My dearest whores,
Over the long and glittering history of civilization, humanity has poured its finest energies into mastering the noble professions. Surgeons have learned to negotiate with the interior of the body. Architects have bullied gravity into compliance. Philosophers have spent entire careers trying to locate the thin and much-disputed border between virtue and sin.
And yet there exists another profession, older than most universities and every bit as competitive as global finance, whose practitioners have been denied the academic recognition they so richly deserve.
I refer, of course, to that ancient and exquisite discipline: the Art of Whoring.
Before the more delicate members of society reach for their pearls, allow me a clarification. There is nothing remotely interesting about an ordinary whore. The ordinary whore desires pleasure, pursues pleasure, and, with admirable efficiency, occasionally obtains it. Such conduct may offend a few churches, but it does not rise to the level of an intellectual achievement.
No, dear reader. The specimen worthy of study is not the one who whores openly. The truly fascinating specimen is the whore who has somehow persuaded himself that he is the purest living embodiment of moral rectitude. The one who demands fidelity of others while roaming like a stray dog in mating season. The one who lectures at length on honesty while treating the truth as a tiresome administrative obstacle. The one who believes his own appetites are protected by the sacred doctrine of personal liberty, while the appetites of everyone else must be investigated, prosecuted, and displayed in the public square.
Such a creature does not merit ordinary criticism. He merits an entire field of study.
And since our universities have negligently overlooked this vital discipline, I have taken it upon myself to shoulder the historical burden.
Welcome to The Art of Whoring: An Advanced Seminar on Hypocrisy.
A note on pronouns: throughout this seminar I shall refer to our specimen as “he.” This is a grammatical convenience, not a sociological finding. The discipline admits students of every gender, and its alumni network is vast.
The Amateur and the Master
To become a whore requires very little preparation: a dash of instinct, a pinch of opportunity, and a willingness to follow one’s appetites wherever they lead, preferably somewhere with a lock on the door.
To become a Master Whore is another matter entirely.
Sexual enthusiasm alone is insufficient. Beauty, charm, even an impressive roster of willing collaborators: none of these can lift a common practitioner into the upper ranks of the profession. True mastery demands the coordination of an entire orchestra of skills: psychological manipulation, strategic victimhood, theatrical grief, tactical dishonesty, a memory that deletes its own files on command, and, above all, the rare gift of concealing one’s grubbiest desires beneath a moral overcoat of the very finest tailoring.
The amateur seeks pleasure.
The professional seeks pleasure while preserving plausible deniability.
The Master seeks pleasure, denies seeking pleasure, condemns everyone else for seeking pleasure, and persuades the entire village that he alone is the injured party.
Picture, if you will, a gentleman who spends his evening enthusiastically exploring the recreational possibilities of the human body, then returns home to deliver a stirring address on the sanctity of monogamy. Observe the confidence. Admire the posture. Marvel at a lack of self-awareness so complete it borders on the architectural.
One might assume such a performance requires a superior intellect. Not necessarily. It requires only an unshakable faith in the stupidity of the audience.
Hence the First Principle of Advanced Whoring:
The greatest whore is not the one who has slept with the most people. The greatest whore is the one who convinces everyone he has never whored at all, while clocking in, quietly, every single day.
Morality as Costume
Every respectable profession has its uniform. Judges wear robes. Physicians wear white coats. Priests wear vestments to distinguish the sacred from the profane.
The Master Whore requires something more versatile. He wears Morality.
Not, of course, because morality governs his conduct. That would be dreadfully inconvenient. He wears it because it is the finest camouflage ever devised.
A properly trained Master never announces, “I wish to pursue my pleasures freely while forbidding you to pursue yours.” Heavens, no. Such candor would bankrupt the entire business model. Instead he declares, with magnificent gravity: “I believe in loyalty. I believe in honesty. I believe in commitment.”
