The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

by Xaviera Hollander

  In those days I was not a madam yet, and I had lots of trouble rounding up eight girls who would participate. Then my boyfriend, Larry, had to go over to Alexander’s and buy some plastic and rubber sheets to protect my bed, because the scene was to be held at my place.

  The girls had been warned, before they came over, not to go to the bathroom, and were promised a $25 bonus on top of the $50 fee for the one who peed the longest. Just for good measure, I told them to drink a lot of beer before leaving for my place.

  The producer arrived slightly crocked and drank a half-bottle of Scotch before he lay naked on the waterproofed bed and the bizarre scene began. All this time the movie projector was showing blue films on the wall, and now I sat on a chair with the stopwatch to time the girls as the first one came in and stood astride him and relieved herself.

  Then the second, third, and fourth girls performed. Urine was starting to overflow on my bed and onto the floor, and I was getting fed up with the nauseating spectacle.

  By the time the last girl had gone, the place looked like a pigsty with puddles around the floor and pee in the producer’s hair, eyes, and everywhere. A little Puerto Rican girl with a bladder infection won the contest by maintaining a weak dribble for sixty-five seconds.

  But he still hadn’t had a climax, so I took the biggest dildo around and jammed it in his rear end, and he popped his cookies. Then I threw him in the tub with lots of Vitabath and scrubbed him all over, took him out, and dried him off, then remembered I had not washed his hair, and had to bathe him all over again.

  The beer, the birds, and the bath cost him $600, and he was pleased to pay the price. However, I didn’t want my house turned into a public urinal ever again, so I sent him to a rival madam.

  Mr. Filthyrich is something else again. This incredibly handsome, intelligent, charming, and wealthy man wants you to feed him your shit – literally – with a silver spoon out of a plate. One girl I know makes a fortune by telephoning him when she feels the urge, and he always tells her to get in a cab and come right over.

  But most of my girls don’t like going there, easy money though it is, because Mr. Filthyrich at thirty-two is so handsome and would make some girl a gorgeous lover that they can’t bring themselves to do what he wants.

  One thing more that especially bothers me about Mr. Filthyrich is that the crockery he uses for his revolting deviation is a blue Delft plate – my country’s most treasured export!

  Henry the Eighth is one of the heaviest “filth freaks” in the whole of my black book, and has been thrown out of every respectable hotel in New York because he is such a big pig.

  In truth he looks more like a frog than a pig. He’s a repulsive man with olive eyes that sort of pop out of his head, and a fat slobbery mouth.

  If a girl is smart, she can get a lot of money from him, but it takes a lot of patience and a strong stomach. This big fat Jewish slob’s hang-up is ordering huge quantities of food up to his room and wolfing it down while he gets stoned on grass, amyl nitrate, and other stimulants.

  He pushes it all into his mouth in large fistfuls while grunting and snorting like a pig; then, when he can’t fit any more in his mouth, he starts hurling it around the room. He throws peas, carrots, chicken bones, gravy, all over the room, in the light fixtures, the draperies, the girl even catches it on her dress, and, of course, there’s food all over the bed.

  Then, depending on how freaky his mood is, he wants the girl to kick him, slap him, tie him down, spit in his face, and sometimes even pee on him. Finally he gets his rocks off when the girl uses a strong vibrator on his penis while he is slobbering with his liver-lips on her vagina.

  You can imagine the screams the maids let out when they come in to clean up his room next morning.

  It’s a repulsive scene, but of course he means well, he’s just a big baby. However, that’s not the way the hotel managers look at his behavior, and that is why he has freaked his way through every hotel in Manhattan.

  When Henry the Eighth first called me up, he had a suite in the Plaza. Last time I heard from him was from a rundown motel on Tenth Avenue in the Twenties!

  14. THE BUSINESS OF PLEASURE

  Everyone seems to think that high-class prostitutes, especially madams, have a lot of money. Lawyers in particular must believe this, because they always charge me three or four times what they would charge a regular client for their time and effort.

