Courtesans, Concubines, And Crack Whores - The Business Of Sex In Joe Biden's Washington

"What do you think of this whole Epstein affair, dear", Jill Biden asked her husband readying herself for bed in the Presidential suite.

"Why, it's a goddam shame", the President replied, "a goddam shame". 

Of course there was no way that this abstemious old man was on The List.  He had not touched his wife in years, and he felt he was far better off for it.  As much support and counsel Jill might give him, just the thought of touching that papery skin made him shiver.  Of course he loved his wife, and their long faithful marriage attested to the fact, but still, he was a man, and all men dreamed of creamy soft skin, and the warm, gentle caresses of a younger woman. 

"What's wrong with me?', he often asked himself as he watched the comings and goings of Carla Bruni at the Elysees, read intelligence reports about Putin's girl-in-every-oblast adventures, and even envied Kim Jung-Il, that high-sidewalled pain in the ass who, according to the same CIA ledgers, was no mean Lothario.  Let alone JFK who had Marilyn Monroe.

  

Tales of LBJ's tomcatting were legion.  His Secret Service detail was not only in on it, complicit in its secrecy, but pimped for the man.  The former president had such a sexual appetite that if the bedroom were dark enough, he could sleep with anyone. Even Nixon was purported to have a lover, although God knows what that affair was like.  "I am leader of the free world, and only have an old crone in my bed", lamented Joe Biden. 

He immediately shook his head to shake the perfidy of even thinking such a thought, but it was true.

The rest of Washington's alte kockers had no such thoughts, nor any second thoughts about young women easily had, easily available, and sworn to secrecy.  The rules of Mme. Beaulieu's parlor - the go-to bordello of Washington's best and brightest - were draconian.  Any leaks would be punished worse than the Puritan tortures of Salem.  

Any girl even suggesting a relationship with Mr. X, Congressman Y or Senator Z would be drawn, quartered, and cooked.  Secrecy and tight lips were Mme. Beaulieu's stock in trade, absolutes in the Washington world of smarmy gossip.

Her stable of girls was impressive for both beauty and diversity - not necessarily the racial kind, but the sexual kind.  S&M, leather, transsexual delights, water sports, monkey business, and downright brilliant fakery were on offer.  Her girls were accomplished actresses, willing partners in any and every kind of sexual fantasy, and respectful, even gallant when it came to sexual 'inconsistencies'.  It was no wonder that Mme. Beaulieu's establishment was so well-known and that the girls were so well paid. 

Her list, if made public, would be curtains for hundreds of lawmakers, but she was under just as much severe countenance as her girls.  Had even one name been leaked to the press, she would have been just as brutally tarred, feathered, and drawn. 

It was the kind of political balance that was common in Washington. There was never really any such thing as compromise, just countervailing threats; and that was enough to keep the peace, the lid on, and business as usual. 

Joe Biden knew that given his administration's public record of moral purity, rectitude, and women's rights, he could never even consider the tomfoolery of Johnson or the seductions of Kennedy.  He was trapped within a cage of his own making.  He, like his predecessors, thought about sex all the time, but the goddam times had changed so much that he could do nothing about it. 

Worse, everyone was doing it.  The Anacostia ghettoes had their pimps and crack whores who serviced the drug trade; Adams Morgan's Salvadoran and Nicaraguan hookers kept Mara Salvatrucha gangs happy; and the usual casual traffic of Midwestern businessmen in town for a conference was taken care of by nice white girls at the Mayflower. Prostitution in the nation's capital was big business, universal, extensive, and prospering.  Only the President, it seemed, wasn’t getting his.

Courtesans have been a part of palace life for millennia.  Beautiful, dressed in silk and adorned with jewels and redolent of the finest scents of the Orient, these women were features of the royal life.  Henry VIII had six wives, but only because he needed a male heir; for sexual bounty he had the nightly service of courtesans and was as spoiled as a Turkish pasha who sampled the delights of his harem with a different woman every night. 

The Japanese had their geishas, the Chinese their Confucian call girls, the Arab sheiks their boys. Courtesans and concubines were features of Ancient Greece and Rome.  No Caesar, no Augustus, Trajan, or Nero was without his nightly comfort.

The former pretender to the French presidency, Dominque Strauss-Kahn had so many women that he never knew if they were paid company or not.  "They were all naked", he replied once to an inquiring reporter, "and all naked women look the same". 

So, there was poor President Biden, a moral sentinel in Sodom and Gomorrah only wishing he could change.  Even those beautiful, high-shelved street mamas of Southeast would do, crack whores or not, such was his frustration and desire.  Again he shook the idea away, returned to the policy papers stacked in his in-box, and resolved to maintain his chastity. 

Madame Beaulieu of course had considered approaching the President, for bedding him with one of her girls would be the feather in her cap she had long sought.  Breaching the perimeter would not be easy, but so many Secret Service agents were her clients that access might not be that difficult.  Particularly since the President was becoming more demented by the hour and was not sure what was what anymore, fulfilling his fantasy - of course she did not know exactly what fantasy, but he being a man he would certainly have some strange confections - should be a simple matter. 

The breach was made, the contract fulfilled, and thanks to the secretive silence on both sides of the agreement, no one could ever prove the President's dalliance.  His age, incontinence, and mental disability all worked in his favor; for no one in the investigative press corps ever thought to dig in that garden. 

President Biden is unlikely to write his memoirs.  His lack of agency would make the job of even the most talented ghost writer impossible, so the record of whatever dalliances that might have occurred will go to Arlington Cemetery with him.