BOOK REVIEW Political whores go biblical Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl by Tracy Quan
Reviewed by Muhammad Cohen
The term "political whore" may bring to mind former Thai prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra’s successor Samak Sundaravej or the US's president George H W Bush.
Bush derided president Ronald Reagan's plan to decrease taxes to increase
revenue as "voodoo economics" - it was - then signed on as Reagan's vice
president for two terms and won the presidency himself as Reagan's heir.
Tracy Quan's Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl introduces readers to some
genuine political whores: prostitutes who defend the world's oldest profession
and fight for the rights of its practitioners to be free from persecution and
disease. The novel also offers an inside glimpse of the art and craft of the
prostitute as practiced by those at its apex, Manhattan call girls who, as the
public learned from
the saga of disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and his
politicized whore, are paid thousands of dollars for a liaison.
Quan knows of what she writes. A former call girl, she began chronicling the
profession in a Salon.com column called Diary of a Man
hattan Call Girl. That was also the title of Quan’s first novel about the
triumphs, trials and travails of Nancy Chan, known to her clients as Suzy. The
second installment, Diary of a Married Call Girl, examines the
motivations for Chan continuing to work her book while keeping it secret from
her Manhattan banker husband. In this third installment of the series, Chan
takes up a favorite client's offer to visit his holiday home in the south of
France.
Sex (for money) in the city
Chan's witty diary entries give an inside account of the unique tribal rites
not just of the sex trade but high-income living on the Upper East Side of
Manhattan. Quan's astute observations double as cultural anthropology of what,
given the carnage on Wall Street and among its banking class, may be a bygone
era. There's an extraordinary paradox in Chan's lifestyle where money is no
object and by definition cannot be - even thinking about the cost of a $350
facial, $2,500 bag or, of course, $1,500 sex act unmasks it as absolutely,
inexcusably, unjustifiably ludicrous. But her work must be only about the money
to maintain mental health.
Reading Chan's diary leaves no doubt that she is quite healthy, mentally and
physically, and that she is involved in a very complicated and challenging
business that breeds insecurity. "I started out in this city as a scrappy
teenager with no customers or contacts of my own and two pairs of shoes!" Chan
recalls. "I managed to become one of the best-connected private call girls in
Manhattan." Even with her Asia-ness as a trump card - a turn-on for a lot of
clients, according to the book - it's not easy for a call girl in her thirties
to stay on top.
As in any business, success means keeping the customer satisfied. For a call
girl, that requires lots of imagination, acting and improvisation in her
skills, outfits, devices, and, above all, cultivating contacts with clients,
other working girls, and madams to meet a nearly infinite variety of demands.
In Chan's case it means carrying off the bedroom (or wherever) masquerade while
also deceiving a husband and his family, that includes a sister-in-law in the
Manhattan District Attorney's office.
The Viagra dilemma
A call girl with a mature business has customers who are too valuable to lose,
so must be catered to even when she'd rather say no. It means worrying about
prostate troubles that can suddenly take a client out of the game for good. On
the other hand, there is Viagra, which may keep an aging client coming back for
more - whether that's a good thing depends on if he spreads his ardor over
multiple visits and/or a girl's pricing policies. There are old tricks who
think they've come to mean something beyond business over the course of a
relationship that's outlasted any of their marriages, and there are sons
looking to assume and extend their father's privileges accumulated over years
of loyal patronage.
All are subject to complex etiquette between both call girl and client, as well
as within the profession. For example, Chan informs readers that she has
occasionally had orgasms with certain clients, but never allows herself to
succumb to that temptation with others. She's not sure what her professional
colleagues would say about her experiencing true arousal, so would never risk
admitting it to them.
This third diary begins highlighting Chan's double life. On the family side,
she might just be in a family way, which would present a professional crisis.
