Why I AM (Unapologetically) a Whore

She’s now the darling strumpet of the crowd,

Forgets her state, and talks to them aloud,

Lay by her greatness and descents to prate

With those ‘bove whom she rais’d by wond’rous

Fate.

From “A Panegyrick Upon Nelly”

Anonymous, 1681

I recently started, and have nearly finished, reading, The Darling Strumpet: A Novel of Nell Gwynn, Who Captured the Heart of England and Kind Charles II, by Gillian Bagwell (2011), a historical fact-based fiction novel, set in 17^th century London. It’s the true story of an oyster-seller, turned child-prostitute, turned stage actress, and in her final metamorphosis…arguably, the century’s most famous courtesan.

I am consuming this book (at a rapid pace), which caused a moment of self-reflection.

Give me the true story of a whore…made good (as in this work), or not (I am thinking of Emma Donogue’s touchingly raw, Slammerskin), and I am engrossed, mesmerized, and slightly aroused from…beginning to end.

Why?

Undoubtedly there have been times in my life where I felt like a whore. Not in the sense of being sexually promiscuous, rather I felt like a prostitute…being paid for intimacy—not necessarily sex, although these situations were always of a sexual nature.

A few times, when I was younger, I was paid to do a photo shoot (erotic) while a man paid to either watched or be included. Very often these involved nudity and touching, and sometimes the man would masturbate himself…or not. I was in school and needed the money, and thought, “It’s not like I’m having sex with them!”

But the feeling afterward, suggested something disparate…

SHAME.

Then (and now) I fought against that feeling of shame, which is why I never stopped repeating these interludes, again and again…over the course of my adult life…

At sex parties, as a hostess.

Working in the dungeon, as a dominatrix.

Even when I didn’t “need the money”…the desire compelled me to continue.

I enjoyed it.

I ENJOY IT.

A natural performer, an easy tease, and born hostess…I get-off, giving myself to another purely for pleasure.

I am a true prostitute.

A WHORE.

Setting the obvious socio-political differences between myself and someone who earns their living from prostitution aside, pleasing others for money adds to the emotional impact of the experience.

The understanding that my pay is contingent upon my performance…drives me.

It doesn’t make the feeling behind the act any less…rather it intensifies it…you, a stranger, are showing me that you value my time…my skill…my ability to bring you pleasure.

This tension, this agreement, is the reason I love to pay for lap dances in strip clubs…as the client, it secures my “hold” on her…it is power…hers or mine? It’s never clear who truly has the power in these exchanges of sexual gratification, only that this particular dynamic adds to the excitement.

And therein, in that moment of tension, is also where I believe the SHAME resides:

I enjoy this exchange, yet I know it’s wrong…which in turn makes it me wrong for wanting it…and therefore makes it all

SO VERY RIGHT!

It is the oldest profession, is it not?

And its dialectic continues to compel me…

Happy Whoring!

xxx, c.

(image by: Michelle Wild Photography)

A Fragmented Woman, Like Many of Us (Book Review)

Fragments by Richard Schickel is a rare opportunity to see into the unconscious psyche of America’s sex symbol…a collections of notes, doodles, poems, letters…this work attempts to capture Marilyn not as we would have seen her, but as she saw herself…it is amazing. I high recommend it…and images of the actual handwritten scrawls are included…beautifully compelling!…xxx c

A Love Story With Fire (Book Review)

I just finished Diana Gabaldon’s Firefly in Amber and found it a magnificent study of the human heart, of love, sadness…and that powerful force that draws lovers together…destiny? Desire? Magic?

Through this somewhat supernatural jaunt through 18th century Scotland to modern day this dense novel pulls the reader through tribulation and trial, through life and death, through reunion and separation and yet you never lose the sense that all of these forces are simply cyclical choices thrust upon us by life and answered by our will alone..striving for that….for WHO…makes us whole…and yet the realization comes slowly that with every sense of fulfillment a new barrier arrises…and the cycle continues.

Heartbreakingly touching…this is a novel for those who long to explore both sides of love…

I hope you enjoy it as much as I…xxx c

Poetry: ‘Fugues’ (Book Review)

Claribel Alegria, Amazing Salvadorian poet…her words are like strong liquor, they entice, burn, and leave you dreaming…of a magnificent moment! xxx c

Marie Antoinette: Misunderstood princess & ill-fated queen (reposted via http://conchitasopenbook.tumblr.com)

Historical non-fiction, as related to royal-women of the ages, has always fascinated me. Their lives were lived in an indulgent manner as foreign to me as the countries they ruled and customs they followed. Still I repeatedly find myself picking-through the next Allison Weir…indulging in the fast-paced historical-fiction of Phillipa Gregory…plodding through the dense and well documented non-fiction biographies of Nancy Goldstone…I always come-back.

