Rough Trade (Part One)

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.  –  Friedrich Nietzsche

Every profession has its dangers, and an omnipresent one for whores of every level is the possibility of rape, though obviously it is much more likely for streetwalkers (especially at the hands of cops, but we’ll talk about that another day).  Because call girls deal with a much higher class of clientele in much more controlled settings, our chances of being raped are far lower than those of our sisters in the street, but those chances still exist and if a girl works for long enough the possibility of rape becomes a virtual certainty.  I was raped twice in my career, and one other time I barely avoided it; strangely enough it was the latter incident which was the most frightening of the three, for reasons which will become clear when I talk about it tomorrow.  In any case, I feel compelled to issue this warning to my readers:  Though I will do my best to describe these events as neutrally and without lurid detail as possible, it may still be a bit difficult for those of delicate disposition or women who have themselves been raped.  If you belong to one of those two groups, you may wish to stop reading now (or at least when you get to the paragraph starting with “the first time I was raped on a call”) and skip tomorrow’s column altogether because I really have no desire to cause anyone distress.  I would rather not have to talk about it at all, but the only way to combat ignorance is with complete honesty, and that means discussing the ugly aspects of harlotry as honestly as the beautiful ones.

First of all, what is rape?  There are probably a dozen ways to define it, but there are things that are legally called “rape” which are not, in my mind, rape; chief among these is statutory rape.  I lost my virginity on my fifteenth birthday to an eighteen-year-old, and I’m sure that at least a few of the guys I had in the next few years were over the imaginary line which separates “child” from “adult”.  By law, all of those experiences were rape, to which I reply “Bullshit”; I was completely in control of every one of those encounters, even the first one.  What’s more, few of the men I slept with had any idea how young I was; though I look much younger than my real age now, as a teenager I was the opposite.  Throughout my late teens people consistently estimated my age as 25, and I was “carded” for the first time in my life in 1996 (at the age of 29).  But despite all these facts, any of the men who enjoyed me when I was 15 or 16 could have been prosecuted for “rape”, which IMHO only dilutes the strength of the word.

Conversely, there are people who would claim a hooker cannot be raped because she has already consented, and many of these ignoramuses are actually in positions of power.  In 2007 a municipal judge in Philadelphia, Teresa Carr Deni, dismissed the case against a group of men who raped an escort at gunpoint, charging them instead with “theft of services” (read story here).  What makes this even more reprehensible is that though local feminist organizations reacted to the story, the response of national feminism was lackluster at best; I’m sure if the judge had been male or the victim a teacher they would’ve had a field day.  Note that the girl was rescued by a fifth man who was invited by the rapists to participate, but realized what was going on and instead rescued her; note also the first response to the linked story, in which a neofeminist uses the incident to argue for the abolition of sex work.  A man recognized rape when he saw it while a “career woman” and “feminists” used the victim to further their agendas, and that is nothing short of disgusting.

I would define rape as “the taking by force of that which a woman cannot be persuaded by other means to give.”  So yes, we can be raped.  Consent to one act does not equal consent to ALL acts, and once force is used all bets are off.  I must also point out that deception is a form of force, since the fraud tricks a woman into giving something she would not otherwise have given; if any of you men out there have ever paid an escort with your credit card and then charged it back when your wife discovered the bill, YOU ARE A RAPIST.  You took her favors after agreeing on a price, then stole the money back.  That is rape, no less than drugging a girl with Rohypnol and fucking her while she is unconscious.  In fact, it’s probably the sleaziest and most cowardly form of rape.  It is, however, not violent; the very few times I’ve had a credit card chargeback that actually stood up (they can usually be successfully challenged) I felt angry rather than violated.  This column is not about such collection-plate thieves, but rather about bona fide, hands-on violence.

The first time I was raped on a call was not the first time I had been raped in my life; that was five years earlier, long before I became a professional, and was both more brutal and far more frightening.  I don’t really care to discuss the incident right now, and I may never do so in this column; suffice it to say that there were three men in positions of power, and that both guns and a massive violation of trust were involved.  But I was a tough little bird even then, and by the time of the incident I am about to describe I had largely dealt with it.  I was enjoying the freedom and money that goes with being a call girl, and sometimes I was even enjoying the sex.  The nightmares and flashbacks had become fairly rare; my experiences with boyfriends in my youth and customers in the preceding months had been so overwhelmingly positive that the trauma was largely drowned in a sea of good experiences with men, both before and after the rape.

