Whore Stories (29 page)

RAHAB

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Doing the best she can

CLAIM TO FAME:
Mention her name twice in a row and see …

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Jericho

Another of the Bible’s more popular whores is Rahab, a wily minx from Jericho, the city featured prominently in the Book of Joshua. Note: She is not to be confused with Rahab, the teeth-gnashing sea leviathan that haunts Isaiah. That is an entirely different Rahab whose livelihood depends on a more biblically acceptable occupation of eating (as in consuming) her fellow human beings.

Our Rahab is equally ferocious, however, in her horizontal way. We first encounter the hooker, Rahab, managing a brothel in downtown Jericho, where two Hebrew spies who need to lay low and maybe party a little, approach her. Rahab is sympathetic to the spies, and is kind enough to hide them in some flax when local soldiers arrive at her place to arrest the operatives.

“Rahab! There’s a rumor going around that you’re harboring a couple of Jewish spies. Is that true?” the uppity Egyptian cadre want to know.

“What would ever give you that idea?” the coquette replies.

“Well, if I’m not mistaken, I see a couple of circumcised fellows hiding under that pile of barley oats behind you,” says the head of the search party.

“Any society that can’t distinguish between flax and barley deserves to fall,” says Rahab portentously. The soldier murmurs his annoyance, but local custom prevents men from entering Rahab’s whorehouse uninvited, so they eventually disperse. In Joshua 2:9–13, Rahab then explains her end of the bargain to the spies with a kind of entrepreneurial spirit that inspires prospective MBAs to this day:

Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death.

Looking to satisfy your wildest desires, or just browse around, visiting live sex shows, sex museums, and night freaks on display in the windows? Here is a quick roll call of some of the world’s top red-light districts:

BOY’S TOWN, NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO: H
ere, prostitution is controlled by the state, which is odd, considering the many available activities that just couldn’t be legal.

DE WALLEN, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS: T
he grand dame of red light districts, this area is an unforgiving maze of alleyways where you can get really, really lost.

REEPERBAHN, HAMBURG, GERMANY: O
nce home to the Beatles, the Reeperbahn area today contains more pictures in shop windows of people eating literal shit than you could ever imagine.

KAMATHIPURA, MUMBAI, INDIA: T
his red light district is Asia’s largest, and was originally imagined as a refuge for British soldiers during the Raj.

SOI COWBOY, BANGKOK, THAILAND: T
he district is named after T. G. “Cowboy” Edwards, who opened one of the first bars there in 1977. Because you go there for the history.

The spies agree, telling her to hang a piece of red cloth outside of her house, so they’ll know not to butcher her and her family along with the rest of the city. On a side note, this instance of hanging something red outside one’s window is said to be the genesis of the idea behind today’s “red-light districts,” the low hum of the bulb now replacing the flutter of the fabric.

In one of the more lopsided victories in history, the Jews walked around the perimeter of Jericho for a week, playing little trumpets and waiting. Then, at the end of the week, Joshua tells everyone to either shout really loud, or start blowing on his or her trumpet. It works and the walls of Jericho fall, leaving the city to be sacked and every man, woman, and child killed except for Rahab and her peeps.

All Biblical savagery aside, perhaps the most compelling fact about Rahab is that, according to the Babylonian Talmud, one only needs to mention her name twice in a row to inspire paroxysms of lust, and instant ejaculation. This goes
way
beyond the pedestrian positions employed by your average prostitute, and it goes a long way toward explaining the inevitable approach/avoidance conflict a young boy suffers when reading the
Shlach Lecha
at his bar mitzvah.

THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Indentured servant

CLAIM TO FAME:
Texas hero, maybe

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
The Lone Star State

The Yellow Rose of Texas is one of the truly enigmatic figures in whoredom. Some folk claim that the most famous (or infamous) whore in Texas was indeed no whore at all. If we are to believe the legend, Emily West, a “freed woman of color,” was integral to the Texans’ defeat of Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto.

While travelling to Texas from the north, Ms. West runs into Captain James Morgan, who offers her a bright future as an indentured servant and prostitute on his Texas ranch. She weighs her options, recognizes that as an African American woman she has few, if any; and becomes the captain’s concubine. When Santa Anna’s army comes charging through in 1836, West literally charms the pants off the opium-addled general himself. Santa Anna kills everybody else on the ranch and picks up West as a replacement for his stay-at-home wife in Mexico City, along with his “travelling wife” who had to turn back when her ornate and unwieldy carriage was unable to cross a particularly treacherous puddle.

One of the really compelling myths out there is that “The Yellow Rose of Texas” is a tune written by none other than the recluse of Amherst and one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson. How the hell did this rumor get started? Perhaps because Dickinson often uses a form called “running (or common) meter.” Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins explains:

This is the meter of a lot of ballads. It’s the meter of Protestant hymns. It’s the rhythm of many nursery rhymes … almost every one of [Dickinson’s] poems can be sung whether you like it or not to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Like it? We love it.

Then, just before the Battle of San Jacinto, West seizes the moment: she entices Santa Anna to blow a little opium and get naked before the Texans’ attack. Things take a turn for the worse for the Mexicans, who are forced to flee over shouts of “Remember the Alamo” from the Texans and “
¡Pinche mierda!
Somebody grab my
pantalones
,” from Santa Anna. The order was apparently ignored, as the general was captured the next day in nothing but a linen shirt and his undies. Emily West is then celebrated as a hero of the Texas Republic, and even today, patriotic, potbellied Texans gather around campfires to sing about the Yellow Rose of Texas.

