Madam Page 3

  You have to understand something about this woman: this is someone who made arrangements for her son to get laid when he was fifteen. She sent one of her girls to him in his own bedroom, which was, incidentally, just up the stairs from where the girls all worked. Now that’s one hell of a birthday present from your mother.

  I remember one Christmas party—Laura always threw these incredibly extravagant parties—watching her son dancing with the girls with a champagne glass in his hand and an erection in his pants. The girls took off more and more of their clothes as the evening wore on, and Chris was there, right in the middle of it all. He was loving it, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that his time would have been better spent making out in the back seat of a car somewhere.

  There was something about the way Laura dealt with Chris that seemed wrong, really wrong, to me. I realize that many people—maybe even most people—think that sex workers have no ethics, no morals, no code of conduct. Well, I do. I may differ with other people on the definition of that code, but I have one all the same.

  Not that I ever had much in common with Laura: We’re both madams; and that is pretty much where the resemblance ends.

  She was prissy about cleanliness, as I mentioned, to the point of covering all her furniture in plastic, just like they used to do in the 1950s. (“Well,” she said to me once, as though it were the most logical thing in the world, “you never know who’s going to sit there, or what they’re going to do.” Yuck. I don’t ever want to not know what people are doing on my living room sofa. And yet this prissy housekeeper regularly freebased, leaving all sorts of paraphernalia around in her kitchen—aluminum foil, cigarette ashes, little gram bags of coke.

  She was organized beyond belief, keeping this small notebook, adding up, who owed what to whom every night. Yet she couldn’t be bothered with all the work that went into brewing coffee and always drank hers instant.

  Laura was, suffice it to say, a study in contrasts.

  This showed up in the way she worked, too. She was extremely stupendously generous to her girls, giving them gifts at unexpected moments, singling one or another out and taking her on a surprise shopping spree. Once, she took eight of the girls on a trip to Alaska all expenses paid. It was work, of course, a road show of sorts, but they made absolutely fantastic money and got to travel on top of it.

  But she demanded—required—fanatical loyalty. You didn’t work for anybody else while you were working for Laura. Period. She’d cut you off; there were no second chances. And she would invariably find out, because everybody knows everybody else in Boston. A client would usually tip her off—most of the clients were hooked into more than one service. If they called another agency and got someone they’d already met through Laura, they told her. And that was that.

  It was as if Laura had this little circle of nuns around her, going off to do their assigned tasks (in this case, fucking men for money) and then returning docilely to the convent under their madam mother superior’s sphere of influence. She didn’t like any of them—including me—having friendships outside of the house. She sure as hell didn’t like any of us having boyfriends outside of the house.

  These rules, such as they were, were never articulated, but we all understood them, and we all used them against each other.

  I’ve never ever seen such a bunch of gossips as I saw in that house—and I come from the South, where gossiping is an art form. These girls were impressive. Well, it was only natural that we would gossip: there we all were, stuck in this nouveau-riche house in the back of beyond in suburbia, hanging out together all day with very little to do. No wonder all we talked about was laundry and each other. We probably sounded like junior high kids whispering and giggling by their lockers in a school corridor.

  I take that back. We were worse than junior high kids. At least they have the excuse of age, inexperience, and innocence. None of us had any of that going for us.

  We were all in our twenties, everyone (except me) dressed in lingerie of some kind, made up, nails lacquered, sitting around on the plastic-covered furniture, waiting. We’d keep the soaps on all day, until a client pulled up outside; then the TV had to be turned off. Major rule, that.

  A guy would come in, and everyone would suddenly try to look like it’s a normal thing, all these girls sitting around in their lace and satin and high heels, each one of them competing with the next for his attention.

  If that doesn’t make you want to do drugs, I don’t know what would.

  If the guy had an appointment with someone, then that was different. Everyone would smile sweetly and the girl would take him off to one of the bedrooms. We’d switch the television back on as soon as we heard the door shut. This was the days before the Internet: we couldn’t just look up what we’d missed on the soaps, so clients were a major interruption.

  When we weren’t watching TV, we were talking about anything and everything, but mostly about each other——and Laura. Lord, we gossiped about Laura, and we were vicious—who she was seeing (Laura was always seeing someone), how much coke she’d done the night before, and what she’d said somebody had said about somebody else. I remember, years later, seeing a high school rendition of The Music Man, and being absolutely amazed at how well Rogers and Hammerstein had described our activity: “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheap-cheap-cheap.”

  Of course, the first thing that everyone wanted to do was find Laura and report back to her on who had said what.

  In some ways, I guess, I do see some of Laura in myself. We can both be incredibly generous and incredibly selfish. We both have a lot of issues that we deal with by not dealing with them. We both talk—a lot, probably too much. We both manage to survive.

  But her style never was my style, and when I left her house and got myself my dream apartment in Boston’s Bay Village, I knew that I had learned enough to know what I didn’t want.

  That was a damned good start.

  At that time, the Boston Phoenix had a pull out adult section called “After Dark.” It still has this section, actually, but these days it’s been renamed and redesigned, which I find unfortunate. I’d always liked that name, thought it was pretty classy. Sort of belied the interior. There wasn’t much that you couldn’t find there.

