The Secret History of Las Vegas

VERB

We are many things — shapeshifters, actresses, mothers, sisters, virgins, whores, homemakers, and home wreckers — but more than anything, prostitutes are mirrors. We reflect only what the john wants, what he has paid to see, to experience. There are many different kinds of johns and a prostitute to match each need. In that way the best prostitutes are those who aren’t ever there. Not really. We are only the desire of men slowly taking shape in the muted lights and scented rooms of their shame and need.

I never have figured out why we call them johns. Some say it’s because men arrested for soliciting always give their names as John Smith. I don’t care much for this stuff. The origin of things is more Sunil’s thing.

In fact, it was Sunil who once told me that the word “prostitute” comes from the Latin verb prostituere, which means to put forth in public, to expose, to dishonor, to put to unworthy use. I thought it curious that he mentioned it was a verb, and not a noun, because that means we can only exist in the moment, in the doing. We are always prostitutes but since we are not always prostituting, we cannot therefore always exist. A real mind fuck, if you ask me. Like the world truly disappears when we close our eyes. I only exist in the verb of doing the thing, the nasty, so to speak. Shit, I’ve even started to sound like Sunil, proof that five years with someone you adore but who doesn’t really see you will make you mold yourself around your own desire to be seen.

Personally, I think the word john comes from John Doe, as in a person who is and who can never really be there except in body, a need that forms only in the reflection of us. Any true hooker will tell you that this is never really about sex for the men — no matter how horny the john is. Maybe that is why it becomes easier with time, to fuck all those men, this knowledge that you are never really fucking them, you are never really having sex. Some johns come to empty themselves in your mirror, to peel away their own loss, until finally they see what they truly are. The trouble with this kind of john is that they often don’t like what they see, because they stunted their own growth so long ago. What is most longed for, their deepest nostalgia, is lost forever — and while that youth they imagine, that virile self who could have taken over the world, is dreamed of, the truth is that in the face of the mirror, they are little more than grotesque dwarves. And then the desire for you turns to hate. These johns vary in tone from the mild asshole to the very dangerous, violent kind. Hookers learn very quickly how to obscure the true face of the monster in the mirror. It can never be fully obfuscated, but it can be mitigated, the john brought back from the edge before it is too late.

The other type of john wants to be kind. He wants to lavish attention on you, gifts even. He will pay you more to let him kiss your lips, your breasts, and your vagina, to trace his breath on your neck in tender arousal, to bury his nose in your hair and nuzzle you. He will try hard to make you come. He will ask you your name, your real name, and he will whisper it as he enters you. He will always be clean when he comes to you. Will always smell good, will never disrespect you, and will always act like he is on a real date with a woman he loves, or can love. But he cannot, and that is why he has chosen you. Because you will let him love you, but only in the ways he wants to, the ways he thinks you should like, the ways in which he is capable, the ways that make him feel good. For him you reflect how gentle he is, how special, how unlike other men he can be. How he is the man all women dream of. How he is misunderstood, hurt by his own deep tenderness. He is a deeply wounded soul yearning to be beautiful, and there is the danger. Some girls become entranced by him and fall in love: yes, we fall in love.

This kind of john can never love you back. Not in any real way, because not even you, with all the true gifts of the courtesan, can live for any length of time in the illusion that he has of you, wants of you, and even demands of you. You will be too tired to have sex some nights, you will want him to fuck you in ways that you want to be fucked, you will grow tired of always having to reassure him that he is good, that he is loved, that he is everything you don’t deserve. So your heart will get broken.

The deeper danger, though, with this kind of john, is that the monster he sometimes glimpses in the mirror of you is so far away from what he can accept of himself. Because unlike the asshole john, this john’s vision of himself is not of a virile self who dominates women, it is of a saint. When the saint glimpses the monster, if his will is too weak, he turns not into the enlightened one but into the worst kind of violent man — the kind who will burn the world down.

But in the end, I suppose, hookers are women and so we are drawn to this flame of destruction by our own need, our own fear, our own weakness, which is, I suppose, that we all want to fall in love.

At least, that is what I want. I want Sunil to fall in love with me, to say without reservation, Asia, I love you.