KhaosTheory.com

The Brothel, by Vincent Van Gogh

(translated and adapted by text originally written by Arnaldo Jabor)

Once upon a time our sweet ladies of easy virtue were called by violent names: whore, hooker, prostitute, trollop, slattern, baggage, bawd, hussy, slut, tramp, wanton, floozy, moll, camp follower, tart, strumpet, in a collection of brutal names that demonstrated the hatred from the good families to the sins outside the family life. The old prostitute was the symmetrical opposite of the decent wives. Today, our ladies of the night are called “escorts”.

A long time ago our streetwalkers would hide away, ashamed and marginalized. Now, with high-tech permissiveness, being a call girl is a profession, more so than the occupation of trophy wife. Now we are no longer talking about miserable girls, but proud sporting ladies living on the edges of the upper class, on the excitement of TV shows and magazines.

The modern courtesan is no longer on the fringe; she is at the center of the system like the lawyers, bankers, or dentists. The media and the Internet display their success. Formerly the working girl resented the sacred matrimony which excluded her. The old harlot was a physiological necessity, an extension of the families to compensate for the sadness of marriage. Today they don’t need to get married. There is no “pretty woman”; they don’t want to be rescued by romantic chumps.

The modern ladies of pleasure brush aside a “normal life”, preferring the cold adventure of money. Many of them are well married and help their husbands with the finances. I have met a school teacher in the suburbs that used to travel to big cities during school vacations to work in famous houses of ill fame.

The contemporary lady of the night is not ashamed of her work and does not suffer from guilt; perhaps just nausea… of you. They look at you as equals, or better yet, with a fine sense of superiority. They are active, on the move, taking action, and taking away from men their biggest pleasure which was the sense of moral superiority in temporary recess – an inhabitant of the clean world visiting the dirty world. Today you are the dirty one.

The old John used to believe in rescuing the fallen unhappy girls. The old brothels used to have a certain sadness in the air like an impossible love. There was also a repugnant kindness in those bygone wore-mongers: “Why are you doing this?” would ask the hypocritical client, before the act. “Oh, my father threw me out of the house, my boyfriend ruined me…” would moan the working girl. “But why don’t you leave this?” Whispered the vicious man, superior and malign, taking his pants off. Perhaps that is why they used to fall in love for their pimps, who used to spank them with sincere and joyful slaps.

Today you don’t comfort harlots, sluts, and fancy women. The romantic woman, now we know, is a man’s invention. Just like the sad, lost girl is as well. A friend told me that “there are no unhappy hookers”. Today they advertise as companions, escorts, promoters, and other euphemisms. They are athletic, aerodynamic, healthy. We used to live in a constant succession of gonorrhea’s. Today, they are the ones who fear your diseases. The condom excludes you, ridiculed with you penis wrapped in plastic like a little dog in a sweater. With the condom you are the venereal threat; she is the health. You used to visit a brothel looking for illusion. The man would go there to feel like he is in an harem. He wanted to be the center of the action. Today, he is the subject. There is a cold air in the modern brothels: clean, fast, and efficient like a fast food restaurant. There is something of a nurse or psychiatrist in the modern courtesan. The is something of a MacDonald’s in the modern brothel.

There are no mysteries left about our bodies: Every position, muscle, fluid, everything was explored. There is nothing else new to find. After the intercourse there is great sadness. As our life became so similar to the brothels, what we need are thematic brothels!

There are some thematic brothels on the Internet. On those you can be subjected in dungeons, hump in paradise among saints, have an orgasm in Mars. But that is not enough. We need brothels of dreams and love. That’s it! Men (and women, why not?) really need pure sentiments. Even if they have to pay for them. You get into a thematic brothel like in an interactive video game. There you will find sad women that you must comfort, motherly women that will comfort you, bad women that will disdain you with delicious cruelty and will forgive you later.

There you will find cries and tears, jealousy fits. In those brothels we can have the feeling of moral suffering (no BDSM, leather and latex), death pacts, endless sorrow, romantic breakups, total happiness, Tristans, Isoldas, flirts, serenades, stolen kisses. We can have real virgins blushing and defending their honor, we can have intrigues, innocence. Brothels of abstinence where everything is permitted, except sex. Orgasms (if ever) would be ethereal, like clouds, like holograms. Those would be platonic brothels. So we don’t have any ingenuity, temperance, love, ethics and moral? It all goes to the brothels. We could even have ethical brothels, where embarrassed intellectuals would purge themselves of malice and opportunism’s. There would be prohibitions, rules, ideologies, enforced by austere ladies, punishing us, wearing white gowns or dressed like “reason”, with black garters underneath, of course…

There can be depressive brothels, solitude brothels, cathouses of goodness, compassion whorehouses, houses of fine sentiments. There is an intolerable level of comfort in our market society. We need anguish, repentance, and restraint. The brothels of the future will be more like spas, like spiritual retreats. Great idea! I think I will open one of those ethical brothels and, naturally, will make a lot of money!