Below is an all quote from $pread, the Spring issue. Read on.
We ran out to see this documentary because of enthusiastic emails circulating on sex workers' rights lists, so were surprised to find that the directors seemed uninterested in portraying the prostitutes in the documentary as human beings, much less in making a case for improving their rights. The documentary takes place in a Calcutta brothel, where photo-journalist Zana Briski and filmmaker Ross Kauffman focus on the children of brothel workers, and while the relationships Briski develops with these children are touching and inspiring, the documentary's representation of their parents is unsympathetic, to say the least.
Briski first took interest in photographing the lives of brothel workers in Calcutta's red light district seven years ago, though her focus soon shifted to the children of these workers, who are now the srars of her documentary. Briski began teaching photography classes to the children soon after she arrived in Calcutta, and eventually arranged a deal with Kodak, proving cameras and film for each child. Briski's students are thrilled to take on the challenges their teacher present and each child's individual style quickly evident in his or her art. The children's explorative photographs are a striking addition to the directors' own filmography.
Briski uses photography as a means of providing the children with a sense of ownership and purpose in what she presents as an otherwise hopeless environment. She additionally puts her students' photographs to work---they become a means to raise money for the children's education and to get them out of the brothels.
Briski is portrayed as a devoted outsider, committed to bettering the lives of the children she works with because, in her eyes, the locals are not up for the task. Brothel itself is painted as a sordid environment ruled by adults whose faces are rarely shown in full light, except when scolding their children or denying Briski permission to sent them off to boading schools. She makes no attempt, at least on camera, to develop relationships with the brothel workers, nor to offer them support in developing better relationships with thier own children: instead, she seems to have written them off as already 'beyond salvation'.
When the film and its directors seem well intentioned (and have no doubt provided a creative outled and much needed financial resources for the children), the women who work in the brothels are unjustly reprensetd as anonymous, enexplained shadows of people and unfit parents. The ending of the film, where we find out that most of the children who Briski managed to enroll in school were either withdrawn by thier parents or dropped out of their own accord, seems indicative of the limitations of focusing solely on 'rescuing' people from the sex industry without providing support and assistance for those who remain in or return to it.
---Rebecca Lynn and Rachel Aimee
clients are ...
Let me just jot down the characteristics of clients from the current agency:
a) eager for mutual oral sex (sixty nine): eh, don't even try. I suck you cas it is protected but I never let you go down. Have you ever heard of herpes?
b) what is the point of trying to use his own saliva when I am equipped with KY.
c) relatively nice characters
Korean 'Ethcort': the hidden part of the structure
I feel strangely unhappy although I should only get excited now: I will start working from tomorrow in the agency that I mentioned in the previous date. The interview was all right, without a hitch or any coersion for sex. The only complaint that I have is this same old strange convention they have as the 'house cut,' the commision the agencency assigns us workers other than the 'break down,' which would not leave even 50% of the price a client exactly pays to a girl for the session.
This weird convention is the notoriety of Korean anachronism, or the institutional sadism againt workers, in the industy. (In NY, the Asian ethnic escort industy is monopolized by Korean's. This is the hidden part of their huge national fund made abroad and sent back to Korea.) Those Korean agencies charge extra fees on top of getting their 60% or so as of break down although they have no logical explanation for the bad convention, except the belief for it to be 'the way' to manage the business. You can substitute 'the business' with a word such as 'slavery'.
They make the tradition to make women's lives helpless in the society so that women become vulnerable and have no option other than being a house wives or hookers, from either of which men can benefit anyway. The society is the institutional slavery for women.
