Whore Stories (25 page)

I love officers. I have loved them all my life. I prefer to be the mistress of a poor officer than of a rich banker. It is my greatest pleasure to sleep with them without having to think of money. And, moreover, I like to make comparisons between the different nationalities.

French officers = People fit only to be farted on, decided Mata Hari when the stoic French authorities in uniform proved, for once, immune to her charms. They accused her of treason and espionage, and in 1917 they sentenced her to death by firing squad.

Facing her executioners, Mata Hari is said to have ripped open her Amazonian outfit and roared, “A harlot yes, but traitor never!” before the bullets pierced her chest, a femme fatale to the end. While a profound doubt still lingers as to her actual guilt, Mata Hari has attained the status of a mythical figure, the quintessential female spy: gorgeous, resourceful, courageous, loyal, and scantily clad to the end.

LA MALINCHE

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Turncoat (when wearing one)

CLAIM TO FAME:
Confidant to conquistadores, specifically, Hernán Cortés

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Aztec empire (modern-day Mexico)

Was La Malinche (also known as Doña Maria and Malintzin) a feminist prototype? The first Mexican-American? A traitor to her people? A vessel of modernity? Scholars have argued for all of these interpretations—but a prostitute?
¡Que escandaloso!
Some remain convinced that La Malinche was nothing more than a depraved strumpet. That she was forced into prostitution is not a mitigating factor for this tough crowd.

Born around 1502 in Coatzacoalcos, a pre-Columbian Mexican province, La Malinche was an indigenous beauty fortunate enough to be a part of the privileged, educated Aztec class under the emperor Moctezuma. Her father was an Aztec chief, although after he died, Malinche’s ruthless mother sold her into prostitution to traders for some quick change and then held a mock funeral for the little girl, who was soon sold again to a
cacique
in Tabasco.

La Malinche’s response was an oath along the lines of “To hell with this,” and she wandered the streets of Tabasco until the Spanish
conquistadors
, led by Hernán Cortés, invaded the region in 1519 and took La Malinche, along with a few dozen other young women to serve as domestic labor for his travelling marauders. La Malinche eventually endeared herself to her captors, becoming the favorite of Cortés, translating, providing cultural insight into the Aztecs, advising him on tactical maneuvers, and even fighting by his side in battle.

Becoming a prostitute does not seem to have been her goal, although for those fans loyal to Team Tenochtitlan, what La Malinche did to her own people was a straight-up painted
puta
move.

La Malinche remains part of the indelible iconography of Mexico, although unfortunately not in sixteenth-century nudie books. Nobel Prize–winning author Octavio Paz, in his essay “The Sons of Malinche,” writes of the “Chingada” (translated offensively as “The Fucked Mother”), an overwhelming whore character who encapsulates all manner of misfortune in Mexico:

If the Chingada is a representation of the violated Mother, it is appropriate to associate her with the Conquest, which was also a violation, not only in the historical sense but also in the very flesh of Indian women. The symbol of this violation is doña Malinche, the mistress of Cortes. It is true that she gave herself voluntarily to the conquistador, but he forgot her as soon as her usefulness was over. Doña Marina becomes a figure representing the Indian women who were fascinated, violated or seduced by the Spaniards. And as a small boy will not forgive his mother if she abandons him to search for his father, the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal.

That’s an awfully big grudge for just one little Latina.

LAS GOTERAS

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Gangbangers

CLAIM TO FAME:
“The Mexican Dwarf Wrestler Killers”

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Mexico City (DF), Mexico

When news broke that “Lucha Mini” stars,
La Parkita
(“The Little Ghost”) and
El Espectrito Jr.
(“Mini-Death”), were seen with prostitutes in Mexico City before a match, nobody was surprised. The legendary whoremongering, dwarf-wrestling twins were always up to party serious. What
was
surprising was that the two favorites of the Lucha Mini circuit were found dead—drugged and robbed—in room 52 at the Hotel Moderna in Mexico City, apparently killed by
Las Goteras
, or “The Drops,” a ruthless gang of streetwalking
rameras
who’d rather “pick your pocket than pleasure your pecker.” (
Author’s quotation marks; author thinks this would be a good slogan for
Las Goteras
if they are looking for internal and external advertising and branding services
.
Contact author directly for rates.
) But really, who are
Las Goteras
, and what the hell do these streetwalking gangs of murderous prosties want? Love, just like the rest of us, probably.

Pequeño Olímpico is the Barry Bonds of Lucha Mini, or “Mini-estrella,” the art of Mexican dwarf wrestling. Why not the Hank Aaron or the Willie Mays? Because Aaron and Mays played the game with honesty and fundamentals and without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs, which, in the case of Pequeño Olímpico, are, in an ingenious physiological coup, administered through his pituitary glands. You see, Pequeño Olímpico is not a “little person,” but merely a little person, standing five feet six and a half inches
tall
. I’m no expert, but that’s no dwarf. That’s a short guy in a mask and tights trying to get a head up on the competition. Five foot six and a half? That’s not much shorter than I am, and you don’t see me—like Señor Olímpico—defending my crown as two-time champion of the
Campeonato Mundial Mini-Estrella
, the World Series of mini-estrellas, try as I might.

Let’s not be naive, though. Money can’t buy love, but it can sure as hell buy a lot of drugs, food, sex, and other essentials that may or may not be featured on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These wily and ruthless Goteras were all about satisfying those needs that can be satisfied with a pocket full of plata.

