Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion. – William Blake
Despite the New Orleans Police Department being incredibly shorthanded in the months following Hurricane Katrina, somebody still thought it was important for time and money to be spent pursuing petty thefts by streetwalkers. Having come to this rather odd conclusion, some other genius decided that the best way to catch a streetwalker was to set up a very expensive “sting” operation involving a luxury hotel room and several hours’ pay for 15 detectives. This series of brilliant “law enforcement” strategies resulted in the arrest of exactly one call girl, namely yours truly, who with one phone call was able to secure release before they even found time to fingerprint her (an oversight which pleases me to no end). Owing to the fact that I’m in excellent shape and was wearing flats that night, they didn’t get the satisfaction of causing me to be caught walking the streets after curfew; owing to my stubbornness they didn’t even stop me from working the rest of that night nor any night in the months that followed. Final score: NOPD zero; waste, fraud and abuse several thousands of dollars.
Doug was astonished when I returned to work within half an hour of my release, but Luke was even more so; as I mentioned in my column of August 3rd he had retired from escorting himself due to extensive legal difficulties resulting from the state attempting to prosecute him for prostitution, “crime against nature” (which I defined yesterday), and “assault with bodily fluids” (a post-AIDS law used mostly to persecute gay prostitutes and people who have the bad judgment to bleed on the cops who beat them up). Luke called me the next morning and said, “Maggie, I am in awe. After my arrest I never went back full-time, and it was months before I could even do it part-time. You are hard as nails, girl!” I was really proud of myself for impressing my colleagues, not only because it made me look even more professional but also because it showed everyone that the efforts of the police to repress me had entirely failed.
It was at least a week before the police report on the arrest was available, and Perry sent me a copy; I had not thought it was possible for my opinion of the moral character of most cops to sink any lower than it already had, but I was very much mistaken. The “report” bore no resemblance to reality whatsoever; it read like a porn-movie script written by an unimaginative 14-year-old. The writer described a long phone conversation between the Judas Goat and myself, full of disgusting details and words I wouldn’t like to use even if I were paid to say them. The imaginary hooker of this conversation was clearly too inexperienced to know that one simply doesn’t talk about such things on the phone, and had apparently drawn her terminology from a cop boyfriend because I’ve never heard a real escort use those phrases. This woman (who according to the report spoke black dialect) even offered extra services for extra money, which I never do. Reading this garbage made me even angrier than the actual arrest had; I had expected an exaggeration but not a total falsification, and I asked Perry if we could get the case dismissed on those grounds.
“What do you mean, Maggie? The cop will lie under oath to say it’s all true, and the others will back him up. You haven’t got a chance that way.”
“But the judge can hear for himself that I don’t speak black dialect; doesn’t that call the whole report into question?”
“The judge doesn’t care; he already knows the report is a lie. Cops lie all the time, but that makes no difference to him; all he cares about it his conviction rate.” I already knew that, but the last remaining part of me which was still capable of a tiny particle of trust for the legal system did not want to hear it.
“So what do we do?” I sighed.
“You just want this to go away, right?” asked Perry.
“Right.”
“OK then. Prostitution is a misdemeanor; he’ll give you about a $200 fine which you can make back in one call, and I’ll get him to expunge your record.”
“What about the felony charge?”
“What felony charge?”
“Crime Against Nature.”
“There’s nothing here about that; they must have decided they couldn’t make that one stick, so they dropped it and went for the quick fine.”
Well, at least that was good news. “So, we’ll just plead no contest and pay the fine?”
“Yes, I think that would be best; the judge gets his conviction but it won’t be on your record, so what do you care?”
But on the day of court Perry came out to where my husband and I were waiting with some annoying news. “He won’t accept the nolo contendere plea.”
“What? Why not?” I asked angrily.
“Because he’s a dick, and he’s trying to run for a state judge position so he wants it to look as though he’s ‘tough on crime’.”
“So what does that mean to me?”
“He’s still willing to do the plea deal I told you about, but you have to plead guilty and swear that the charges are correct exactly as stated.” (There was a special legal name for this kind of plea but I don’t remember what it was).
“Wait, I have to get up there and say that everything happened exactly as stated in that idiotic report?”
“Yes. What difference does that make?”
“But I didn’t do or say any of that!”
“So what? He’ll expunge your record anyhow.”
“But that’s perjury!”
He sighed. “Maggie, you’re right. But you can’t win this on facts; if you insist on telling the truth the cops will lie, the judge will rule against you, you’ll get the same fine and the judge will be pissed off at you for rocking the boat and he’ll deny the expungement.”