And should anyone inquire whether these noble principles apply equally to the speaker, he will receive the question as a savage assault upon his dignity.
For the Master, morality is not a code of conduct. It is a costume.
And like any successful stage costume, its purpose is not to reveal the actor but to convince the audience that the play is real.
When he desires someone else, it is “a complicated emotional situation.”
When you desire someone else, it is “a devastating moral collapse.”
When he disappears, he “needs space.”
When you disappear, you are “hiding something.”
When he lies, he is “protecting his privacy.”
When you withhold, you are “betraying his trust.”
When he whores, he is “exercising personal autonomy.”
When you whore, Western civilization trembles on the brink.
How convenient. How economical. One law for the king, another for the peasants, and the crowning marvel of the system is that the king frequently believes himself to be the victim of tyranny.
The Monarchy of One
There is something unmistakably royal about the Master Whore. He does not conduct himself as an equal partner in a relationship, but as a sovereign presiding over a small and rather unlucky kingdom.
His desires are royal decrees. His absences are affairs of state. His inconsistencies are classified. Everyone else’s conduct, meanwhile, is under permanent emergency investigation.
The royal constitution is charmingly brief:
“While I am out whoring, it is your duty to believe I am not. While you are out whoring, it is my duty to interrupt you, interrogate you, and make you feel guilty to the point of madness.”
When he returns, all shall proceed as though he never left. Should he discover that another has also whored, he shall regard it as the greatest betrayal in the recorded history of the species.
One must doff one’s hat to such constitutional ingenuity. The king enjoys unlimited liberty; his subjects are expected to supply unconditional loyalty. His whereabouts are private. Theirs are evidence. His silence requires understanding. Theirs requires explanation. His adventures leave his character untouched. Theirs define them forever.
There is, admittedly, one embarrassing flaw in this magnificent political order. A relationship is not a monarchy, and crowning oneself king does not automatically convert another human being into a servant.
But never underestimate the determination of a commoner with royal ambitions. He may lack a throne, a crown, and a plausible account of his whereabouts last Thursday, but by God, he will have his sovereignty, even if he must manufacture it entirely out of counterfeit outrage.
Professional Credentials
Our distinguished inquiry draws to a close. It is therefore appropriate to establish a formal system of professional certification.
The Common Whore pursues pleasure.
The Ambitious Whore pursues pleasure while attempting to preserve a respectable reputation.
The Accomplished Whore develops sufficient theatrical discipline to conceal the gap between private conduct and public morality.
The Master Whore constructs an entire moral universe in which his own conduct is always forgivable and everyone else’s is always prosecutable.
The Second-Rate Whore attempts all of the above while remaining convinced that his audience cannot tell the difference between an assertion and a demonstration.
The Second-Rate Whore may possess the appetites of a professional, the ambitions of a monarch, and the outrage of an inquisition. Without credibility, he possesses nothing but a growing archive of increasingly unconvincing speeches.
Permit me, then, a final observation.
There is no special talent in whoring. There is no remarkable achievement in pursuing desire. The farce begins only when a man who cannot govern his own conduct appoints himself governor of everyone else’s: when the loudest preacher of fidelity cannot explain his own contradictions, and the self-appointed guardian of morality treats morality as an obligation reserved for other people.
Such a creature may continue his performance indefinitely. He may deliver another speech, invent another explanation, convene another imaginary tribunal, polish his invisible crown, and draft a fresh royal decree. None of these activities will resolve the single contradiction on which his entire production depends: the elegance of his words and the squalor of his deeds have never once been seen in the same room.
And there is always something rather entertaining about a man who insists on wearing his crown while everyone present can see perfectly well that he is standing there stark naked.
Yours in scandal, scholarship, and the occasional necessary profanity,
Tony Whistledown
P.S. Fidelity is a virtue. Whoring is a choice. But preaching fidelity while whoring indiscriminately is an art best reserved for those who have mastered its most demanding requirement: remembering their own lies.