Sex for Sale: Conversations with Call Girls

By Zita Weber

Have you ever wondered how a Call Girl starts in the business of selling sex? What’s it really like? Do they kiss? What kinds of men pay for sex? What kinds of sex do they want?

Sex for Sale: Conversations with Call Girls gives an astonishing insight into the hidden world of the Call Girl. In this book you'll meet twelve women who work as Call Girls. They speak honestly. Sometimes they speak brutally honestly about their work as Call Girls. They will tell you about their likes and dislikes, their attitudes and their clients. They’ll share interesting facts and funny moments. You will start to see beyond the stereotype. Call Girls are ordinary women. They are extraordinary women. You will be surprised by what you’ll learn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zita Weber
• Release date: Jan 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458117991

Zita Weber

Dr. Zita Weber PhD is an experienced therapist, counselor and academic who specializes in grief and loss, women and depression, relationships and sexuality. She is the author of Back from the Blues, Out of the Blues, Good Grief, Skills for Human Service Practice, The Best Years of a Woman's Life, Unfaithfully Yours and Sex for Sale.

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Sex for Sale

Conversations with Call Girls

Copyright 2011 by Zita Weber

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Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to the twelve women who grace these pages. They wanted to get their message across. Kirsten, one of the women whom you'll meet said, `It would be good if you could get across that we're ordinary women.' Ordinary women in what some might consider an extraordinary profession. With the women's help, I hope I have managed to do that.

In the interests of confidentiality, the women agreed to give their work names. Any short biographical sketches which are given have been kept deliberately general to protect the women's identities.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Call Girl - Who is she?

Chapter 2 -. Getting Started

Chapter 3 - It's a business doing pleasure

Chapter 4 - Let me show you a good time

Chapter 5 .- Talk dirty to me

Chapter 6 - I don't kiss

Chapter 7 - He’d kill me if he found out

Chapter 8 - What’s a nice girl like you….?

Chapter 9 - Let me take you away from all this

Chapter 10 - Once a hooker….

Chapter 11 - Endnotes - Sexual Reflections

INTRODUCTION

The statistics are startling. It has been estimated that in the U.S. today, as many as 10 million women have sold sex for money. In 2002, researchers estimated that about 1,000,000 women were practicing prostitution. They were thought to be entertaining about 300,000 clients a night.

Selling sex is clearly big business. At the elite end of the sex industry is the biggest business. This is what is often referred to as the Call Girl business.

Let's face it, prostitution is an interesting topic. Even if Call Girls are just ordinary women, we are still a little curious about how these ordinary women handle the business of selling sex. Our individual and collective curiosity is natural, given the secrecy that surrounds prostitution.

In this book, the women speak frankly about their work, their clients, their personal lives and their aspirations. I have attempted to be true to the women. This book is not so much politically correct as it is humanly correct. I believe that's as correct as we can get.

Chapter 1

The Call Girl - Who is She?

'You can't ever make a morality about whores and stick to it. They are people, real people - not objects; and it's amazing, always was to me, how much they could wriggle around and get in and out of trouble, have good times and bad times, show character and show fight. Everybody has ideas about whores, but no real picture of them.'...........Nell Simball, 1970

The modern Call Girl is the most misjudged of women. She's misjudged because she's misunderstood. No-one really knows who she is. She is never thought of as an ordinary woman who travels on the subway or joins everyone else in the supermarket to do her shopping. Yet, the reality is, she is an ordinary woman in what is sometimes thought to be an extraordinary business.

No school leaver has it suggested to her by a careers adviser that she might consider becoming a Call Girl rather than a personal assistant, lawyer, nurse or doctor. Neither are bookshelves stocked with manuals on How to Become a Successful Call Girl. Becoming a Call Girl is not regarded as a real career option. Nice girls just don't.

Most people, when thinking about the Call Girl, see her as a glamorous figure, the courtesan of the past, the pampered woman who sells her sexual services, the high-class whore. She has been a fascinating figure for painters, poets and writers, some of whom have been preoccupied with her in their works. She is one of the most fantasized women of all time. But the fantasy cannot give the true picture.

Reality and fantasy have become confused. The Call Girl's life and her work have been distorted by secrecy. People may despise her existence, but she is an integral part of most societies. Yet, so strong is the taboo about her, that she is denied a place in society. She is made invisible.

While society might want the Call Girl to be invisible, it makes sure that her clients enjoy even more invisibility.

