Brothel Management and Marketing: Spitzer’s Fall

People are talking about Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s catastrophic implosion everywhere today – in the elevators, on the street, huddled around water coolers (it’s true, I witnessed one such water-vessel caucus). The media is frenzied. The blogosphere is crapping its pants. These are the kind of lurid, juicy scandals that we love so much because it offers an opportunity to chatter publicly about the taboo. A secretary in my office told me confidently, “That’s nothing special. There’s dozens of brothels uptown in all those fancy townhouses.” I can only imagine.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? I see two threads in the Spitzer narrative. First, the voyeuristic details that were front-and-center when the story broke; details like Spitzer’s code name, Client 9, and the eerily mundane phone conversation between the call girl and her handler (“I mean it’s kind of like…whatever…I’m here for a purpose…”) bring this story out of the stratosphere of power and into normal life. These are exactly the kind of minute particulars a fiction writer sweats blood to dream up.

Perhaps more compelling, however, is the familiar story of power that leads to hubris that leads to a fall. Spitzer was powerful, but also egotistical. He embraced the nickname Eliot Ness, no doubt for the theatrical value, but I got the sense from various profiles that he actually believed it. The unwashed masses, myself included, derive a small, hard packet of moral self-satisfaction from shaking our heads and thinking, Jeese, I’d never do that, all the white wondering I wonder what it’s like to have that kind of life.

In any case, Slate has some excellent advice for those of you licking your greedy, exploitive lips at the prospect of pimping $3,000-an-hour prostitutes.

P.E.O.P.L.E. in the City

The French band Air has a song called “People in the City,” that describes the cadence and stricture of urban life. The lock-step rhythm mimics the plodding of commuters up the dirt-blackened stairs of the 14th street 6 train, and the chanted verses, “Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling,” speak to the numbing repetition we experience as city dwellers. But the song opens up after the second chorus, giving a sense of the excitement at being surrounded by so many people, each with myriad webs of relationships, dreams, and frustrations. The song is really rather bad, but it speaks to an essential experience.

My own zombie shuffle was interrupted last Tuesday, when a beautiful young woman tapped me on the shoulder and gave me her business card, saying simply, “My number” (the Scribblerist is just as shocked as you, dear reader). I called her and we hung out and as it turns out, she’s pretty cool.

It’s got me thinking about how we move through the city as social creatures. In breaking the silent-but-iron-bound taboo about speaking to strangers, I feel this girl has given us both a small transcendence. Why shouldn’t we speak to people who seem interesting or give off a comforting energy? We’re all interdependent anyway, right? What stops us from acting like it?

When I first moved to New York from Missouriananois I made eye contact with everyone I passed on the street. It was an unconscious gesture, and the preface to a friendly Midwestern “hello!” I soon realized, however, that people were either uncomfortable with friendliness or worse, downright hostile. A few weeks later, I had mastered the art of moving down the street without noticing other people, Ipod strapped to my side like a gun, a private universe unto myself.

This is a horrible, lonely way to live life. Cities are supposed to be sites of great meeting, discussion, collaboration, and exchange. Wrong. New York is like a shattered pane of glass, with each shard representing a self-contained social group that thinks, incorrectly, it has no need for any of the other shards. New York is, indeed, diverse – a profusion of non-intersecting subcultures.

Crossing those lines is courageous; hence, my admiration for the subway girl (who shall remain unnamed for her protection). What prevents me from doing this more often? To start, I’m shy, but I’m sure there are deeper behavioral and social reasons, too. I’m afraid this post is a non-starter: I have no answers to the collective gag rule in New York.

Still, I can’t help but ponder. I’m imagining a group of people from all different sub-groups gathering just to talk about ideas…

Then again, perhaps Air could just rock us out with their mellow European psychedelica.

New York: Playground for Beautiful Women

The girls. They are everywhere on this island. I can see one, right now, from where I sit on a shop bench at the corner of Mulberry and Bleeker. It is evening, and across the street the sun is setting a red brick and wrought iron apartment building on fire. She has black hair, bob cut like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, one black boot on the Bleeker subway station railing, the other in the street, her slim body zig-zagged into an impossibly tantalizing shape. Like a crazy straw for drinking sex.

They run all varieties and I’m an equal-opportunity gazer; Punk, preppy, Betty Boop, cyclist, hipster, Wall St. pin stripe suit, yoga instructor, ballet dancer, disillusioned Midwesterner, and, of course, waif-like model. There are lots of would be Cover Girls floating around, with one cubic centimeter of stiletto touching the sidewalk. They used to drive me first to euphoria, then grinding frustration.

These days, I’m training myself to have an aesthetic-sexual experience instead of the other way around. Still, when I get hit with 4 or 5 in quick succession, even my Buddha’s Third Eye dilates and I want to scamper after them and drool on their high heels like a god damn dog. I flatter myself that I’m not creepy about it. My strategy is: be direct with your gaze, don’t shun eye contact, and let your eyes say, by way of an apology, “I’m looking at you because you’re gorgeous.” Chances are, they already know.

David Cross said it best: In New York, “You are constantly faced with this very urgent, quick decision you have to make about every 20 minutes. You have to decide immediately… ‘Oh my god. do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world? Look at her, she’s fucking beautiful, but look at him! He’s wearing orange footy pajamas and he’s got tin foil on his head and he’s playing a Casio, but look at her she’s amazing – ‘”

I opt for the girl every time.