The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune. – Amelia Earhart
I once went to a dinner party with my best friend and business partner Grace. The hostess was a friend of hers and an acquaintance of mine who had only recently found out that I had started working as a call girl. She had known I was a stripper since we met, and that never seemed to bother her, but the transition to prostitution was apparently too much for her. Exactly how much it bothered her I did not find out until after dinner, when the conversation turned to careers. The group was a highly educated one, and it was remarked on that no one there was working in the field of her degree. Moreover, all of our careers were at least somewhat unusual. Since there was a lady there I had never met and did not wish to risk offending, I merely joined in the discussion without bringing up my own profession. At least, that was my plan until the hostess suddenly spoke up.
“Maggie has a very interesting job,” she said sweetly, “don’t you, Maggie?” Since everyone else there already knew what I did, her intent was obviously to embarrass me in front of the lady I had just met, who was middle-aged and fairly proper.
“Oh, really, what do you do?” she asked me, expecting nothing shocking, I’m sure.
“I’m a whore,” I replied matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?” the lady asked, clearly believing she had misunderstood.
“A whore,” I repeated. “A prostitute. A call girl. A harlot, a lady of the evening, a hooker, a strumpet, a doxy, a fille de joie. A demimondaine, a woman of questionable virtue.” This was delivered with a straight face and no hint that I had said anything more unusual than “bank teller.”
“Oh, how interesting,” the poor dear said faintly. Our hostess turned scarlet and someone quickly introduced a new topic of conversation. I put up no fuss and simply continued on with the evening as though nothing had happened until the earliest polite opportunity to excuse ourselves and leave.
I introduce myself with this anecdote because it illustrates several points I would like to make right away, the most important of which is that this blog is in no way a confession. That would imply feelings of guilt, of which I have none. Somehow, neither my mother nor the nuns who taught me ever managed to instill in this little Catholic girl any sense that sex is dirty, bad, wrong or otherwise distasteful, and without that unhealthy concept imbedded in one’s psyche prostitution is no different from any other service one might perform for hire.
I can almost hear some of my readers’ protests: “Oh, I don’t think sex is dirty, but it’s so intimate. How could you do it with someone you don’t know?” Therapists listen to intimate details of their patients’ lives all the time and give them intimate advice on subjects they wouldn’t discuss with their best friends. My gynecologist sticks her fingers into my vagina without a qualm, and nurses give very intimate care to bedridden patients. None of this seems to bother anyone.
Or this one: “Oh, but sex is special; it’s for showing affection to someone you love.” Well, there are many ways of showing affection. If a professional chef prepares a special meal for her husband, is that gesture lessened by the fact that she prepares meals for strangers every day? If a masseuse gives her man a massage, is he concerned that she has been rubbing other men’s backs? If I dated an artist, would the picture he painted for me be any less a gift for his having painted many other women? Of course not.
But there is no need to go on. I am not here to destroy anyone’s deeply held beliefs, nor to say that I am right and everyone who disagrees is wrong. Many if not most women, whether because of natural shyness, moral views, personal prejudices or conditioned guilt, are temperamentally unsuited to prostitution, just as others are unsuited to motherhood and still others unsuited to office work. If everyone were the same it would be a pretty boring world.
Most of us are more discreet than pop stars.
What I am here to do is attempt to give my reader a new perspective on how some women make a living, and perhaps to show you that we’re not so different from any other women you might know. That having been said, I’m not trying to tell you that all prostitutes are the same; that would be absurd. We are no more or less like each other than are nurses, or teachers, or housewives, or students. I know, because I have worked with women from each of those fields (and many others) who hooked on the side, with nobody the wiser. What does a prostitute look like? Look around you. Most of us don’t hang around street corners in stilettos, miniskirts and excessive amounts of makeup.
Another thing this blog is not, is a tell-all. If you’re expecting names, forget it; you’ll have to get your gossip elsewhere. Although I had more than a few clients whose names you might recognize, those names will never pass my lips. I can’t speak for my less fortunate sisters on the street corners, but those of us in the higher strata of harlotry have professional ethics just as any other professional has. I would no more reveal a client’s name than his lawyer, doctor or clergyman would reveal any of his other secrets. On top of that, I have a great deal of affection for many of my regular clients and would never do anything that might harm them.
