by Dan Savage
—Jerry Falwell
The American people have got to go about their business.
—George W. Bush
Running all over the country committing all seven of the seven deadly sins can take a lot out of a guy. Sloth is restorative and restful, and the “Sloth” chapter is nestled neatly in the middle of the book, but I was too busy working on this book to indulge myself in the brand of sloth I most prefer. Writing about pot-induced mental vacations for the last year didn’t leave me much time to take any, so all the eating, gambling, parading, convening, and forced marches that I had to endure in the writing of this book were not leavened by any sloth. Celebrating sin in America is exhausting, and while I met some of the nicest people sinning in America—from Teresa and Shawn to David and Bridget to Kevin and Jake—I was worn out. Keeping up with the adulterers, gamblers, gluttons, rich folks, and gun nuts who make this country great was hard work.
Nevertheless, I planned all along to close this book with one last, sin-packed, blowout, wasted weekend; one more bash before I returned to my normal, non-book-deal life. I would get a hotel room and go off on a two-day sin binge, bravely attempting to commit all seven of the seven deadly sins in under forty-eight hours—at my publisher’s expense, naturally. All the cities I visited while working on this book were charming American Gomorrahs. Looking at a map of the United States, I no longer see a continent-spanning nation but an archipelago of Gomorrahs, a chain of islands filled with American sinners. For the last chapter of this book, I decided to head to the Gomorrah of Gomorrahs, the one place where a man can commit all the seven deadly sins without breaking a sweat. After all, how could I write a book about sin in America and not spend some time in New York City?
I always planned to end this book in New York City, but I couldn’t have known back in December 2000 that the very airline and hotel reservations I was making would allow me to commit one of the seven deadly sins. You see, by the time I got on a plane and headed to New York City, I was filled with anger—pure, white-hot rage.
Late in 2000, I planned a trip to New York City, making hotel and plane reservations for the weekend of October 5 to 7, 2001. Less than a month before I was supposed to get on a plane for New York City, Islamo-fascists—well, you know the whole ugly business: the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania, the World Trade Center. The American airline industry shut down for four days, and Americans were distinctly reluctant to get back on airplanes when they started flying again. New York City’s $25 billion-per-year tourism industry, which employs 282,000 New Yorkers, was devastated. Hotels were empty, restaurants were going bankrupt, Broadway shows were closing. Newspapers all over the country were filled with stories about the thousands of waiters, bellhops, receptionists, and maids being laid off. Asked by Larry King on CNN what the people of New York City needed most from the rest of the country, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer said, “Come back and be tourists.” Rudy Giuliani invited all Americans to visit and be part of “the New York miracle.”
Getting back to normal, going about our business, returning to our regular patterns of consumption and travel—it wasn’t just about making New York City whole. Pursuing happiness, credit cards in hand, was our patriotic duty. The Washington Times, an archconservative daily owned by the Unification Church (aka the Moonies), literally ordered its readers to “spend in the spirit of patriotism.”
“Consumer spending accounts for something like 70 percent of economic activity,” the Washington Times pointed out. “Consumers, get your credit cards ready. Your country calls.” In November, the State, a conservative daily paper in Columbia, South Carolina, also ordered its readers to return to normal, which by then everyone knew to be code for, “Don’t think too much about the war; pursue happiness instead!” Under the headline NORMAL ACTIVITY DEFIES TERRORISTS, the editors wrote that if Americans didn’t “return to normal . . . then the terrorists’ objectives of bringing America down will be more successful than anyone could have forseen.” What caught the attention of the editors at the State? A drop in the number of people golfing at a Myrtle Beach resort.
Even the president of the United States got into the act, encouraging Americans to show their anger towards and defiance of the terrorists by returning to our normal lives as quickly as possible—especially if our normal lives involved getting on airplanes. President Bush starred in a series of travel industry commercials that encouraged Americans to defy the terrorists by going on a cruise. Suddenly to American conservatives it didn’t matter if Americans were buying rap CDs, booking passage on a gay cruise, or flying off to Las Vegas in search of degraded distractions, so long as we were spending.
