E.E. Cummings Month: “‘kitty’. sixteen,5’1″,white,prostitute.”

— Sorry for the sparseness and lateness of posts today, dudes, but my grandmother is having a really Bad Day. The human brain can be such a bastard. —

“kitty”. sixteen,5’1″,white,prostitute.

ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death’s littlest pal,

skilled in quick softness. Unspontaneous. cute.

the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,

Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
                                                   you corking brute
amused from time to time by clever drolls
fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
The babybreasted broad “kitty” twice eight

— beer nothing,the lady’ll have a whiskey-sour —
whose least amazing smile is the most great
common divisor of unequal souls.

(E.E. Cummings, “‘kitty’. sixteen,5’1″,white,prostitute.” 1923.)

“Whose slippery body is death’s littlest pal.” God.

The poem is designed to shock and it is shocking — not so much her age of 16, which was consenting in most states at that time, and there is no harm in a consenting human exploring their own sexuality, but the idea that Kitty is such an old and careful but hopeless hand at the sex trade that it is her sole living and she has abandoned her childhood likely earlier than she would have liked, implying her experiences began at a far more tender age — as well as containing a moral without being overly pedantic about it: my interpretation is that Mr. Cummings finds the youth of this prostitute, Kitty, sad and abhorrent, and is taking to task the entire trade, together with its purveyors, its proponents, and its “banal” and wicked pervasiveness, which can crush the spirit of a child and that can drive the spark and spontaneity out of the eyes of a “cute,” young girl. He is disgusted that a young woman’s agency has been foreclosed to a system that allows her no real freedom. That is my take and I stand by it staunchly. If you take the poem to mean that Mr. Cummings is fine with teen prostitutes, I’m interested to hear your argument.

Girl sold by her family in Thailand. Please only follow this link if you are not the weepy kind. (I am.)

In a lot of Eastern European and developing Asian countries, this problem is so nauseatingly endemic that its only solution is harsh, swift, Actually ENFORCED sanctions from other countries.

For those in more “developed” nations (raise your pinky, okay, cause we are sooo evolved with our computers and cell phones), I think the greatest way to prevent a sad poem like this from becoming the reality for that sullen girl-woman you see with her arms folded in front of the cosmetics display at the grocery while her mother fills the cart with gin and baby formula is to start coaching early and hard in strategies for self-esteem and success the likely victims of the child prostitution trade. I take no such high road as Mr. Cummings about obliquely non-pedantic “you should stop this,” methods: he is far more subtle and poetic than I, obviously. With protection of those vulnerable targets in mind, here is a short and very hastily-assembled list of groups that I think do that. If you have any to add, please, please do.

Organizations for child advocacy

— In the U.S. (all of these non-profits have been rated A or higher by charitywatch.org; do not leave home without it … wish they would start tackling and rating more international non-profits) —

National Alliance to End Homelessness. Common factors in teen prostitution: runaways; homelessness. Donate time or money.

Save the Children. Mainly focused on the United States, but also offers opportunities to better the lives of children in other countries

— In the U.K./Europe —

STOP (Trafficking UK). In support of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 and the sanctions established against the trafficking of humans, espeically women and children, by the U.N. in Palermo in 2000, STOP (Trafficking UK) is an advocacy group for helping those who have come to the U.K. via the channels of the illegal sex trade — women and children — to find jobs, parents as need be, literacy coaches, counseling, and any other support they need. A new but excellent group.

UN.GIFT (the United Nations Global Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking). “UN.GIFT works with all stakeholders – governments, business, academia, civil society and the media – to support each other’s work, create new partnerships and develop effective tools to fight human trafficking.” UN.GIFT is a great jumping-off point for finding ways to help in your specific country.

— Other efforts abroad to advocate for disadvantaged youth and stem child prostitution —

Pearl S. Buck International: founded by the author of The Good Earth. Through PSBI you can arrange an inter-racial adoption via Welcome House or you may choose to sponsor a child. Special program for children in Asia, where many countries’ lax laws governing prostitution make it a viable and thriving trade, via Opportunity House.

