The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

by Xaviera Hollander

  The fourteenth combination, 242, opened it, and inside I found five Valentine cards from five different senders, and one registered letter. The letter was in a familiar handwriting, and the stamp was from Holland. My hands were shaking as I opened it.

  “My dearest Mexican Globo,” it began. “I hope this letter gets into your hands safely, because I would hate Xaviera to read it, since we are still good friends. I can’t tell you how happy I am, and our Mexican love affair is still freshly printed on my mind. My darling, I am all excited. Your beautiful marriage proposal is the most fabulous present I have ever had. I am dying to depart from Holland. I could not think of a nicer person to spend the rest of my life with. I am jealous of Xaviera for every moment she has spent with you lately, and I count the days until we meet. See you in Sao Paulo. Your Indonesian Penny.’

  5. WHAT’S A GIRL LIKE ME?

  By that bleak February day in 1969 when Carl left for Brazil, my confidence in myself as a woman and a human being was at an all-time low.

  I was battle-scarred from two whole years of being in love with and faithful to a man who cheated, humiliated, and finally abandoned me. And for the first time in my reasonably well-adjusted life I had an inferiority complex you could photograph. I was almost a candidate for suicide.

  I desperately needed warmth and reassurance, and an obvious easy way was to hear men praise me as a lover. I had thrown Carl out of my house after showing him the letter from Indonesian Penny. He called several times to apologize but I hung up on him. His plane was to take off at 4 P.M. that same afternoon and by that time I was in bed screwing my brains out with a man I’d met in Maxwell’s Plum.

  This was the first man I had been with since I first met my fiancé, and to tell you the truth, it was a dismal failure. We were both looking for something neither of us got. The baby-faced lawyer wanted a no-strings, uncomplicated roll in the feathers, and I wanted an escape from my misery. But instead of feeling elated with his loving, I burst into tears and sent him away.

  Nevertheless, I decided my stolen self-esteem was in a bed somewhere in Manhattan, so for the next six months I cut a sexual swath a mile wide across the city.

  After work each day I would go to the bars where the gray-flannel set hung out, like Ratazzi, P. J. Clarke’s, Ad Lib, Charley-O’s, or Maxwell’s Plum. Charley-O’s was downstairs in my building, and the junior-executive types would go there to get laid before the last train to Westport.

  These men would all be full of promises about how they could introduce you to this job, or get you cut-rate travel or whatever it was they thought you might want. Meanwhile, you’d end up in bed with them, and when you’d call next day they were always out.

  My roommate, Sonia, who knew me from the suffering days when I was living with Carl, took a genuine big-sisterly interest in me, but sometimes she would get angry enough to call me a nymphomaniac.

  She was nine years older than me, unmarried, and disillusioned with life; her retreat from reality was the bottle, in the same way mine was sex. At night she would quietly drink herself into her happier world while I would screw myself into mine.

  I would cruise the First Avenue singles bars where Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens secretaries go looking for marriage and end up settling for a night in bed. My scene was to drag home any Tom, Harry, or Dick who had a pleasant face and a tolerable manner.

  I went on that way until around August, when things got so depressingly repetitive and aimless I thought I would go around the bend. As providence had it, one of the junior execs actually came through with a round-trip ticket to Miami.

  It was just the break I was waiting for, and although I knew nobody there, the change of scene would help my discontent.

  The long weekend was spent swimming, sunbathing, and mixing in with a happy crowd of people from Miami. I even met a nice hillbilly who was the manager of an advertising agency. Vernon, from nearby Dinner Key, owned a luxurious yacht and he soon had me as a housemate on his boat. We took trips with some of his young friends and had orgies almost every day. It was fun to go topless and shock the passing captains with their families. By Sunday night I was a much calmer, happier girl than the one who had arrived there the previous Wednesday evening.