The inescapable draw being, I believe, the simple humanity that connects these very REAL women. Yes, they were queens…yes they lived lives filled with eccentricities that very few will ever match and yet they were also mothers, daughters, wives, lovers…they experienced great achievements alongside terrible failures…they celebrated and they grieved and they did so…much like ANY OTHER WOMAN…with all of their hearts.

The main difference, unlike other-women, their successes as much as their failures were witnessed and then judged by their entire countries, and for some, the world. So perhaps it is the magnification of human experience that intrigues. Many of these women chose lives in which decisions cost them blood…both loved ones’ as well as their own. And none so ill-fated a story than that of Marie Antoinette.

Antonia Fraser’s novel, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, based on the true events of Marie Antoinette’s life from childhood until her death at the age of 38, depicts the complexities of politics and culture that cast this French Queen as such a rebellious and infamous historical figure. I have Quoted the novel and film based-on-the-novel (Directed by Sophia Coppola) extensively here as well as in my other blog (www.nymphobrainiac.wordpress.com) and even attempted to embody Madame Antoinette for this past Halloween.

Much has been said about this notorious French royal and yet not much is fact. However, we have Antonia Fraser’s widely read (2001) novel to thank for illuminating much of the truths about this historically monumental woman’s life. As one might guess, Marie Antoinette’s life was not all indulgence and golden opportunities…rather as a foreign-born princess she was to forever to remain a political outsider to her people and political pawn to her family.

Volleyed between her duties as French sovereign and Queen of one of the wealthiest political powers of the 18th century and the political designs of her overbearing mother, the ruling Queen of Austria; Fraser describes for us a very young woman who early in her rule (beginning at the age of 14), caught between these two dialectical forces, chose to indulge in the superficialities of life. She was fashionable, she was fun, she threw great galas, she sang, she acted, she traveled, she gambled, ALL to excess.

And yet, she was also a great supporter of charities, particularly those that catered to women and children. Marie Antoinette was singularly responsible for the rise of fashion in Paris and supported all of the arts equally. She truly gave as much as she got. She was a “glittering star” of the era…and unfortunately, the perfect scape-goat for all that the common-people despised about the inequities of the French royal rule.

Enter…1789…The French Revolution.

Without an adept political voice to defend herself, nor the savvy to predict what danger she and her family were in…the fall of the French royalty was swift. Immediately The King’s power was stripped and much of the royal cabinet was imprisoned or be-headed; there were a few botched escape attempts of the royal family and then the final imprisonment of The King, Queen and their young children.

Their story is iconic and well documented in history books, however I believe that Fraser does a particularly good job of depicting a uniquely perceptive version of these events. We feel for The Queen and her naieve understanding of the political views that would eventually seal her fate, her undying commitment to The King…refusing to leave him even when she could have escaped safely alone…and above all her love for her children…a love that guided her every decision in her life…and at the time of her eventual death.

Fraser paints for us a woman…caught in the political circumstances of an extraordinary life…which perhaps seemed to always be just out of her grasp.

She was a lover of the pleasures of life and conceivably as a princess, not properly endowed with the adequate skill to navigate life’s many displeasures.

She did NOT say, “Let them eat cake!”

She DID say…to her sister-in-law, on the day of her beheading:

‘I have just been condemned to death, not a shameful death, that can only be for criminals, but in order to rejoin your brother (The King). Innocent like him, i hope to demonstrate the same firmness as he did at the end. I am calm, as people whose conscience is clear. My deepest regret is having to abandon our poor children; you know that I lived only for them and for you, my good and tender sister’ (Marie Antoinette, p.495)

Marie Antoinette is an honest portrayal of an alternately despised and celebrated character in our world-history. Let me re-phrase that, Marie Antoinette is a literary portrayal of a woman honest, to her heart. Thank you, Antonia Fraser…for your ability to weave historical fact with palpable feeling with the lightest of touch.

Great read guys…pick it up and DIG IN! xxx c.

(originally posted in: http://conchitasopenbook.tumblr.com/)

In keeping with GREAT HORROR reads for HALLOWEEN posts, I present you with…I Am Legend, the much acclaimed 1954 horror-sci-fi classic by Robert Matheson always tops any Vampire Buff’s list one of THE BEST books in his or her blood-sucking collection.

The book is so compelling in fact that it has been adapted to film THREE TIMES! 

First in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth, then again 1971 as Omega Man, and then most recently in 2007 starring Will Smith (see scene above).

The story follows Robert Neville after the world’s population has been overtaken by a Vampiric Virus, leaving it’s inhabitants to rule the darkness as blood-thirsty monsters. While it is a wonderfully imaginative, if frightening, premise…the novel is most compelling as a character study of Neville’s increasing madness through grief and isolation…grappling with the question of humanity, and how one retains humanity when there is so little left!