The Global Fund for Children. Well-rated, takes your money and spreads it around well-researched country-based special needs groups.

And of course, UNICEF, the United Nations International Childrens’ Emergency Fund. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but it’s what Audrey would want.

Photo credits, top to bottom: Jodie Foster as Iris “Easy” Steensman, Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976); Brooke Shields as Violet in Pretty Baby (Lois Malle, 1978); Iris and Travis Bickle dine out in Taxi Driver — Jodie again with Robert De Niro; I credited the center one below the picture itself and I again find it flabbergasting and horrifying; Brooke on the cover of People in May 1978; Jodie again from TD, heartbreakingly young in the green sunglasses — to me this has become an iconic outfit, summing up totally her character and Iris’s backstory and motivations; Brooke again out of costume on set for Pretty Baby, a surprising addition to the so-called “Raider Nation.” I assume the Raiders were still in their brief stationing at Los Angeles at this point.

NSFW November: Holly Witt, Miss November 1995

I’ll be honest: Miss November 1995, Holly Witt, mainly bores the crap out of me, and I feel like Playboy did not put their best effort forward with this pictorial’s disjointed themes, nor did they demand enough of the model.

Photography by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda
I just feel like this shoot could have been done better. I’m surprised Arny Freytag was involved. Possibly he only did the centerfold and this Wayda character did the rest.

The kiddie pool picture is actually pretty good. And the one below of her in the salon chair with her hand to her head is okay. But the rest come off wooden to me and look like something from a much cheaper magazine. It’s a shame that they let her get away with just doing the kind of arched back, pouty mouth thing, because I think she was capable of more. Some more stringently unusal or less stiff poses could have made the shoot kind of this interesting and erotic, challenging look at the trope of the slutty housewife: the set dressing and pastel but somehow lurid, vivid colors would have worked great with that.

Instead, because she was allowed to go with Porn 101 posing of chipmunk face and out-thrust breasts (not that there is anything wrong with that pose in its appropriate context), the shoot just falls in to pornographic fantasy pictures instead of doing the more dynamic and interesting thing by elevating it a level further and erotically, cleverly referring to that genre, rather than crassly being it. Does this make sense?

Anyway, fuck this shoot. The rest of the text is going to be quotes from an interview that also ran in this issue by contributing editor Lawrence Gobel with none other than superbomb flyass mothafucka Mr. Harvey Keitel.

PLAYBOY: You must be aware of how people react to you. You’ve developed a reputation as a powerful actor willing to dare exposure.
KEITEL: I’m smiling now as you say dare. I mean, that’s what I do. I don’t know what to say, except that it comes naturally to me. You want to call it daring? OK. I look at it as being.

KEITEL: Here’s a man who is doing the job of a pimp and a girl who is working as a prostitute. It’s monstrous, it’s horrible. But that wasn’t my approach to it. My approach was as a working man. Often, pimps are brilliant people caught up in life’s misfortunes. It’s like this whole debate going on about the welfare system: Is it the fault of the poor or of their circumstances? I believe a great deal of it has to do with their circumstances, not just because they are irresponsible.

PLAYBOY: How could Reservoir Dogs have gone further?
KEITEL: Perhaps there was some way to make the universal quest more obvious to an audience.

PLAYBOY: You may have a point—most people saw it as a violent movie, not one of some Arthurian quest.
KEITEL: I never saw it as a violent film. … I see it more as a story about a man who is in need of nourishing a younger man, of being a father figure, of being an example. It’s a quest we’re all on.

You can read the full interview here, which I strongly recommend because Keitel mercilessly fucks with Gobel the entire time; he is enigmatic and a dick and just all-around brooking no publicity machine bullshit. He is the consummate Man. I love him so well.

In closing and to bring it back to the subject of this entry, I will merely add that if you are on a date with the lovely and talented Ms. Witt and are thinking of impressing her with a story about Pythagoras or Fermat, shut your piehole, because she lists among her turn-offs “math and history.” Awesome.