  There was only one small moment of drama in the whole trip, and that was when I was leaving. Somehow the airline had mixed up the tickets, and for a while it was uncertain whether I would be able to have my scheduled seat.

  For some reason the ticket clerk was giving me a hard time, and I guessed it was because the man who was double-booked was much more influential than I. He sure looked it; he was an expensively dressed, distinguished-looking Englishman.

  For ten minutes I argued furiously that I had to be back in time for work the next day, and finally won a place. However, I was surprised to see the tall Englishman – when we got off the plane at La Guardia – walking purposefully toward me.

  “Hi.” He smiled. “My name is Evelyn St. John; I am English and I live in Paris and I’m here in New York for a week.” A mouthful for openers.

  “I am also ashamed of myself for hoping you would get bumped off the flight because I was after your seat,” he continued. “So by way of apology, would you let me take you out on the town tonight?”

  I felt immediately attracted to him. He was charming, handsome, with prematurely gray hair, and I could also see he was Jewish, which I liked as well.

  “It’s about midnight now,” I said, “so what can we do?”

  “Let’s start off with a drink at my hotel and take it from there.”

  In the taxi on the way to the Hilton Evelyn said, “Why not check in with me tonight? Are you married or single?”

  “No, I’m not married, I live with a square roommate. I like you and have nothing to lose.” As has been established, I daresay, I was never very inhibited about sex.

  That night I moved in with him, and he became the first man I felt anything for in the six months since Carl had left me. We made love all through the night, and in the morning I went straight from his bed to my office, without a wink of sleep.

  Love can elate you in a way that a month of early nights never can, and I confess I thought I was in love.

  Evelyn was what I could only describe as a truly elegant lover. Considerate, controlled, yet very passionate. You could tell he had penetrated the best beds of Europe in the arms of the most sophisticated women.

  Not that he consciously let it be known. Quite the contrary. He had the most convincing way of breathing undying love when he was on that paradise stroke. He was that perfect combination men expect only in a woman. A lady in the living room and a nymphomaniac in bed.

  Evelyn was witty, urbane, generous – everything Carl and the others were not.

  For the next week I spent the days dreaming about the nights. After work each day I would float across the half-block between my office and the Hilton to meet my lover for romantic dinners, movies, Broadway shows, and passion. It was a fantastic relationship, sexual and cerebral, and no wonder I was in love – or thought I was – and showed it in every way.

  But Evelyn had another way of demonstrating his feeling for me. A way I have since learned is typical of people of his breeding and background, and, to my horror, he exposed me to it toward the end of the week after a romantic dawn.

  I remember vividly the setting for the conversation that was to change the entire course of my straight and simple life. He was leaning back against the pillow, and I was cradled in his arms.

  “Xaviera,” he began in his slow, Oxford-accented English. “I can never tell you in words just how wonderful you have made this week in New York.”

  I shuddered at the reminder that today was Friday and on Sunday he would leave. “To show you what you have meant, I have something for you,” he went on.

  “What is it?” I asked dreamily. I was always on a cloud after we made love.

  “Here,” he said, and handed me a hundred-dollar bill.

  I froze. I was shocked, hur
t, and speechless with anger. At least if this was not love on his part he had no right to make it seem like prostitution.

  My mother had always told me not to accept money from any man except the man I marry. “If a man friend insists on giving you something, ask for flowers or chocolates,” was her advice.

  “Evelyn,” I said when the numbness wore off, “you make me feel like a whore. I don’t want your hundred dollars; here it is, please take it back.”

  He was genuinely surprised, but he still persisted. “Xaviera, I know you are supporting your parents, so take it and at least give it to them.” He took an envelope from the drawer, asked me to address it to their home in Holland, put the money inside, got dressed, and went out to mail it. That made me feel better, because I did not use the money myself.

  Next day Evelyn took me to Saks and bought me $800 worth of dresses, shoes, and handbags and whatever I wanted. And, this, to me, was the really tremendous gesture of a gentleman, and he was the first man who ever bought me anything of value.