I have nothing snide to say about any of this. I’m a patriot. On September 11, I didn’t blame America; I blamed bin Laden. And while I may love this country for different reasons from the scolds and virtuecrats, I do love this country. I love the separation of church and state, for starters; I love the First Amendment; I love that “pursuit of happiness” stuff in the Declaration of Independence—and I’ve always loved New York City. REST OF COUNTRY TEMPORARILY FEELS DEEP AFFECTION FOR NEW YORK, ran the post-attack headline in The Onion, the brilliant satirical newsweekly. It didn’t take three thousand deaths to make me love New York City. My affection for New York has been lifelong.
Since I’ve always been a big fan of pleasurable pursuits—I was hard at work on this book long before the terrorist attacks—and of New York City, George W. Bush didn’t need to tell me twice: I was ready to consume, fly, and go back to my normal, sinful routines. Like anyone with a brain, I was angered by the attacks on September 11, and my anger was quickly tempered by righteous indignation. We had to act, and the ensuing war was just and remains just. While I didn’t vote for George W. Bush, and I have no plans ever to vote for him or any of his relatives (I’m considering a move to Florida just so I could vote against Jeb), and while I want the Democrats to oppose Bush’s domestic agenda tooth and nail, nevertheless I think the ol’ cokehead has done a bang-up job with the war. If I could help W. defeat the terrorists by channeling my anger into a trip to New York City, I was ready, willing, and able to spend my publisher’s money.
In the days before my long-scheduled trip to New York, the anthrax scares hit the city. No matter, I was going. I confirmed my airline reservations, hotel reservations, and hit up a well-connected friend for tickets to a mega-hit Broadway show. I went to New York City not only to fight terror but also to help save the jobs of all those waiters, bellhops, maids, receptionists, cooks, busboys, and stewardesses I’d been reading about in the papers. There was another group of New York City service providers I wanted to show my support for, hardworking men and women whose livelihoods were impacted by the attacks of September 11. We didn’t hear much about this group, despite all these big-hearted men and women do to make New Yorkers, tourists, and business travelers happy. I wanted to go to New York to show my support for the city’s whores.
The sexually liberated student putting herself through college working as an escort has become something of a cliché. The old prostitute stereotype—a drug addiction, tenth-grade education, track marks, bad skin, a dozen STDs, an abusive boyfriend—has been replaced by this newer, more user-friendly stereotype. Patronizing a prostitute seems a little less opportunistic if your money is helping to put someone through school, which will ultimately get her out of the business altogether. So I was a little disappointed to find that Emily, the New York City escort I rented my first night in town, was not a film student at Columbia or getting her master’s in social work at New York University. She was, Emily said, “just a ho.”
“I find that putting-myself-through-college line tedious,” said Tracy Quan, author of the novel Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and a member of Prostitutes of New York (PONY), an advocacy group that is seeking to decriminalize prostitution. “Most of the pros I’ve known were not going to college,” said Quan. “Most of the pros are materialistic, very attractive girls who liked to shop. Girls putting themselves
through Columbia don’t make very good prostitutes. They’re usually badly groomed, they don’t know how to dress, they don’t really like what they’re doing. The people who are really good at this are the ones who decide to make it their career.”
Emily was definitely making it her career. A college dropout from New Mexico, Emily got into the business after she followed her rock-star-wannabe boyfriend to New York City. Her boyfriend’s band broke up shortly after they arrived in New York in 1997, and she refused to return to New Mexico with him. Emily had fallen in love with the city and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else ever again. When he went back to New Mexico, she stayed behind in New York, and within a few months she was working full-time as an escort.
“It was the only way I could afford the rent on the studio apartment we used to share,” Emily told me over cocktails in the crowded bar of a crowded hipster hotel. “Once he moved, I had to make a lot of money or get a roommate, and I didn’t want a roommate.”
