Since the Newsweek piece I wrote about why Spitzer may have done what he did was published, I've gotten a slow but steady influx of new letters from johns. Most of the time, I don't correspond with the johns I hear from. My impression from reading them is that writing the letters is a narcissistic act--not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that the act of writing the letter is more about the man's relationship to himself than, say, me. Recent events have given rise to the question, "Why do men pay for sex?" Recent interest in Letters from Johns has made me wonder: "Why do johns write these letters?" Not long after the Newsweek story went online, I received a letter from John 21: "I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done," in which one military man chronicles his journeys across America and around the world and into the heart of the sex trade, high and low. Curious, I sent John 21 an email, asking why he wrote the letter, what his experience was of writing the letter, and if it mattered to him that the recipient of his letter was a woman. His answer, which he granted me permission to publish, follows here. (More about Studs Terkel can be found here.)
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 ... .... ...
