Not So Model Behavior

In the time before time, a hunger was born. It was, and still is, a universal hunger. Men feel it more than most other animals, but its there in all of them. if you understand it, you can do quite well for yourself.

Some people, quite a few acutally, will tell you it’s immoral to provide satisfaction for this hunger. Which only shows how hypocritical most people are, really, since they are the same ones that will come to you in secret and shamefully so that they can have it fulfilled. I don’t think it is any less moral than speeding or cheating on your taxes, neither of which I’ve ever done.

They, whoever they are, say the profession I practiced in my younger years caused the break up of marriages. I disagree. Someone who came to me knew that the business we contracted was temporary, a physical thing. There may have been liking, or even friendship in the rare case, but never were the emotions or heart more involved than that. My patrons came to me because they did not want their emotions to get tangled up, because they wished to keep the relationships they already had, but for a brief moment needed something they were not getting.

My name is Vivelle Johnston and I am an old woman now. But once upon a time, I was a courtesean, respected and sought after. Certainly sex was something I provided, but it was a small part. More often I provided relaxation and an affirmation of ego. And it wasn’t just men who sought my company. There were women too. In my day there weren’t many, true enough. But there were some. And the few that still live remain friends.

Most of my contemporaries are old sticks-in-the-mud. They do little but play bingo and complain about the cost of things, about their aches and pains, and about the young people of today. They grow older and more inflexible everyday. The ones who know what I was look down their noses at me, as if they’re better than me because they married and had children, because they spent their lives being what their families and society expected them to be.

Their loss. I prefer the company of youngsters anyway. The younger people who are a quarter of my age are considerably more pragmatic and far more accepting. To them, I am something exotic - like an American geisha. They are willing to spend hours in a restaurant, bar or my home listening to my stories of a bygone time or asking questions.

The openess of their minds is a wonderful thing that they are yet too young to appreciate. The breadth of their knowledge is remarkable to someone of my generation though the depth of that knowledge does leave something to be desired. As does their fashion sense at times - but that is my age showing.

I have never before kept a diary, or journal, so one might ask why I am choosing to do so now. There is much to tell of my life, lessons others can learn from it and things I want others, especially my young friends, to know. Recently, yesterday in fact, I was reminded of my mortality. A flash of bright white light, a twisting, tearing sensation in my chest, and then utter blackness. it lasted only a few moments and luckily I was seated, but I am heeding the warning.

So I will set my stories, my histories to paper as I never did in the past. There was too much danger in the past - that a patron might suffer for it if such writings were found. But most of my patrons are dead, or at a point in their lives where such stories will not damage them overly much. Still, I will refrain from naming those who are still alive. I have always been discreet.

So I will record my stories and my thoughts here, and I will tell the young women who are my friends that I am doing so. These young women are strong and inquisitive. Ther are vulnerable in ways I never was, but they have, at the same time, a far greater sense of themselves as people, than most women of my time every did.

No doubt some of the women of my generation will be appalled at the secrets I leave here, if they ever learn of it. Perhaps, when I am gone, this memoir will find its way to publication - one or two of my young friends are in the publication business. If there are any of the old bats of my generation still alive, they’ll probably have heart attacks on reading it. It would serve them right.

I’m not bitter. If anything I feel pity for those dried up old sticks. Most of them never really lived. They may think they did, but they never had their own lives. They went from their parents’ homes to their husbands’. And if their husbands passed away before them, they went to their children’s homes, or, in some cases, an old folks home. most never had reason or opportunity to lean or use the strength they had within themselves. And they allowed it, because it was the way it was supposed to be.

I’ve always been a rebel. I’ve always questioned what I was told. And I’ve never accepted “that’s the way it is” as an explanation. I’ve lived. I have regrets, things I wish I hadn’t done or said, but even those things made my life more vivid, more real. And they are far outweighed by the experiences and opportunities I’ve had. It’s time to share that knowledge and to show other women how to live while they are still young enough to appreciate it.