To Whittle this Down to One

I've had a lot come across my plate the last few days that seem blog-worthy. Or rather, rant-worthy and I need to talk about it: The implicit racism of Barbara Walters (or the denial of such underlying racism from Whoopi Goldberg), the fuck-you-in-the-face-W-Bush granting of the Nobel to Obama, the rise and codification of the vocal level "squee," the reminder to my San Francisco denizens that you don't mess with the Chinese woman on the bus.

No, what really got my attention was this:

Now, I know what you're thinking: it's about the cheesecake. And taken into account along with the prostitute story from earlier, that's understandable. But that's not it. Okay, a little bit, but not much.

See, I view this picture -- and mind you, we ran this at work -- I view this picture, and the eternal flipping rolodex that is my fractured memory system remembers a book: Ballard's Crash. Sex, car crashes, removable prosthetics. Beautiful shit. But no, that wasn't the full end of it: From Crash to "Good Country People." Preachers, hollowed-out Bibles containing condoms and whiskey, a hayloft, another prosthetic. And if this is what Hulga looked like, then I can suddenly go to sleep (well, pre-sleep) content.

Thank you, ESPN The Magazine, for re-invigorating this fine, fine work.

The Whores of Midtown

I'm taking a break tonight from the sweltering newsroom (read: the only thing enjoyable about saunas are the humidity and semi-circulating air), when this girl walks up to me, pink dress covered by a studded black cotton jacket, and asks me if I need company.

Reflexively, naturally, I say I'm doing just fine, and frankly I was, the sting of the pre-autumn air doing wonders for my mood, but that was not the reason. Let's face it: she was a whore. Really, a bonafide woman-of-the-discretionary-last-minute-hotel-rooms whore. But that wasn't even the reason. More on that later.

We're going to now rewind to another episode, this time to a planned post-BW retirement celebration about three, maybe four weeks prior. I have the chance to mingle with some of the people in full on decent mood, what now that I'm at this point finally getting my feet on the ground out here. For avid followers, this was the same weekend I moved into the new digs.

And so I'm outside smoking, listening to a shoot-the-shit conversation from a bunch of this-establishment regulars, when I see an african american girl, all decked in white like it's a clubbing outfit (and like it is the 85 degrees at night it was), who waves. I nod, turn my head, ignore her for the ministrations of my tobacco inhalations. She doesn't leave, and instead stops and crosses the street.

"What's a guy like you doing out here all alone tonight?"

"Smoking."

"Well you know, you need someone to keep you company?"

"I'm doing well, but thanks."

"Oh, you don't have a girl in there, do you? Nobody to come in and break all this up?"

"She's waiting on me, actually."

That's essentially how the conversation ended, a few idle lines passed, then she goes clomping along -- clomping not being the proper term but what is the term for somebody wearing knee-high thick-heeled patent-leather boots who still walks with grace? -- and I go back to my smoke.

The bouncer: Holy shit, I haven't seen one of those in years. (descriptor: the guy is a seriously tatted up biker-looker who regaled me later on about going for his gun if t his one guy on the pool table would not...just...quit...egging him on...while he was working.)

Regular: One of what?

The bouncer: She was a whore. Haven't seen one of those around here in a while.

And so, this is my frame of reference. Were I a journalist, I'd probably pull out some prostitution stats showing the increase in such-and-such numbers over the last x number of years. But I'm lazy and a pontificator and a fictionalizer, so I digress. The sound of my voice is what I'm really looking for in all these.

Which cuts back to the story tonight: I'm walking, it's a whore, I'm reflexively prone to not trusting and say no. After the incident happened I dissected it for what it was: It wasn't that she was so obviously a woman of the trades, an ex-mortgage broker or derivatives trader (because really, both these scenarios tell me Pretty Woman might not be a figment, at least in that prostitutes exist that aren't completely cracked out and gumming for the next available stupid cash-laden john. See Spitzer, Eliot.)

No, the real reason why I said thanks, I'll pass, has just been a thing of breeding, an axiom I have: Never trust a woman whose wardrobe consists almost entirely of pink.