Page 256
them in other businesses, in the fashion industry, or on Wall Street. They had to change their attitudes.
I haven't looked at prostitute movies as carefully as you have, but what you're saying may be an extension of something I've been thinking about. It seems to me that pornography has primarily to do with men's hatred of their own bodies. It may be that the apparent need to see women punished in movies for being prostitutes is a function of their being so dirty as to have been with so many men.
Well, it relates to any of the kinds of postcarnal hatred of women that are so typical of men. It would be fascinating to explore those feelings. I did talk to a lot of clients when I was doing research for the film, but men are so reluctant to analyze their feelings, and the feelings are so complex (and so many men are living a web of lies anyway) that it's hard to get much out of them. But it's interesting that (at least this is what I've gathered from reading and watching movies and talking to people)regardless of the intensity of a guy's desire for a woman, the minute he has her, the minute he comes, there's some kind of hatred. There's a sense of having to throw it off, put it away. I'm not talking about when people are in love; I mean sex for itself or as part of long-term relationships
sex. Anyway, that pattern does seem accentuated in prostitution.
But it's the other thing as well. A lot of clients want to see the women on the outside. For a lot of men there's this inability to separate a sexual act from something more. There's a desire to maintain something. Also, there's this need to feel different from the other clients, so different that a woman would give him the privilege of seeing him on the outside (so that of course he wouldn't have to pay for it!). There's that fantasy constantly. And there's this whole thing of regulars, which is how small places like the one in my film run. A lot of men like to see the same girl over and over again. There's a sense of having a kind of girlfriend.
But I think what you said is true, that men may have a hatred and mistrust of their bodies. Have
felt that way?
Yes, but in a way the feeling is buried, taken for granted. I certainly know that as I was growing up, I was internalizing the cultural teaching that, for example, semen is a gross substance, almost the definition of what is gross. It is produced at this moment where, theoretically, you're supposed to be ecstatic (or released,
), and yet the physical evidence of this ecstatic moment is a snotlike substance that everybody hates. The good news and the bad news arrive simultaneously. And there's not only a
to the bad news, there's the process of women cleaning up afterward. Cleaning away the dirtinessoften right away. I mean, don't misunderstand me, I wouldn't like it either, probably. Here's
Page 257
this body not your own, unlike your own, squirting this stuff all over,
you . . .
Do you think also that that's why men have accused
of being dirty for so long and have had this horror of menstruation and women's body fluids, have called them dirty cunts? Do you think that that's a reaction against women's revulsion about semen?
I don't know. I suppose it's true that women are made to feel dirty about menstruation. It seems obvious enough in the compulsive neuroticism promoted by ads for tampons and sanitary napkins. But when I was growing upI don't know what it's like growing up nowI didn't know
about menstruation. And when I did find out about it, I never thought it was a
processin the sense that semen was a dirty substanceit was blood: scary, but not dirty.
What's so interesting is the transformation of those feared fluidsin filminto fetishization. Every conventional porno movie I can think of has those slow-motion cum shots, beautiful arcing shots with symphonic sound behind themat the finale. It never happens
. This all relates to other forms of fetishizationgolden showers, brown showers, the extremes, the desire for the most vulgar, hated substances.
The
is to have these substances accepted, adored.
You know, in those sex fantasy phone calls you can charge to your credit card, the idea of men coming is treated in that way. The women transform semen into something very desirable, something very wonderful, to be waited for, to be coaxed out of men with a lot of adjectives as if they can't wait for it. There's a whole fantasy vocabulary for the penis, based on how men (clients) want their penises to be perceived.
I would say definitely that the reason the phallus has been so mythologized and symbolized as this mighty, powerful, steellike organ is that for the most part it's
like that. I mean if it
it's for very short periods of time. Most of the time it's this vulnerable, very retiring organ that's easily hurt. In most rape cases men literally don't get it up. Violence happens
sex. Rape is about the inability to have an erection in any kind of framework of control.
Obviously, all of this evaporates in a case where two people are madly in love with each other. Then all these