“But you said the judge knows this report is a lie!”
“If he doesn’t now, he certainly will after seeing and hearing you in court.”
“So he’s forcing me to commit perjury. That’s a felony; what if he backs out on the deal?”
“He can’t.”
“What do you mean he can’t?”
“If he does, the whole system collapses. If he backs out on a plea deal nobody will trust him anymore and his career is over.”
I sat quietly for several seconds, then turned to my husband. “What do you think I should do?”
He said, “I understand how you feel, but your standing on principle won’t accomplish anything.”
“So, you want me to lie under oath?” He nodded. “Then order me to do it.”
He and Perry both looked at me. “What?”
“You’re my husband; tell me I have to do it. At least then I won’t feel entirely responsible.”
So he did, and I agreed to the deal. I went into that courtroom and committed a felony in front of 200 witnesses in order to receive a more lenient sentence for a misdemeanor, because the judge forced me to do so in order to further his political career by one miniscule fraction of a percentage point. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, and it bothers me to this very day. Yes, I know I had essentially no choice; I also know that in the grand scheme of the universe one whore’s lie isn’t exactly catastrophic. But the fact is that I was coerced by a government official into violating my principles, and in that moment the last atom of respect I had for any government official at any level evaporated.
Aside from the arrest and its related difficulties, the autumn passed smoothly and very profitably; I paid off some rather large debts, and December 1, 2005 was the single busiest day I ever had (ten calls). But no bubble can go long without bursting; as I mentioned before a number of out-of-town escorts appeared in December, and by January many local girls had reappeared. Also, FEMA’s dismal record of payment caused many contractors to pull out or at least tighten their belts. By Mardi Gras the boom market was over; a much smaller amount of business was being divided amongst a much larger number of girls. As if that weren’t bad enough, my health was beginning to suffer; I was overworked and the various mold spores and God-only-knows-what-else in the air was starting to have a serious effect on my sinuses. My mood was beginning to degenerate with my health, and that in turn affected my professionalism; by June my husband told me he thought it was time for me to retire. Of course I protested, but he insisted that I had worked long enough, and with my 40th birthday only a few months away it was high time anyway. I knew he was right, and so I resigned myself; around June 30th I did my very last call, and we went home the next day. It had been an amazing year, full of some of the best, worst, strangest, most memorable and most profitable experiences of my entire professional career, so all in all I have to say it was a fitting conclusion to that career.
We’ve gone back to visit every year since then, and in the opinion of this native New Orleans isn’t the same city it was; something essential is missing, something which made it unique and alive and special. Oh, people still live there and business is still carried out, but there’s a sort of emptiness at the heart of it all. As my husband observed, it’s like a Christmas tree, a thing which appears to be alive but is actually dead and only maintained in the semblance of life by artificial means. No matter what politicians, advertising agencies and a few diehards will tell you the old New Orleans is gone forever, and though I’m no seer I can confidently predict that the city growing up in its place will become more and more like every other city in the country until it retains no more than the image of its former self. And that, my friends, is a damned shame.
“Hobbesian Leviathan State”. Wow. I had to look that up, and I’m still not sure if I understand it. But you know, prostitution is one of those things that functions as a sort of socio-political bellweather, and the common perceptions and misperceptions, and the way the Establishment (particularly the Police arm of the Establishment) treat Hookers, along with other oftimes marginalized groups in society, says a lot about the place things are at and the direction they’re going.
I just call it incipient fascism. White collar crime becomes institutionalized, but they need their Goon Squad to keep their power. And the best way to inspire that you’ll have a good cadre of thugs is to allow them free reign to abuse their power over certain groups of people. And to show that the system can be used to nail you any time they want.
I was involved in an online discussion a while back in which I opined that the “Gay Rights” movement made a huge mistake when their strategy changed a few years ago from promoting tolerance (“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”) to trying to convince the public that homosexuality is “normal.” One guy disagreed with me, saying that once the general public accepted homosexuality as “normal” then homosexuals would no longer be persecuted. I responded that this was a morally bankrupt strategy, essentially a sellout, because it leaves unchallenged the idea that society has the right to persecute those who are abnormal yet harmless. Tolerance isn’t about pretending every behavior is “normal”, it’s about recognizing that the majority does not have the right to persecute consensual behaviors even if they’re NOT normal.
I entirely agree with you on this, Maggie: tolerance is not about defining everything as ‘normal’ (what does ‘normal’ — outside of statistics — ever mean anyway?), but about saying that anything that doesn’t hurt third parties and is consensual should not be prohibited.