  I had a friend once, Claudia, who moved up to the Boston area from New York or New Jersey, someplace where they must be more sophisticated than she—apparently—was. It was late at night. She was tired, overshot the city, and ended up going north on Route 1. Exhausted, she saw a motel, pulled over and went to check in, figuring that she’d find her way to wherever it was that she was supposed to be going in the morning. The name of the motel was the Sir John. (Okay, I know, I know, so she was really tired.) The manager was a little surprised that she wanted the room for the whole night, but I guess he figured, what the hell. She didn’t notice that the motel was right next door to the Golden Banana, one of the North Shore’s biggest and most famous strip clubs. She sure as hell didn’t get much sleep that night.

  Anyway, Claudia told me once—years later—that while she was sleepily driving back south on Route 1 into the city the next morning, she was looking around her, and figured that there wasn’t anything that anybody could possibly want in terms of commodities that they couldn’t buy on Route One.

  That was how I felt about the After Dark supplement in the Phoenix. There wasn’t anything that you could possibly want that you couldn’t find there.

  I thought that After Dark was as wicked as it got.

  My innocence was in part the product of my personality and in part the product of my past. I really do believe at some level that people are fundamentally good and that, given the opportunity, they do the right thing. My observation of and occasional participation in thoughts and actions that are less than pure haven’t completely tarnished this fundamental belief.

  My experience—well, that’s something else altogether. If I went by my experience, I’d probably be as cynical as they
come.

  I grew up in the South, where ladies are ladies, “sir” and “ma’am” are common, and when people ask you how you are, they wait for an answer. That’s a far cry from the brisk how-ya-doin’? of the Northeast. I really do believe that there’s a little of Scarlett O’Hara in every white woman who grew up in the South, a fundamental belief that good manners can get you through just about any situation. For a very long time, I expected people to behave well—just because they should.

  That was not exactly the best upbringing for my line of work, but I’ve also found that it tempers the cynicism that is part and parcel of my profession and makes me—or so I’m told—reasonably pleasant to work with. Perhaps not the most overwhelming of compliments; but there are days when I’m willing to settle for reasonably pleasant.

  It also means that I smile and acknowledge toll collectors as people, am overwhelmingly polite to telephone operators, and am, of course, kind to dogs and small children. Or is that children and small dogs? I never seem to get that one quite right.

  In any case, what the South did give me, besides that take on life and an accent I still cannot entirely get rid of, was a wealth of literature. I love to read; I read everything that is ever been set in front of me, from cereal boxes to VCR instructions, but the voices of the South are what echo the loudest in my world, then and now. Eudora Welty, with her ironic sense of humor, has probably pleased me the most, but the other Southern voices have helped shape my sense of the world as well: William Faulkner; Flannery O’Connor, with her moments of truth and grace seized from damaging situations and damaged characters; Kate Chopin’s short stories, which taught me to love (and in fact, write) in the genre; the poignant poetry of Frances Harper. These are the people who have informed my life, and their words have never failed to enchant me.

  Though proper Southern ladies might blanch at the thought of running an escort service, I haven’t really gone overboard after all. For many of these writers are the same ladies who embrace sexuality with gusto and imagination, who write obsessively and far into the night of breaking free from the oppression of white society (and, some of them, of male society), who tell of awakening to a world where they can be managers of their own destinies. I think that, in the end, some of them might even have applauded me.

  It was perhaps under their guidance that I made the final decision about my new business—choosing a niche, an area of specialization, if you will. And when I chose it I was completely aware of the ladies’ voices telling me that it was the right thing to do.

  I decided to focus on guys who wanted more than just sex. I know that may sound odd, coming from a madam; but while sex is the blanket under which we sleep, so to speak, it’s not all about sex. Far from it.

  It’s about power, and it’s about loneliness, and it’s about a media that constantly tells people that they can Have It All, then springs Real Life on them like some cruel joke. Sex is the battlefield. Sex is the forum where all this stuff gets negotiated, worked out, and practiced. We make so much of sex because we make it mean far more than it was ever supposed to mean. Europeans know that already. No European would ever have gotten flustered over Bill Clinton receiving a blow job from an intern. Their only question would be: Does he do his job? Europeans elect former porn stars, support gay marriage, and generally get on with life, having sex, eating dinner, going to the theater, and sitting in a café. It is only we Americans, with that puritanical past that we can’t seem to rid ourselves of, who see sex in terms of its excesses: as everything or as nothing.

  So it’s not surprising that all of our issues either have to do with, or get worked out via, our sexuality. It’s a pity, but it’s a reality; and a business that aims to take advantage of Americans’ hang-ups does well to note that.

  In the end, what I decided to do was provide girls who were educated or on their way to being educated, girls who could talk about politics or literature or current events and keep up with the conversation, girls who could do more than just be blonde. Those were the girls, I thought, who would bring in the clientele that I wanted—middle-class guys who want vanilla sex and a chat.