Emily didn’t work for an agency, she didn’t have a pimp, she wasn’t a streetwalker, and she didn’t work in a brothel. Instead, Emily paid a friend to maintain a Web site for her, which is where I found her. In my hotel room, the day I arrived in New York, I plugged in my laptop computer and logged on to my Internet service provider. Then I typed “Manhattan,” “Female,” and “Escort” into a search engine. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand Web sites to choose from, and I spent some time surfing around before I found Emily’s Web site. Her site had a few pictures, some tasteful nude shots, and a cell-phone number. I liked Emily’s pictures: she didn’t have big hair, wasn’t wearing a ton of makeup, and didn’t look like someone escorting out of desperation or against her will. There was also a disclaimer: “What my clients buy is my time,” it said. “If anything happens during our time together, we’re just two consenting adults with a professional relationship who happened to hit it off. It happens in offices and at workplaces all over the country every day.”
Emily was expensive, however. She charged five hundred dollars an hour with a three-hour minimum. Why so expensive?
“I’m beautiful and charming and fun,” her bio read. “You probably pay at least that much to talk to your lawyer. And you’re lawyer isn’t nearly as beautiful. Or fun . . .”
I called Emily, expecting to leave a message on an answering machine, so I was a bit flustered when Emily answered the phone. For some reason I was worried that Emily might not see me if she realized I wasn’t interested in her for the same reasons her other clients were. I didn’t want to have sex with Emily; I really did just want to buy her time. I was looking for an escort, not a euphemism.
“Is it okay if we just go out and have dinner, see a show? And nothing else happens?” I asked.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Dan,” she said in a soothing voice. “Is this your first time using a service like this?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You should know that the time we spend together is your special time,” Emily said. “I’m there for you. Things can go just as slow or just as fast as you want them to. Nothing has to happen.” She asked for my first and last name and the name of my hotel; then she hung up and called me back at my hotel to make sure I was really a guest. That’s when she reminded me that her time cost five hundred dollars an hour. She would also be happy to make dinner reservations at a nice place near my hotel, if I didn’t have a place picked out already. I told her to go ahead and make a reservation.
“I’ll meet you in the bar in the lobby of your hotel at six,” she said. “Does that sound good?”
That sounded fine.
“If we meet and I’m not quite what you wanted,” she said in an I’ve-said-this-a-thousand-times tone of voice, “you don’t have to pay me. Cab fare back home would be nice, but it’s not necessary.” If I wasn’t into her, I should say so within ten minutes, and she would leave, and there would be no hard feelings on her end. If I made her uncomfortable, or my personal hygiene was poor, she would say so within ten minutes, and she asked that there be no hard feelings on my end. If I wanted her to join me for dinner, I would need to hand her an envelope with $1,500 dollars in it for the first three hours. If I didn’t have cash, she could take a credit card but would have to do it now, over the phone, and the charge would have to be approved before she came to the hotel. If things didn’t work out, all but fifty dollars of the charge would be removed from my Visa bill.
Before we got off the phone, Emily asked what I would be wearing. I was confused. Did it matter what I was wearing? I’d seen her picture, so I knew what she looked like. I’d be able to spot her in the bar—
“I only ask because you said you want to go out to dinner and a show,” Emily explained. “If you’re in jeans and a sweatshirt and I show up looking like I’m on my way to the Golden Globes, we’re going to make a pretty conspicuous couple. And if you’re in a suit, you don’t want me showing up looking like I’m ready to go clubbing.”
I told Emily that I would be wearing what I’ve been wearing all of my life—jeans, a T-shirt, tennis shoes, and a jeans jacket.
“I’ll dress down,” she said. “See you in the lobby bar at six.”
I almost fainted when Emily walked into the lobby two hours later.
