I just had to ask: why not pay in cash?
I figured he’d give me the standard answer that he couldn’t pull that much cash that late at night.
Whenever guys couldn’t or didn’t want to spend a lot of money, they would use the excuse that they couldn’t get that kind of cash from the ATM.
But he didn’t. He apologized, explaining that he didn’t have access to his money right then and there. He was on an allowance and had gone through all his cash. He said this in a shy, embarrassed tone, like he was ashamed of having a trust fund.
I surmised that the credit card bill must go directly to his dad’s accountant. The way his old man rolled, Scott must have known the bean counter would never look twice at a Gotham Steak charge for three grand.
He asked me if he could put a tip on his card, and I told him sure, even though I’d have to split that additional money with Jason, if I saw it at all. Cash would have been mine to keep.
Amanda brought me into the bathroom and said, “Let’s get changed.”
I didn’t know what this meant exactly, but they’d already won my running “hottest client” contest I had going on inside my head so I was game for whatever they wanted of me. Her request was pretty tame. She pulled out a garter belt and fishnets, “Scott loves garter belts.”
“So do I,” I said.
So we got bordello-ed up and went into the bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an ornate silver tray with a pile of blow the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I was confused. Did they travel with that? The tray, not the blow. I don’t remember those coming standard with the rooms at the W. Then I remembered the W Hotel franchise mantra, “Whatever, whenever.” I had heard rumors that included drugs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the doormen had a great side business selling to all the VIP clients, but an empty silver tray was a pretty funny thing to order from room service with a straight face.
Scott did a long, fat line and offered me the straw. I usually liked to use my own straw, but I was in the presence of the equivalent of North American royalty and didn’t want to be gauche. He didn’t look like he was carrying hepatitis—if anyone can not look like they have an invisible disease.
So I did my own humongous line and thought to myself, “Okay, so it’s going to be that kind of party.”
We tied Scott up. We were tied up. He watched us. He did more blow. We talked. Scott oozed charisma. Amanda radiated sex.
At one point, I sat back on the couch watching her suck his perfect, hard cock, sipping from a chilled bottle of champagne, and thought to myself, I cannot believe I am getting paid for this.
Over the course of the night, he came five times, so did Amanda and I. When I left, I kissed them both on the cheeks. He gave me some coke and a few hundred dollars in cash as a tip. A nice gesture, I thought. And then I said goodbye.
* * *
The Quarterback’s booking was scheduled for nine o’clock. I heard someone mention he was really famous, but the booking sheet didn’t give many details. I was as excited as I was intrigued.
I arrived in the lobby of the W Union Square, looked around, and was approached right away by a short, overweight and not at all sexy guy dressed in ill-fitting Dockers and a pink polo shirt. Could this be the Quarterback? How could he let himself go this much? I didn’t know much about American football, but I didn’t think quarterbacks could be that short, or ugly.
As we got into the elevator, the man told me that he was actually taking me to someone. He was his agent. I tried not to look too relieved. I was nervous as we walked down the long, dimly lit hallway. There was a part of me that always hoped I would meet the love of my life and that he might be someone like the man I thought I was meeting: a famous sports legend.
The suite was big and nice, but still just the W— nothing mind-blowing. Or maybe I’d just seen it all before.
The agent left me alone for a second and went in the other room. He came back, and I panicked that the client didn’t like me, that maybe he was looking for Gisele rather than Natalie Portman. Despite my reviews and status, my ego was still as delicate as any girl’s, so when he handed me my envelope, I smiled with relief. I loved it when they just paid me, and I didn’t have to ask.
The agent disappeared without saying a word, and my quarterback walked into the room. He was older and obviously retired, but he looked as fit as ever and had a warm, friendly face. He poured me a glass of champagne from the bottle that was sitting on ice and casually lay back on the bed where he’d been chilling when we arrived.