Regarding for the slavery of the Korean ethcort (I think I'll use this made up word, which seems to capture the essence of what is to be described) business, it is so unacceptable that I feel an urge to let it all out to people outside who has no access to see how horrendous the violation of human rights are. Besides, it is noteworthy that all the Korean workers are blinded to acknowledge how much they are being abused in the environment whereas they are made to be grateful to have jobs and sources of income: their unawareness of the condition is greatly attributed to their culture that is premised to abuse women. They are too imune to it to articulate what is tolerable and what is violation for sex workers' rights on top of what human rights can be. This is what is going on in the US where American women benefit f eminism even without any awareness or struggle. So here I am, a sexslave running loose, who accesses to all the directions, to reserch, analyze and represent.
a guerrilla
the Singaporean Escort agency
For all who walk on the wild side
Not again
I went back to Japan Society's exhibition yesterday, which seemed to enable me to sort out all the caotic ideas I had in the first place about the show. I will jot them down later when I can digest things more. I would like to state before you presume, though. I did not go back there because I could get enough of the show but I had a company to 'escort'.
an entry lost
I hate it here. I just lost one good piece of draft while adding Emoticons to it. Funny how hard I was trying to explain their limited features (of th is host) SHHHH). I feel as if I was censored and the writing was deleted. Just kidding. But I have got a legitimate reason to react to be this neurotic when any of this sort of incident happens to me. I was doodling a little more than a year in another location of non-free hosting, the lowest profile in the industry (and got paid for it) shhhh) That was a part of their attempt to promote their operation) SHHHHH) yeah, I was one of those prostitutional blogger besides I am really a prostitute blogger) how confusing). They were mostly cool about things I jotted down even if I wound up using them for personal notes (but how could I get motivated when no one seemed to read it except my beloved glutter and Adrienna), but one thing: they would never tolerate my complaints about the host for any reason. I could not write anything negative about them even they had apparent defects or troubles. They deleted or pressured not to say anything negative about them.
(loudly) Oh, how much I love it here!
I can stay carefree at least! Besides it's got the very tightly knit community where fellow bloggers can reach each other out easily. If only we have a spellchecker.
beyond salvation
Born into Brothels (2004)
Kinsey
To answer the Muskee's question, I haven't seen Kinsey. How did it go?
You can read his blog by hitting Klein Legs in my link.
The Third World Feminism & One living Vocabulary
The institutional Sadism against women is another issue that occurs to me when I think of the argument Murakami brought up. He puts so much emphasis on how helpless these Japanese geeky hermits are. What makes it possible for them to live in the luxury of self-confinment is the economic well off off of the society that would not let people go bankcrupt so easily even when they have a couple of grown ups with no source of income in a family. More importantly, though, the society's maternal sacrifices sustains the very sickening social structure.
Recent high profile cases of the sex offenders or homicide cases are analysed to involve one common scenario where mother figures participate in complicit of the criminal acts:
1) Sons are prone to be spoiled so much for the partriarchal structure where boys are appreciated while girls are rather ignored or underappreciated.
2) Those spoiled boys grow into helpless 'aging out' (I apply the term from the previous entry on the adoption system, read it back as well) cases who can't do anything without mothers' help.
3) They prove themselves only to be failures w/o mama's cheers in workplaces, schools and relationships with others, especially with women.
4) They turn to female kids and develop themselves into pedophiles.
5) They abduct female kids and take them home to rape, kill or imprison (there was a case that kept a girl for a decade) where their mothers back them up to complete the crimes .
Most of those who ended up complying to their sons were also victims of their domestic violence. This is how the viscious circle is formed and goes around.
Er...I have begun fuming even when I am putting this post.
Another problem that I found during the whole show was that there was no feminism persepective in it. After all, the point Murakami makes on top of where he situates himself is completely phallocentric, isn't it? The voicelessness of Japanese women is another issue that I find problematic and queasy.
Honestly, I still don't understand why women don't get angry about all the overt and over sexualization of children that has been the center of the attention of geeky culture. On the contrary, the sexualized female children are justified and promoted in their hyper macho culture. The whole society is designed and institutionalized to encourage men to boost their own masculinity up at the cost of the helpless; kids. When they have no voice heard to go against it, they have no limitation to institutionalize, reproduce and reenforce the phenomenon. Currently, the sexualized female children are the very common commodities among them (oy! ill)! They even have the nickname that has been introduced to the West: isn't what lollicon is? How are mothers of girls coping with the phenomena?
