THE PROJECTS is a series focused on reinventing the journalist as an
autonomous creator, exploring new avenues for digital self-publishing
in a transforming media climate, and inspiring a new generation of
creators to redefine how they do business in the digital age. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. The
projects section of this site can be found here.
I started The Letters Project
on a whim. It was January 3, 2008. At the time, I had no idea the
project would last five years, or that it would garner attention from
media outlets around the world.
On that
day, I posted a call to my blog, asking readers to send me emails about
why they pay for sex. Within a few hours, I had received my first
email: "The Night I Drove A Call Girl To Her Next Stop." It began, "I am writing because I can’t tell this story to anyone I
know and maintain my dignity."
That afternoon, I created a blog and named it Letters from Johns.
"Why do you pay for sex?" the sidebar queried. I posted my email
address, asking for more letters. The authors would remain anonymous.
Over
the following year, I heard from over 50 johns. Their letters came at
all hours of the day and night. They were from young guys and old guys,
white guys and black guys, military grunts and corporate drones. The letters were poignant, exhilarated, nostalgic, terrifying, revelatory.
They were all confessions.
"I keep a coded diary, in case it's discovered. 1 dot is oral, 2 dots is
vaginal sex, and 2 connected dots is anal sex. In the event that someone
questions the dots, they are associated with good/bad days: no dots are
normal days, 1 dot is a good day, 2 dots is a great day, and 2
connected dots is the best day for that week."*
Of
course, the letters weren't about sex, or prostitution, or johns. They
were about love and loneliness, from guys who just wanted to be touched
and men who had gotten dumped, stories in which call girls really had
hearts of gold and mercenaries cruised foreign streets in search of bodhisattvas-for-hire.
On January 14, 2008, I launched Letters from Working Girls.
I heard from fewer sex workers than I
did johns. They were too busy living the life, I assumed. Those I did
hear from had a wide range of experiences. Some were in their twenties
and used the internet to turn cyber tricks. Some had long since retired
and recollected fondly the good old days in which they had sex for
money.
"One guy, in particular, we all loved. We called him 'park bench.' He did
not get undressed, he laid face down on the table, and the girl sat on
him, naked, reading a magazine, not talking to him. After about 20
minutes he'd say thank-you, and that was it."*
On March 10, 2008, the New York Times revealed that then-New York governor Eliot Spitzer had been paying escorts for sex. A few days later, Newsweek
discovered The Letters Project and asked me to write an essay about why
men who have a great deal to lose would risk paying for sex.
"For some men,
especially those who are seen as particularly moral or righteous in
their public lives (think of all those fallen preachers), part of the
appeal is the fact that it is illegal and a moral transgression in their
eyes."*
On April 26, 2010, I began Letters from Men Who Watch Pornography.
I didn't
hear from many men who wanted to examine why they watch porn. Introspection is the enemy of pornography: a literal
boner-killer.
"Am I addicted? Yes, probably. But I would rather say that I'm addicted
to the world and to beauty. And while not all porn is beautiful (believe
me, I know), sometimes a glimmer shines thru it and that is what I'm
looking for."*
On October 26, 2011, Letters from Men Who Go to Strip Clubs went live. This iteration begat a great deal of media attention. Salon deemed it "bizarrely poetic," CBC Radio concluded, "men go to strip clubs for much more than just naked women," and the Telegraph found it "startling."
Compared
to the letters from johns, the letters from men who go to strip clubs
were lighter, more playful, less torn. In some cases, strip clubs
functioned as a kind of school for socially-awkward males who couldn't
navigate the real world of courting women. In the clubs, they were assured a
positive response from the dancers -- as long as they were tipping. The nudity was secondary to
the connection.
"The reason I go to places like this is for those moments when they stay
and talk. That's all I wanted. They don't have to be naked. They
could be wearing a suit of armor for all I care; I just want to talk to
someone who cares, and $1 every 3 minutes is a lot less than $250 an
hour for a therapist."*
On September 24, 2012, I reached out for Letters from Cheaters.
Adulterers didn't want to talk, apparently. Or perhaps the term
"cheaters" was too pejorative. Maybe part of the thrill was keeping the
secret a secret.
"Sometimes I worry that everything is really just work and performance."*
Every letters project lasted one year. Then I closed it to submissions. Over those five years, rarely did I respond to the letters. I surmised the letters were not for me; they were for their authors.
I did reach out to one john. He was John 21: "I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done." He was ex-military, and he had traveled, and been a john, around the world. He had closed his letter with this assertion:
"One can try to hang a sign on us, the collective john, as perpetuating
the global conspiracy of sex/slave traffic, and I'll grant that my
Thailand trip may have/probably did contribute to some sort of thuggery.
But in the end, I am ashamed of nothing I have done."
I asked him why he had written his letter and if it had made any difference that I was a woman. He responded:
"I read a piece on Slate or maybe MSNBC about the Spitzers
of this world that referenced your blog. I found the concept of your
blog akin to one of those Avedon-type coffee table books--voyeuristic
and interesting enough to keep it in plain view for guests to peruse
while the host/ess is at the bar scaring up some more mojitos or
martinis or whatever. So I navigated to the blog, read a couple of the
letters and decided I had a story to tell.
We create
stories to share, and before I navigated to your blog, I had nothing to
share. When Studs Terkel shows up at the door, the Average Joe asks, 'Studs who?' Yet he's created an indispensable repository of American
history by asking simple questions. You were my Studs, showing up
unannounced at my door, like a census-taker, with three simple
questions. Although I loathe writing this, I will: 'This is why I sent
the letter.
The writing experience was cathartic for
so many reasons. The facts of the matter matter to me in such a profound
manner. I love(d) the mother of my beautiful daughter, but I had such
intense revulsion that she shared our crazy love/sex with someone else
that I had nothing other than the 'nuclear' option available to me.
While writing the letter to you, I experienced a range of emotions I
haven't felt in almost a decade: achingly deep love, disloyalty, loss,
freedom, puppy love, freedom... in a sort of linear fashion. I even had a
Jenny and Forrest reunion synapse trigger while writing my letter.
Although you may have picked up my closet romantic self in the letter,
Jenny and Forrest will not be reuniting in an antebellum estate anytime
soon. And, yes, I did find writing about my Czech beauty very
titillating. I was able to transport myself to another time, carefree
and full of wanderlust. I saw the room, I saw her body, and I felt,
f-e-l-t, the excitement I experienced. It was wonderful, and as I sit
here writing this reply, I feel nothing of the sort. (Too bad.) This is
near-clinical, but not quite.
By that, I mean I never
considered that I was writing my letter to a woman. You're Ms. Breslin,
with a blog about john experiences. Like my several john experiences, I
was reaching out to no one in particular; I was, in hindsight, trying
to find some elusive unidentifiable emotion. Although I gave you 'a
perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish,
distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights
with respect to that information at its sole discretion, including
incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later
developed including without limitation published books,' you cannot take
from me the liberating experience you elucidated from three simple
questions. Thank you. And again, thank you, if only for a few brief
moments of experiencing ... .... ..."
