Smith - Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the Worlds Oldest Profession

When I was a small child, I was prone to insomnia and fits of the night terrors. To get me to fall asleep, my mother and father would fasten me into our familys 1971 Toyota Carina, throw in an eight-track cassette of Anne Murrays Greatest Hits and drive up and down South Main Street in Houston, Texas, to look at the prostitutes. The blinking neon signs of the no-tell motels, the bling of streetwalkers working their finery, and the day-glo hues of their billowing lingerie were too much stimulation even for a toddler; I would finally shut my eyes and stop struggling against the seat belt while Shadows in the Moonlight and the South Main ho stroll played on. I nodded off to sleep not only with visions of sugar plum fairies, but also of leather-clad fairies, common harlots, desperate dope fiends, glamorous go-girls, and rowdy rent-boys all gyrating in my little head.

It wasnt my idea to expose me to a life on the street like that, but back in the 1980s, you had to get out of your house to experience life and love and also to look at prostitutes. Today you can just go to some live-stream dung dungeon and e-jaculate along with the rest of the blundering online nymphos to stuff youre not even creative enough to imagine, or ask for.

Since then, Ive visited prostitutes from Nuevo Laredo to Amsterdam, Hamburg to Tokyo, and Las Vegas to Havana, and one thing never changes: People are too quick to make assumptions about what visiting means. Where Im from, visiting can mean anything from talking and catching up with folk to setting fire to a miniature pony, although I havent heard it used that way in ages. The point is, I miss the calming effect provided by those idealized streetwalkers of my youth.

What? Youre not buying the nostalgic visiting whores put me to sleep as a child excuse for writing a hooker book? The lecherous lullaby ride not convincing enough? That was a 100 percent true story, but heres a more recent and possibly more accurate illustration of why I came to write Whore Stories, documented in an IM exchange last year between me and my agent, Jon Sternfeld. At the time, I was working on some leading-edge inventions, which is something I do when I am lonely and unemployed.

TSS: whats the worst thing about europe?

JS: I dont know. France?

TSS: making love in small cars.

JS: so?

TSS: kids keep having sex in those little Smart carsIve seen it myselfand I think it spells future spinal trouble.

TSS: you there?

JS: yes.

TSS: So ive invented a car wash where you rent a limo with your manfriend or ladyfriend and its in a big limoplenty of room. and palliative oils. itll be cheap. good tunes, too.

JS: A car-wash whorehouse?

TSS: a drive-thru love station with rain.

JS: hey, thats somethingyou should write something about whores.

And so I did.

If you are offended that the politically correct term sex worker is not used to describe the characters in this book, I apologize. But then you try to write a book called Sex Worker Stories! See, even with the exclamation point, Sex Worker Stories! sounds more like a serialized bodice-ripper involving one nurse techs search for true love in a haunted sperm bank. Aside from the common term used in the title, the words slut, harlot, trick, chickenhawk, rent-boy, trollop, prossy, hooker, gigolo, etc. are used liberally within. What can I say? The lexicon of love is a bountiful trove.

Selective word choice aside, the biographical material in Whore Stories is essentially accurate, providing you, dear reader, with an informative, entertaining, and revealing look at the men and women who have blazed the bawdy trail of prostitution since the dawn of time. Some of these people have become legends for turning tricks, like Xaviera The Happy Hooker Hollander, La Belle Otero, and the self-proclaimed Rosa Parks of male prostitution, Markus Bestin. Others have traded sex for money at some point in their lives, and then became famous for other reasons, like Al Pacino, Malcolm X, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and Valerie Solanas (she shot Andy Warhol). Still others have turned into man-eating spiders, like the Japanese whore-deity Jorogumo. And finally there are people who have no real claim to Fame: They are just intriguing individuals who happen to have been hookers.

The aim of this book, then, is a simple one: to look into some of the shadier corners of human history, and to shed a little light on an eternally compelling figure: the prostitute. And if youre thinking of asking me any more questions about my field research, then making the international sign for doing it, Ill tell you the same thing I told my agent: Cut it out, pervert. This is a historical document.

TSS