Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  Now, what’s this? Is your mother suggesting it would be a great career for you? Your mother is not. Why not, if there’s nothing wrong with screwing for a living?

  Well, the “Why not?” is simple. You don’t have enough of a sense of humor.

  “Yes I do, yes I do, yes I do!”

  No, you don’t, no, you don’t, no, you don’t.

  Now, on to a really touchy subject. A really touchy subject. There are a lot of secrets between parents and kids that should stay secret. It isn’t true that parents need to know everything about their children, and it’s even truer that kids don’t need to know everything about their parents. In the first place, everything is never everything. In the second place, it’s none of their damn business. However. However. It does seem to me that a kid’s schoolwork is their parents’ business. And it also seems to me that the parents’ work is their kid’s business, because that’s how the kid is getting fed. I think kids should grow up understanding very clearly what their parents have to do to keep them safe and fed and educated.

  However, my profession is an odd one, is an illegal one, is loaded with all sorts of fears. So, I’ll leave it to you. You decide how much you want to know about my business.

  If I sold cars or insurance, I’d be a little ashamed for you to see some of the stuff I’d be pulling on people in the course of a day’s work. As it is, however, although I’m nothing special in other departments, I am a good, A

  honest whore, and wouldn’t be ashamed for you to see me practice my trade, though it might embarrass me.

  Now, you’re saying, “Gross, gross, GROSSP-but I think that what you’re feeling is scared, scared, SCARED!

  Isn’t that interesting? Why is everybody so frightened about such a usual thing? Why do they find it so terrifying, so disgusting, so secret, when they don’t mind eating pizza in front of everybody-wiggling their tongues while they stuff the toothed end of their tube like mad? (Isn’t that great? I stole that “toothed end of their tube”

  part from a woman poet named Misrahi. If you want, I’ll send you the book.) But I mean it. It’s a serious question.

  As far as my profession goes, it’s just business-and sex, and the only thing weird about it is that both parties are getting exactly what they want, and aren’t wearing suits. Anyway, you decide. And if you ever do want to see this mysterious, gross, terrifying, disgusting, criminal stuff that keeps you supplied with yucky school uniforms, Delius tapes, and strawberry floats, just tell me. I have a client named David, who’s sweet, intelligent, great-looking, four years younger than yours truly-in fact you’d probably fall in love with him-who’d think it was very funny to have a disapproving schoolgirl solemnly observe her aging mother earn an honest dollar.

  Anyway, think about it. If it’s all just too much, and the most nauseating thing a mother ever proposed to her innocent daughter-then forget it. Though the truth is, sweetheart, let’s face it, you’ve been having your period now for a lot longer than a year, which means that nature considers you a grownup. But it is a scary notion-scares me, too-and if you feel it’s too scary, then forget it. Whatever you feel is probably right for you, although I do believe all kids would be better off if they knew that sex was angel food cake-not dog shit.

  “Well,” you’re saying, now that you’re over the shock, “Well, I notice she didn’t want me to watch her and George!” And you’re right. That’s love. It’s just between him and me.

  I told you when I started these long, long letters that I would try and tell you some truths I’ve noticed maybe more clearly than some people might who are in different professions. Now, these are my truths, and some of them may not turn out to be true for you. But I’ve worked hard to learn them, so don’t be too quick to say your freaky mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  But before I get to people, let me tell you a truth about money. Money and love, love and money. Add health, and you have the three great worries. Money.

  You will probably have a great advantage over me.

  You will probably earn legal money. When you do put as much as you can aside every month into some government-insured investment. Start when you’re young. When you’re in college. Do it. That money will compound into a fortune, and you will someday thank your old mother for letting you in on a fact that most people are too dumb to figure out: Time, plus interest, equals big bucks.

  Money and people. Old folks use money in place of sex, dealing with other people. If they haven’t got money-unless they’re very lovable-they’re in trouble. Men use money to push other people around.

  Women use money to try to stay safe. Here’s my advice on money: Earn as much as you can without devoting your life to it. Start saving early.

  Spend the rest and have a ball.

  O.K. Human beings. Let me start with women. Sigmund Freud wanted to know what women really want.

  Well, here’s what I’ve noticed most women want, but not many get. One: A man to love them who’s a little smarter and stronger than they are, but not smart enough pr strong enough not to love them. Two: Something important to do. Three: To take care of people they love. Four: The admiration and envy of other women.

  Five: Children. Six: Money. Seven: A maid. Eight: To stay young forever. Nine: To be a perfect size eight.

  Ten: Not to get cancer. Eleven: To suffer, but not too much.

  I better add fast that I know some women who don’t want any of the above, except not to get cancer. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. And I better add just as fast that young girls have slightly different “wants” than the above, and you know more about that than I do. Still, when you deal with women, you might keep this little list in mind. The reason we’re such great complainers is that these are hard needs to satisfy, and it is definitely not a good idea to stand between a woman and the satisfying of even one of them.

  What else about women? Well, they’re pretty and soft. They smell good almost all the time. They’re fun to have sex with, if you keep in mind it isn’t the big obsession for most of them that it is for a man. And they were designed to be baby buckets, like it or not, do it or not, be it or not.