Women in Japan are set back as kids (underappreciated for not being boys), always evaluated if se xually attractive or not (eh..would you give them a break? They are only kids of pre teens), dismissed if they don't serve those male centerized purposes as sex objects, threatened not to speak their minds or not to talk back to articulate men's inadequateness, they consequently grow into those very dependent and servile women perpetually and fatally coerced to sacrifice themselves.
In terms of the level of prevailance of the notion of feminism, they are in the ultimate third world condition. It is to be attributed to their ideas about basic human rights, which are next to nothing.
While flipping through the Interview magazine, which is entirely on Japanese cultures this month issue, I spotted this right comment to conclude what I started out without specific clue to end: the Japanese musician Utada says something worthwhile to quote here. The interviewer is that Nick Rodes from Duran Duran whom I barely recognized.
NR: Last year, you launched your first English -language album, Exodus[Island Def Jam] How have people in Japan reacted to?
U: Things are a bit different for me now. For years I was known as a very academic girl who did all her own songwriting, the good girl. But in English you can be sexy without lowering yourself. The language allows more room for a sense of humor and a playfulness for things. I wasn't expecting many people to buy the record in Japan, but it actually did pretty well. I do my own music programming, so I guess people are familiar enough with my intentions and what I do that they can recognize my music---even if they don't understand the lyrics.
Frankly, I don't think I am enough familiar with this musician from Far East, but my heart sank when I went over the interview or when I checked out her MTV You Hear It First. Does a woman of 22 years old have to be this repressed and stifled (as she actually articulates) for not knowing how to present herself as a grown up woman? What does she need to be afraid of so much? She should be gifted, educated and independent woman who should make enough to give no shit to anybody? No?
Padradoxically the comment in bold types explains how the ideas of being sexy and being positive about herself are incompatible. "Then, what do you want them to be?" I wish I could yell at those who enslave their 50 % of population of the society and dismiss them as secondary beings. They want them to be sex objects all the time from early on in their lives, and then, they want women to act as if they are asexual.
What we actually see in the society is that so many women lost or afraid of taking controls of their own sexuality and ultimately, their lives. An unwed woman is supposed to be ready to give her up to anybody who releaves her from being a 'sexual suspect': People might redicule or despise her if she is not married because it is thought to be an official failure. But then, if a woman is lucid enogh to handle her sex life, she would be condemned one way or another. It is just the pre-feminism condition. Wishing to get rid of the burden of having to prove herself as something worthwhile without lowering herself, a woman desperately depends on a man who marries her, believing it to be love. What all those young women need is to get education that serves nobody's but their own benefit. Instead of it, however, they are willing to participate marriage institution that's premised to dismiss women's human rights, but they falsely believe that family is sacred and they die on it. This is how those women with no subjectivity are mass produced.
Utada got married quite early to a man who was fifteen years older, as if to spend no time on being nubile without any legitimacy of being sexually active. More importantly, though, she might have chosen to marry that early because that was the last resort to get out of her father's dominance over her life. Remember that she was a sweat shop like 'music lab laborer' to make a living for her dad, who had been parasited to her mom previously.
Utada is often compared to Britney Spears although she openly hates the comparison. I don't think it is not only fair to compare them just because their age range but stupid because it ignores the difference of characters and intentions of their arts. Alicia Keys should be another singer who might offer more interesting and worthwhile exampes to compare: Keys is also a singer and songwriter who is very successful to fake a street smart 22 sister although she really is a repressed classical music geek. But I love her anyway! They (Keys and Utada) have more things in common; they are both minorities happened to have grown up in NYC, (for utada, on and off, for Keys, all the time) and they ended up landing the same school Columbia. Here you should keep your eyes open and see if this very young woman has ever been hesitant to express her womanhood? No way. She is fully aware of what is to be the origin of her art: just to be herself more and more. Sexuality is also a huge part of who an artist is.