  Now it is true that my business – as my stockbroker would put it – does generate a large cash flow. The top madams in town can make $4,000 a week during a good week in January, February, and March, but the rest of the year it’s much more likely to be $2,000 a week. And expenses are large the year round.

  I almost always have four or five girls working in my three-bedroom apartment from Monday through Thursday nights. On weekends, however, the johns desert New York and go back to their families in Long Island, Ohio, or wherever they are from. Summer weekends, they take off as early as Thursday to go out to the Hamptons.

  In addition to the girls at the apartment, I am usually sending another five girls out to apartments and hotel rooms each night. Some customers, and this is particularly true of Latins, want to make a big occasion out of seeing one of my girls. Dinner, champagne, a floor show, these johns want to lavish on the prostitute before fucking her. So I won’t send a girl out on a three-hour dinner date for under two hundred dollars. But the rich South Americans have their own style and don’t mind paying to maintain it.

  Most of my customers come to me as a result of word-of-mouth publicity. If somebody arrives at my place and he looks like a wealthy man and can spend large sums of money, I’ll first of all ease the price up above my fifty-dollar minimum. If I think he can go for more money, I give him two or three girls and, bending my rule, let him pay up front. For a trip around the world, if indeed the girl is willing to perform this intimate service with her tongue around the john’s behind, we usually charge double. If he hasn’t enough cash with him, I accept a check, even if he’s new to my place. You can tell if a man is wealthy.

  When a man leaves my place and he’s from a city like Washington, Chicago, or Philadelphia, and not New York, I give him a few of my interior-decorator cards and ask him to give them out to his groovy friends and tell them to just call me anytime.

  When a Texan walks into my place, the price is immediately a C-note, a hundred dollars. They generally are the best-spending customers I get. For his money a customer is entitled to one half-hour with a girl – and no money back if not delighted.

  We squeeze in the little brokers for a quick fifty dollars. They’re not demanding because they’re always horny. They come up often, and they’re not the type to hang around for three hours drinking up my booze. Basically they’re very easygoing.

  Sometimes I get men who are impotent and want to eat up two or three girls while still not being able to come. They waste a lot of time and are usually the ones who give me a hard time when it’s time to pay. But most of my customers reach their rocks off in much less time than the half-hour due them. Then if they want another go, even with the same girl, and even within the half-hour, they must pay again.

  I split fifty-fifty with my girls, and every night is pay day. The girls I send over to hotel rooms usually come back to me each night after they’ve finished work to give me my fifty-percent madam’s fee. Sometimes, however, they are so tired that it is not until the next day they bring my money to me. Almost always my outside girls are honest and split fairly with me. Since both they and their customers need me, they would not lie. For instance, if I send a girl to a hotel room and instead of only one fuck, she makes the customer climax three times, she could collect $150, and tell me he came only once. But this almost never happens, especially since the customer likes to remind me how much he’s paying me. Maybe he hopes I will give him a discount someday.

  A lot of men seem to wake up horny in the morning and would like to see me, but can’t get to my place. For them I have a spe
cial service. I let them telephone me, and I talk them into an orgasm while they jerk off. For this I usually don’t get paid, but I know they’ll be back as paying customers some night.

  Quite a few of these, what I call dial-a-jerk calls, come from masochists and slaves who jerk off while I describe how I am going to tie down their balls and put pins through them, then I’m going to beat their behinds with my steel-bristle brush and handcuff them and whip them with my cat-o’-nine-tails. But to tell the truth, I am trying to stop this service now, because I am usually up until five in the morning carrying out the administrative duties of a madam, and just getting my beauty sleep when these horny guys or sickies wake me up.

  Some of the girls live in my apartment for a week or a month at a time. For this they pay me $125 a week, and, of course, they get the first choice of the johns who come in, especially the nooners who want a quick fuck or a blow-job at lunchtime. So the girls don’t object to this rent arrangement, and it helps me, because my apartments always run five hundred to $1,000 a month.