  Anything else your wise mother has noticed about women? Yes. They’re wonderful company, for a while.

  Now-men. A good friend of minesays that men can be satisfied by a blow job, kids by a peanut-butter sandwich. And, in a way, she’s right. Men, like kids, enjoy specific pleasures very, very much. Physical pleasures. Atmosphere doesn’t mean much to them, although admiration does. O.K.—so, what do men really want?

  One: A woman who’s not quite as smart and not quite as strong but who’s smart enough and strong enough to love them anyway. Two: To b’brave.

  Threc To have something important to do that everybody knows is important to do. Four: The admiration of women, the envy of other men.

  Five: To be able to screw every good-looking woman they see. Six: Money.

  Seven: To take care of people they love, or people they don’t love who are grateful. Eight: To be able to screw every good-looking woman they hear about. Nine: Not to get a heart attack. Ten: To want something else, something they can never have.

  Well, you suspected as much, and grownups are always going after these shitty things, or those silly things, right? Wrong. Most grownups don’t go after what they want, at all. They do what their parents and friends think they should do; they do what they think they should do; they do what most other people they know are doing, and they hope that somehow something special will come to them. It’s my experience that waiting and dreaming like that tends to make most people sad. They make their own disappointments that way.

  Don’t misunderstand me, sweetheart, when I talk about things like women wanting to be a size eight not that they don’t. And speaking of which, I would like to see you lose a couple of pounds. Nothing gigantic, just a couple of pounds. Look out for food; it’s the most addicting drug of all. Of course I don’t mean women yearn only for the dress size. I mean they
yearn to be all right. To look nice. Not to be fat, or ugly, or too thin, or anything that people are going to laugh at or pity.

  And the same is true of all those other silly and not so silly things people want. Behind each want are a lot of other wants, a lot of other fears that pop out now and then in weird ways. One person wants number Three most of all, and another one decides he’d die for number Six.

  People’s wants are like combinations to a lock, but the combinations keep changing.

  Which brings me to love. Being in love, being loved, makes people feel good about themselves, as you well know (or should, since your mother loves you like crazy), and since that’s what most people lack, they need love a lot. Let me tell you a whore’s secret: People come to me the first time, to come. The second time, they want some love.

  I try my best to give them their money’s worth both ways, but with affection for the second part, not real love.

  I knew a man … Wait a minute, let me tell you a story. I knew a man who was very special to me. His name was Larry; he was in the shipping business, and he claimed he used to play semipro baseball, which could be true. He was a sweet, sweet man, not very smart, though I suppose he was good at business. He would tell these awful jokes, not funny at all, and start breaking up in the middle of telling them and not be able to finish, he was laughing so hard. Well, here was a darling man, really handsome and physically just perfect-which you will discover is a mighty rare thing and one of those really unusual men who are naturals in bed. He wasn’t ashamed to do anything, he never worried about anything—he just loved it. He lived in bed with a woman as if she were a brandnew duplex apartment and he was crazy about it and was checking upstairs and downstairs and into every cabinet. Most men are a little worried about women’s bodies, their vulvas, vaginas, their assholes, and so forth. They’re a little worried about some surprise here or there.

  Not this Larry.

  Well, I fell in love with him. In love with a john.

  And the moment I did that-fearless Larry fled. He hadn’t been afraid of my body, but he was scared to death of Sally Gaither. Well, maybe I’m lying to myself. Maybe he just didn’t like Sally Gaither. Whenever a man runs like hell, we like to think he just wasn’t mature enough to appreciate us.

  So, I got a lesson that hurt. As far as men are concerned, a woman is a two-part person. The body, and the rest. For example, a woman meets a man, and thinks, “Does he like me? He has nice eyes. What a wonderful voice. - - - He looks in really great shape … so strong! He would come home to me flying in from Europe to our place in Connecticut, and I’d be there with the kids, and that wonderful smile as he came in the door.

  Right?

  A man meets a woman, looks at her face, her legs, her butt, then starts trying to imagine her pussy, in detail. What she’s like with her panties down. What she’s like with her panties off. What sounds she makes during sex. Then, after that, while they talk, he decides if he likes her. If sfie’s nice. If she’s good company …

  intelligent.

  It’s the two-part problem. If a woman is lucky, she has a man who loves both parts of her. If she’s unlucky, he doesn’t. Men are always being blamed for this, but that’s like blaming the grass for growing. And of course the reason men divide women into fuck and friend, is that they are divided just that way themselves; their cocks are semi-independent

  -a fact of LIFE that women have never accepted, to their sorrow and my profit.

  “Well, you’re saying, “if a prostitute doesn’t know what men are really interested in, she’s a pretty dumb prostitute.”

  I was a dumb prostitute, and a young one, too, and of course I knew what men were interested in. I just didn’t realize how separate it was for them.

  So, I’d suggest when you deal with boys and men, especially if you like them a lot, that you remember the two-part person problem. You can remember it as teepee pee-pee. You might also remember the significance of this synthesis, as they say at NYU (at least they say it in the Continuing Ed. courses). If a boy or a man isn’t your friend, as well as your lover, he’ll never last.