The hotel’s bar was, surprisingly enough, overrun with businessmen and hipsters, and I decided to wait for Emily in the lobby instead. I was sitting in a ridiculous oversize chair just outside the bar when she came through the doors. She was a stunningly beautiful woman—the pictures on her Web site didn’t do her justice—with nary a track mark in sight. Emily’s legs were longer than the Oscars. She was wearing jeans and a tasteful little top held up by spaghetti straps, and carrying a metallic silver jeans jacket. The jacket sounds trashy on the page, but in person it was just the right amount of flash. She looked like Cameron Diaz on her way to a club, which is to say, Emily was a total fucking knockout—a steal at five hundred dollars an hour.
I didn’t wait for the ten minutes to pass; I handed her the envelope with fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills in it, which she tucked into the pocket of her jeans jacket, which I had to compliment her on.
Talk about your New York miracles—I’d been in town for less than four hours, and a beautiful woman had just been delivered to my hotel. If I were straight, this would have been the night of my life.
“Let’s get a drink,” Emily said, strolling into the bar.
I didn’t go to New York City simply to sin and to defy Osama bin Laden and his Islamo-fascist pals. I was also in New York because Jerry Falwell pisses me off.
Falwell’s comments after the terrorist attacks made me angry, and I wasn’t alone; Falwell caught hell for his remarks, even from good ol’ Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. On some level, though, I was secretly thrilled by Falwell’s remarks. By attempting to pin the blame for the attacks of September 11 on the American Civil Liberties Union, abortion-rights groups, pagans, gay men and lesbians, and federal judges, Falwell not only exposed himself for what he was (hateful, divisive, mean-spirited), but he also exposed Christian fundamentalism for what it is (hateful, divisive, mean-spirited). Thanks to Falwell, millions of Americans realized that Christian fundamentalists hate all the same things about the United States that the Islamic fundamentalists hate: liberated women, sexual freedom, secular culture, fundamental human rights. After Falwell opened his fat trap on the 700 Club, people in the political center had to admit that the Falwells and Robertsons were, as John McCain dubbed them during the Republican primaries in 2000, “agents of intolerance.” (McCain was slammed by the media for that bit of straight talk.)
After September 11, reasonable Americans could no longer pretend that all men of faith were harmless do-gooders. The nineteen hijackers were men of faith, and in their own twisted minds, they meant well—they thought they were doing God’s work, just as Falwell thinks he’s doing God’s work. Osama bin Laden, if he’s still alive somewhere, is a man of faith.
John Walker, aka the American Taliban, is a man of faith.
Maddeningly, right-wing pundits have attempted to paint Walker, a religious conservative, as a hot-tubbing Marin County, California, liberal. “We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.” That comment by psychoconservative writer, commentator, and supposed “babe” Ann Coulter was greeted with cheers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., in February of 2002.
Fascist isn’t a word that I toss around lightly—I can’t stand lefties who cry fascist every time a Republican or a police officer enters the room—but that’s the only word that accurately describes Coulter’s politics. What’s revealing about her comments and the comments of so many other right-wing pundits is their burning desire to convince us that Walker is some sort of liberal. Excuse me, but Walker didn’t embrace the Marin County’s live-and-let-live liberalism. Walker rejected Marin County’s liberal ethos in favor of an intolerant, ranting, raving “faith.” What’s more, Walker and his coreligionists hate all the same things Falwell hates: liberated women, secular culture, homosexuals, religious freedom.
In the case of both Walker and Falwell—and in the case of September 11—faith wasn’t the solution to the problem, faith was and is the problem. “If we believe absurdities,” Voltaire said, “we will commit atrocities.” On September 11, Islamo-fascists, heads stuffed with absurdities, committed the most appalling atrocities. It was religious fanaticism that brought down the World Trade Center, not secularism, and a murderous intolerance inflamed by hate-mongering clerics. Falwell did a real public service by reminding Americans immediately after the attacks that the Islamic world doesn’t have a monopoly on religious hatred and fanaticism, nor does the Islamic world have a monopoly on hateful clerics.