(Though a properly manicured girl can cover a skillful Caesarian scar.) As
Suzy, she's swapping gigs and gossip with her working girl colleagues in
Manhattan's priciest locations. It's a juicy tale of fulfilling a wide variety
of male fantasies, replete with Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags filled with
props - a lost Pyrex double dildo triggers an occupational crisis - footwear
that's never touched a sidewalk, intricate threesomes, and elaborate
choreography among appendages and orifices, generously lubricated with
Astroglide.
But then there's double trouble. Nancy finds herself on a professional losing
streak. Her possible pregnancy leads to quarreling with her closest
call-girlfriend Jasmine that could alienate her from certain contacts as well
as a confidante when she most needs one. Things get worse when Chan heads for a
hotel rendezvous and finds her brother-in-law in the lobby, innocently
stationed between Chan and the elevator. Her attempts to look inconspicuous
draw the attention of hotel security, and that combination forces her to
abandon the mission, drawing the wrath of the madam whose client got left high
and dry.
Tart au Provence
The invitation to spend two weeks at his renovated villa in southern France
from Milt, Suzy’s most dependable client, seems like a good way to change her
luck. But an assignment like this is too much to handle alone. She recruits her
colleague Allison, whose sex worker activism is bringing her to Spain for an
AIDS conference. An excuse about house hunting with her mother clears the way
with Nancy's husband, and she's flying to Nice - at the front of the plane, bien
sur.
The plot thickens a bit when Nancy finds herself attracted to Duncan, Milt's
attractive, cultivated Kiwi cook, whom she dismisses as gay. Still, she finds
herself having erotic fantasies about Duncan while servicing Milt, a client
who's not allowed to cross Chan's orgasm barrier. As a book it rises as a
French bedroom souffle, spiced with an increasingly international cast - a job
like this one is too much for two girls - including Tini, a pneumatic Southeast
Asian transsexual who says she's Malaysian but speaks the language of the
Philippines, Tagalog - baked at high heat, Provence style.
When Allison inquires about visiting the biggest attraction in the nearby
little village of St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume, it's clear that Quan is cooking up
more than fluff. The village basilica is the home of the skull of Mary
Magdalene. In Christian tradition, Mary was a repentant sinner, possibly a
prostitute depending on which tradition you believe, who became an apostle of
Jesus Christ. Mary has been adopted as the patron saint of fallen women,
including sex workers. In this village she's honored with an annual march
through town that coincides with Chan's visit.
Karma pays Chan back when her mother does in fact show up in town, vacationing
with her female housemate and her daughter Ruth, who's guided them to the
village. Ruth is part of a feminist group that feels Mary dishonors women and
plans to purify her image and wrest from the forces of disreputable, including
call girls, who degrade her. Author Quan, a card-carrying member of PONY -
Prostitutes of New York - unleashes a troupe of activist political whores,
fresh from the Barcelona conference, to fight for Mary's dishonor. Meanwhile,
Chan tries to keep her client and her mother in the dark, while dealing with a
police bust with trans-Atlantic implications, a crisis at home, and another on
the job involving Duncan and a breach of the professional code.
Deftly mixing sex farce, convoluted relationships, international financial
intrigue, family drama and the real emotions with the politics of sex work,
played out by a galaxy of sharply drawn characters, Quan constructs a novel
that's equal parts guilty pleasure, gripping story in every sense of the word,
and an affirmation of Mae West's great line: When I’m good, I’m very, very
good. But when I'm bad, I’m better.
Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl by Tracy Quan, Harper Collins, 2008
(paperback). ISBN: 9780007249381. Price: US$11, 246 pages.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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hattan Call Girl. That was also the title of Quan’s first novel about the
triumphs, trials and travails of Nancy Chan, known to her clients as Suzy. The
second installment, Diary of a Married Call Girl, examines the
motivations for Chan continuing to work her book while keeping it secret from
her Manhattan banker husband. In this third installment of the series, Chan
takes up a favorite client's offer to visit his holiday home in the south of
France.
