by Rebecca Kade
I had a friend whom I cried and cried to about this. She said, “It looks as if there is no way out. You are going to lose her, and he is going to win.”
That really made me mad. When and why had this become about “winning”? My daughter was not a prize that you won at the end of a game. She was my heart, my precious child who for more reasons I can ever list I would do anything for.
I was desperate. I clicked on the category entitled “Models Wanted” and started reading all these ads about how a girl can make thousands of dollars in weeks. Just reply, they said. So many of them were worded very generally in order to skirt the state laws, but I got the picture: anyone making that kind of money every single week is not really a model. Unless you’re Gisele Bündchen. And they’re not looking for the world’s next supermodel on Craigslist.
No, these Craigslist ads were not for models. They were for sex workers. And I answered one of them, fully aware of what I would be asked to do. I dove into the dark side, and it was so near. It was right there on Craigslist, just a few clicks away.
I answered this particular ad because of the way it was worded. It read that a female who understood and related to her staff ran it. The money would be about $10,000 a week, depending on how hard a girl wanted to work. It was all up to the girl. It said, “Call or email to set up an interview, and please have an understanding of the business.” And that is how I met one of the most infamous madams in New York: Kristin Davis.
I went to her apartment in the Corinthian, the tallest residential building in New York City when it was erected in 1988 by developer Bernard Spitzer. Later, I found that ironic when his son and one of my johns, New York governor Eliot Spitzer, was outed as “Client No. 9.”
I was very nervous about the appointment. I had no idea what to wear to this kind of job interview. I remember wearing a pair of light-brown pants, a cream-colored blouse, heels, and light makeup, a bit of jewelry. I was meeting her after my day job coming from downtown, and I took the subway in that beautiful outfit—I was that broke.
Kristin swung open the door and welcomed me in in that brassy, outgoing manner of hers, and the first thing that struck me about her was that her breasts were gigantic. She must have worn a 48DD bra. There was no way they weren’t implants. She looked as if she’d had major work done on her face as well, even though she claimed to be just thirty-five. But she was extremely nice and seemed far more intelligent than she looked. She’d actually been the vice president of a hedge fund before, shall we say, transitioning careers.
I said I’d just come from my job in the Financial District.
“No problem,” she said. “A lot of my girls work on Wall Street.”
Her “girls”? I thought. What was I getting myself into?
I guess she was giving me the once-over as well, and I must have passed muster. Boys always seemed to notice me in school. I do have curves, and I’ve always worked to stay in shape. And the Lord did bless me with straight, light-blond hair, which I wear all the way down to the small of my back. One of my boyfriends once called me Lady Godiva.
I must have seemed as nervous as I felt, because Kristin offered me a glass of wine. She asked me a little bit about myself and then she started to explain the business.
“Are you interested in ‘outcall’ or ‘incall’ work?” she asked.
I had no idea what she was talking about. I was completely naïve. She saw that, and chuckled.
“Basically, it is what it sounds like,” she said. “I have a nice cozy place, and some of my girls meet gentlemen there. We call those ‘incalls.’ ”
I guess that’s what people call a brothel, I thought to myself.
“We also have a lot of clients who like the girl to come over to their own apartment,” Kristin continued. “Yes, that’s what I said: they have sex right in the same bed they sleep in with their wife. I don’t know where the hell the wife is at the time, but we haven’t been caught yet. Anyway, that would be their problem.
“Other men prefer hotel rooms. Nice hotel rooms. We’re talking the Waldorf, the Pierre, and the Regency. You might go out to dinner with him first, so you have to dress nicely. We call these ‘outcalls.’ ”
Wine or no wine, what Kristin said only made me more nervous. I was raised in a strict Christian home, and I had hardly even had any boyfriends in my life. I got pregnant with Isabella at the early age of twenty-one and had barely dated since. How was I going to go to a room in a fancy hotel and have sex with a complete stranger? What if he wanted to do some kinky thing that would freak me out? What if he tried to hurt me?
Kristin has a big, charismatic personality. She’s a little like that legendary speakeasy owner Texas Guinan, who’d greet people in her club by saying, “Hello, suckers!”
Kristin has a very open mind about sex, and thinks our society is way behind other countries. She says that the lawmakers who keep prostitution laws on the books and enforce them are some of her biggest clients. Look at Spitzer. When he was New York State attorney general, he prosecuted a tour company that took men to countries where prostitution is condoned. Kristin calls such pols hypocrites. You may have seen her on TV, calling for prostitution to be legalized. She even ran for governor on that platform.
Kristin cajoled me, trying to allay my fears.
“Look, honey,” she said, “if you’re going to date men you don’t even know that well, like all girls do these days, you might as well be paid for it. And paid well. Do you realize how much my gals are making in a week? One just saved enough to buy herself a racehorse. And with your looks, you could do very well for yourself. How about it?”
Without telling her my reason, I really had no choice. Nobody could help me get my daughter back but me.
“I’ll try it,” I said meekly.
“That’s my girl!” she exulted. “Now let me tell you about my little bag of tricks.”
