute's tradition but, rather, a part of it (or did she say "a tradition itself"??) Krzysztof Wodiczko's presentation was funny and briliant. There will be an Ipod link to all this, I think. (Speaking of technology and tradition: Melissa tried to persuade me that I need Permalinks but you can't tell that to someone who still writes in WP51. Still, I'm going to experiment with some new features on this site. I'm determined to keep this interface though. How rare to find a blog these days without Permalinks! Think of this as a rarity, not an absence. I can't call it a tradition -- the Permalink seems to be far more traditional at this point.) Norene's shoe is beautiful. I hope there will be another chance for people to view it. About which more soon. Dr. M. Hope Ditmore, editor of the Encyclopedia of Sex Work (forthcoming from Greenwood Press in August), showed up -- and gave me a jar of her homemade pickled okras. I can't wait to make another one of my traditional Okratinis. Over and out. UK News: How do you really feel ... about "meeting the ex's new bird" (as my friend Rox puts it.) As an ex, you have an advantage. You know all those things she has yet to learn... All those things and more in my first Cosmo piece, which appears in the June issue --on sale now. Thursday, May 11, 2006 The ...32nd Sex? I'm looking forward to seeing Melissa Gira this weekend. She'll be on the panel with me at Eyebeam (Saturday May 13) and this time, I hope I actually get to talk to her. We both did this radio show last spring, but not at the same time. We always seem to be zooming past each other. So near and yet -- as the saying goes. Last time we were in the same room together, it was the $pread magazine Sex Worker Visions party. That was a madhouse, though certainly fun. I never did get a chance to experience '30 Second Sex' -- Melissa's version, that night. I suppose we've all... Never mind! Anyway, this is my chance. And yours too: 6pm Reading and book signing by Tracy Quan. Melissa Gira presents '30 Second Sex', a webcam performance with Ana Voog, Echo Transgression. Music by DJ Natural Spheres. And I love the title they came up with for our panel: "Sovereign Whores and Seditious Technology." I believe this was Norene's but I'll ask. The shoe itself is a work of genius -- old world artisanship meets the latest technology. Just like any urban prostitute, though I think ours must be an older technology. Didn't prostitutes precede shoemakers? (Come on, we must have.) All this and more on Saturday! I hope to see you there. Wednesday, May 10, 2006 Modern Positions I met Jessica Spector at a speaking engagement in Hartford, Connecticut circa 2001. We were part of a mini-festival organized by Real Artways, featuring films and discussion about sex work. We shared the panel with a cop who trotted out that old chestnut --"nobody ever says: I want to be a prostitute when I grow up." (I corrected him.) He finally agreed that prostitution laws were ineffective, a view shared by many police officers. Jessica was then teaching a philosophy course on porn and prostitution at Trinity College, and did an excellent job of explaining different positions from the modern prohibitionist to the classically liberal. She was the only panelist who did not offer her own opinion -- which, as we all know, requires both discipline and wisdom. When invited to contribute a short essay to her new anthology, I was intrigued. I'm pleased to hear that Prostitution and Pornography: Philosophical Debate About the Sex Industry will be published by Stanford U. Press this July! It will be fun to read the other essays and to see how people respond to this collection. (My own piece is in a section entitled "The Limits of Liberalism.") Tuesday, May 09, 2006 In My Mailbox Today: A Letter About "V" I have to check this out for myself but here are excerpts from an email addressed to Dear TQ: Hi Tracy, Monday, May 08, 2006 Contrawhatchamacallit I was absolutely shocked to see this rather surreal phrase in a New York Times magazine piece this Sunday: "The Bush administration's point man on abstinence..." I am not making this up. I need to explain to some of my UK and Canada readers -- this is not a hoax! Nor is it parody. It is just the way it is, according to Russell Shorto, but I was also puzzled by his intro. Shorto begins: The English writer Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, "Robinson Crusoe," but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom." After apparently being asked to tone down the title for a subsequent edition, Defoe came up with a new one — "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed" ... The book wasn't a tease, however. It was a moralizing lecture. After the wanton years that followed the restoration of the monarchy, a time when both theaters and brothels multiplied, social conservatism rooted itself in the English bosom. Self-appointed Christian morality police roamed the land, bent on restricting not only homosexuality and prostitution but also what went on between husbands and wives. To me, it seems that Defoe is best remembered for that fictional harlot, Moll Flanders, who transcends her creator's religious and political hang-ups even today. Moll's "memoir" was published five years before the treatise on Matrimonial Whoredom -- wouldn't that be a more amusing juxtaposition? And in 1724, a year before the treatise, he published yet another harlot's tale -- Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. I'm not sure why all this was ignored in favour of Robinson Crusoe but... YMMV. Saturday, May 06, 2006 "Married" in Dutch Callgirl met een dubbelleven has a rather provocative jacket. Pub date: June 2006 Pre-order "Married Call Girl" in the UK Natasha Law's jacket illustration complements her Manhattan Call Girl jacket perfectly. Pub date is June 6! Friday, May 05, 2006 Girl Talk One lesson from the sex trade will stay with me, I hope, for the rest of my life. You can't be everybody's type. Some