The true value of a prostitute is based on male perceptions. Such manifest themselves in different ways. In essence, there is not much difference between a girl in a downtown brothel and one upmarket. The downtown girl may even offer better service. Yet because of the roughness of the section, there is some cheapness, dirtiness, and dumbness associated with the downtown girls. This is one of the things that make men in the lower part of the city believe they should pay the girls there little. The girls downtown are seen as practicing prostitution proper; the poor desperate girl with no other means; the uneducated village or slum girl, and the ambitious house help. Given the circumstances, the girls are seen as having no option but to accept the lowest reasonable offer. Then again most of those who patronize the low-class brothels lack enough income to include entertainment in their budget. The money they spend on prostitutes eats on rent, transport, food, and even school fees. They will want to pay the least possible.
These things were not obvious when telling the man that 200 was cheap. I felt I should charge what I was worth; A figure I found impossible to determine. I was blinded by my ego to think that my fee should correspond to my obvious swag and nothing else. A better approach would have been to charge a premium based on the base amount the girls charged. Yet to charge a premium people must first appreciate that which makes them pay an extra amount. Here no one appreciated my looks, swag, or anything. In one way or another, all girls seemed equal.
To cut to the chase, two or three men approached me, and I repeated 200 was on the lower side. Then some drunk pinned me down and asked how much I wanted. I said a thousand. It was enough to make the man howl and repeat the amount loud enough for all to hear. People laughed and sneered. ” Is yours golden? Even if it was I wouldn’t pay that amount”. I felt crushed. I felt nasty being valued so low. For the first time, I felt like a real prostitute.
The Yeats’ girl now a little sober came to my defense. She sat where I was and had a chat that opened my eyes to the kind of place I was. The long and short of it I ended up taking the 200, going to the dingy short-term rooms, and having the most detached of my thousand-plus sexual experiences. The hardest part was lowering my pants, and laying on the filthy mattress. But soon I got used to the dirt. It was a rite of passage, that changed me forever. In the short time I practiced at the SJ, I lost any sense of morality, and my mind opened to view the world in a way I hadn’t done. I slept with countless men every single day without guilt. And whenever opportune I stole from the drunk. At 200 there were many men now willing to sleep with me. The flip side was I started losing the value of myself. It didn’t matter who I slept with; dirty, clean old, or young. I still cared about how I looked, but well, it wasn’t a must-have thing to do. What I became is something I can’t explain in words.
Yet I still felt angry charging or rather being given 200. I wanted someone to pay me a thousand or more; that would make me feel I was getting the best value for my body and personality. Thus when I got the chance to go to the street, where the pay per session is higher, most of the men there were relatively respectable. (Or wishing to look so), I chose that option. The exact logistics of joining the street and the obvious shortcomings as compared to SJ, and why I decided to go into this business, is a story for another day.
For now, I am on the street where though I know I am a prostitute, I don’t feel like one.