He turned on the large flat-screen and selected a Keanu Reeves movie on pay-per-view. No one’s ever accused pro athletes of having great taste in art.
We lay together and watched the laughably bad flick. He still had the toned and muscular body of a jock, despite having been retired for many years. I touched his skin, which was tanned and moist, and we compared scars. He won, easily. His shoulder, hip and knees were covered in them, souvenirs from a decade of pounding in the NFL. Mine ran down my stomach from just below my belly button to just above my pussy. I always worried that guys would be turned off, or that someone would complain about it in on TER, and my career would be over, but it never happened. That’s something else I learned from this job. Women think men want perfection. They’re wrong. Men want to be appreciated. They want to be adored. Perfection intimidates them.
He had hired a call girl, of course, but I sensed he wasn’t so much turned on by sex as he was in recapturing the glory days: crazy post-Super Bowl parties full of drinking, strippers and hot female fans throwing themselves at him. Some guys want you to dominate, even if they don’t say it. Not the quarterback. When I kissed and sucked his dick I did it with an intensity almost bordering on worship. I could tell he needed to know that I knew how lucky I was to be with him.
Whether it was because of his tired athlete’s body or because he wanted me to earn my money, at first he let me do all the work. I gave his gorgeous cock one last lick with my tongue, then reached for a condom. I climbed on top of him and put him inside me. This was at the peak of my career. I was in phenomenal shape and could stay on top for forty-five minutes and not ache. I looked directly into his eyes. He lifted me up and flipped me onto my back. I could tell he wanted to show me what he could do—old athletes never lose the drive to win. He went down on me forever and though I really wanted him to fuck me again, I knew not to stop him. When I complimented him on how good he was, he said, “I was always more of a giver than a receiver.”
I laughed.
Finally, he was ready to fuck me some more. He turned me over on my stomach and gave it me hard. All I wanted was for him to come. Feeling a guy about to explode is usually all it takes to get me there. I came and so did he.
We lay down together. As I lay across his chest, he confided that he ached all the time. I stroked his body as we laughed at Keanu’s acting. I became an expert in telling time. Without the aid of a watch or clock, I was able to tell exactly when the appointment was up. Two hours had passed.
He smiled his million-dollar smile, and we said goodnight. I told him how much fun I had had and thanked him for having me over.
Back at the loft, I went straight to one of the computers. I’m from Canada and can name every hockey icon, but up north we just don’t do football. I wasn’t quite sure whom I had just slept with. The agent had told me his first name when we were in the elevator on the way up. I Googled famous NFL quarterbacks with his first name. My jaw dropped.
I went downstairs with a big smile on my face and told Jason. Jason was a serious star-fucker, so I figured he’d be impressed.
“Guess who my last client was?”
He stared blankly at me. He didn’t understand anything I had just said. He was blitzed out of his gourd on Special K. He wouldn’t have cared if I’d said I just fucked Bill Clinton.
Sometimes Jason would drift off into a K-Hole. I knew that in those strange distant moments he was thinking about his time in jail. I would lie with him,
looking into his face—with his pupils dilated and his memory shot—and try to guide his mind to help him see that he could shape his destiny.
“Jason, you do not have to go back to jail. Jason, you do not have to go back to jail,” I would say over and over again like a mantra. I believed if he knew that in his soul he could prevent it from happening. His choices would keep him safe. If you believe a sting will kill you, you stay away from bees.
But Jason had built a beehive, and his recklessness would get us stung.
CHAPTER SIX
THE PERFECT FLOWER
With business booming at New York Confidential, we were in constant need of fresh talent, and Jason would go on scouting tears in order to meet the demand. Like a hawk, he’d observe his prey, circle, then swoop in for the kill, or in his case, to make the vague, enticing promise of easy money. He’d introduce himself, engage in idle chitchat, flash his giant white smile, and then, almost like it was an afterthought, he’d slip the girl his metal business card, seductively whispering that if she wanted to have fun and make some serious cash, she should call him. There was no place he couldn’t find a potential new girl. Of course, nightclubs—where the music was pumping, the girls were most likely drunk and/or high, and the promise of sex was everywhere— were his most successful recruiting grounds. His other trusty locale was the Gansevoort, the trendy Meatpacking District hotel where Joelle and I had our girls’ day out that ended in tears.
