A John’s Story
By ANNIE SPRINKLE
PAYING FOR IT
A Comic-Strip Memoir
About Being a John
Written and
illustrated by Chester Brown
280 pp.
Drawn & Quarterly. $24.95.
Who has not seen the remorseful
preachers, politicians, actors and other men in the news, begging forgiveness
when caught with their pants down and publicly outed as “johns,” patrons of the
world’s oldest profession? To be a known john is to be trailed by shame and
stigma, at least in the United States and Canada. There are millions of johns,
but for one to come out voluntarily — with honesty, integrity and pride — is
indeed rare. In my nearly 40 years in the world of sex workers, I’ve known only
one: Fred Cherry. In the 1980s in New York, Cherry sued Mayor Ed Koch for the
legal right to pay for sex with prostitutes (a case Cherry ultimately lost). To
ascertain if any other such brave johns had slipped my mind, I surveyed a few
of my older prostitute friends. “No, just Fred Cherry,” they confirmed. (Today,
I might count Charlie Sheen.) So for the Canadian comic artist Chester Brown to
announce in his graphic memoir, “Paying for It,” that he is a john is truly
groundbreaking.
You don’t have to like
comics to relish this book. Brown, whose previous work includes a comic-strip
biography of the 19th-century Canadian revolutionary Louis Riel, begins his
story in the summer of 1996, when his live-in girlfriend, Sook-Yin, confesses
she has fallen for another guy. She also still wants to live with Chester. “I
love living with you,” she says. Chester — feeling like his “normal, content,
all-is-well-with-the-world self” — goes with the flow. (“You’re fine with
this?” an astonished friend asks him. “I’m fine,” Chester replies.)
He and his girlfriend
transition to being friends and housemates. A few months later, the new
boyfriend moves in with them. Brown, still single, realizes he has come to a
place in his life where he has “two competing desires — the desire to have sex,
versus the desire NOT to have a girlfriend.” He seriously questions the idea of
romantic love, and concludes it is a virtually impossible ideal. He decides to
explore his options, which leads him to experiment with prostitutes. He finds
some through brothel advertisements, and also online. “There are a whole bunch
of these prostitute-review Web sites,” he tells a friend — johns writing for
other johns, “like movie reviews or book reviews.”
Over the course of
several years, Brown had numerous paid sexual encounters, and in “Paying for
It” he has given each woman a chapter: Carla, Anne, Wendy, Yvette, back to
Anne, Jolene, Larissa, Angelina, Kitty, Gwendolyn, Jenna, back to Angelina,
Myra, etc. He also recounts conversations about his thoughts and motivations
that he had with his close friends, some of whom disapprove (“There is NO way
I’m paying for sex,” says one), others of whom are ambivalent (“I think it
should be legal, but that’s not the same thing as saying it’s right”).
Chester Brown is not a
john to pity. He has options. He is a reasonably handsome, lanky, talented
artist, now 51 years old. Some women, and men, who read this memoir may develop
a crush on this goodhearted bad boy. The cartoonist R. Crumb, who provides the
introduction for the book, describes him as “a very advanced human.” Brown also
seems to be a feeling, thoughtful, considerate man, honest with himself and
others.
This graphic memoir is .
. . sexually graphic. Chester’s penis is a leading character, and a charming
one at that. Brown has made no obvious attempt to eroticize his drawings, and
as a result his cartoons are totally sexy in the way real life and really good
art are sexy. As he explores the logistics of being a john, he shares what he’s
learned about hygiene, the etiquette of paying and tipping, and the necessary
financial planning (“If I went every two weeks, that would be 26 times a year;
26 multiplied by $160 equals $4,160 a year — that’s quite a bit”). He also
gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts “for generously
assisting me financially while I wrote and drew this work.” Can you imagine the
National Endowment for the Arts financing any project remotely resembling this?
O Canada!
As someone who has had
sex of one sort or another with more than 3,000 johns myself, I can attest to
the fact that all of Brown’s encounters ring absolutely, gloriously true. The
usual stereotypes (wallet-snatching junkies with pimps) are avoided, and the
lovely moments feel genuine — the pillow talk alone is perfection.
If you don’t ever have
“bad” sex, then you probably haven’t been looking hard enough for the really
great sex. Brown documents his sad, curious and disappointing paid encounters —
always amusing — along with his abundance of sweet, satisfying and successful
ones. He appears to be relatively nonjudgmental, like a person who can equally
relish both junk food and a gourmet feast. I found myself utterly captivated by
his story, and I loved the transgressive surprise ending (which I won’t spoil
here).
At the end of “Paying
for It,” Brown provides 23 meticulously drawn appendixes, most of which are
devoted to deconstructing just about every argument you can think of against
prostitution. He presents the typical objections (e.g., “Prostitution is wrong
because it gives a man sexual power over a woman”) and counters with utterly
rational and incisive responses (“Prostitutes aren’t passive puppets, and most
johns aren’t dictators”), backing up many of his points with observations from
sex workers themselves. In the process he makes as convincing a case for the
decriminalization and destigmatization of prostitution as anyone I’ve ever come
across in the prostitutes’ rights movement. This will be a welcome book to
prostitutes everywhere, especially those who have been raped, robbed or busted
in places where laws and stigmas against the business make such experiences all
the more traumatizing. It is also a valuable resource for academics, a
challenge to law enforcement and politicians, and a boon to johns the world
over.
Annie Sprinkle, the author of “Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex,” is an
artist, activist and ecosex educator. She worked as a prostitute for 20 years.
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