Emporer's Club, Geisha, and You

In reading through the spate of "inside scoops" on high-end prostitution, a figure has cropped up a number of times, specifically, that in as many as 40% of the rendezvouses, no actually sexual contact occurs. What gets even more interesting are the descriptions of these ultra-high tier hookers and that they are operating in effect as a paid mistress, a companion. Especially as these trysts involve repeated meetings and dating, the line between pure sexual object and someone more intimate begins to blur. As I was reading through the above article, it brought to mind nothing quite so much geisha.

I'm not even pretending to be an expert on geisha or prostitutes, but after reading Memoirs, my interest was certainly piqued, and I've flagged geisha as a topic of continual curiosity. A large reason I found geisha culture so intriguing is that it was a relationship substantially more complex than casual prostitution. Just as in any profession, there are copious tiers and classes and, as best I understand it, the lower rungs of geisha were rife with blunt sex-for-money. In those contexts, their appeal was their relative scarcity; even though a only modest income was necessary to purchase a geisha's services, a common workman could rent a prostitute. Their appeal was status, at least at the lower levels. This was a rationale put forth in the WaPo for Spitzer.

But as you start to ascend the caste system, the issues get muddier. High-priced geisha were trained in tea ceremonies, flower arrangement, art, dance, music, conversation, the finer points of sumo, politics, culture, and whatever else their patron might desire. In short, they started less like whores, and more like Whores of Mensa (also, it appears I'm not the first to make that connection). Compare that description to the one given describing the tiers of high-end prostitution, and the explicit mention of their educational attainment, not to mention their highly restricted stables of men.

So, it sounds like we're talking about a companion. For some men that is a more superficial title than for others; it really is just about the sex. But for some, and especially for those in a culture that created and venerated geisha, it wasn't. And just like the articles from last week saying that it turns out teenage boys have more on their minds than sex, so too do men.