Lily Todd is my source of much knowledge and she recently recommended the Booker nominated On Chesil Beach by Ian Mc Ewan. As I already commented on Lily’s blog, I tried, in vain to purchase said volume from a local bookshop; settling instead for Belle du Jour- ‘The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl’ . I can justify my purchase by various means: quite recently, every magazine you idly flick through (or subscribe to and wait with baited breath to arrive each month) featured Billie Piper, in an ‘in depth and intimate interview about her sexual adventures’: given that she recently portrayed ‘Belle’ in an ITV television production of the novel, also as a sexually active member of the ‘Sex in the City ‘ generation of women I consider it my duty to women (and even soon to be encountered men) to stay abreast (unfortunate term) with the ever changing sexual revolution, Pretty Woman’ remains, one of my favourite movies, Belle’s confessions began life as a blog and I therefore thought I could gain a subject for my own ponderous outpourings; and at Lily’s suggestion I was looking for a book about sexual discovery…
This confession list is an insight to my psyche when it comes to this novel: I feel I have to justify- to you- all four members of my reading public: why I, a QUB English graduate, shaper of young minds, bought and within a matter of days read, a book with a lingerie clad ‘hooker’ on the cover: whose entire reason for putting pen to paper/ or perfectly manicured red talon to keyboard, was to discuss her illegal, highly gripping (again unfortunate term: this blog may soon be a study in innuendo) and absolutely adventurous sexual activities. It was one of those books that made me glad I’d moved out of home and wouldn’t have to explain it to my Mother. For anyone who as a curious teenage ever encountered ‘Ralph’ in Judy Blume’s Forever : can hopefully share my very guilty pleasure.
I again confess, even as a box-set owning, been on the tour in NYC: Sex in the City graduate, there were certain actions, activities and what could perhaps be described as acrobatics in this novel that I found truly shocking: both in their physical dexterity and sado-masochistic endurance; but also in the honest and frankly glib way that the writer had committed her ‘adventures’ to paper.
Where was Belle’s shame at her chosen profession? Where was her realisation that every single relationship she had (both male and female); the only exception being that with her parents, was both tainted and charged with sex? Belle doesn’t seem to regard herself as the commodity but instead she creates a product for which there is much demand on the market. She only half-heartedly pursues other ‘mainstream’ means of gaining employment.
It is too easy when reading the novel to judge the ‘characters’ that lie within: the men that pay for Belle’s services (naive as I am and enjoy being; I realise that escorts/hookers/people of the night for both genders and for every facet of sexual orientation and experimentation are a feature of every society across the globe: always have been and always will be), the men she has relationships with who are willing to share their intimacy with paying strangers, the friends and family who allow her to continue to ply her trade and perhaps most pointedly Belle herself, for not taking her degree/ her talents/ her aptitude for image and sales into the nearest, highest paying advertising agency and demanding they pay her for intellectual dexterity.
But who am I to judge? This girl is not a drain on society; she is not at the mercy of a violent pimp, she now gains money not only from her chosen career but also from writing published novels about it. She makes the decisions: ’she says who, she says when, she says how much.’
If the sexual revolution and quest for equality teaches us anything then surely it is that women should be in charge of their own physical destinies. I support a woman’s right to chose, in the broadest sense possible: to pursue a career in ANY given field including those of battle, to not only vote for but run for public office, including the American Presidency, to be a stay at home Mum, to be a Mum who juggles her family and her career, and to abort an unwanted pregnancy. How then, can I judge a financially independent career girl who happens to sell herself to make a living?
Yet I do. On a drunken night long ago I gave up the ideal of no sex before marriage; and that of sex only occurring inside a relationship in which both partners love and respect each other. Sex can entirely be a consenual physical transaction between two adults, uncompromised by emotional attachments. This liberal definition can be readily applied to all of Belle’s adventures: but yet I stand in prudish dismay. I feel that even if she is the highest paid call-girl in London, her ‘industry’ cheapens not only herself, but sexually active people everywhere and even the act of sex itself.
I applaud women who are in control of their own sex lives: inside and outside marriage, in fact inside and outside any sexual relationship totally regardless of orientation; single women with a string of emotionally uncomplicated but physically fulfilling sexual encounters and the woman who patiently wait for that right man to come along. Learning sexual respect for your self is one the most important lessons a society can teach its children (but one we don’t teach particularly well).
As I stand on my hypocritical pedestal I remain troubled by my condemnation of Belle and my enjoyment of her ‘tale’; so much so, that I travelled to the next town over and bought On Chesil Beach this very afternoon…maybe a little sexual conservativism will help me regain my sexually liberal equilibrium.