  That’s not as crazy as it sounds. It wasn’t just that I wanted the distinction of running a literary escort agency, though there’s something to be said for that—it evokes images of people reading Anaïs Nin and Anne Rice to each other while getting undressed, which is an image that I have to say I rather like.

  No, my decision was completely practical. I wanted those clients, first and foremost, because they are the lowest risk around.

  They weren’t going to get too weird and hurt somebody. They weren’t going to threaten me with exposure because they would mostly be married (or at the very least, in a career of some sort) and in no position to seek exposure themselves. They were going to order up their entertainment like they ordered take out—and I planned to be their favorite restaurant.

  It was a great plan. Has it worked out? More or less.

  And therein, I suppose, lies the rest of this tale.

  Night One Chez Peach

  I placed my first ads in the After Dark section of the Boston Phoenix and waited with some trepidation for them to come out.

  One of the ads was advertising for girls to come work for me (“education required,” I had written), and the other was for the service itself. Both had a boudoir-lace edging and stood out, if I do rather smugly say so myself, among all the screaming ads urging readers to “try out my tits” and to “cum all over my ass.”

  I had already hedged my bets. During my transition between the suburbs and the Bay Village, I had been doing more than just decorating (although I have to say that my new apartment, with its skylights, exposed brick walls, and claw-footed bathtub, had indeed been absorbing quite a lot of my energy). I had also been talking to my former colleagues, asking them if they knew anyone who would like to work for me. That wasn’t stealing from Laura, I rationalized. I was employing a network, something altogether different. And of course I got names.

  To tell the truth, I don’t always run the employment ad these days. Not every week, anyway. Maybe one week out of the month. The reality is that from the beginning I’ve had the most success getting potential employees through a network—friends, acquaintances, cousins, colleagues, fellow students.

  It makes them happy, since they are referred by someone who knows how I work, who knows that I won’t be weird or dangerous or take advantage of them. It makes me happy, too, because referrals aren’t very likely to be cops.

  So the first Thursday that the Phoenix came out with my ad, I was ready. The phone lines were set up: one for clients to call in on, one for my outgoing calls, another as a strictly personal line. I had voice mail, I had call waiting and call forwarding, and, just for security, I had my Yellow Pages. I had Gail Godwin’s A Southern Family and Walker Percy’s The Thanatos Syndrome. I had a stack of mindless magazines, a pen, some scrap paper. I was sitting in the middle of my canopied bed with my television on to keep me from getting too nervous, and I was ready.

  My voice mail message implied much more than it said. “Hi, we’re busy right now, but someone can talk to you if you call us back after five today.” I could imagine what the caller might think when he heard those words, filled with a breathy double-entendre. He probably was fantasizing that the place was filled with women, maybe having sex with each other while they wait. (That, I have discovered, is a premiere fantasy for most of my clients, the idea that women just can’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off every chance they get.) I know what callers had assumed when they called Laura’s place. Of course, in her case, they were correct—minus the jumping on each other part of it: a lot of beautiful girls, scantily clad, each one sitting patiently, just waiting for that one caller to ask for her. Well, chez Peach, it was a little different. It was just me.

  But they didn’t have to know that.

  I had hoped for some modest business. Maybe a couple of calls on my first night, some contacts for future work.
I knew that my voice, with its Southern undertones of peach blossom and bourbon and hot nights, was seductive but businesslike. I knew that anybody who called could easily be enticed to call again. I had some confidence and I expected a nice opening night.

  What I got was an avalanche.

  This was a step on the learning curve. Clients, I learned, absolutely love new girls, girls they have never seen before, girls who are new to the business. They adore them. I don’t know if it’s some sort of little sick initiation rite that they’re imagining doing, or something leftover from the ever-popular deflowering-the-virgin concept, but whatever it is, they love new girls.

  Their assumption was that a new agency must be full of them.

  I was hard-pressed to handle all my calls that night. Some weren’t serious, they were just checking me out, testing the waters, trying to pull me into some erotic chat, but my time at Laura’s had taught me how to deflect them—I wasn’t going to play their reindeer games. Others were dead serious: who did I have that I could send out to them right now? There were the perusers of menus, sitting back comfortably, perhaps with a snifter of brandy to hand, asking me to go through my offerings one course at a time. “Ah, yes, and you said that you might have someone else a little older? Can you tell me about her, too? Okay, now remind me again—the one named Tina …?”

  There I was, in the midst of it all, answering phones, putting people on hold, racking my brains to keep names straight and numbers remembered, trying to screen these guys so that I wouldn’t send someone out to see a homicidal maniac my first night in business.

  The three women I had lined up already were frantically working the telephones, themselves calling up possible recruits.

  “Hi, Peach? This is Kara, I’m a friend of Stacey’s, she asked me to call you.”

  I cut right to the chase. “Super. What do you look like?”

  Kara, no beginner herself, was clearly used to the drill and rattled her stats off in a practiced manner. “I’m a redhead, shoulder-length hair, I’m twenty-two. C cup bra. I weigh 123 pounds, five-foot-six, and I’ve got a car.”