Derek Freeman and the Working GirlsWhen Derek Freeman, the notorious anthropological critic of Margaret Mead, was at the height of his psychoanalytical phase, (around 1963-4 in London) he not only photographed phallic doorknockers in Bloomsbury, but went round the cafés in Soho asking the working girls how they assessed the virility of a client. It was absolutely characteristic of Derek that he was not interested in the girls for sex, but for information on phallic symbolism. They judged by the ties, he told me: they said that they preferred long red shiny ties as indicators of sexual prowess. They didn’t like wearers of bow ties, nor did they like clergymen in uniform, he added, and that showed that the clerical collar was a castration symbol. They liked tight, not baggy trousers on men. He said the girls in Singapore didn’t like men in Bermuda shorts. (He was there when the Australian navy retook the city from the Japanese. He remembered the admiral announcing that the sailors could rape and loot, but they must not disturb or destroy any official records. This had a profound effect on him, as did the behavior of said sailors.) Men who talked too much, or appeared too clever, he discovered, also put the girls off. This particularly satisfied him. I wrote the following
for him then. He was amused.
It has been in a file ever since.
No self-respecting whore would want to lie With a client in a polka-dot bow tie, And would dismiss with contemptuous snorts A john in baggy check Bermuda shorts. Yet she will happily trust herself in bed To one whose tie is silky, long and red, And gleefully trust her scarlet-painted lips To a man whose pants cling tightly to his hips. So you of the bow tie or Roman collar, Can you buy passion even with the dollar? The lady, after all, is not a stone, She cannot live or love by bread alone. Respect this ancient wisdom of the whore (These ladies, after all, should know the score.) Remember: clothing indicates the man Far better than vocabulary can. So quips in Greek or epigrams in Latin Will not excite like ties of shiny satin, And all the wit that pious learning gleans Has not the eloquence of clinging jeans. |
Further to “Epilogue” in The
Passionate Mind
(2000).
Life
Is Too Short When we were young and all the world was green, We used to tell each other: “Life’s too short” -- To justify our sins. We didn’t mean It literally of course. Now we are caught In its stark literalness, and so we know (We wheezing, balding ones way past our prime, Whose memories melt away like last year’s snow) The humorless reality of time: Of time foreshortened, of the loss of friends, Of old ambitions unfulfillable. We curse the destiny that shapes our ends, And ‘til recorded time’s last syllable Confront, with shaking limbs and labored breath, The loss of beauty, and the fear of death. |