Looking at Prostitutes

Amsterdam is a city of temptation.  The stench of marijuana wafts through the doorways of coffee shops.  Plastic-enhanced prostitutes display their nearly nude bodies in the glow of the red light.  I squeezed through the skinny passageways while chewing the last bites of my chicken curry. 

With my empty takeout box in hand, I did not feel sexy, nor was I in a comfortable state to indulge in bedroom activities, yet I tried to adopt the mindset of someone hiring a prostitute for the first time.  What kind of things must happen to a person so that he can grow comfortable with this transaction?  Having sex with big-bosomed strangers is a common male fantasy, but what causes a person to act on that desire? 

According to a conventional definition, I’m not the most masculine of men.  I can’t mend a broken stair or discuss engines.  I’m passable with a hammer, and I’m strong enough to start the motor on a lawnmower.  I don’t believe these qualities make a man, but handyman skills and ruggedness have become common expectations of heightened masculinity.  Sleeping with whores is also a way to prove one’s manliness and to advance oneself in a competition of egos. 

While on this trip, I was confronted with many choices that forced me out of my comfort zone and threatened to crack the glue holding my identity together.  I had to tread carefully because I wanted to crack my outer shell so that I could grow into someone new.  But I worried about crossing treacherous lines.

I was under the influence of a new flavor of friends I didn’t have at home, and I was under the spell of foreign lands.  I had no obligations and no one telling me I was making poor decisions.  I was learning that many aspects of my personality were unshakeable habits, but some of my thoughts were not so stubborn.  Who is to say I wouldn’t be tempted by the song of the sirens?

A blonde woman with pale skin stood behind a glass door.  She was thinly clad in a light blue bikini.  Two burly men opened the door and asked for a threesome, but she denied them.

“I only take one,” the prostitute said.

I envisioned myself grabbing hold of the handle, my hands steady.  I would approach the woman confidently.  Would I greet her properly and ask how she’s doing?  Or would I straightaway ask her the price as though I were ordering a sandwich?  If I were the type of man capable to open this door, I would cut right to the chase.  I would inquire about the cost, not because I was on a budget.  The number would not deter me; one’s reason rarely conquers sexual desire.  My asking would be a mere formality, a fulfillment of the process of this charade. 

She’d close the curtains and lead me to the bed that would otherwise serve as her desk if she chose a more socially-accepted field of employment.  She would probably moan, but feel nothing, while I would be pumping mechanically, lovelessly.  Would I enjoy this fiery, shameless act of copulation?  Or would I feel empty inside knowing that, despite the friction between our bodies, there is no connection between myself and this woman?  Would I concern myself with her opinions, her feelings, her goals?  Would I wonder what she does in her spare time?  What makes her laugh?  What would she rather be doing? 

No.  I would be just another customer in line paying to achieve a dream because I could not accomplish it by my own powers.  I would dress in my same outfit, but emerge through the doorway a man with a tarnished history.  The seedy desires of foul men trap women behind glass cases, and the men, in turn, are imprisoned by their own desires.  But we did not build these prisons.  These definitions were created for us. 

Europeans are much more relaxed in their opinions toward sex, but my American upbringing was more inclined toward repression.  Although they weren’t allowed to be preached openly in public schools, Christian values always lingered in the background, and religion does much to treat the body as a sacred object.  When combined with conservative politics, the socially-sculpted mind views prostitution as shameful, but a one-sided viewpoint is hypocritical.  We are all tainted with voyeuristic pleasures, so we can’t help but look.  

We scrutinize images of strangers, and our eyes are drawn to attractive destinations.  We watch movies and stare at faces prettier than ours and wish we could look like that so that we could be looked at more often.  We can hide behind virtue, but vices and vanities are not always easy to reject.

I didn’t hire a prostitute, so instead I merely window-shopped and looked upon those beautiful women with a combination of lust and pity.  Usually it’s safer, and more socially acceptable, to look through the window.  That didn’t stop others from opening the doors, but why should it?  Those men lived in different worlds governed by laws unfamiliar to me.  They carried on fulfilling their desires behind closed curtains, but I could still picture what they were doing.  The border between thinking and doing is invisible, but that doesn’t make it any easier to cross.