There was no way I could have guessed what awaited me that night; I had already done five calls and was high on the knowledge that I had already made a large profit, with another fee on the way!  The customer was at the Windsor Court, New Orleans’ only five-star hotel, which I always enjoyed visiting because it is so beautiful and the staff so friendly and respectful.  The only oddity about the call (though it sent up no red flags at the time) was that I had not spoken to the customer myself; the arrangements had been made by Doug, the best agent of the several I worked with.  This was necessary because the client was from Paris and spoke no English, nor do I speak French.  Doug does, and so was able to set up the call for me.  I trusted Doug’s instincts (and still do; this incident could not be blamed on him as you will see), the customer was in a very expensive hotel, and just before I arrived Doug gave me ANOTHER call to set up for afterward at the hotel next door, which would bring my total to seven if it went through! The client seemed very nice, smiled at me and paid as soon as I came in; I had absolutely no sign of possible danger, no indication that this was not going to go smoothly and quickly.  Things went as they usually do on a call of this type (except for there being absolutely zero talking) and after a bit of foreplay he indicated he wanted to enter me.  After a few minutes of that, however, he suddenly pulled out and attempted to change orifices.

I was not remotely an anal virgin; I had experienced and enjoyed such sex many times with boyfriends and with my ex.  But I never did it with customers for the simple reason that it can be excruciating if done incorrectly, and a stranger simply cannot be trusted to take his time and follow instructions so as to make the experience pleasant for the woman.  So when he started probing there, I said “No” firmly and squirmed backward to get away from him.  Since that word sounds the same in French as in English and my body language was unmistakable, what happened next can only be called rape; he grabbed my shoulders, dropped his whole weight down on me, and rammed into me in one rapid motion.  I started to scream but he put his hand over my mouth, also getting my nostrils in the process so that I couldn’t breathe.  At that moment my brain focused instantly; I felt utterly calm and realized that if I stopped struggling he would probably let go of my face, or at least relax his hand so I could get my nose free.  The pain was at that point secondary to survival, so I went completely limp.  As predicted, he loosened his grip enough for me to twist my nose clear of his hand, and then I was able to concentrate on willing myself to relax so the rest of the experience would be something less than agony.

Fortunately, it didn’t take him long after that, and when he withdrew the pain subsided fairly quickly, though of course the soreness persisted and would for some time.  He went to the bathroom to clean up and though it took me a minute or so to compose myself I soon followed him, silently going over to the toilet; a warm washcloth removed the blood, and when I was fairly sure I wouldn’t stain my underwear I got dressed in silence.  He didn’t seem to think he had done anything wrong, and he smiled and said something in French; when I slung my purse over my shoulder to go, he even spoke a cheery “Au revoir!”

“Adieu,” I replied, and went on to my next call.  I was not exactly in the mood to continue working, but since I had already made the appointment professional ethics and greed combined to get me over there.  As it turned out, it was the best thing I could’ve done; both the next customer and the one after him (I did eight calls in all that night, a record which stood until December of 2005) were very nice, very gentle, and were looking for nothing out of the ordinary.  I have often thought how lucky I was that it happened that way; it’s like the folk wisdom that if one is thrown by a horse one must immediately get back on if one wishes to avoid being afraid of horses forever afterward.  I did indeed get right back on, and as a result suffered no lasting ill effects other than a sore anus for a few days.

I didn’t understand then why it was apparently so easy for him to do what he did; men had tried unwelcome things with me many times before, but had always stopped when I asked them to.  The body language of “no” is impossible to misread, and I didn’t believe there could be such a cultural gulf between France and the U.S. that he would ignore my wishes.  Besides, I had seen plenty of European men before, including Frenchmen, and nothing like that had ever happened.  So I put it down to his simply being a complete asshole and went on with my life, and it wasn’t until the second incident many months later that I figured it out, as I’ll discuss tomorrow.  For that second incident bore a striking similarity to the first, and thereby demonstrated in no uncertain terms the value of forming a rapport with clients.