  During my engagement to Carl I was the one who spent half my salary to give him a birthday or Christmas present, or, when I could not afford it, spent hours writing poems for him. He gave me nothing in return. Except his insincere promises.

  So Evelyn had, truly impressed me with his behavior, and he gave me some advice before he left for Paris the next day.

  “A girl like you should let men spoil her,” he said. “You are worth a lot more than a dinner here and a show there. You should be kept and cared for financially.

  “You have all the qualities a man should pay for. You’re attractive, intelligent, good company, happy, gay and on top of everything, you genuinely love sex.”

  Previously I had met girls who had sugar daddy types in tile background, but I was always too proud to ask anyone for anything. And, even though I had been shocked when Evelyn St. John gave me the money, after he treated me so nicely it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be so bad to have this happen more often.

  It would have been wonderful if Evelyn had asked me to return to Paris with him, but of course I understood why he could not. He was, after all, a married man.

  But after he left, I went back to happily screwing my brains out all over town and having men take advantage of my constant horniness.

  My job at the consulate was really boring me now, too, because it was routine and unchallenging.

  The rare bright moments were when I met some nice man who called in for legal or some other kind of advice. One of them, a Dutchman named Dirk, called up one day to find out about getting an entry visa to my consulate’s country.

  As we grooved on each other’s voices on the phone, I got the impression he was very handsome because he certainly sounded it; and after talking for about ten minutes he said, “Forget about business – why don’t we meet today for lunch?”

  I met Dirk at a restaurant across from Rockefeller Center, and while he was not exactly as handsome as he somehow sounded, he was a charming, spontaneous kind of man.

  At lunch we talked about his private life and his twenty-year-old marriage that now existed only in name and how he just lived for his job and his children.

  I asked him bluntly what he did about his sex life. Did he have a girl friend?

  “No, I just use call girls when I need them,” he said.

  At that time, to show you how innocent I was in some areas, I did not exactly know what call girls were.

  I knew they were not listed in the Yellow Pages, but I thought it was a service you called if you wanted a black girl with big tits or a Chinese girl with no tits, on a rental basis and not for a one-shot session. More like an employment agency.

  Dirk was a man in his mid-forties, so I supposed men at that time of life did that kind of thing.

  When lunch was over, he suggested we meet after work to go somewhere and be alone. I willingly agreed. After all, I had made it with half of Rockefeller Center, so why deny my own countryman?

  It so happened that Sonia was away on three weeks’ leave, so I suggested my place at six P.M. He was eager, and I was looking forward to some exciting sex with a man who was a nice, humorous person.

  But things weren’t to be exactly as I expected. It turned out that Dirk was utterly impotent and got his kicks freaking out on the phone with other girls in between performing cunnilingus on me.

  After an hour he had to leave, but I could tell he had had a good time, and even though he was no Valentino, I enjoyed his company also.

  And recent history repeated itself that night. After he got dressed, Dirk took out his wallet and handed me $150.

  I was dumbfounded, but not for the same reason as with Evelyn St: John. The amount was what astounded me. Evelyn gave me $100 for a whole week of making love and Dirk gave me more for an hour of not making it!

  He also gave me a similar lecture to Evelyn’s, but something even more constructive.

  “Xaviera, if you are going to make money out of this, we have to help you meet the right people. And you should. Why give all that pleasure away?”

  By this time I was in complete agreement. “Okay,” I said, “let’s do something about it.”

  Dirk dialed a number, and a raucous female voice picked up on the other end. “Who is it?” she yelled.

  “It’s Dirk here, Pearl, and I have someone I think you ought to meet.” Pearl Greenberg was a small-time madam, and Dirk was a sometime client of hers.

  He told her all about me and recommended we get together for the benefit of us both.

  “Sure,” she screamed into the phone in a happy voice. “Get her over here, and she can start work tonight.”