  In order to keep my business lively and growing, I have had to adopt that very American system of credit. For instance, one of the biggest stock-brokerage houses on Wall Street has a credit rating with me of up to two thousand dollars. They send their best out-of-town executives and customers up to me, and once a week the vice-president puts the cash owed me in an envelope and sends it to me with a messenger from the firm.

  I take a lot of my payments in personal checks, but this, of course, can be risky. As in any other business, it is impossible to completely escape bad checks and bad accounts.

  I keep a little red book in which I record my operating accounts. On the left side of the page I list the customers by name and how much they pay. On the right side of the page are the names of the girl or girls each john saw. This way I can be sure each girl gets paid correctly. I also know how much came in each day. In the back of the book I keep a list of my charge customers and how much they owe me. I also keep a list of the checks that bounce, so I can have Larry, my boyfriend, try to collect for me.

  Also in the red book I keep a record of the money I invest. The money I send to my mother in Holland is circled in red. I have told my mother to invest this money so that if anything ever happens to me she will be protected.

  Until my name and picture hit the press of the world in connection with the New York police payoff scandals, my mother thought I was an interior decorator. I was able to conceal the fact of my frequent moves by having her write to me in care of Larry. She was able to accept that I lived – as I told her – with Larry, who was hoping to marry me someday.

  Whenever I find I have more than a thousand dollars in cash lying around, I telephone Larry and say, “I just saw George,” or “George was here.” That means I have a G, a thousand dollars, to go into the box. I have to be careful on the phones, because frequently I find they are tapped.

  But now, let me show you the other side of the ledger. My huge outlay.

  In the back of my red book I see that I am owed $8,000 in credit accounts and checks that have bounced. I will be lucky if I collect $3,500 of that money. My yearly loss because of maltreatment in business is more than twenty percent of my total earnings.

  Actually, if my business was legitimate, I would deduct a substantial percentage for depreciation of my body. I look into the mirror these days and see how tired I look. I am only twenty-eight, but prostitutes age fast from the late nights worrying about arrests, and only a few hours of sleep. Fortunately, I don’t drink, smoke, or take drugs, or else I would look even older.

  To give you some idea of how same people think they can beat a prostitute out of money, a man in Long Island who entertained his friends at my place finally owed me almost $2,000, and I sent him a nicely typed bill for interior-design consultation. When he didn’t pay, Larry telephoned him and the customer said he had sent me a check and it had been cashed out in California. I said this wasn’t true, since I cash all my checks in New York, and he then let Larry see the canceled check. It was made out to me, and someone had forged my name. I have seen this trick before. This john had indeed made the check out to me and then had somebody forge my name and cash the check in California and give the money back to him. Then he not only kept the money, but took a tax deduction for business expenses.

  So, as I say, to begin with I have a twenty-percent. loss off the top, and that represents a ten-percent cash outlay, because every night I pay my girls in cash their half of what they earn, even if I accept a check or let the customer charge.

  My biggest outlay is when the police raid my apartment and arrest me and my girls. So far this year I have had three disastrous busts. One was in March, a second one in April, and a third in late July. Each time I am busted I have to bail myself and all my girls out, pay the fines against us, and most of all pay the lawyers. This is not counting what I pay off to the police. These payoffs averaged over one thousand dollars per month and were spread all over the precinct. Once or twice police officers told me they quashed complaints, but the fact is I have just been forced to move for the fourth time in less than a year.

  After every bust I have to move to a new apartment in a different precinct. That means moving vans, new wall-to-wall carpeting, having the phones reinstalled, and trying to get the business going again at a new address.

  So now maybe you get a better idea of some of the expenses big madams are faced with. Just the ordinary expenses of running a house like mine are high. I have a maid every night, sometimes a butler, and the liquor my customers drink also runs up.

  In my business we also have unusual petty-cash expenditures, which can become large items. Take for instance the large-size lingerie, black fishnet tights, panties, bras, garterbelts, and wigs I have to buy and keep in my closet for the transvestites who want to be all dressed up by me and the girls. These delicate feminine underthings don’t last long, being stretched out of shape as they are by the freaks I put them on. And they have to be washed constantly, because these weirdos usually come all over them or in them. But lawyers and payoffs are what hit me the hardest. In the last eight months they have come to about $25,000.

