Her eyes had narrowed very slightly and there was something possibly sad behind them. But her words came out in a laugh. “You are—what was your old term?— corny,” she told him.
He protested, “I’m not that old. Between that word and the time I went into hibernation there was ‘square,’ ‘not with it,’ ‘not hep,’ and various others I can’t think of right now. But, okay, breakfast it is.”
They took turns in the bath and when he returned to the bedroom she had already garbed herself in the dungarees she almost always affected, and had dialed a complete new outfit for him except for shoes. He found it difficult to get used to the modern custom of wearing clothes a single time and then disposing of them to be recycled. He had been told that less labor was involved in such a system than washing, drying, ironing, replacing buttons, mending tears and holes. The textile industry was one of the most highly automated in the nation.
They headed for the kitchen. On the way, Edith said, “Jule, tell me about prostitutes.”
“What?”
“About prostitutes. Whores.”
As they sat down at the kitchenette table, he asked, “What’s this fascination you women have with the subject? Your mother asked me about it just the other day.”
“A double order of ham and eggs, lots of toast, butter, marmalade? A liter of coffee?”
“I could use it,” he agreed emphatically.
After she dialed, she said, “From this perspective in time, it’s almost impossible to understand it, though, of course, as a student of anthropology I realize that since history began, prostitution existed in most parts of the world. But why did they do it?”
“For money,” he said, his voice laconical.
“How much money did they get?”
He rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “I suppose it depended on the country, how attractive they were, how young. I’ve heard of prices ranging from twenty-five cents to five hundred dollars.”
“Twenty-five cents!”
“Women in India, aged, half-starved, undoubtedly diseased.”
“And five hundred dollars?”
The food had arrived. After she served it, he said, “In places such as New York, Hollywood, Paris, and London, they had ultra-swank call girls. Very high-class office, usually under the guise of a model agency or some such. You had to be properly introduced, properly identified, and all the rest of it. For anywhere from two hundred dollars up you could have a girl for the evening who was very presentable, well educated, a good conversationalist, and supremely attractive. The five-hundred-dollar ones were usually recognizable TV or movie starlets, who even gave you a bit of prestige when seen with them in the top nightspots or restaurants. Few people knew, of course, that they augmented their incomes by putting out for their arranged dates at an agreed-upon price.”
“They must have hated it.”
“To the contrary, some of them loved it. I recall once being invited on a yachting cruise with five other upper-class chaps in roughly my own age group. There were eight girls aboard, all of them available at any time. The party lasted a week. The best of food, the best of booze, and, frankly, the best of girls. They were all college students, by the way, making a bit of extra cash during the summer. Believe me, if there were any of them that didn’t love the job, they didn’t show it. As I recall, the yacht owner gave them a thousand dollars apiece at the end of the cruise. On top of that, some of the rest of us tipped their favorites.”
She shook her head in disbelief, even as she ate.
“But basically, how degrading.”
He shrugged. “There were male prostitutes too. Handsome young physical specimens whom older women, usually, would go for—either for one-night stands, indefinite arrangements, or sometimes marriage.”
She shook her head again. “I can’t imagine such a code of sexual morality.”
He had to laugh at that. “Well, it’s a little difficult for me to comprehend some aspects of yours.”
“I read that a good many of these women were lesbians; that they came to hate men so much that they turned to women for their real sexual release.”
“Evidently some were. I think more were bisexual. There was quite a book on it just before I went under. The Happy Hooker. The author was a top-paid prostitute and madam who liked both men and women. Are there more lesbians now, since you’ve let down the legal barriers against homosexuals so far as consenting adults are concerned?”
“Oh, no. I would think considerably less. It turned out that in many cases it was largely psychological—not completely, of course—and most of it disappeared among both men and women when legal restraints were removed and sex education improved. I tried it once.”
He eyed her in surprise. “You did?”
“Uh huh,” she said around a mouthful of ham. “Just to see what it was like. With a girl friend at school. I didn’t like it, though. I like men.”
“So I noticed,” he said.
“What was swinging all about?” she asked.
“Swingers? Oh, well, toward the end of the sixties or so, a lot of sexual restraints were lifting. Quite a few people, especially the younger ones, were experimenting. Sometimes whole groups would get together and with complete abandon have any type of sex they could think of.”
“Single people or married couples?”
“Both. Sometimes they’d have little clubs, sort of, that would consist of two, three or four, or even more married couples who would meet weekly and have a sexual binge. Everyone who participated was expected to, uh, put out for anyone who wanted him or her. The others could stand around and watch or, if aroused, join in.”
“Were you ever at one of these parties?”
“To tell the truth, no. It never appealed to me.”
“It doesn’t appeal to me, either. I think sex is a very personal thing between two people. Speaking as an anthropologist, offhand I can’t think of any society where group sex seemed to develop.” She considered it for a moment, before adding, “Unless you count some of the orgiastic religious mysteries of, say, the early Greeks. And they were invariably performed while under some hallucinogen such as the amanita muscaria sacred mushrooms. How do you account for it in your time?”
He cocked his head slightly. “I suppose it was just one more aspect of the revolt that was going on, especially among the young. One group or another was protesting just about every aspect of our society. I suppose the swingers were protesting the restraints that had been put on sex for so long. Then, of course, there was wife-swapping.”
She looked at him.
He cleared his throat. “Two or more couples would get together periodically and exchange wives for the night, or for a weekend, or whatever.”
“Then why bother to get married at all?”
“Darned if I know. There were a lot of books and magazine articles by sociologists and others digging into the phenomenon. Some were pro and some were con. But I didn’t read anything that made sense to me particularly. At the time, as you know, I was preparing to be married myself, and would have been horrified by the idea of swapping my wife with someone else.” He grinned ruefully. “However, you know, in spite of the fact that I was the son of the Wild Wests—or possibly because of it—1 was slightly on the prudish side when it came to such things.”
They had finished their breakfast.
She asked nonchalantly, “Would you like to go back to bed for just a little, before we return to the university?”
They didn’t get back to the Julian West University City until past lunch. They had stopped on the way at a motel which boasted an automated restaurant. Julian hadn’t noted any lessening in the food quality, which is something he could hardly have said about the food in roadside restaurants of his own era.