  Dirk gave me an address down on the wrong part of Ninth Street in Greenwich Village, where I had to be at eight o’clock. I had one problem, though – I didn’t know what prostitutes wear to work. I didn’t want to wear what my image of them dictated: wigs, heavy makeup, tight clothes, and black stockings. “To hell with it,” I thought. “I may behave as a prostitute, but I’ll be damned if I’ll dress like one.” So I went Aura natura in the blouse and skirt I had on.

  The cab dropped me off at a shabby brownstone, and I ascended five flights of dusty stairs and knocked on my first whorehouse door.

  “Who is it?” Pearl’s raspy voice came through the door.

  “It’s Xaviera, you were expecting me,” I called back. After a long minute of rattling of chains and shuttling of locks, the door fell open to reveal a homely big-boned girl, naked except for an Afro wig, with pendulous breasts threatening her ample waistline.

  “Pleased to meetcha,” Pearl said. “Ontray voo.”

  I entered this whorish place with red curtains, and ragged carpet, and very messy with scarves, wigs, shortie pajamas, and assorted lingerie all over the place, and a projector for dirty movies.

  In the middle of the room, lying face up on a sheet, was a fat, ugly Jewish man naked as the proverbial jaybird. Pearl had obviously been working him up, because his equipment was pointing skyward like the Statue of Liberty.

  “Okay, this is your first victim.” My hostess gestured to him. “Go ahead, baby, and fuck him.” So I took off my clothes and jumped on top and fucked my brains out, and I really enjoyed it, because he turned out to be a nice person and his cock was as hard as a cock should be.

  I could see he enjoyed me, too, and Pearl was out of her mind with the excitement of discovery – as she told everyone in Manhattan on the phone in the next hour. “I’ve got this lovely Yiddishe madel from Holland who loves sex and will do anything you want,” she broadcast.

  So that was the beginning of a pleasant if not too profitable relationship with Pearl. She was what we call a “mensch” in Yiddish, good-hearted, good-humored, spontaneous, and warm.

  Pearl had a black pimp somewhere in the background who kept her more or less on the poverty line. Her clients were mostly men from the garment district, not the bosses, but the middle-management guys who paid only $25 or $50 tops. I remember times when I would servi
ce my clients in their workrooms after the staff had left for the day.

  The men, in threes or fours, would pull two racks of dresses around to make an L-shaped screen and put some other garments on the floor and make love to me one by one.

  Facilities were never the best, and one of them would always bring a toilet roll to use in lieu of towels or showers. After I stood up following one of those two-hour sessions I would have imprinted on my back impressions of zippers, hooks and eyes, buttons, and any other trimmings in their current line.

  Pearl’s financial arrangement with me was forty-sixty percent, so for every $25 date I got $15. It wasn’t much, but in quantity it did make a difference to my $150 from the consulate job.

  For the first three weeks I was able to take customers back to the apartment while Sonia was still out of town, but when she returned things became tough. I had to take them either to Pearl’s whory whorehouse all the way downtown, or borrow a crummy room belonging to a fag friend and buy him a shirt or a bottle of after-shave as payment now and again.

  Obviously that was not a satisfactory arrangement, and I still remember standing in the street weary and cold at three A.M. trying to get a taxi after a grueling night’s work.

  I had already solved the daytime transportation problem the way all Dutch people do, by buying a bicycle from my first earned money with Pearl. I would ride around to my lunchtime and early-evening assignments on this and save time and money.

  When I first went into the business I was extremely naive and not very discreet, probably because I saw no harm in what I was doing. From the beginning I could justify to myself what the whole thing was about. However, the Saturday afternoon before Sonia came home I was in for a nasty experience, because I had failed to cover my tracks. Two customers had just left, and while expecting another I was cleaning and oiling my bicycle when there was a ring on the doorbell. In my naiveté I opened it without looking through the peephole, and a man in a blue uniform pushed his way in.