When it comes to Utada, what makes it so difficult to take her own sexuality under control might come from so many different reasons. But I can name her father as a starter, who made a sweat shop laborer musician out of Utada from the age of 12 (!), or her mother who was formerly a famous singer in Japan and fell into this co-dependent marriage with the abusiv e spouse, Utada's father, the self-claim producer. It was a known fact that he was a talentless and skillless man who ruled his wife with perpetual violence. It sounds to be another story of Japnese man in NY: it is very typical of those who linger here for no purpose but living off Japanese women who lack the idea of basic human rights. On top of everything, though, the fear of judgement makes even a woman like Utada act like a school girl who is afraid of evaluation and punishment from unknown others.
It is another cliche of what Japan produces out of women in general by the time they come of age. They threaten girls so perpetually that women can't care anything but how they would be evaluated and validated by others.
While I was musing above, Utada reminded me of Lena Kiper of Nichiya (refer the previous entry on Nichiya and Ivan Shapovlof). While they seem to be completel y the opposite types, night and day, they have so much in common in terms of how difficult it is to hold themselves as artists and as women as well from those cultures where women hardly access feminism.
Art is so long
The above is a catalogue of the exhibition of question. Let me quote from the magazine Interview that's got coveniently a good and articulate description of the show.
"Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" is the third installment in the "Superflat" trilogy curated by Japan's current art superstar Takashi Murakami. Hosted by New York City's Japan Society and running through July 24, the show explores Japan's obsessive Otaku (geek) subculture and its extreme fixation with things horrific (radioactive monsters, atomic apocalypse), huggable (Hello Kitty), or somewhere in between (lollicom "Lolita Complex" figurines). In addtion toa number of works by contemporary Japanese artists like Yoshitoomo Nara and Cinatsu Ban, the show features an exhaustive array of pop culture artifacts---toys, manga, anime, and films that address Japan's postwar state of mind. (...)
I took it out of the intro of the co-interview of Murakami and Yoko Ono on the eve of the exhibition in NYC. Anybody interested should go get the June issue of the magazine.
The first thing that came over to me after the show was certain inability to verbalize some disappointment. It was completely all right to be caught by surprise for anything, resentment, disturbance...etc. However, I had this very mixed feelings when I was going through each item in the show, from animations, cartoons to sculptures and stuffed animals. All the things I saw were either boring, sickening, shallow or impenetrable. Honestly, there did not seem any criticism or any firm stand; to say the least of simple joy to appreciate when I usually experience to encounter any art work.
The theme Murakami has set seems to be so accurate and ambitious that I almost correct my presumption on this artist or (I would rather call him) the art critic. Among all the agendas he raises in his statement in the beginning of the whole show, he keenly points out how low people in Japan have to keep their profiles or how desperate they have to avoid conflict with others, to the extent of impossible. To summerize all of the characteristics that go back to the trauma of war, he employs the terminology "super flat" that dominates the total mind set of Japanese postwar culture. I am not quite sure if the word 'flat' is correctly defined in his idea (Murakami uses 'flat' as meaning oppressed state of mind in the society as well as to describe two dimensional visual logic), but can't agree more with his articulate point.
However, the whole artworks Murakami collected for the show pretty often sidetracks or succumbs to pointlessness. Imagine that I am standing jaw dropped in front of a video screen that plays 'Yurui (loose) characters' show', which would resist all the translational attemps but let me try; say, all the second class characters from off the center of Japan as opposed to the main stream and renowned character such as Hello Kitty that anybody knows? Yet, it is too much to ask regular audiences to see this and still intrigued or appreciate instead of being perplexed. There were too many works just as this, which did overly nonsense and appears to be pointless to consist any sequence of logic to support the theme the curator sets in the beginning.