Every now and then, there are sensational media stories around the police bust of a Call Girl business said to serve the sexual needs of rich and famous clients.

When such stories are reported in the media, the names of women involved are often cited and their photos shown, but any mention of a male's name in connection with the business is hotly and swiftly denied. In recent times, Sydney Biddle Barrows, the so-called `Mayflower Madam', Madam Alex and Heidi Fleiss have all been at the center of sensational media stories about the Call Girl business.

Sydney Biddle Barrows ran an escort service, Cachet, known for its high quality. To her handpicked girls she emphasized that ‘We are in the business of selling fantasy and success’. Cachet kept detailed records of all clients and the scent of a sex and scandal permeated trial held the public’s attention. Ultimately, the case against the Mayflower Madam was dismissed, but it had been interesting to witness the confusion generated when beautiful and well-dressed women are accused of selling sex.

Very often, accounts of the business give the impression there is only the supplier of sex, the woman, and no purchaser of sex, or man in the transaction. But, to quote Polly Adler, America's most famous madam, `If there were no customers, there would certainly be no whorehouses.'

The customers or clients, the men who use Call Girl services are reluctant to identify themselves publicly. So are most of the men in the background, the `managers' and the men behind the madams. These men don't risk identifying themselves, but the Call Girl has no such rights to anonymity if she is busted.

So who is the Call Girl?

She is a high-class prostitute. She may work for an agency or she may work her own telephone. She may even base herself in luxury hotel lobbies, restaurants and bars where she gives a percentage of what she makes to the hosts, bartenders and others who allow her ready access to these places, and therefore clients, without asking questions.

She has to be completely self-possessed when she strolls through the lobbies of the world’s most renowned hotels. She has an elegant work name that suggests class and good taste. She has to be well-informed and make it her business to read the better weeklies. She knows her geography and is unlikely to confuse Monaco with Mauritius or the Caribbean with Cuba.

Twenty centuries ago, the Roman writer Ulpianus defined the prostitute as a woman who openly abandons her body to a number of men, unselectively and for money. Today, the definition is not very different.

Prostitution is sex for sale. It is not given. There is a transaction and the sale of the sex is the primary purpose. There should be no confusion with the arrangements made between men and women who become their mistresses or social interactions where sexual favors are given in return for career opportunities. The marriage contract is also exempt. But it is interesting to note the words of the old marriage vows, where the groom said, `With all my worldly goods I thee endow', and the bride responded, `With my body I thee love.'

In the world of the Call Girl, secrecy and discretion are paramount. Her clients number rich and powerful, and often famous men. Her silence is part of the bargain, she is paid well for her silence.

Society is still sitting in the jury box and the Call Girl remains stigmatized. But truth has been obscured by hypocrisy. Throughout history, there has been a desire to repress prostitution and a desire to retain access to prostitution. This makes for an interesting tension.

What sort of women are Call Girls?

You will have to put aside your stereotypes of the Call Girl. We reach for stereotypes to explain behavior, to understand our world. Stereotypes serve a purpose, otherwise they wouldn't capture our collective imagination in the way they do. Take the prostitute stereotype of the archetypal bad girl. This is embedded in the subconscious of most men and women. Such stereotypes are all around us. The nun stereotype for purity, the virgin stereotype for innocence, the temptress stereotype for seductiveness, the mother stereotype for nurturance.

But life isn't that simple. One Call Girl summed this up when she said: `You know, many more women imagine themselves as Call Girls than actually become them. Those of us who do may simply be putting fantasies into reality.'

In 1964, police swooped on Sunset Strip in Hollywood. They busted a Call Girl business masquerading as a casting agency. Police reported that many of the Call Girls' clients were `well-known movie stars'. One police officer said: `You'd be surprised to know that several of today's big box-office film actresses started their Hollywood careers as Call Girls.'

Call Girls are women. Like all other women, they can't be lumped together into some stereotyped group. Call Girls are not all from poor backgrounds and they don't all share similar life experiences. Not all Call Girls have had a lousy childhood, treacherous lovers or heavy drug habits. They are not sex crazed nymphomaniacs, or emotionally cold, cruel women and frigid lesbians. Call Girls are not such stereotype figures any more than any other groups of women, for example, personal assistants, nurses, lawyers or doctors.

It seems that everyone has ideas about who the Call Girl is, but no real picture of her.