I think there is a way to defend that gay guy, though. The point he might have tried to make is that many of the things that people associate with ‘abnormality’ — perversion, obsession, ‘evil’, psychological or physical harm, exploitation, etc. — are no essential features of homosexuality. He might mean “we’re normal!” not as in “we’re just like apple pie,” but as in “contrary to your prejudices, my lifestyle is not harmful in any essential way, neither to me, to my partner(s), or to others.” I.e., as myth-debunking rather than as an appeal to some perceived “normalcy.” In that sense, that gay activist’s sentence might still be quite commendable.
Good try, but he did in fact mean “normal” in the conventional sense; he was one of that bunch that also tries to pretend that the ancient Romans had “gay marriage” and that there are exclusively homosexual animals. 🙁
Hm! OK… A dreamer. All right, there isn’t much you can do for him other than wish him well and hope no sharp, pointy facts ever come close to his bubble. 🙁
“…because it leaves unchallenged the idea that society has the right to persecute those who are abnormal yet harmless. Tolerance isn’t about pretending every behavior is “normal”, it’s about recognizing that the majority does not have the right to persecute consensual behaviors even if they’re NOT normal.”
Wow. I finally get what whats-his-face was talking about in that book Not Normal, but you were far more convincing in far fewer words. Kudos.
“Tolerance isn’t about pretending every behavior is “normal”, it’s about recognizing that the majority does not have the right to persecute consensual behaviors even if they’re NOT normal.”
What an amazing point you have made here. i have asked people on a couple of forums if they support gay rights to marry, do they also support poligamy. almost without exception everyone who replied said no. now i do not partake in either, but i also dont mind if people do. guess my point is that it seems like a lot of people are only tolerant of their own out of the norm bahavior.
Precisely. And that isn’t actually tolerance at all.
Just seems like often its about special rights, not equal rights. this society needs to abandon labelling people as this or that. the labels keep things from being equal.
A good example of why judges should NOT be elected. Congressmen are there to do the will of the people; judges are there to interpret and apply the law.
You can’t, it seems, do both. A Biblical quote about serving both God and Mammon occurs to me. Well, it seems that G&M have no monopoly on the need for a monopoly on service.
I’m really, really interested in how your husband was able to handle you being a call girl.
I noticed you said he started out as a regular client. Did you particularly like having sex with him from the get go, after he became a regular you were familiar and comfortable with, after he became a close friend, or only after you “fell in love” with him?? When in this transition did you start
Did you start hanging around with him off the meter before he proposed and did that transition to giving him sex off the meter too?
Did you do any of these things with any other guys before your husband proposed to you?
I’m interested in all the same things with any other bf’s you might have had since beginning hooking.
There was electricity between us the first moment we laid eyes on one another; it was love at first sight for him, and though I don’t fall quite so easily I was certainly very attracted from square one. I enjoyed sex with him from the very first time, then started giving him extra time, hanging around “off the clock” without sex, then finally became his girlfriend. He proposed a few months after that. Before him, I was never even tempted by anyone either while stripping or escorting; it took an exceptional man indeed to capture my attention so.
I’d also be real interested in you’re writing more about your stripping with occasional hooking career.
How often did you let stripping clients pay you for hooking services?
It varied. Sometimes weeks might go by and other times there might be several in rapid succession. Either the offer had to be very generous or I had to feel so inclined for one reason or another.
By very generous do you mean at your $250 call girl rate, or less or more?
I had a much younger stripper gf once. Live together actually, or 1.5 years. Smart girl from Texas moved to NYC. Gorgeous tall blonde with big tatas. Then I encouraged her and helped her get into law school. Heavily edited her essays; helped her choose schools, etc. (I had been a student representative on the admissions committee at Stanford).
Anyway, she told me that most of her fellow strippers sometimes hooked. Like 75% she thought, of those that had been in it for more than a year, and quite a few newcomers too. They tended to select on how much money but also how attractive or anyway not unattractive the guy was, but which was more important depended on the girl and her money problems a lot. She admitted to having done it three times. (She’d been stripping less than a year.) I’d guess she was low balling it a good bit. She claimed to have stopped when she moved in w/me. For one thing no more rent. I didn’t ask her to stop, but might have if she hadn’t offered. Do I know for sure she did? No. But she didn’t show suspicious behavior.
My normal rate as an escort was $300, but as a stripper a guy would’ve usually spent about twice that much on me by the time I would give him that kind of service.
I think you did the right thing in following your husband’s advice to lie … but reading this really pissed me off.