He lay there on the bed and took deep breaths of the darkness, hoping for sleep. But the silence didn’t really help. He could still see them out there, the white-faced men prowling around his house, looking ceaselessly for a way to get in at him. Some of them, probably, crouching on their haunches like dogs, eyes glittering at the house, teeth slowly grating together; back and forth, back and forth.-I Am Legend

xxx c.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

This past Spring I picked up “The Longshot,” by Katie Kitamura to entertain me under the flowering trees in the park while…I sat and sneezed and itched my eyes! Allergies aside…this was a GREAT read! I was pleasantly surprised that, okay I will admit my bias in advance, a woman could write so passionately, intimately, and with so much knowledge about two men and a male-dominant sport: MMA. I snagged the book for two reasons:

1. The reviews were excellent and touted this new talent’s style as “pared-down” and “lyrical” prose….I LOVE stylized writing…thats reads more like poetry than grammatically linked words…I believe we call those sentences! Anyway, reason #2…

2. My boyfriend is an MMA fighter…quite advanced…and so it was my way I think of understanding his “world” a little better…getting closer perhaps.

And while both of my “reasons” were fulfilled, this book was so much more, enough cannot be said about the relationship between the two main characters, one the old rumpled mentor/couch/philosopher, the other an (almost) former prize fighter at the crux of his career and headed toward the imminent decline that every elite athlete must face.

And here we meet two men facing THE FINAL FIGHT…as the Longshot. It’s an emotional journey. Yet it is wholly masculine. It is packed with action. Yet belabors the simple moments of contemplation…in a word it is a powerful work!

Taste it:

Fear rushed in again. He thought probably Rivera could see it. He thought probably everyone in the room could see it. The nightmares were of his own dreaming but the fear was more than that. The fear went further. It was in his body, like it had set in his blood. (p. 132)

It is worth a hearty bite…it goes down a little stiff, but I highly recommend it xxx c

I Just Picked-Up: ‘Marie Antoinette’ by Antonia Fraser…a sympathetic nod to a naughty princess!

Last week…in my OTHER blog, MY LIFE AS A NYMPHOBRAINIAC…I wrote about Sophia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, staring Kirsten Dunst…an indulgent piece detailing the exploits of its oft misunderstood main character, the film is a beautiful work to behold…visually…it is as sumptuous and sensual as we imagine life at Versailles to be!

Honestly, it feels like a guilty pleasure to watch…

And I enjoy it as much as I do a fluffy, sugary, delicate…piece of…CAKE!

Upon doing a bit more research on the film recently I discovered that it is in fact based on a novel by the historian/fiction writer, Antonia Fraser…

Of course I snatched a copy as quick as I could locate one and after finishing the first 30 pages of this rather lengthy tome (600+ pages in total)…I find a slightly different Marie Antoinette emerging… certainly one who is much more complex…layered…and overall a sympathetic being. A child who who’s future was determined by royal birth and who’s unfortunate downfall appeared to be her destiny. Spoiled…yes…indulgent…yes…and yet she was also innocent and naive to many of the political determinism of her day…and no…she never said,

Let them eat cake!

That unfortunate attribution was actually uttered by a royal 200 years before Marie Antoinette became Queen of France! In fact this queen was quite the humanitarian it seems… Mis-attributions aside…I very much look forward to getting into THIS ONE!

As`always…I will keep you updated along my read! xxx c

For Those Who Love FEM Fantasy/Horror…P. Briggs just doesn’t sink her teeth in!

In this first of five (soon to be 6) in the Mercy Tompson Series by Patricia Briggs we meet our heroine, the tough and talented Mercy…a shape-shifter with a nose for trouble and a knack for perseverance. She is as hard and nasty as she is loyal and idealistic. She fights for what is right and as a reader, we love it…we love her! The novel is woven in modern times when mythes, monsters and legends (e.g. vampires, werewolves, goblins) roam freely, some “outed” and some not. We, follow Mercy as she negotiates the trials and politics of the wolfpack that raised her. The story is solid, easy to follow. There is a hint of mystery and intrigue…but there is also something missing in this premiere of the series…

BITE!

Briggs stops short of pushing the development between her characters. We enjoy then…we fell for them…but I could never quite get a sense of how they felt for one another.

The novel reads a lot like a wonder menagerie of fantastical figures..waiting to meet one another!

I can only hope…that in the next installment Briggs gives her characters the introduction they so badly deserve!

xxx c.

In honor of THE NEW SEASON OF DEXTER!…starting this Sunday…I thought I would peruse the book shelves for any new Dexter books…on which the TV SERIES is base…and indeed I find I am behind! I have read the first 3 and find that in fact the 5th, Dexter Is Delicious (Jeff Lindsay) has been out since early September!

In this installment we follow our favorite morally-rooted serial killer as he meets his match:

VAMPIRES!

That’s right! This NEW NOVEL combines the quick ironic laugh-out-loud dark comedy of Lindsay’s writing style with…my favorite antagonist (in this case)…THE VAMPIRE!

Anyway…I cannot wait to catch up to this newest installment as the previous books I enjoyed immensely.

Dexter is hands-down…the most loveable of reasonable homicidal sociopath…I have EVER had the pleasure of meeting…and I have met…a few in my work!

heehee

xxx dr.c.