I am so not VIP. I had no idea about the world of bottle service, and the ways of the sales-associate bottle girl. I knew this world existed, but that’s about as far as it goes. I had no idea there was the baiting and the hooking and all that jazz. I mean I know things happen, strange things (I’ve been around enough of what may not be considered “normal” in both my work and my every day city life)  but I was fascinated by what I thought was the current, but now I know it’s last week’s New York magazine article Rachel Uchitel is Not a Madam. (One important thing I did learn is that my subscription to New York comes a week later in LA).

I think Rachel Uchitel sounds smart, except for when it came to answering “yes!” about posing naked for the photographer for NY mag. Can you imagine Tiger Woods posing in nothing but one of those golf club cozy thing-a-ma-jigs over his willy for an article about his sexual habits? In this article, Uchitel doesn’t really talk about the Tiger thing she’s not talking about, and that’s in large and obvious part to what Allred’s daughter calls  ”Mr. Green” and friends, instead she talks about the world of VIP status.

Tiger Woods. Rachel Uchitel. They’re both just part of a privileged world, a world where protocol involves a “don’t tell, play well” policy. It’s a world that uses both sex and sex appeal to its advantage, a more mainstream, acceptable dance that we don’t think twice about. Not in the way we scrutinize things like sex work and porn, because it’s a celebrity world and it’s got wads of money. And the people playing “nice” are well-respected rollers and those driven to roll around with them. So it’s cool and assumed that if you serve(ice) bottles, you’re also serving booty. And not just your own.

But what makes it different than sex work, aside from maybe how you define sex? Intercourse or no intercourse, it’s quite similar. And fascinating.