Kristin proceeded to tell me lots of different things that she had taught the other girls to do—things that would make the clients keep coming back for more, and once they were there, things that would stretch the session out, make it go longer, even hours longer. The client would be happy, but so would we, because he would be charged more. That meant more money for Kristin as well as for me, since she would split it with me right down the middle. Kristin was going to take a 50 percent cut of whatever I did.
I wondered: What will I have in my bag of tricks?
THREE
my first client
Kristin called me within two days.
“OK, girl, are you ready to rock and roll?” she chirped. “I’ve got somebody nice for you at the Parker Méridien.”
Le Parker Méridien! Skylit swimming pool, Central Park views, spa. I used to cut through its columned lobby from West Fifty-Sixth Street to West Fifty-Seventh just for a luxe moment in a harried day. Now I was being asked to go meet a complete stranger there to have sex.
“Room 3606,” Kristin continued in businesslike fashion. “Just go right to the elevator casually like you’re a guest and up to his room; don’t stop by the concierge desk to be announced. His name is Stephen. He sounds like he’s got plenty of dough, so take your time.”
“Kristin,” I mewled. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
No matter how fancy the hotel or how big the payment, it still felt . . . cheap. If I did it, I would have to get out of this “line of work” as soon as I possibly could.
I was afraid too. I had heard of incidents where escorts had been killed after meeting men online. Kristin knew only a little about “Stephen,” and I wondered if she had screened him. Screening is when your boss, your pimp, your madam—whatever you want to call them—makes sure that the person on the other side of that door is who they say they are and that they are safe. Looking back now, again, how does anyone know who is safe, by the sound of their name and their credit card number or which hotel they are staying in? No bodyguard would be going with me to wait just outside the door and listen to make sure everything
was all right. I would be totally on my own. And doing God knows what.
I thought about my pastor back home in North Carolina. “Revelation 21:8!” he would fairly holler. “ ‘But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’ ”
I would find out later that the first death was even closer than I realized. A few months after I started, Kristin’s booker, Lucy, began surreptitiously booking us and taking the 50 percent cut for herself. She didn’t screen clients at all. She didn’t care about us, as long as she got her percentage of the thousands of dollars we would make from one encounter as she sat there and did nothing. One night she sent me to Washington, D.C., where I was truly terrified that I would be badly hurt, if not murdered, like one of those girls you hear about on the news.
“Rebecca, are you there?” asked Kristin. “Look, do you want to do this or not? Because he wants you there at eight o’clock, and if you’re not up for this, I’ve got to call another girl. It’s not anything you wouldn’t do with your boyfriend; I know this guy enough to know he’s not a freak. And by nine o’clock, you’ll be a thousand dollars richer.”
I had no choice.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“That’s my girl! Wear lacy lingerie. He likes that.”
Great, I thought. I have none of that. I will have to go shopping, which means the profit from this encounter will be minimal. But I had a feeling I would soon be making some real money.
I will never forget that night. One usually goes directly to the gentleman’s room; sometimes they even leave a key card for you in a magazine in the lobby. But they were renovating the Parker Méridien, and I had to meet this stranger outside on the sidewalk so he could escort me into the hotel as if we were a couple.
I shivered in the freezing January evening, and as the clock ticked past our appointed hour, I started to get anxious. Had he seen me, changed his mind, and turned on his heel? Maybe I wasn’t tall enough, or perhaps he preferred brunettes. I called Lucy and wondered if I had mixed something up. She told me to wait while she called the client to see what the problem was. It seemed an eternity and I called Lucy again. “Where is this guy?” I asked in exasperation. She confirmed the time and place and instructed me to continue to wait and I was not to leave. I was miserable. I was literally standing out on the street, waiting for a john. Is this what I had reduced myself to? At that moment, I did feel like a $20 corner hooker. I felt like running home, but I was already out cab fare and would have to spend more going home, and that was money I could not afford. I was that broke.
Finally, a tall man in his forties approached and said, “Ashley?” (That was the name I’d decided to use.) He apologized profusely, as he had been waiting on the Fifty-Sixth Street side of the hotel. Being from out of town, he didn’t know that West Fifty-Seventh Street is one of New York City’s main thoroughfares, with Carnegie Hall just steps away. He seemed pleasant enough, but I was still overcome with the feeling of despair that had overtaken me. But I knew he would sense it, so I willed myself to snap out of it.
I tried not to call attention to myself as he led me through the Parker Méridien lobby and I clickety-clacked across the hotel’s marble floors in white-and-gold four-inch stilettos. They were still in my closet from my nightclub days, and they matched a tight white dress I had that looked good with my hair. I was all white and virginal, but underneath I had on a thong and lace push-up corset. What kind of job dictates your underwear? The job I was about to begin.
The elevator went up with a whoosh and I tottered down the thickly carpeted hallway with him to Room 3606. My heart was doing a drumroll in my chest.
