Class Whores

12 Sep

“In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is impossible. Class is the British language.”

William Golding

Class, class, all is class. Us British are as moved emotionally and culturally by the notion and fact of class, as the Yanks are about race, or the French about sexuality, or the Italians about, I dunno,…art, masculinity… sofrito mix? It’s a vexatious issue, and a degree of intuitive sensitivity is needed to understand the fine tissue of social expectations permeating around one’s presumed class or status. Oh, we are supposed to be over it all that now; we are a post-class society educated into mobility; the noble Americans showed us the way! Off we clambered from the precarious ladder of class and into the great colossus of material inequity! If we follow them all the way down, we can be free to fill our pockets full of rank success, from the castles made of sand of poor health care, junk food induced chronic sickness, lawless police knock abouts and feral firearms going off hither and yon.

But, in any case, we are not, are we? I still feel the sticky oppressiveness of anxiety amidst the files of the petite bourgeoisie; who is making more money, who is set to inherit, who has made the wiser real estate decisions and nabbed a more respectable bit of fluff to plop into said real estate. All hidden under the skirts of middle class banter, a conversational style that manages to be both foamy and acidic at once - the bitchy put down which is actually deeply respectful which is actually deeply seething - a finely brewed bouquet that my nose is too unsophisticated to grasp…

Have you have had what you perceived at the time to be a ‘good old laugh’ with an old workmate and later, as you peddle home (on the bus, in the Saab, at the back of the horse drawn carriage) you realise they had spent the better part of the conversation putting you into whatever they imagined your place to be? It’s hit you, suddenly, like a cluster fuck of old coat hangers falling out of your Ikea flat pack wardrobe, in your eclectically decorated Victorian terrace.

Or maybe they weren’t? Maybe that quip about how great it was to “see you going across in the world” was one they always pull out at dinner parties, like a magic trick, and quite by coincidence, what with your chronic lack of promotions, it was just too on the money for you. And maybe the kindly/sickly bit about how “brave” you are to try online dating after the hard time you have managing your bank balance or your belt size, was just a kindly meant projection of their own deep malaise? But, bugger it, why not hate that smug arsehole anyhow? Just in case. Because you’ve been at enough British dinner parties to know the smell of quiet, projectile disdain is everywhere - like sulphur during the ether crisis - so how the hell are you ever to truly know? Sod giving the benefit of the doubt, you’ve done it too many times already, you’ve been the butt of too many ‘playful’ aren’t you doing poorly, jokes. So why not spend all night searching his Instagram for fat, drunk, shit car, ‘unfortunate looking’ girlfriend pictures … buckle in, pull on the gas mask and have a good hunt for minor misfortune. We’ve all been there.

Perhaps that faux politeness is the brilliance of it. The smoke and mirrors of passive class judgements, the slippery uncertainty of coded one-upmanship and the classic battleground that is the “vanity of small differences”. And is it preferable to the more overt, highly weaponised, tanked to buggery competitiveness of the aformentioned culture of the American dream? Is it possible to get the theoretically open field of its affirmation and aspiration culture, without all the guns and bitches and electric chairs and garrulous arrogance and supernaturally white teeth, and all that other blood-splattered sherbet?

The sex biz has its own needling umbrages about class. Vertically and horizontally the ‘whorearchy’ is alive and well; in some corners disputes plunder on about whether sadomasochism counts as sex, or pornstars are ‘taxonomically’ still prostitutes. In others, anxieties about transactional sexuality are mollified by odes to courtesanry, elitism and luxury. These in turn inflame the insecurities of less privileged or aspirant whores, who present their irritation about the high-mindedness of escorts who claim some professionalism as satirical popping of deluded balloons, although the energy of insecurity is always gently belabouring when folks gush forward to slash down tall poppies.

In Harlots, the ‘respectable’ pimp Will, when confronted by a client made irritable by a price hike on his girls after a move to a finer house said, (words to the effect) “I can get twice the price for some sweetmeats, if they come wrapped in a pretty paper!” I’m conflicted. Cocks enter cunnies in much the same fashion, irrespective of pomp and ceremony, and yet eroticism often has need for magical thinking - the mystifications of seduction - to get it furnaces going. But there again, perhaps that is a romantic affliction I carry that many don’t share. Indeed, whenever I get my hopes up about the dreamy possibilities of sexuality, I come across the sterility and cynicism of popular pornography, and I am disabused. But it's also because I am instinctively troubled by a conflict I have between the ‘ political troubles’ of elitism and the threat of mediocrity that arrives out bitter humbling, disguised as just egalitarianism. The digital age has given escorts a cornucopia of public relations possibilities, and many take to it with aplomb, and others (clients and escorts alike) watch nervously at the potential creep of higher prices and more competitive standards. The paradox of self improvement; as you gain more ground, you find yourself with ever greater expectations.

Well, I’ll not solve the riddle tonight, perhaps because its raining, perhaps because I’m tired, and perhaps, as a person of ‘middling’ aspiration, as a whore and enthusiastic mediocrist, because I never take it upon myself to have a strong opinion or a definitive answer. And thus, as is appropriate, tomorrow, you’ll find me in Leeds, on a poor day, in a middling hotel, with a fine bit of lingerie, a high dose of enthusiasm and a offering a positively gaudily ambitious good time.