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them in other businesses, in the fashion industry, or on Wall Street. They had to change their attitudes.
MacDonald:
I haven't looked at prostitute movies as carefully as you have, but what you're saying may be an extension of something I've been thinking about. It seems to me that pornography has primarily to do with men's hatred of their own bodies. It may be that the apparent need to see women punished in movies for being prostitutes is a function of their being so dirty as to have been with so many men.
Borden:
Well, it relates to any of the kinds of postcarnal hatred of women that are so typical of men. It would be fascinating to explore those feelings. I did talk to a lot of clients when I was doing research for the film, but men are so reluctant to analyze their feelings, and the feelings are so complex (and so many men are living a web of lies anyway) that it's hard to get much out of them. But it's interesting that (at least this is what I've gathered from reading and watching movies and talking to people)regardless of the intensity of a guy's desire for a woman, the minute he has her, the minute he comes, there's some kind of hatred. There's a sense of having to throw it off, put it away. I'm not talking about when people are in love; I mean sex for itself or as part of long-term relationships
most
sex. Anyway, that pattern does seem accentuated in prostitution.
But it's the other thing as well. A lot of clients want to see the women on the outside. For a lot of men there's this inability to separate a sexual act from something more. There's a desire to maintain something. Also, there's this need to feel different from the other clients, so different that a woman would give him the privilege of seeing him on the outside (so that of course he wouldn't have to pay for it!). There's that fantasy constantly. And there's this whole thing of regulars, which is how small places like the one in my film run. A lot of men like to see the same girl over and over again. There's a sense of having a kind of girlfriend.
But I think what you said is true, that men may have a hatred and mistrust of their bodies. Have
you
felt that way?
MacDonald:
Yes, but in a way the feeling is buried, taken for granted. I certainly know that as I was growing up, I was internalizing the cultural teaching that, for example, semen is a gross substance, almost the definition of what is gross. It is produced at this moment where, theoretically, you're supposed to be ecstatic (or released,
something
), and yet the physical evidence of this ecstatic moment is a snotlike substance that everybody hates. The good news and the bad news arrive simultaneously. And there's not only a
witness
to the bad news, there's the process of women cleaning up afterward. Cleaning away the dirtinessoften right away. I mean, don't misunderstand me, I wouldn't like it either, probably. Here's