Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

When she was a wee child, Miss Poubelle was introduced to stamp collecting by an aged relative. As a way of occupying little hands, stamp collecting has much to recommend it. She even received a merit badge for it. Yet by puberty, Miss Poubelle's hands had found a more pleasurable hobby, practiced chiefly in the privacy of her own bedroom.

She was amused to discover that just as her hobbying interests had taken a more mature turn, so too the senses of the word hobby have grown from the simple pleasures of collecting and building model planes to the more complex pleasures of hiring women for sex.

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In its original sense, a hobby is a kind of small horse, but as early as the 16th century a hobby-horse was more frequently some sort of representation of a horse. For example, in Morris dances there is sometimes a horse figure made of wicker who dances around, and this figure (or the person carrying it) is called a hobby-horse. More familiar is hobby-horse as a wooden stick with a carved horse's head, made as a toy for children.

By the 17th century, hobby-horse had come to mean an activity that one pursues for one's own amusement. As one writer put it in 1676 "Almost every person hath some hobby horse or other wherein he prides himself." The metaphor seems to be that just as children amuse themselves with toy horses, adults amuse themselves playing the fiddle or watching birds. Hobby-horse was shorted to hobby in the early decades of the 19th century, and that is the form that is now listed in our dictionaries.

But a new sense has sprung up fairly recently. On several web sites specializing in escort services, men who regularly hire escorts are now referred to as hobbyists. At one site an escort complaining about a bad review writes "[Serious clients] know better than to put much value in the rant and rave of a guy who is more fan than hobbyist." Hobbyists, apparently, are regular customers of escorts, not the occasional one-time john.

Miss Poubelle can see that regular use of escort services might be considered a hobby, though it is not the sort that the Boy Scouts would be likely to issue a badge for. Hobbyist, in this use, is a euphemism, a way of renaming those who would more generally be called johns. One also finds the women who provide these services are sometimes not called escorts, but providers or service providers, possibly on analogy with Internet Service Providers. Escort is, of course, already a euphemism, but one that has become a bit muddied over the years. Provider is neutral enough to be used without raising suspicion.

The rise of the internet has made it possible for hobbyists to communicate with each other regularly for perhaps the first time. In the traditional way of doing business, johns really had no contact with each other and no way of comparing notes on pricing and services offered. But at several sites, hobbyists now write reviews of their encounters and give recommendations to other hobbyists.

By and large these sites are made up of straight men giving each other advice on where to find providers, what the providers look like, and what they will do. Some escorts will provide BBBJs (bareback blow jobs) while others do not allow DATY (dining at the Y, i.e. cunnilingus). The providers' looks and attitudes are discussed, and occasionally a hobbyist will complain of the prices or poor service.

But one of the most-discussed attributes of an escort is nothing kinky or exotic. It is whether she will provide a real GFE, where the letters stand for girlfriend experience. Many of the hobbyists hope to find a woman who acts as if she really likes them and finds them attractive. From reading their posts, it seems that certain providers don't even allow men to kiss them, and encourage them to get it over with and leave. A GFE is the opposite of that; one in which the provider doesn't act like a whore, but a like someone who might be a girlfriend (in some alternate reality).

Our culture doesn't encourage much sympathy for men in general, much less men who frequent escorts. Men are from Mars, we are told, and it's all about our dicks, our money, and our jobs. But there something genuinely human and rather touching about the straight men on these lists, sharing their dreams of beautiful women who find them attractive. And if it must all be an act, at least there are talented actresses out there.

A wise old queen once told Miss Poubelle that the secret of getting a man is remembering that the hard dick is usually attached to a soft heart. She suspects gay men and straight men aren't much different in that respect. Yes, we are highly sexual beings, but our sex lives can't be completely divorced from our emotions, and we are deeply vulnerable to the pain of lost looks or virility. Our hearts are complex in ways that can be hard for us to understand or explain. Sometimes the attentions of an attractive partner can do more for us than a prescription for Prozac.

Miss Poubelle wishes for the best for her heterosexual brothers in pursuit of the elusive GFE with a beautiful, big-breasted blonde who accepts personal checks. May they enjoy their hobby. It certainly beats the hell out of stamps.