  I paid $400, to the police, just to get my black book back after my last arrest. This book, which I have brought up to date myself, is the heart of my business. Just as I keep all my financial records in my red book, in the black book I keep all the information about my customers. Names, addresses, telephone numbers. If I have a home phone number, I put it in brackets to remind me not to call unless in an emergency like a bouncing check. I keep little notes on the johns, such as whether they spend fifty or a hundred dollars, if they want two girls at a time, drink a lot, weirdo, slave, con-artist, big cock, sweet person, shy, likes variety, likes to eat pussy, pays extra for around the world, and COD – that means get paid up front, he’s stingy, or tries to chisel you down.

  A typical entry in my book would look like this: “Peter Pan;…; OK; Lolitas; diminutive.”

  Translated this means that the john called Peter Pan pays “…” – which is code for $50. His credit is good (OK). He likes very young girls (Lolitas). He has a small cock (diminutive). Another john in my book is coded as follows: “Steve Supercock; *; COD; Groups; S.F.”

  Steve’s name in the book speaks for itself as to the size of his cock. He pays “*” – or $100. His credit isn’t too good, and he haggles about price, so get the money up front (COD). He likes making the scene with more than one girl at a time (Groups). He’s an out-of-towner from San Francisco (S.F.).

  If I put down “MSS” after a name, the john is a freak, a slave, and I get out my goodie bag when he comes over. Sometimes I have the real name of a customer in the book followed by his pseudonym. But in any case I know who all of them really are, but go along with their desire to be called by the fake name they have taken. So it is easy to see why I can’t afford to lose my books, which are really the most valuable things I own. I have to get them back, and naturally I pay off to do so.
r />   Another important service also costs me much more than it should. In my four moves this past year I always go through the same real-estate agent. This guy is socking it to me on fees and commissions, he cheats me left and right, but I stay with him because he always gives me a cool building. He knows the manager of the building, he knows the superintendent, and he knows that there are other girls working in the building. All of this is so important to me that I cannot argue about being hit over the head with expenses. And my real-estate broker will take nothing out in trade with me.

  I use this expression, “take it out in trade,” a lot. I do indeed operate on a barter basis. A man who runs a private country club in New Jersey brings me most of my liquor in cases that he takes out of the club’s liquor supply. I give him a girl for a case of liquor and pay the girl $25. This man is usually quite horny, and once he wanted five girls in a night. He gave me three cases of liquor and a check for a hundred dollars. My florist gave me two beautiful big indoor plants worth $80 for one quickie. My jeweler gives me a good discount for a screw now and then, and there is even this old Jewish shoemaker down on Ninth Street who makes the finest shoes and takes his pay in a girl. He made me a beautiful pair of shoes worth easily $50, and when I came to get them he put me in the chair of his dirty little office, I only took my pants off, put my legs up and apart, and the old cobbler gets it up enough to get in me, and boom, boom, in less than two minutes he comes and I go off with the shoes.

  A furniture manufacturer I know gave me two chairs and a chaise longue for a few blow-jobs, and even the staff of the Chinese restaurant downstairs in my building brings up Chinese food at a discount. In return I give these Chinese boys a girl for half-price, $25. This is in addition to their once-a-month freebie in exchange for free meals.

  I tip the five doormen in the building $10 a week, but the superintendent prefers that I give him a girl twice a month, which in my system of accounting is worth one hundred dollars. The building manager I tip on the same basis, so it costs me $200 a month in trade to take care of the two of them. These gifts are worthwhile, because after an arrest a prostitute gets evicted right away, but this didn’t happen to me after my last, well-publicized arrest. I screwed the manager an extra time, and as a special favor fucked one of his friends as well. Thus I was allowed to stay in my apartment until I was ready to move at leisure into a new place.