If I want my time wasted, I’ll waste it myself. – Mason Cooley
One of the banes of an escort’s existence, second only to cops, is constituted by time wasters and deadbeats; the former are men who pretend to be interested in our services but never actually arrange anything, and the latter those who make appointments with no intention of keeping them (or who get cold feet but don’t have the balls to call and cancel). Time wasters are a mere annoyance, but a deadbeat costs a girl time, fuel, and possibly another fee if she turned one down in order to keep the supposed appointment with the deadbeat. Those who at least open the door, admit their change of heart and pay a cancellation fee aren’t so bad, but those who won’t even open the door are in my mind utterly reprehensible.
“I don’t think so,” I laughed. “I don’t take my clothes off until you pay up.”
So he paid me, and I disrobed and turned this way and that while he ogled every inch of my body before saying, “No, I don’t want you to stay. Please give me my money back.”
Now, I didn’t just fall off of the turnip truck; I knew very well what this cheapskate was up to. He figured he’d get himself a strip show for $50, then wank himself as soon as I walked out the door. So I handed him $200. Immediately he reacted; “You said the cancellation fee was $50!”
“That’s for me just showing up; I provided you with a service by taking my clothes off, so I’m charging you double.”
“That’s not fair!” he whined.
“Not fair? Are you for real?” I asked calmly. “You must think I’m some kind of idiot. I know what you’re up to, and you’re lucky I gave you back as much as I did. A less honest girl would’ve kept the whole thing. Of course, if you want to try to take it back by force…”
“No, no, I’m not going to do that!” he assured me, and I left the room after advising him not to try this sort of thing with anyone else. At least I felt reasonably certain that I had ruined his mood and made him unable to use his mental image of my nude body for the purpose he had planned.
The single most common excuse I got for cancellation from the ones who actually opened their doors was, “You’re not what I expected.” Now, I’ve mentioned before my reasonably thorough description of myself, and 99% of my clients were ecstatically happy with my looks and presentation. So, given that nearly every man who said this was either under 30 or not much over it, I am forced to conclude that either A) he really had less money than stated and when he saw a clear-eyed woman of discernable presence rather than a drugged-up trollop he knew better than to attempt to bargain me down to $100; or B) he had fantasies based on stereotypical images and was disappointed that I wasn’t wearing garish makeup and some ridiculous outfit. I can’t be sure, though, because they would never explain themselves more fully.
Once I had agreed to go a particularly long way for a client, out to the nearby town where I grew up. It was a quiet night, but I still made the young man understand that I was doing him a favor by coming out that far (I was the only working girl in New Orleans who would). And then he opened the door and came out with that same stupid statement; I was utterly furious.
“I dunno,” he said, standing there with an asinine Gomer Pyle smirk.
“Are you blind or just stupid?” I then asked, resisting the urge to slap him.
“A little of both, I guess,” he said with the smirk still on his moronic face. He of course refused the cancellation fee as well; judging by the condition of his trailer I doubt he had 50¢ much less $50. I honestly considered calling my husband from the nearby car to beat the crap out of him, but I thought better of it and just left.
Most of them, of course, don’t even bother to open their doors; if they’re scared, playing games or just passed out drunk they don’t even come near the door (the light visible through a peephole darkens when someone puts his head there to look out). One of the ways I always tried to protect girls from such games was by insisting that they call hotel clients on their room phones rather than cell phones; this ensured that the client was genuinely in that room and often that he was the registered guest if the hotel asked (as many do) that a caller confirm the guest’s name before putting it through. If a client did not respond to repeated knocking, it was a simple matter to pull out one’s cell phone and call the room again; if he was asleep or passed out this would usually awaken him so one could ask him to open the door. In the case of a true deadbeat, however, this mattered very little; he knew his victim was out there, and he knew that she knew he was in the room, but what could she do? Well, in some cases, embarrass the crap out of him by writing “deadbeat” or “asshole” or some such on his door in lipstick. I myself never did this unless I was absolutely certain he was in there and refusing to answer, and not even always then. But there were some times that the stupid game made me so angry I just had to waste his time or piss him off as he had done to me.
On one memorable occasion I got a call from an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Metairie (the largest suburb of New Orleans) and since it was a warm, dry evening I went in my convertible. As I got out of the car a kid about 14 years old suddenly appeared at my side and asked me which house I was going to; though it was early evening this made me suspicious. “I hardly think it’s any business of yours, sugar.”
“If you’re going to (the house number), they aren’t there,” he said. Of course, it was the same number my supposed client had provided, but given that I had to park several doors down on the opposite side of the street the only way he could’ve known that was if he had given it to me himself.
“I’ll check it myself if you don’t mind,” I said; of course he was correct and nobody was there.
As I got back into my car, he leaned over my door and asked “Are you an escort?”
“I think you already know the answer to that,” I said, starting the car.
“What do escorts do?” he asked.
“Call me back in about seven years and I’ll tell you,” I said. “Now get off of my running board and don’t bother us again, OK?” He complied, but never stopped alternating between looking at my face and staring at my tits. I really couldn’t bring myself to be angry; he had succeeded in fooling me on the phone, and one expects juvenile pranks from a juvenile. Adult men have no such excuse.