He unlocked the door and held it open for me. “Well, come in . . .” he said. It was the first time I was able to get a good look at him. He looked fine. He helped me off with my coat. He was making me feel at ease—more of a gentleman than I had expected. He had a big smile, so I guess he liked what he saw. That was a relief. He had a deep voice, and he was wearing charcoal-gray trousers, a French-cuffed shirt, and a fleur-de-lis-patterned tie, a bit loosened. “I’m Stephen,” he said. “And did I get it right? Ashley? A beautiful name, befitting a beautiful lady.”
Ashley was to be my nom de guerre. From that moment on, until the time I walked out his door, I was the persona Ashley. Rebecca no longer existed. I had to push everything about the real me aside and lock it away in my purse. Who I was, all the things about me that would identify me—the things I really cared about, things I liked—were hidden. I morphed into the woman I thought he wanted. It would become my modus operandi with every client: I had different names and different personalities. It was more for my sake than theirs. If it was all pretend, then it was easier to emerge from afterward. At the time I thought it was more to hide who I was from them so I could keep my identity unknown, but later I would realize that it was most definitely for me. I could not have done this job if I even minutely felt it was the real me. I would “flip the switch.” You will hear me say that from time to time, because later I literally had to keep track of how many switches I was flipping at once. But for now, it was my first encounter as Ashley, and I was terrified. I had no idea what to do, really.
I noticed he had a bit of gray at his temples, and he seemed pleasant enough. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“Just a Coke, if you have it,” I said. What a joke. He could have whatever he wanted at the Parker Méridien. Including, apparently, me.
He had a suite, with a modern Scandinavian dining table, art all over the walls, and a living room overlooking the lights of New York City. It was bigger than my apartment. He led me to the sofa, and I wondered if he could tell if I was nervous.
“You sure you don’t want a little Jack Daniel’s in your soda?” he asked as he handed it to me. “I thought I detected a drawl, and I know Southern girls like their bourbon.”
Did all the other girls drink a lot? I wondered. Did they party, do drugs? Was I supposed to do that too? Kristin hadn’t warned me about this. I was never one to get drunk or do drugs, and I was improvising as I went along.
“No, this is fine, thanks,” I said, and he proceeded to ask me where I was from, what I was doing in New York. Basically he asked me all about myself, and I chattered on nervously. I didn’t tell him I had a daughter. I didn’t tell him why I was doing this, and he didn’t ask. I asked him about himself, and he said he was with an oil company that was exploring other sources of energy. Not for how it would help the planet, but because it would create other revenue streams for the company. He asked me if I’d heard which shows on Broadway were getting good reviews. He took his time and acted as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and he didn’t seem to notice that we had been chatting for nearly an hour.
After a little while, though, he did become restless, and I knew that he needed something a bit more entertaining.
“I notice that you brought a bag along with you,” he said. “Would you mind sharing what you have in there with me?”
Blood rushed to my face. I knew from Kristin’s bag-of-tricks talk that for this client that meant modeling lingerie for him. Kristin had encouraged me to put it on in the bathroom and strut out with the seductive confidence of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.
I honestly would have preferred to be shot at that moment. I was way too shy. I smiled nervously and slipped off into the marble bathroom and locked the door.
I must have spent fifteen minutes in there, changing. I was terrified.
“Do you need any help in there?” he called. “Or should I just get naked and come in there and we can take a shower together?”
“I’ll be right out!” I squeaked.
I unlocked and slowly opened the door. I was wearing a black-and-flesh-colored lace push-up corset and garters with black stockings and five-inch heels. He was extremely pleased. I started to
talk flirty and even a little dirty, and he became . . . even happier.
He asked for me to keep it all on and he lifted me off the ground and effortlessly placed me on the bed. He left his shirt and tie on, and I saw that he had begun to sweat. He unbuckled his belt with one hand without looking, and his pants dropped down.
He wasn’t wearing any underwear, and I could see how hard he was. And then, after all my anxiety, it was over in less than two minutes.
He finished and threw himself on his back next to me, breathing as if he had just run the New York Marathon.
Then I just got up, picked up my things, and got dressed. He paid me in cash and said, “I hope to see you again on my next trip,” as he helped me on with my coat. He led me to the door, and just before I went out he kissed my hand. He was a gentleman—unlike several famous clients I was yet to meet. But I had crossed a line that night. I had lost . . . innocence.
Could I do this again? I asked myself as I descended in the mirrored elevator, regarding my reflection. I knew I would take a long hot shower when I got home. But I also knew my answer by the time I had hailed a cab. With his generous tip, I had $4,500 in my purse—in cash. The cab ride would be no worry this time. Yes, I would do it again.
I called Kristin as soon as I got into the taxi.
“Wow, you were there for a good long while,” she said. “How was it?”
“Different,” I replied. “I don’t know if I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, you know what you’re doing, honey.”
“I felt guilty—he had a wedding ring on,” I fretted.
“Girl, did you just fall off the turnip truck?” she chided. “Half the men you’re going to be with are married. They’re faithful to their wives when they’re home in East Ashtray, Texas, but when they’re on the road, well . . . what their wives don’t know won’t hurt ’em. I think married movie stars call it a ‘location lay’—ha. Listen, he paid you in cash, right?”