(One of the things I hate most in my life is translation. I have led a life that is divided into languages I command depending upon each occasion and people I deal with, I am not used to translating process, which consumes energy unnecessarily.)
Anyhow, this (seeing the Loose Characters' Show in Japan Society) was quite a mind-bending experience to me. There seemed to lots of notions and terms that I did not digest ot even know. What was outstanding was now thatthey would not go starve for the well off nation's economic status, all they seem to care is to minimize the amount of activity and confine themselves in their own confy rooms. Funnily this was the original meaning of otaku, which referred to a house in Japanese, or 'you', the casual second person adressing form used among geek y people. It could also derive some kind of arrested development cases who had no clue to socialize with other people in adequate manners.
It was not a coincident that those otaku crowds were finally registered in the collective consciousness as sex offenders (or the petentials) that was initially manifested as the famous Miyazaki's case: an aging out figure kidnapped girls and butchered the bodies to videorecord (which is actually brought up in Murakami's interview in 2000 I pasted in the previous entry, so go back and check it).
We can draw out certain conclusion of Murakami's theory; he tries to make certain consistency among the postwar state of mind in Japan and the trauma of war. People's current neurosis and grown-up men's acting out are inevitable consequences of the wounds from the slaughter the tribe went through. The reason Japanese people keep their lowest profiles is because they are scared to get attacked again. That is the dead true lesson people learned: they never know when they will be attacked again by some monstrously destructive and unarticulated power to whom they have no way to fight back. This has become the recurrent theme and the developed fixation for destruction that we so often observe in Japanese violent animation, cartoon or SF where geeks were originated.
Reading back the interview of Murakami circa 2000, I have got this funny impression on the artist: I am completely uncertain if he is trying to make people laugh or if he is being serious and zealous for what he is talking. Prabably for both, I'd say. At the stage, he might be more on the joking side, though. He jokingly set so many working theories such as the geeks' culture as a weapon to fight back to otaku bashing. The trouble is tha tis no longer a laughing matter. If geeks are crowds resulted by the political defeat of Japan and geeks' culture should be the response to the opression. The world wide circulation of the otaku culture originally from the center of otaku, Japan, there should be some meaning to be analysed when people locate the common vocabulary in the phenomenon.
Regarding for the warfare and the trauma rooted to it, now they know what was done and who did that. US military force dropped the atomic bombs because Japanese people were considered to be monstrously impenetrable and helplessly anarchy. But that was then and this is now. If Jaoanese can't get over the fear and if they are aware of living the submission ever since they got shut up by the bombs, all they can do is to confront the cause and speak up, isn't it? What those people are suffering for is that they still have no affirmative self-images: they consider to be invisible, who transcend to anything they want. But they can't build up any relationship with others also because they have no bodies. Nobody. It does not take a rocket science but just some focus and courage to get their bodies back. It is just that it would take US side's recognition and apology for having denied and deprived their bodies by the slaughter. Otherwise, they have to go around the wound that's got tons of puss, which has not come out yet but worsens the wound.
So here is Murakami, who seems to be clever and fiece enough to reach the point. But he really disappointed me by his evasive and unarticulate presentation of the show. What he ends up proving is paradoxically the very characteristic of Japanese same old mentality. He cannot keep holding the opinion high enough to get the recognition as he initially might mean, with so many excuses to be made. But if you shoot, then you would be shot back. I don't believe if he shot in the dark unknowing the very basic law. He could not endure the argument he brought up probably for the fear of being solid political or becomes not arty enough. It is always easier to avoid the confrontation. Another might be, eh, he might be very unaware of what is uncool here: being timid, unconfrontational, uncritical or spineless.
Well, then, what did he want to do if he would withdraw or resign so easily with all the remote, pointless and uninteresting installment? At least the book that I pasted the link of from amazon at the beginning of today's entry seems to be loaded with all the historical backgrounds, agendas and theories with illusrations organized so well. It is worth taking a look at, I would rather say, the irony is that reading this book is enough to understand what the whole show is without bothering to go see it.