  Anyway, that wised yours truly up, and I started to realize I’d been way out of line with Larry. That the Life wasn’t just a game, get-fucked-and-paid, or at least it shouldn’t be. It was a profession, and one that’s done a lot less harm than most of them. So, I got professional, and stopped looking for my personal satisfaction with clients who were paying for theirs. I don’t mean to say that I don’t enjoy sex with them. I do and I always have; it’s the extra that makes the work worthwhile, like a travel agent’s being able to travel cheap. I mean I stopped leaning on them for love, stopped romancing them, stopped trying to take advantage of them. For a prostitute to get a client to love her is like a psychiatrist getting a patient to screw. It’s unfair. The odd thing is, when I stopped trying, I began getting a lot of them failing in love with me. Some people like hopeless love a lot better than the other kind. And also, people are full of surprises.

  It’s safer to bet on horses.

  “Well,” you’re saying, “what about George?”

  George refused to be a client. He asked for his money back. Once I handed that honey back his cash, he was fair game.

  Now, one more quick story. The man with the tiny dick.

  A friend of mine named Gloria, who used to be in the Life and has since retired to married happiness and three kids with a vice cop-which is quite a story in itself, since he blackmailed her to have sex with him, and then fell in love with her-anyway, Gloria had a friend on Long Island who was crazy in love with a man named Carl who owned a Buick dealership out there.

  This Carl was something special, apparently. But there was a problem.

  “What was the problem, Mother?”

  Thank you, dear. The problem was the man had a tiny penis, and was so ashamed of it that Gloria’s friend had to practically force him into bed with her. And that wasn’t much use, either. We walk around and pass people on the street, and some of them are in agony, have been living in agony all their lives. This poor man had lived like that. Short of serious illness, I don’t suppose there’s much worse suffering than a boy’s with that deformity. Their cocks are a big deal for men. If you put all our worries about our hair and out weight, and how big our breasts should be all together, they still don’t balance a man’s concern for his penis.

  Anyway, Gloria’s friend, who was a very nice woman, and who was dying for love of this man, made as light of the matter as she could-“It was not important …

  women don’t care about that so” of thing” - - . and so on and so on.

  And of course since the man was no fool, he didn’t believe a word of it.

  He stopped seeing her.

  Of course he stopped seeing her; she just reminded him of another humiliation. Men are great brooders. That’s what they do instead of complaining.

  I told Joey-that was the jerk policeman redeemed by love-to send Carl to town, Joey and Gloria and Gloria’s friend all being in on it together, since Carl was a friend of theirs. Of course the man didn’t want to come and see me-Joey presenting it as a sneaky thing the girls didn’t know about and so on, but Joey told the man I was very small and big ones hurt me and so forth, so the poor devil called me, had a few drinks, and came over one summer evening.

  Well, he was a very nice man. He was pretty tall, was starting to lose his hair, wore nice clothes, and wasn’t handsome at all. But to look at with his clothes on, nothing wrong with him.

  I guess it took me almost an hour, talking, fixing very light drinks for him, talking some more, to get him into the bedroom. Well, sweetheart, yours truly has cooed over and coddled many an inadequate penis-and the truth is most of them will get the job done if the man enjoys doing. But not this one. Your mother stripped and strolled around in her birthday suit, and told of her adventures the week before and so forth, since men enjoy listening as well as looking, and then finally got down to business. No good. The man was just too frighten
ed. And he had reason to be. His penis was bigger than a finger, but not by much.

  I suppose Carl had been told by every woman he’d tried to go to bed with, that it didn’t matter. And hadn’t believed any of them, of course. I could have continued that lie, but it was killing poor Carl, so I didn’t.

  “Holy shit!” said yours truly. “That one’s nice for tickling, Carl, but it’s too damn small for heavy duty.”

  Well, the poor guy sat on the side of the bed staring at me like I’d shot him. Couldn’t believe I’d said that to him. The truth is your know-it-all mother was also scared this was only going to hurt him worse and not accomplish anything. “Carl, you have a handicap,” I said, “just like being deaf, or missing a hand or a leg.

  Why in hell haven’t you done something about it? You must have left a bunch of pissed-off ladies in your life.”

  No response. Carl can’t believe someone is saying it to him.

  “You better get on the ball,” says the Big Mouth, “and learn to dance around that dingus, or you’re not going to make any lady happy. Ever.”

  “What?” Carl says. “What in hell … can I dooo?”

  The ice is broken, and I, as a lewd, down whore, spend the next half hour with the Buick dealer crying in my arms, begging for this and that, help me, help me, help me … blowing his nose in my handkerchief, wiping his eyes. Sob, sob, sob. Yours truly sobbing along (anybody cries, I cry too) and at the same time breathing a big sigh of relief that more good had been done than harm.

  Next two and a half hours: anatomy, funny stories, more anatomy, more funny stories, instruction in the arts of love talk, lovemaking, caressing, kissing, more love talk, more lovemaking, the use of the hand, fingers, tongue, and last and not least, vibrator one, two, and three.

  It all cost Carl the price of a microwave oven with limited features.