A Different Kind of Whoring

Very early this morning, at around 4AM, I woke up with a start. After 4 hours of sleep, my mind was still actively churning out conversations, regurgitating old spoken statements and ruminating on them again and again. The body was sleeping, the mind was awake. So when the body awoke too, I allowed it to listen to the words my mind was spewing out at a rate of a hundred words per minute. Two words stood out, pointed accusingly at me: TALK WHORE.

The term came up after I realized that for some way or another and for a very long time, I’ve been doing some whoring myself. Not the traditional whore, mind you. But as I said, I’m a talk whore. That doesn’t seem too hard to understand. You see there’s the traditional whore who gives out sex for a fee, someone always around ready to be mounted on by anyone in need of any humping. The talk whore is pretty much like that. Only, there’s no sex involved. It’s just all, well, you probably already got that, heavenly, orgasmic conversation.

The talk whore is somewhat akin to the meantime girl. However, the meantime girl is emotionally shackled to the meantime guy, hoping that someday she’d stop being the meantime girl and be the “one”. With the meantime girl, there’s sex involved, and there’s too much emotional investment. With the talk whore, a nice long conversation is all there is to it.

You go to a talk whore if you need someone to talk to. You visit at your own terms, your schedule, your choice of venue. If she has something in her mind that she needs to talk to you about, she has to wait until you would again want her enough for her services. You’re not available when she needs you, but when you ask for her, she’ll be around in an instant. It’s business at your own terms. After all, you are the paying customer.

The pay is actually cheap. Buy her dinner or a few drinks and you’d get excellent conversation in return. You know she can’t harm you because she will keep all your dirty secrets to herself. You give her a ring-side ticket to the mess you call your life and she’ll sincerely applaud you, win or lose. She gets a front-seat ticket to the soap opera that features you, and she’ll loudly laugh at all the absurdities you’ve gone through, and secretly cry for all the tragedies you’ve had. And if you do give her a supporting role in your soap, she gets to play the part of the girl with amnesia. Proudly and all too willingly.

With her, you lose track of time. You reveal your secrets, you unleash your mind. You wonder out loud, hope out loud, even pray out loud. She trusts you just as much. To you, she’s as transparent as a pane of glass, as clear and as placid as a pool of water undisturbed for years. She has seen through your soul, but despite everything she saw, you’re sure that nothing will ever be taken against you. She also allows you to see through her soul, but then, so what?

When the evening comes to a close and you have nothing else to talk about anymore, you drop her off at the side of the road. She thanks you for the great evening and walks on home without looking back. No questions asked, no threats, no invitations, no pleas. She just made herself available to you and all you had to give was your time and the free meal. There are no strings attached, no emotional anchors, no additional charges. She’s inanimate, incapable of feeling, she's just your talk whore.

She knows it may take months before you suddenly show up like a ghost again. She also accepts the possibility that you may no longer ever show up again. She moves on with her life, hesitantly at first, but she’s smart enough to know her place in the world. She’s just a talk whore, and she knows it. She's insane enough to live with it. Your secrets are safe, your life, dirt and all, will always be revered the way she will honor her own. She won’t go looking for you, but she’ll be right there if you ever need her again.

To all of you who keep their own talk whores, you might want to reconsider increasing your pay: a little more than dinner and drinks, such as genuine friendship would do. Your talk whore might be in need of a talk whore herself, someone she can call at her own terms, someone who’ll stick around way beyond talking, and way into living itself.

To all of us who were, are, or will be talk whores, whoring can never be this noble. We change the world in a way, tilt the balance on the side of good, if that’s any consolation. We have an underappreciated, much demeaned job. But what the heck, by all means, and while I still can, I’ll keep on whoring.