Escort Lists Hitting the Fan - Again

The secrecy inherent in the whole world of escorting is kind of amusing when it’s torn away and becomes public knowledge. Not amusing for those who want to keep it a secret, of course, but the thing about skeletons in the closest is that if you don’t want to have any, don’t do anything to put them there. Any time big bombshell news about someone’s personal life gets exposed publicly you can see the anguish on the person’s face, but have to wonder how they didn’t see it coming.

Today, with Eliot Spitzer not too distant from our memories, another high profile madam, Michelle Braun, has been caught and has a list full of names that she has finally agreed to turn over in exchange for a lighter sentence. Names of people who paid upwards of $50,000 a night to be with one of her girls. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that had better have been the best fucking sex ever in the history of all time.

So now some knees are shaking and gossip journalists are salivating like starving dogs outside a butcher shop. No names have been released yet but word is it’s “shocking.” I bet. While the madam claimed some of her girls included Hollywood actors, Playboy centerfolds and fashion models, you have to keep this in perspective. For instance, Hollywood actors include the people who co-star in direct-to-dvd Steven Seagal movies these days. Very likely many of those people have to escort to make ends meet. Playboy centerfolds are just regular women from around the country who happen to be attractive. No shock there. And fashion models? Aren’t most of them famous for loving heroin? Maybe that was a few years ago, who knows.

Point is, the list of clients, of prominent men who paid these bajillions of dollars to be with her girls, is soon coming out. But is it shocking? In all honesty, how many name could be on that list that would actually be shocking? It’s a given that the Pope might raise some eyebrows, but who else? Is there an actor left in Hollywood that people would gasp about if they knew they’d seen an escort? A politician? Short of Barack Obama or George Bush, neither of whom would be that shocking if you thought about it for a few minutes given that JFK was shtooping Marilyn Monroe in the Lincoln bedroom, you’d be hard-pressed to be surprised by any politician paying for sex. So who could be on the list?

Sadly “no one cares” is not the answer. No one should care if you pay for sex, no one should care if Charlie Sheen, Eliot Spitzer or the Dalai Lama pay for sex. But they do anyway. And when the list comes out, people will be shocked. God knows why, but they will pretend to be. How could so and so do such a thing? I thought better of them! Any time news like this comes out, the world at large reacts as though sex was not unlike eating food out of the garbage. Sure, some people do it but…eew. Not us.

So keep your eyes open for the news as it develops, but remember. You may not be famous yourself, or paying as much as you’d pay for a Lexus to get laid, but if you’re interested in this, someone may be interested in what you’re up to. Until we can all get past this morbid fascination with other people’s sex lives, until we can stop thinking of it as juicy gossip or something illicit, it’s always going to be a skeleton in the closet.