Memories of My Free Whore

Rio de Janeiro - I had not thought to publicize my stroll through the world of prostitution until I read that bookstores in São Paulo and Paraná had initially questioned whether to sell the Portuguese translation of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's new novel "Memorias de minhas putas tristes." (Memories of My Melancholy Whores).

These booksellers weren't alarmed that Latin America's most important novelist and Nobel Prize winner had become a pornographer. What incensed them was the title of the book. And their reaction reveals the widespread prejudice that surrounds the oldest of professions.

I also shared that puritanism - that sleeping with a prostitute was a sordid and shameful experience - when I was forced to rethink that view 23 years ago. I had just moved to Rio de Janeiro, and become friends with a carioca who saw me as square and needy.

He suggested that since I hadn't found my girl from Ipanema, Botafogo or even Bangu, that we visit the Lido, the red-light district of Copacabana. When I said "no," and babbled about the emptiness of sex without emotion, he suggested that I view going to the Lido as anthropology. And he offered to make the field trip my birthday present.

Although his offer challenged what I considered a sexual taboo, it also appealed to my belief that taboos are meant to be broken. So I said "yes," on the condition that I go as an anthropologist. I had, after all, always wondered why hookers use perfumes that smell like they should be named "L'eau do suvaco" (fragrance of armpit).

Once inside a Lido club called "Holliday," my thoughts turned libidinous, not analytical, as I began dancing with a variety of women. But the dancer who attracted me most seemed the least interested. And my pursuit of her ended in a kiss that lasted for what seemed like hours.

Foreplay ended when we, along with my friend and his companion, were driving back to his home. I had bought her popcorn which she started to prefer over my kisses. So, I jealously threw her bag out of the window and the climate changed. I had treated her as an object. So she became a robot. But the sex, even with her "automatic pilot" on, was better than I'd had with many other women.

Even more revealing was how that "pas de deux" changed my relationship with my friend. The next morning, after driving both women home, we said goodbye, not with a mutual tap on the back, but with a long hug. It was then that I realized that my tryst with the hooker, neither sordid nor shameful, had also been a bonding ritual. I admit it's macho, but our friendship endures to this day.

By challenging a taboo I opened new doors and ended a prejudice. I also began to question the hypocrisy of those who act with indignance towards this profession. Although prostitution comes in many forms, only its most explicit form is condemned by men, many, if not most, of whom have used its services.

My aim is not to romanticize the profession. Perhaps no other job does more to erode a woman's self esteem and threaten her health. And I obviously condemn child prostitution because it is the most cowardly way of robbing childhoods from those whom society should most protect.

I only want to say that there is nothing sinful or shameful about a trade women turn to in order to survive. Yet the puritanism surrounding it is profuse. It can be found, not only in the prejudices and booksellers in São Paulo and Paraná, but in the Aurélio (dictionary), whose synonyms for the word "prostituir" are "corromper," "degradar," e "desmoralizer." What is truly "desmoralizante" is defining a socio-economic problem in moral terms.

This article was first published by the Brazilian daily “Folha de São Paulo” on July 28, 2005. Michael Kepp, a U.S. journalist living in Brazil for over two decades, is the author of a book of essays "Sohando com Sotaque: Confissões e Desabafos de um Gringo Brasileiro," (Dreaming in an Accent: The Confessions and Critiques of a Brazilian Gringo), published by Editora Record. Order Sonhando com Sotaque from Livraria Cultura (in Portuguese).

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