The Call Girl business is not modern white slavery. The women make a clear and rational choice to work as Call Girls. There's always a strong economic motive and other positive benefits, such as freedom from 9-to-5 jobs and a lifestyle which allows time at the health club, the hair salon and the opportunity to take riding lessons or French classes.

Some women become career Call Girls while others use the business as a stepping-stone or transitional career. Others move in and out on a part-time basis, selling sex to help buy luxuries or a vacation in the Caribbean or Nice.

In the past, some societies have permitted women of beauty and intelligence to advance to positions of influence and wealth by prostitution. Often this was the only way a woman could advance. This is not the case today, although it is still one way a woman can advance. It is one way that has been chosen by many women.

To become a Call Girl a woman must be attractive, refined, well-groomed and be pleasing in her presentation. Her business is all about image. But it also helps if she is intelligent and can hold up her end of a conversation. If a man is paying several hundred dollars for one hour of her time, she must meet all his fantasy requirements.

The Call Girl has to be an expert in all matters of sex. But she will also be expected to be bright enough to string together a sentence that doesn't involve a story line from a soap opera.

In this book you'll meet twelve women who work as Call Girls. Between them they have more than 77 years of prostitution experience. One woman has worked as a Call Girl for 17 years and another has just completed her first 10 months in the business. They range in age from 21 to 41 and most of them graduated from high school. Some of them have gone to college and a few have completed professional degrees.

They will speak honestly. Sometimes they will speak brutally honestly about their work as Call Girls. They will tell you about their likes and dislikes, their attitudes and their clients. You will start to see beyond the stereotype.

Call Girls are women. They are ordinary women. They are extraordinary women. They pay their bills like everyone else. They shop like everyone else. But they can afford luxuries that others only dream about. They have experiences that many can only fantasize about. Sometimes their work is interesting, more often it is routine and even boring.

Yet, they share the same hopes and psychological motivations that other women do. One thing is certain. The Call Girl is not who you think she is. She might be a neighbor, a sister, a girl-friend, a lover, or maybe she was your mother.

Things are never what they seem.

Chapter 2

Getting Started

'A woman has the right to sell sexual services just as much as she has the right to sell her brains to a law firm where she works as a lawyer, or to sell her creative work to a museum when she works as an artist, or to sell her image to a photographer when she works as a model or to sell her body when she works as a ballerina. Since most people can have sex without going to jail, there is no reason except old fashioned prudery to make sex for money illegal.'.......Dolores French, 1990

Morgan's apartment is reminiscent of a set an advertising director might use for a Bacardi rum commercial. The place exudes a cool warmth. Walls are white and dotted with elegantly framed prints by Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Mapplethorpe, and the silver and white combined light and fan fittings hang from the ceilings. The simple, but dramatic, black-and-white curtains are pulled back to reveal sweeping views of Central Park. The look is minimalist but the unusual Italian designed furniture is inviting and you get the feeling you want to relax.

I admire Morgan's view and she offers to show me around. The rest of the apartment is beautifully presented, but I am struck by the contrast between Morgan's bedroom and her `working room'. The same stark modern theme is evident in Morgan's bedroom. However, her `working room' is another story. It is a hymn to Victoriana. I have a feeling of stepping back in time. It is all white linen and lace. This romantic look works and Morgan says, `I guess both the client and I are transported to another world'. The only concession to modernity is one wall covered with mirrors. Morgan looks at me knowingly and simply says, `Let's be frank, most men are narcissistic.'

At 37, Morgan retains the model's chiseled face and at 5'9" has a slim long-limbed body. Her taupe silk pantsuit is soft and fluid. It spells style, and I just know I'm looking at the sort of understated elegance that costs plenty.

She is a strawberry blonde, whose hair looks like it's cut by the best stylist in town. She has an elegance and grace that is magnetic. Her husky voice adds to her allure. She speaks deliberately, as if she is making sure her story is being heard.

The question of how and why a woman began a career as a Call Girl is raised by anyone curious about her life. People remain fascinated by this. The motives and motivations of the Call Girl have been studied by some researchers. Often their results reveal a great deal of uninformed comment. Mostly, their findings echo a moralistic perspective.

Morgan laughs when asked about getting started.

`Why did I become a Call Girl? For the money and fun, what else?'

Then she looks at me earnestly.

`Seriously though, I started out 15 years ago, when I decided I wasn't going to struggle with modeling. It seems I didn't have `the look' that was all the rage at the time, and I figured that after five years of trying to make it, it was time to get out. The modeling world is very fickle, one