Primal

The pornographer Mike South is approaching age fifty, and blogs:

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for strippers, hookers and porn chicks, when you get close to them, become an insider there’s a real beauty in their honesty, they see the primal side of us, even themselves, and they embrace it.

Primal means fundamental. What's primal is courtship, penetration and ejaculation, a swelling belly, and a kid being pushed head first out of the womb. Raising kids is primal. So is growing old.

At the primal level, we're all the same. There are no sex workers. The primal happens whether we embrace it or not, which means that sex workers can't make a living off of it.

Paying a stripper for an elaborate sexual display or an escort for expertly performed services isn't primal. There are societies were people live without these things. In our society, these things are assigned to the hidden and shameful. Sex workers make their living by making it possible for us to do the things we don't admit that we do. It's not just sex. We expose them to our contempt, our dishonesty, our mix of insecurity and vanity, and occasionally our violence. When they take off their clothes, we take off our inhibitions.

I'm doing what I do with you because I value it more than the money I'm giving you, more than the purity you contaminate. I pay you to be kind without pretending to be good. As long as your kindness is hidden, I can pretend to be good without having to be kind.