The
modus operandi
of Las Goteras was to find a Juan or two, spike their drinks with a quantity of Mexican eyedrops and hork the unsuspecting clients’ money and clothes. In the case of La Parkita and El Espectrito, the two Goteras got a bit too heavy handed with the eyedrops, and the result was
la muerte
for our hapless Mexican minis. Apparently, the two floozies failed to calculate the difference in molarity required to poison a four-foot tall
guerrerito
as opposed to a typical-sized
luchador
. But, come on. Just maybe there’s a little bit of La Gotera in everyone. Who among us hasn’t thought about drugging a dwarf-wrestler, dragging him to a dingy Mexican no-tell motel, and taking his money?

The tale of Las Goteras is shrouded in both mystery and Spanish, but stories like these are valuable. They remind us that no matter what kind of raunchy, Byzantine fictions we dream up, things are happening in hotel rooms across the planet that are simply beyond a normal citizen’s ability to imagine. Could this prove that Heisenberg was right about uncertainty and that Einstein was wrong about God not playing dice with the universe? If God
is
playing dice with the universe, I’m thinking those dice are loaded and weighted in such a way that chaos and absurdity carry the day. For evidence of this, one need look no further than TV Azteca footage showing the funeral procession in which hordes of mourners are wearing Mexican Lucha Libre masks in honor of the diminutive departed.

On May 23, 2011, a criminal judge sentenced three members of Las Goteras for their roles in the Lucha Mini murders. Two, a man and a woman, were sentenced to twenty-four years in prison, while another Gotera got twelve years.

VALERIE SOLANAS

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Writing manifestos

CLAIM TO FAME:
She shot Andy Warhol

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
New York

Remember
The Little Rascals
TV episode where the boys in “Our Gang” inaugurate “The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club” because not one of them has been invited to the Valentine’s Day party? What, you may ask, does this episode of
The Little Rascals
have to do with the lady who shot Andy Warhol?

Well, Valerie Solanas started her own club that served as a kind of “She-Woman Man-Haters Club,” but she called it the “Society for Cutting Up Men,” or SCUM. Spanky’s He-Man Woman Haters Club may have been the inspiration for SCUM, but Valerie’s platform was considerably more sinister. The Little Rascals’ goal was simply to exclude women, while Solanas’s purpose leaned more toward the extermination of men altogether. Perhaps Valerie should be applauded for her breadth of vision, but SCUM’s charter contains some hard-to-swallow rhetoric. Here’s an excerpt from Valerie’s “SCUM Manifesto”:

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. . . . The male is a biological accident.

Damn, Valerie.

But let’s start at the beginning. Solanas was born in 1936 in Ventnor, New Jersey, which ipso facto provides a good excuse for acting like a lunatic. She was, however, smart, impulsive, and ambitious. The problem was that her father sexually abused her and then abandoned the family while Solanas was still very young, so maybe we need to cut her some slack for the extreme ideology she later adopted. While exhibiting increasing lunacy, Ms. Solanas managed to secure a psychology degree from the University of Maryland. That would be a “good looking out” to the Terrapin’s Psychology Dept.

Prostitution helped Solanas pay for college, where she engaged in lab work that she believed offered proof positive that the existence of men was accidental and wholly unnecessary. After her stint in graduate school, Solanas sat down in earnest to write the “SCUM Manifesto,” and in 1960 she found her way to Andy Warhol in New York City. Still making her way as a prostitute in the Big Apple, Ms. Solanas attained a kind of hanger-on status at the Factory, the home of Warhol’s art studio and the place to go for a good old-fashioned orgy.

In 1967 Valerie Solanas was determined to make her mark as a writer, and she thrust her theatrical opus,
Up Your Ass
upon Warhol. She was under the impression he would eventually produce this play in which the main character is a fast-talking, man-loathing prostitute. The play was so graphic even Warhol was grossed out, and he tossed it, much to the dismay of the fragile scribe.

The sad truth is that Solanas was, by now, deeply disturbed as evidenced by her decision to off Andy Warhol. After putting a bullet in the artist, she was sent to prison and passed around to various mental institutions.

As for
Up Your Ass
, after Warhol died, the play finally turned up in a mountain of the artist’s literary detritus, which was about to be tossed into the trash bin. Solanas’s main character is her alter ego, Bongi, a street-smart lesbian panhandler, and the play itself is “garbage-mouthed, dykey,” and “ anti-male,” by the playwright’s own account. In spite of Solanas’s apparent low opinion of her own work, when the play finally opened in 1999, an audience actually showed up at the George Coates Performance Works Theatre in San Francisco, and after the premiere a critic published a review in
The Spectator
Magazine
:

No small part of the enjoyment to myself and other freaks is the attention paid to pussy, cock and balls . . . and of course, turds. Scatologists will feel right at home with the parts about cooking and dining on shit. (With chopsticks, no less!)

I hate how you can never get a reviewer to state whether or not he or she actually
liked
or
disliked
a performance. A ticket to the theater is just too damn expensive to purchase on the promise of turds, cocks, and balls alone, usually.

After stints at numerous state institutions, Solanas was released crazier than ever and spent the rest of her days harassing everyone around her and whoring. She died a lonely death in a welfare hotel in San Francisco in 1988, a bewildering little rascal to the end.

AILEEN WUORNOS

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
You’re looking at it

CLAIM TO FAME:
America’s most famous female serial killer

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Florida highways and byways

It’s hard not to fall in love with Aileen Wuornos, especially when you see her disrobe in
The Devil’s Advocate
, starring fellow prostitute Al Pacino. Incorrect. I’m thinking of Charlize Theron, who played Wuornos in the movie
Monster.
It’s significantly harder to love the actual Wuornos, a woman who was probably nothing like Charlize Theron, and who was definitely not afraid to shoot you. Although it’s hard, probably impossible, to fall in love with Aileen, sometimes it’s easy to sympathize with her.