What the hell does that anachronistic claptrap have to do with Emily West? Not much, really. Her actual life was one of unbelievable hardship and oppression, void of the romantic notion that she somehow sacrificed her body for the good of the Texas Republic. But, we love our myths, and so the Yellow Rose of Texas endures as a symbol of Texas independence and whoredom across the ages, while the song that bears her name also remains in circulation, serving as an inspiration for besotted yokels who see nothing wrong in uttering the word “darky
.”

JOROGUMO

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Spinster

CLAIM TO FAME:
Infamous samurai groupie

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Ancient Japan

Everybody knows that when a spider turns 400 years old, it is granted special powers. Specifically, the spider can shape-shift into a super-hot hussy, lure busters into her trailer, and rock a lute solo that so entrances her audience that they sit there grooving to her licks while she spins a spider web around them, eventually devouring her captive clients whenever she’s feeling a little peckish. Sounds familiar, right? No? Well it would, if you were a three-centuries-old half-digested samurai, or perhaps a historian.

Jorogumo (literally “prostitute spider”) was an alleged hustler during Japan’s Edo period, and she’s not for amateurs. Y’all just ain’t ready. As legend has it, the Jorogumos’ (there are a few scurrying about in the literature) primary concern is to marry a samurai, or at least eat one. If you were fortunate enough to possess samurai characteristics (loyalty, obedience, and perhaps a letter of recommendation) you were, unfortunately, fair game for Jorogumos. Here’s how it would typically go down:

A samurai, fresh from some battle, comes upon a lake fed by a silver waterfall and squats to wash all the blood and crap off himself, take a drink of water,
etc.

SAMURAI: All this killing. And for what? A stratospheric bill from Takeuchi’s cleaners, that’s what. Ah, me.

Jorogumo, in spider mode, creeps up on the samurai, showing an octet of thin naked legs. As described in legend, she “has a long, slender back, and a pointed rear end with long black limbs. Its thread is sticky like bird-lime and is tinged with yellow.”

SAMURAI: Eek! A spider! Beat it!

The samurai flutters his hands wildly at Jorogumo, and then falls into the lake. The samurai’s awkward attempt to right himself and regain his composure causes his metallic armor to clang. He sees Jorogumo, now in smoking super-model form.

SAMURAI: Oh my! Hi there. How un-bushido of me. Jesus, I feel like I could just die. In fact . . .

The samurai readies himself for
seppuku
, or ritual suicide.

JOROGUMO: Hey, not so fast, sweet cheeks. No need to go overboard.

SAMURAI: You don’t think so?

JOROGUMO: Nah. C’mon, come over here and kick off your boots and armor. Let’s party at my place. Get you out of that wet steel.

SAMURAI: (
pumps fist
) Yes!

JOROGUMO: (
rolls her eyes
) Dipshit.

Then it’s back to Jorogumo’s place for some heavy petting and lute playing. They make love for a few minutes, the samurai collapses in amorous exhaustion and in the morning, there’s Jorogumo, back in spider mode, tying up loose ends in the web she’s made to contain the samurai. The samurai tries to move, but he’s stuck in the brilliant, gossamer thread.

SAMURAI: Damnit! You’re that whore-spider everybody’s been talking about.

JOROGUMO: (
laughs deviously
) Indeed.

SAMURAI: Perhaps we could compromise? Like you can spider out during the day, but then you whore-out again at night? What say?

In this moment, Jorogumo spits hot acid on the face of the samurai, sucking away his skin with a staccato, arachnoid slurp.

JOROGUMO: Eat your heart out, Peter Parker.

Jorogumo lets loose a happy belch, then plops down on her futon, fondling her throbbing lung slits and rearranging her epigastric plates, slick with love and digestive fluid.

Myths often feature grains of truth about nature, and the legend of Jorogumo is no different. Researchers at the Zoological Institute in Hamburg, Germany, performed experiments at a kind of spider orgy, discovering that a female spider normally enforces a “ten-second rule,” which ensures her mate makes things snappy and gets the hell out before she loses patience and devours the boys, Jorogumo style.

NAAMAH

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Succubus

CLAIM TO FAME:
Sacred angel of prostitution

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Eden and surrounding area

The Zohar is the chief text of the Jewish Kabbalah, and it’s typically seen as an allegorical or mystical interpretation of the Torah. Since the Torah has most of the good action (the Bible is more Merchant/Ivory, the Torah is all Michael Bay), you can imagine the Zohar gets pretty radical. And it is in the Zohar that we encounter Naamah, although to be fair, like most religions, there’s cross-pollination all over the place, so the Zoharistas can’t totally claim her, nor can anyone else (even the Satanists have tried to bring her in). That said, apologies if your religion claims Naamah as the queen of Tupperware or the wife of Criss Angel or some other damned thing. The point is, she’s all over the place and she’s coming to bonk your brains out, then take your soul, if not your bankroll.

First of all, Naamah is the daughter of Cain, whom you may remember from such holy episodes as “Killing My Brother with Agricultural Tongs” and “Wandering around East of Eden with a Note on My Head.” And yes, Naamah was probably another fiery redhead, like her pops. You don’t hear much about her, though, which is surprising, since she was, according to many sources, the most beautiful woman in the world, although we’ve heard that one enough to know better by now. And, she was a demon, which everyone can get bullish about.