women relate to my writing (or my past) and some... do not. Recently, Victoria Namkung published this Q&A in Audrey mag's Girl Talk column. I, for one, loved the whole idea because I'm ... all about the girl talk, as some of you know. One reader, however, was miffed. You can read Regina Cheng-Sheu's letter here. Regina's protest raises some interesting questions. If every prostitute or ex-hooker lived in shameful silence, would the world be a better place? Does Regina feel, on some level, that a prostitute is not her social equal? Does she think that women like us should "know our place"? Retreat to the shadows of pop culture so she can pretend we don't exist? She's kidding herself if she thinks every Asian female strives to be a brain surgeon, lawyer or dentist. Some of us think formal education is boring. Some of us believe we were put on this earth to sell our bodies, a fact which may shock or offend the haters out there who are still paying off their student loans. Some of us think getting a pedicure is more important than swotting for an exam -- and we are no less Asian (or human) for rejecting these middle class values. Is there a xenophobic aspect to Regina's comment about "non-Asian" men? Is it ever the case that "Asian" men make silly assumptions about us, too? And, when they do, is this more excusable simply because they're Asian?? And furthermore, what does it mean to be Asian or non-Asian? Is this all about how you look? Or how you think? I have an Irish friend who grew up in Asia. Cynthia was raised by a Cantonese nanny, and taught by Chinese nuns in a Catholic school. She is far more "Asian" in her outlook than I am. Although a product of Catholic education, she is (at heart) a polytheistic quasi-Buddhist because she was taught by nuns who never abandoned the local beliefs. Compared to Cynthia, I'm not very Asian -- and she thinks I'm a very uptight, monotheistic, judgemental Westerner, actually! Another thing: Why are some Asian-Americans always encountering shallow, simple-minded non-Asians who are just stereotypical fetishists? I have a theory. You get what you put out. If you see other people in stereotyped racial terms; if you see the world this way; if you see yourself this way, you will attract a lot of stereotypical racism in your sex life and your social life. In other words, if you go around categorizing people as non-Asian, you will meet a lot of idiots who fulfill your expectations. Okay. Yes: I have encountered racism when dealing with white cops. I have even met a few "non-Asian" guys with foolish ideas about the rules of attraction. But most of these encounters are superficial and (blessedly) brief. Every human encounter can't be a brilliant or fulfilling one, but I suspect that I have more faith in humanity than Regina does. I attribute this to the years I spent in the sex trade having sex with people from all over the world, including a fair number of Asians. Girl Talk (Part Two) Recently, a reporter asked me, "Did you have a lot of customers who liked you for being exotic? How did you feel about that?" A fair question which I will answer here. Many customers were white Americans, Brits or Europeans. However, I never felt like a stereotype. This surprises some people. Well, I never marketed myself as an exotic stereotype, that's why. I was brought up to see myself as an individual, an aspect of upbringing which I can't erase. When I get email from guys who categorize me because of my name or my face, I'm puzzled because they seem... a bit childish. I don't recognize myself in their comments. When I worked in the sex trade, I preferred (and mostly saw) customers who were into variety. My customers also liked blondes; they were also into meeting Latin American or black girls. The customers who had a thing for Asians-only were not my type. They were boring and I couldn't relate to them. They almost never became my regulars. The men who became my regulars weren't even hung up on a body type. What they liked was a personality type. I leave it to your imagination to figure out what that personality might be! This may surprise the people who think you have to be a narrow-minded fetishist to have sex with someone from another race or ethnic group. The world is only like that if you think it is. Thursday, May 04, 2006 Italy: Diario vero di una squillo di lusso sposata The Italian edition of Married Call Girl has just been released and you can check it out here. My spies tell me that cigarettes are becoming a no-no in Italy (about time!!) so ... the controversial jacket may add a certain sense of the forbidden to the whole affair. Sex for pay; adultery; or nicotine. Which of these three is the greater sin these days?? I've had wonderful feedback from Italy for my first book ("Diario vero di una squillo di lusso a Manhattan" was a bestseller) -- and I will be posting news about the Italian sequel right here. Stay tuned. Coming soon: Married Call Girl in the UK and in Dutch translation. The Swedish edition of Manhattan Call Girl in October. I will post links tomorrow. I must go offline because I am having a new dishwasher installed. The old one was flooding. Back tomorrow! Monday, May 01, 2006 What's a Diary? "No more than a story one tells oneself," says E Jane Dickson: "The form gained popularity, post-Pepys, in the early 1700s, helped along by greater literacy, cheaper paper and a newly advanced awareness of the self." Protestants, "appalled by the idea of confessing to a priest," saw it as an alternative method for "unburdening oneself to God." (Those innovative Protestants!) But here's the catch: "The pleasure of unchecked subjectivity...went to writers' heads, and by the 19th century the diary was essentially a personal political document, a chance for writers to reorder the universe according to their lights." And when did bunny-boilers start dotting their i's with circles? Read Women and their diaries of self-delusion in today's Independent, if you're curious. |