The Geeks as the tribal identiry
OK, I caught the show in Japan Society yesterday. So stay tuned while I am mustering up the analysis of what I saw.
http://www.jca-online.com/murakami.html" title="http://www.jca-online.com/murakami.html" target="_blank"http://www.jca-online.com/mur... Murakami's interview circa 2000
http://www.japansociety.org/events/current.cfm" title="http://www.japansociety.org/events/current.cfm" target="_blank"http://www.japansociety.org/e... Japan Society's exhibition of question
The Super Flat Hiroshima Nagasaki Mon Amour
I had been completely unimpressed by Takashi Murakami up until very recently: currently he has installed an exhibition titled Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, which explores the postwar Japanese visual art scene. The theme of the show is to examine the trauma and fixation the Hiroshima & Nagasaki caused the whole culture.
Murakami is the Japanese artist who made his name by the 'superflat' theory, which analyses the extremely two dimensional Japanese visual culture rooted on cartoon and drawing or Luis Vitton that has got cutsey illustrations on it. Yes, he is the mastermind of the whole kitche syndrome from Japan. The materials he has produced so far might have been loaded with theories and strategies that I never knew or gave two shits on. All I know was this is not a stupid man.
However, his presence did not mean anything to me when his artworks appeared to be completely empty and shallow that only seemed to focuse on commodification. This commodification is made possible only when the commodity (values of the concept, ideas and craftworks) is trafficked and crossovered by rather an easy way: moving things from Far East to the US although this is always the necessary process of creating value out of what is taken for granted at the original location.
Murakami is not very favored among Japanese audiences for he has gained his fame in seemingly an easy way rather than paying certain sacrifice as an artist in a convetional way. Ironically, though, this seemed to be the inevitable process of shifting what was recognized as the 'sub' and 'trivial' culture into the main stream one, which involved certain group of people's recognition and validation. This case, the attention from Western world (as the authority) was inevitable: Murakami seemed to be very strategic and fierce in the 'class struggle of art'.
Now I have got more to think about this phenomenon regarding for Murakami and the theme he has presented in the exhibition. Because he seems to have collected all the attention to do at least one justice nobody ever brought about: to examine the trauma of the warfare of Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and represent the predicament Japan is still suffering for. I have always believed that Japan would never acquire their voice and self image back unless they confront the trauma the tribe suffer for even if there are so many things that abstract the obvious cause. Their relationship with US is one of the agenda that abstract the political vocabulary. Because the process of decolonization would involve the American side's recogtion and apology. The only vocabulary that would bring level relationship between two should be rememberd as the paradoxical proof of the predicament. All we know in the US is the brutal dismissal and the ignorance about the historical incident.
I have got to run: I am about to get out to catch the show in Japan Society. (to be contiued...
EST and my old neighbor
I ran into somebody that I had not seen or talked to for three years in my neighborhood. We ended up talking about all the people we knew in common back in those days and very surprised to discover how many couples had broken off despite of how tight they seemed to be stuck to each other. Among of all, though, the shocker was D's news. She was a woman that I used to know closely. She did not seem to be an exception to split with her husband even though they appeared to stay together forever, not because of their love for each other but because of her uncompromising control over her husband S. You have not reached the shocking part yet, though.
She broke up with her husband now and she got caught by this severe depression she never seemed to shake off. What she resorted to was to get an Electric Shock Treatment.
I was very alarmed to hear that. I know lots of people who go through stubborn depression, which almost surmounts to the cliche. This seems to be what North American people are doomed to experience as the consequence of their highly individualized and 'civilized' life style that is based upon sacrifices others', minority and/or foreigner's, mostly, make. However, it is not so common to see somebody go for EST. All the association that I have with the method might be biased and old fashioned, such horrible cases that I have seen in movies like Magdalene Sisters or An Angel at my table.