This site isn’t about them, anyway; it’s about me. Modern critical theory holds that a work of literature cannot be separated from its author; whether you believe that or not, I’m not even going to make the attempt. I cannot speak for any other woman, describe her experiences, or know how she feels about being a prostitute or why she does it. Nor can I speak for any man to tell you why he hires a prostitute and what he thinks about her. All I can tell you is what I feel and felt, what I think, what I observe. I can and will tell you how and why I became a prostitute, what some of my memorable experiences were, and why I don’t do it any more. I can also tell you what I saw other girls do, what they said to me and my impressions of what they felt at the time; furthermore, I can tell you what clients did and said and my opinion as to what they were about and why. These impressions are of course all subjective, but can any author claim otherwise? Not until the day our bookstores start carrying offerings by Vulcan authors.
I could never be this objective.
One thing I can promise you is that everything you will read here is true. Oh, I will change little details here and there to distort something into unrecognizability if I think it necessary, but I am not going to sit here and make up stories to titillate you or further my agenda. I am not a fiction writer, and truth is stranger than fiction anyhow. To the best of my ability and memory everything here is as it happened. Among the stories and dry facts you will find my opinions, ideas and even some friendly advice, but I won’t try to disguise any of those by putting them in the form of parables, and I give you my word that I will try to describe details about girls, clients, or other dramatis personae as neutrally as possible so you can draw your own conclusions rather than being forced to accept mine.
One distortion I must make involves “stage names.” It is very rare that a girl uses her own given name to work, though I have known a few. This ensures a certain degree of anonymity and separation between professional and personal life. “Maggie” is not the name I used while stripping and continued to use when I became a call girl; that name, the name by which I am known in our “professional community” to this day, is as much mine as the name my mother gave me, and therefore I will not mention it here in the interests of my own privacy. Though my “stage name” is not the one on my driver’s license nor the one used by friends and relatives (except those working girls with whom I became friends), there are still far too many people who could identify me by it, so I will reveal neither it nor my legal name for the obvious reason that many people do look down upon prostitutes and I have no desire to find out how open-minded my in-laws and neighbors are, nor to test the limits to which cops will go to harass us.
Some girls change stage names every so often, while others (like me) keep the same one forever. In the interests of everyone’s privacy, therefore, I will not use the actual stage names of any girls herein; some of them may be attached to those names and much of what I have to say will not be complimentary, so in the interest of fairness I will avoid the use of their “real” stage names just as I will avoid their legal names. It is not necessary to violate people’s privacy to make a point.
Finally, if you’re looking for pornographic detail you may as go elsewhere because you won’t find it here. If I wanted to provide wanking material I’d start a phone-sex business and it certainly wouldn’t be for free!
So, OK, I’ve told what this blog isn’t; what is it, then? Well, first and foremost it is a podium (wits among you might consider “pulpit” a more appropriate term) from which I can talk about how I see the world, through the lens of my experiences as a call girl. I’ll comment on various aspects of the subject of human sexuality as I see it, give a whore’s-eye view on current events (including virtual slaps in the face to girls who violate professional ethics), and point out the bias built in to nearly every mainstream article about prostitutes. Sometimes I may talk about my experiences in “the life”, including how I started and what I did before and since. I may tell you a little about the history of the profession and my philosophy of it, as well as the opinions of other girls I’ve talked to about it. Sometimes I’ll tell you about the men and women I’ve met through the profession, including those I wish I hadn’t met, and what I think and feel about them. I’ll talk about where I think prostitutes fit in society, why men come to us (it’s not always what you think), and how non-professional women can use this knowledge to their advantage. I’ll also make some educated guesses on why Americans have such a weird love/hate relationship with us. Along the way, I’ll also write about a lot of other stuff which is not strictly on the subject but is inextricably bound up with it in my head. That’s the essence of a good story, though; it should make you think about things and feel things and maybe even teach you something in addition to merely entertaining you. And this is definitely a good story; I only pray that I have the ability to do justice to it.