What pisses me off more though – were the priorities of the NOLA Police Department after Katrina – well, all of the Police and Sherriff’s Departments in the whole of South Louisiana. I had experience with neighbors whose guns were just “taken” by law enforcement after the hurricane. They were law abiding citizens. I was out in Slidell – and I needed my gun … we had starving dogs (owners left them through the hurricane) and they were wandering my neighborhood in search of food. A couple of them found my wife and no amount of yelling or throwing sticks could make them disinterested in her. A shot in the air sent them scrambling though – but those dogs were vicious.
In the immediate days after Katrina – there was NO law in South Louisiana that I could see – and people had to fend for themselves.
It’s just simply amazing to me that NOLA Cops reacted this way. Mind you – their record DURING Katrina was abysmal and marked by outright betrayal of the uniform, murder, theft, and complete incompetence. You would have thought their top priority would have been to pull themselves together rather than harass citizens for no good reason. Real nice to see their priorities were to put 15 cops on an “escort sting”.
And the funny thing is – this is around the time that all kinds of help was pouring into NOLA for search and rescue – and help in distributing aid – and clearing roads, etc. I’m sure these 15 cops could have been put to better use. Of course – it may have meant them taking up a “real man” job and getting their hands dirty – and, well – it’s just a lot simpler to justify their existence and purpose with “busting” the only escort in NOLA. LOL.
Many kudos to you Maggie, for being willing to help out in NOLA in those days. Like I said – I was in Slidell trying to rebuild my house, I went into NOLA one time to check on my Commanding Officer’s house on the West Bank. I was in the Navy at the time.
Passing through New Orleans back then – I only did it once, and didn’t re-enter the city for a year after that. It was depressing.
I don’t know how you were able to do it. I’m a big burly guy who’s been all over the world and fought in combat – but there is no way I could have lived in New Orleans in the months after the storm.
Well, as I’ve said before, I’m a pretty tough little bird; my husband has compared me to Lara Croft. And like that character, my risk and trouble resulted in considerable financial gain.
“it bothers me to this very day”
Yeah, it would me, too.
I was a lawyer for many years and got to observe the workings of police officers up close and the courts from the inside. Ugh. I’d like to write more about what I think of them, but the words don’t come in anything less than an incoherent spew. I should say that I found some fine individuals. I’ll also say that there is a cynical law enforcement culture that cares about the exercise of power and cares nothing about being truthful — and it infects all of the systems attached to it. I am convinced that being in a position of power over others –cops, prison guards, judges — corrupts the people who exercise it — unless they approach their position as one of true service to others. Not the “Protect and Serve” bullshit they utter. I mean truly seeing themselves as being in the service of their fellow human beings. That seems to me to be the only way of fighting off the infection of the disease of “having power over others.”
I haven’t fully thought this through — I’m just reacting to Maggie’s experience and my own experiences. I’m also reflecting on some psychological experiments that were done where some college students were assigned the role of “prison guards” over other students who were assigned as “prisoners” and the way it affected the participants’ behavior. It was truly chilling and disturbing.
That would be the Stanford Prison Experiment, and I agree…chilling and disturbing, but not at all surprising to anyone who has ever had to deal with cops or bureaucrats.
I was able to visit NO twice in two months for business in 1999 or 2000 (I forget which), and really enjoyed myself, despite not availing myself of your services or those of your colleagues. I am sad to hear that the city’s heart and spirit have been gutted. I’ve thought it would be fun to go back to see how things have changed, but perhaps I’m better off just remembering.
Just saw this story from a comment about it in your post with the sting article, wow did you ever go through the ringer, sorry to hear it. Least you handled it well enough though…..even if you had to perjure yourself at the end.
About that though…..I wanted to bring something to your attention that might interest you, it’s why I am commenting here. There is a documentary called slavery by consent, which you can find here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXspt459LE
In it, among other things it talks about related to how government basically owns our lives….a woman tells a story about how she went to court, and with two simple phrases got her case entirely dismissed. They were as follows: when she first was addressed by the judge she said something to the effect of: “I invoke my common law rights” I’m paraphrasing that, but you can hear it for yourself in the video. From there, the judge started listing her charges and asked her how did she plead. She replied: “I do not consent and waive the benefit” when she did that, the judge immediately dismissed her case.
The legal system only truly works if people go along with it…..it cannot hold power over a person in any way at all, if they know how to assume their rights. Most of course do not, so they are left at the mercy of it as a result, but for those that do, it can’t touch them. One just has to know how like this woman did.
Just thought this might be interesting to pass along to you, I know you are an activist as it is, so would think this would hold some interest for you. It may be too late to save you from the fate you had to deal with, but…..it could prevent others from going through the same if they are faced with it in your line of work, or any other for that matter.