It was during a recruiting spree at our favorite haunt that Jason discovered my latest BFF Ashley. He caught her by the hook and then made damn sure he wasn’t going to let his new find get away.
After Jason’s newfound treasure gave him a little naked “audition,” she put back on her pair of Seven jeans, tank top and heels (almost identical to what I’d worn to my first meeting with Jason in Hoboken). Just hours after he’d laid eyes on Ashley, Jason wanted to send us straight to work, but she wanted to go home and change first. Instead, I loaned her a top and dressed down a little, too, so that we would match. I gave her a razor so she could shower and shave her legs and pussy. She borrowed some of my makeup and my D&G purse. I gave her some condoms and showed her the credit card imprint slips and how to fill one out. We were going together, but I wanted to walk her through everything.
Jason had a great client lined up for us: a TER regular. He wanted Ashley’s reviews up and working for her right away. He wanted her first guy to be a winner. The truth is, most of the clients were pretty amazing— the types of guys I would be happy to go out with under normal circumstances, that is, if they didn’t cheat on me with escorts.
Ashley and I were amazing together. I loved her body. She wasn’t skinny at all, you’d never feel like you could break her, but she didn’t have any fat on her body. She wasn’t noticeably muscular either—she had a naturally gorgeous frame and shape. The only thing I didn’t love were her breasts. She had implants, and I didn’t think they were the greatest. She told me she got them when she was sixteen. That shocked me. I felt like such a foreigner. What’s more American than fake tits at sixteen?
When I saw Ashley’s pussy, I was overcome with the need to lick it, to devour it. And when I did, I didn’t want to stop—she tasted so sweet. Ashley was at that point when girl meets woman, and it’s spectacular. I had to stop before I wanted to. I couldn’t be selfish as there was a client in the room. I must have inspired him. He laid Ashley and I side by side on our backs. While he went down on her, Ashley and I started making out, kissing really slowly and softly. He switched to my pussy and then back to her and then back to me. I was observing Ashley as much I was participating in the moment because I was going to have to deliver my report to Jason. He wasn’t going to get all the details—he was after all, still my boyfriend—but I was definitely going to deliver my opinion: this girl could be our next superstar.
When she came, I tried not to judge. It was believable, for a civilian, but I could tell she was faking it. You can’t come every time. I came most of the time, but when I didn’t, I had paid enough attention to my own orgasms to know how to fake ‘em and sell ‘em. There are certain things my body would always do when I came that I duplicated when I was faking: the way my eyes rolled back just a little; the speed at which my body moved; the way my legs would shake a little after, as though I’d just run a marathon. It was all part of the show.
When Ashley and I arrived back at the loft, I took Jason aside immediately. I said, “You’ve got to book this girl. She has the most beautiful coochie I’ve ever seen.”
Jason wanted details. I struggled to find the words. Pink, small, pretty? How do you describe a perfect pussy? It’s the great existential question. How do you describe the perfect flower or sunset?
I just said, “Don’t you trust that I know something beautiful when I see it?”
He cracked up.
So Ashley officially became Victoria, and we all drank a champagne toast.
* * *
It was around seven o’clock on a Wednesday night. The loft was not over-crowded, which meant there were at least eight or nine people milling around. Thank God for my closet, otherwise I would never have had any privacy. It bothered Jason that I always locked myself away in our room, but I needed my down time or I would have gone crazy. I saved my energy for my clients.
Ashley knocked on the entrance to my closet and peeked her head through the curtain. She totally got why I needed refuge from the chaos of the loft.
“You want some sushi?” I asked.