D was known as a typical case of JAP (Jewish American Princess) in New York added to the arrested development partly because she was spoiled and partly bacause of her heroine and other substance abuse developed in her early teenage years. She managed to clean all the habit owing to the terrible car accident that almost put her in the eternal paralysis at the age of 20, which left some deformation in of her legs that we could still see after more than ten years. After all, though, she survived the accident and even thrived.
When I befriended with her, she finally put herself together and started to play in a band she formed with her professional base player husband. Since I had so much trouble with her, I was happiest when I could finally get rid of her when she moved out of the guttery neighborhood for a co-op bought by her parents for her.
I would rather not go into the details but she was busybodying, prying and trying so hard to matchmake as a typical married woman, who felt insecure as seeing unwed people, because she had to question the validity of her own decision in her life. All in all, she was somebody who could have relationships only if she was controlling others. She even had no experience of working nor made money by herself. Fortunately or unfortunately, she had all the people who were grateful and/or could appreciate if only she was alive. If she could move and make a sandwitch on her own in future, which was predicted to be impossible when she was run over by a car, that would have been a triumph of her life. What the doctors warned was that she would be paralysed or would function in a very limited range at het best. Now that she could bitch and control others, it could not be any more pleasing for her family.
Well, the fabulous story is through. She is alone and suffering for her depression to the extent that she needed EST to release herself from the paralysis of her mind. I figure how much suffering she had gone through. But that does not make me want to go back to her and pick up where we left off. Chances are she is getting only worse than ever and actually that was what R (the one that I actually saw and talked to) described. She had her rough time and all the more she became unmanagable. She had acquired another justice of being a bitch.
At least, her father was a psychiatrist, so the decision she made to take EST might be the result of what was thought through and well examined envolving the professional figure close to her. This is another cliched JAP story in NY. She has got all the pampering staffs in her life so that she can make herself unhappy till her heart's content.
Bitter or Sweet? A hooker's off
During the time that I was away from working in the full gear, I have developed this bad habit of getting technical with multiple partners. This is not the bad part, though. The bad part that I have a trouble leaving behind is that I don't get paid for it.
This is what people might do more often and I should take this as a rehabilitation to get back to something humaine. However, this really throws my pace off and has screwd my feeling up.
The only good news that I got today is that all the results of regular check ups were fine. I can go back to work without any worry now.
I went to Brighton Beach just as usual today; all the people are out there for bathing and swimming. I wish I had been one of those who can enjoy and forget all the troubles in life. I left there before dark figuring the tradition of kidnapping marriage. Sometime it could be way easier to be abducted and forced instead of having to choose at our own risk. Having grown to attached so much to certain men that I am so much in love with makes it tougher to go back to work and now copulate with strangers in a steady basis.
let's see...
I am not quite sure if I would agree on all of these agendas, for I don't necessarily like the idea people tend to have about sexworkers,whi ch is overly glorifying. However, let me contemplate on these simply because they sound humorous and I like that funny aspect of the argument here.
I have got to tell you that I cracked up at least seven timese whie I was going through all.
The above is from Tracy Quan's recent post in her blog. See my links if you are interested.
wow
Summer Plan
Rent Girrrrl
As soon as I published the previous entry on Tea, I ran to Barns & Noble in Union Square to get a copy of Rent Girl. I found it amazingly well rendered: this should be one of the finest and the landmark sex worker literature in last one decade. It has got gorgeous illustrations along with Tea's simple and strong prose, which captures what you almost pass as you're being too immune to if you are ever in the industry. To complain a bit, there is not much new to find if you are familiar with Tea's works already, although I don't deny she has got the finest voice.
Anyhow, reading about the industry does really wear me off, just as getting traumatized once again. After all, that means this book reflects what it really is like to have been there and done that. You can count on Tea.
