Global Congress of Post-Prostitution

6.7.19 / Text
A teaser for Keti Chukhrov’s new play

Philosopher and poet Keti Chukhrov penned a new play titled Global Congress of Post-Prostitution. The congress —organized by local academics and activists in the small town of Zugdidi in Western Georgia—on stage unfolds into a biting satire that focuses on global NGO culture, the merry-go-round of academic conferences and the arts. Moving quickly from one remote area to the next, they revel in briefly highlighting the plight of marginalized communities. The play will be staged for steirischer herbst ’19 by Georgian director Guram Matskhonashvili. What follows is a teaser for the play, two short scenes highlighting an international curator’s preparations for the congress …

Scene 2
Claire, enter Sratko

Apartment of the globally most influential curator Claire Chavipsy in Amsterdam, she sits at the desk with a computer, chatting over the phone with her friend Dustin Kunden, also a participant of a congress in Zugdidi, whom she sporadically dates and whose work she admires.

Claire:
That’s what I’m constantly telling Fritz,
One cannot participate in any serious project without a proper English book…
Yes… which, on top of it, should be duly reviewed.

The Doorbell rings. Clair opens the door to a dark haired handsome young man, Sratko, the Bosnian nanny of her child. He lives in the same block of flats.

Sratko:
Is the kid asleep?

Claire:
Yes.

Sratko:
Is any sex needed from me today?

Claire:
No, my postgraduate assistants Nicky and Micky
have already licked my ass.
I’m still packing, but please come by in an hour for my skin palpation with extended fingers, which will be hovering over it no more than three millimeters.
Don’t forget to bring a volume of Alexandra Kollontai;
While you tickle my skin, you should hold the book in your mouth and scream.

[…]

Scene 4
Claire, Sratko, enter Fritz, enter Nedko

Again in the apartment of Claire Chavipsy.

Claire lies topless on her back while her servant and her kid’s nanny, Sratko, tickles her.
Enter Fritz, her husband, with his computer.

Fritz:
I have not prepared my talk yet, only half a page. Can’t imagine what I’ll do, the venue is tomorrow night and I have only written 2000 characters.

Claire:
Relax, these are just workshops in a lousy place nobody cares about,
we go there for fun.
If you were at least slightly gay you could use my Sratko.
I very much hope there could be some low-paid after-workshop abuse parties with the locals.

Fritz:
Do you know which country it is? Asia, Caucasia, or Russia?

Claire:
I don’t remember. Jane, my personal assistant, will text me.

Fritz:
Pleasure without abuse becomes so stale.
But abuse is impossible if you remunerate for it, right?
Then it will not be a true abuse,
and hence there will be no enjoyment;
that’s the reason why I find it stupid to pay for sex,
it kills the pleasure of unremunerated superiority over the abused.

Claire:
I disagree, by paying for the abuse you abuse even more.
Imagine, if I didn’t pay Sratko a concrete salary;
he would then simply be my gigolo, or a harassed student;
whereas now, he is my grateful and totally susceptible collaborator,
and the fact that I’m paying for his services
allows me to extract even bigger surplus in my abuse of him;
paying for my right to coerce someone
definitely humiliates the person I pay much more
than if I coerced him for free.
It’s impossible to get surplus pleasure without costs.
Only concrete costs and values can produce surplus.

Fritz:
True, but payment blocks the possibility of love from Sratko.
He does not love you;
he simply formally and diligently provides services
and allows trolling him for a concrete sum.
So, since his heart is cool, he does not experience desperation,
and hence a true humiliation from you;
simply because he is an indifferent wage laborer, not even a lover.

Claire:
Yes, in a way I agree, the true enjoyment is in disgracing someone,
and this is impossible without spitting into someone’s
generous devotion;
Disgrace can only be free and due to sincere trust from the one you abuse.

That’s why I don’t believe in the supercession of enjoyment with paid therapy.
Yet, enjoyment is impossible without vicious promiscuity and perversion,
And they, in their own turn, are impossible without the right to obscenely demean and mortify;
On the other hand,
have you ever met a decent educated person who is successful in her career
and would explicitly allow an abuse whether paid or unpaid?
I.e. one can only abuse the gullible inferiors, or timid beginners.
But here a paradox:
Who needs to mortify and humiliate the undereducated pigs,
or fervent students persevering for promotion,
even when they are attractive and sexy?

I see the solution to the problem in searching for surplus enjoyment
among the mid-career intellectuals
in the underdeveloped periphery:
Latin America, Africa, the former Socialist East,
the Middle East, Asia or the Caribbean.
You can find there not only bodies for sale,
but someone both smart and hot.
You pretend you’re also precarious,
you communicate with them as if with equals,
slightly engage in a couple of projects,
seduce by collaboration and sincere attachment,
then use, recycle, outsource.

Sratko is going on with tickling palpation while Claire talks to Fritz.

Claire:
Sratko dear, enough, now please end it all with biting my toes.
No, not the plain toe-biting as usual,
but bite my toes with a smile,
while singing the tune of the “Marseillaise,”
exactly as you did two weeks ago.

Sratko:
As which pet should I now say good-bye to you?
Dog, cat, horse, rooster, a hen,
tiger or a lion in his den?

Claire:
Tonight say good-bye to me as a white puppy,
that barks muted, as the muzzle it wears is so huge and heavy.

Sratko leaves, pretending to be playing a dog on his fours, whining.

The son of Fritz and Claire, Nedko, appears:

Nedko:
Mum, can I play with the dog,
I like it when Sratko whines as a puppy.

Claire:
You should be already in bed,
and by the way, Sratko’s nursing hours are over.

Nedko: yelling
Noooo, I want to play with a dog.
Please, don’t leave, Sratko,
I want to discuss with you the courage of Kobane female squadrons,
Rosa Luxemburg’s impact on art,
and the deplorable consequences of AFD voters in Germany.
But stay on your fours, Sratko,
I want to discuss all of these with a cute lovely dog,
not simply my nanny.

A phone call to Fritz. He goes to another end of the room.
An artist from Vietnam that he sometimes dates in the sauna of his fitness gym, calls him.

Claire hears it all.

Fritz:
Hi Chenchi, missing you badly,
Every time I hear your voice
I get hard and rejoice.

Claire: laughing
Too much Cialis ends with ischemia, dear.

Fritz: to Claire, while Chenchi is saying something over the phone
It’s a Vietnamese artist with temporary residency here.
She’s desperately trying to settle in Amsterdam.
As all Asians, she is so good at dangerous contortions.
I promised her she can participate in this lousy workshop,
but lied to her, saying all the speakers are paying for flights on their own.
I thought this hampers her from deciding to join,
But, poor thing, she bought those expensive tickets.

Claire:
We’ll have enough local contortionists there.
But, I agree, Asians are incomparably stretched.
This Vietnamese, though, doesn’t seem to have sufficient talent and dignity.
Not so interesting to demean.

Excerpt from: Keti Chukhrov, Global Congress of Post-Prostitution (unpublished manuscript, 2019). All rights reserved.