She shook her head no. I dialed up my favorite sushi joint and ordered some tempura and a bunch of sashimi, keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t get a booking before I had a chance to eat. This is what being a firefighter must be like, I thought to myself.
I never felt hungry, but around that time I was always bordering on being too thin. I loved my close-to-zero body fat, but I hadn’t had my period in months— great for business, but a little scary health-wise. Most girls have to take at least a few days a month off.
Among all my other roles at the loft, I had also become the period expert, teaching girls the industry secrets, like how to stop bleeding for a few hours. I’d send them to Duane Reade where they could find a natural sea sponge in the makeup aisle. Then I’d show them how to put it in like a tampon. It would stop the flow of blood for a few hours, and the client wouldn’t feel anything different. CVS, Duane Reade’s main competition in Manhattan, carried something called “Instead.” It looks like a disposable diaphragm, a little disk that you push up inside of yourself that acts in a similar way to the sponge. I preferred the sea sponge method as I thought clients would be able to feel the plastic of the “Instead” thingy and wonder what was up.
I looked at Ashley, “How are you?”
I poured her a glass of champagne.
“Where are you from again?” I asked her before she had a chance to answer.
“New Jersey.”
I was always confused about New Jersey. The image I had was that it is was sort of ghetto. Newark. Jersey City. Trenton. But I’d also seen The Sopranos and knew there were parts of New Jersey that were desirable in a nouveau-riche-suburban sort of way. My guess was that if Ashley could afford breast implants at sixteen, her family had at least some disposable income. But I knew nothing about her at this point and was dying to get the full story.
* * *
Ashley was lying on my bed. I was on my laptop, with TER open, checking to see if I had any new reviews posted. Regular people have Facebook, we had TER. I scrolled down and saw the name Victoria. I clicked on it and pulled up a new review for Ashley.
She jumped up and read it over my shoulder. It was a 10/10; I gave her a big hug. The review started by talking about Ashley’s personality (sweet) and her goals in life (aspiring singer).
“Wait, you’re a singer?”
“Yeah, you didn’t know that? I thought I told you.”
I thought, for a second, maybe I should introduce her to Peter, my record producer client
. He was behind some of the biggest names in the then super-hot, pop punk scene. Then I rewound. Did I really want to send this bright, young thing to see one of my best clients?
I’d have to think about that one.
“That’s so cool,” I said.
I was about to ask her about her family, but I didn’t. That was one question that didn’t come up around the loft. The girls never talked about their families, and I always assumed the worst.
Right on cue, my cell phone rang. It was my mom. I hit the mute button—now was not the time. My mom’s phone calls required a few things: patience, privacy, and at least twenty minutes. I breathed out and shook my head, trying to let the emotion go. A nice cocktail of guilt, frustration, annoyance and sadness.
“My mom,” I said to Ashley, gesturing toward my phone. She didn’t say anything. It was almost like she hadn’t heard me. I guess we weren’t going to be sharing family secrets.
She never did tell me much about her past. Like the rest of the world, I read about her back story after she found herself embroiled in one of the biggest political scandals in recent memory. By the time that happened, we’d drifted apart for a number of reasons.
Once the agency was shut down, I stopped answering my phone when anyone “escort-related” called. I got a new number that I only gave to certain clients, and everyone else got cut out of my social network. Ashley and I had some mutual friends, but generally we ran in different circles. She was career-driven, and as a result, most of her circle consisted of the music industry—or wannabe music-industry—crowd. My circle was more acting/entertainment-industry types and native New Yorkers/hardcore party-people. After New York Confidential, our separate worlds hardly ever collided.
When we hung out I thought I knew everything about Ashley, even though she kept her family history so secret, but when I, like millions of others, read her MySpace page, I realized I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. Although we shared the same life for a while, and I feel like I know her better than most people, there’s a lot we never got to and a lot we hid from each other.
The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort Page 9