Phoebe Gloeckner's realism and a hooker's life
I was thinking of Phoebe Gloeckner for a couple of days. She is a graphic novelist and known for her autobiographical work A Child's Life. This is quite a tough read: set in 70's, it is a story of a lower teenage girl's journey and the hard-won wisdom fruited by her narrow survival. The author draws out all the details and truths she found in her ultra realism where is no room left for any dream nor denial. What protagonist has to go through to reach the moment of epiphany is to be neglected by her mom, to run away home, to get hooked up with all the wrong crowd, to get bombarded with the carnal encounter with strangers, adding the finishing job of drug abuse and prostitution,&nb sp;just to escape the origin of the troubled mind; sexual abuse by her own famiy.
In this case, the protagonist Minnie is sexually abused by her step father and getting raped. After running away from her home for the cause, she gets into a series of troubles and involved with an abusive figure after another.
Actually, examining the pattern here gives readers certain knowledges and solutions to get out of the same kind of trouble because what causes it here is very obvious; The girl Minnie falls into abusive environment because she is vulnerable, too needy and desperate. To substitute her need to be loved and to repair the damage caused by the loss of the attention from her family, she throws herself to anybody she runs into in her life, just as a junky tries to fix him/herself by a quick and desperate way.
What puts an end to the magical tour of hell is to acknowledge that she would not get any love from anybody; thus she stops giving two shits on any man but focuses to her own benefit and herself.
While I was thinking of the story above, I happened to find another book, A Diary of a Girl by the same author. This one, though, is more like a novel with many illustrations inserted by the same author. This is not much different from what I read in the former work except certain settings; this time, the protagonist, Minnie, again as the alter ego of the author, is another teenage girl who has a sexual relationship with her mother's boy friend by her deliberate choice instead of getting raped like the first story. After her mother's discovery or it, things get tougher for the girl Minnie because of her mother's indifferent, reproachful and contemptuous attitude toward her. She even encourages her boy-friend to get married to Minnie to redicule her daughter and to nag her boy friend. Under the influence, her mother mocks two for copulating by obcsenity,("You have to marry my daughter because you poked her!") in public.
By the end of the story, she learns to say "I am better than you, you son-of-a-bitch" to the mom's boy friend and moves on along with her academic plan that insinuates some promises for her future. However, to get to this seemingly sober veiw, the girl has to struggle so much to give up the hope and the false feeling she has clung to: she believed to love him and hoped that he would save her from the loneliness. She even wished that he would really marry her when her mother brought it up.
I know by now that you are ready to yell, "Give me a break! How can a girl fall in love or believe that she loves a guy who fucks her while he also fucks her mom?" Well, I want to set the same question and that was exactly what was on my mind when I accidenty spotted this book in a bookstore.
Why can a woman love a man who just abuses her?
Where does the feeling come from?
Working explanations:
When a girl has no experience? When a girl has no good example of grown-ups to show her what can be the right love? When nobody shows what she really deserves instead of jumping onto what just seems to be availabe to her (this case, he is not even available to her, though)?
All of the above seem right reasoning.
The real horreur, and the real moving part of the story as well, is when she calls up to the suicide prevention hot line. She just finds that someone on the other end of a line is a religeous fan atic, who is actually having fun to mortify her and verbally abuses her with quotes from bible. That is the moment when she discovers the universal truth; she can't turn to nobody but herself to get out of the hell.
Can anything be tougher than this? I couldn't stop crying and shuddering for the fear of the sobering realism this author employs. And I have got another reason to cry and suffer for the discription of the confused soul right before the moment of her realization; am I same as this girl to be madly in love with a pimp figure who benefits and exploits me as a prostitute? Am I as helpless as this naive and abondoned soul, little Minnie?
This is what I have been figuring; am I trying so hard to trust somebody in vain? Am still I looking for love in a wrong place?
Oh, how difficult it is to tell how wrong I am.
The rest of the story should be written by nobody but me as a part of my story, "The Playgirl from the Eastern World."