The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

by Xaviera Hollander

  And that was the beginning of a swinging period for me, even though I was going steady with Paul and was still very much in love with him.

  However, the syndrome was disconcertingly similar to the Carl affair. As with Carl, I confessed the episode with Lisa and Marvin to Paul, more or less hoping he would realize what he was driving me to. But instead of commiserating, his first words were: “When can we all get together?”

  Paul had never been in a swing, and I should have made sure it stayed that way. I had had enough bitter experience to know that converting straights into swingers usually pushes them past the point of no return.

  But in order to please Paul, I organized a dinner date with the couple, after which we all went back to his apartment. I had to orchestrate the scene and even though I didn’t want the swing, I did not want to be regarded as the wet blanket.

  We pulled Paul’s bed out into the middle of the room and all piled on naked and started doing our thing. I began by kissing my man’s nipples, intending gradually to work my way down to his penis, but when I got there, Lisa the shrinking violet had already arrived.

  She was sucking his cock and all over his body, and she obviously dug him. And I could see it was mutual. They were completely engrossed in each other, while I was going crazy with jealousy.

  If I have no emotions for the man I am with, then I can swing, but if I am in love I can’t stand the fact that he is enjoying himself with another woman, even if that other woman had been my own lover for one night.

  That night I couldn’t face the reality of my man enjoying himself with Lisa; fucking, sucking and eating her delicious pussy. I got so upset I walked from the room with a long face and phoned my answering service, just to keep myself occupied.

  Marvin, whom I liked talking to but for whom I had no physical desire, came out and started eating and kissing me all over, but his mouth was too wet and slobbery, and I was in no mood to have his saliva drip all over me.

  Finally I was too uptight to take it any longer, so I suggested everyone go home and leave Paul and me alone to sleep together. This didn’t appeal to my lover very much, and he was surly the rest of the night.

  More and more on our few precious nights together he would ask me: “Why don’t you call up a girl friend and invite her around?”

  As I really loved him so much, I would go out of my way to turn girls from straights into swingers, even if they didn’t turn me on. It would occasionally be fun for half an hour, then Paul or the girl would get possessive and act as though I did not exist. One girl actually cried when I pointed out she was the one that should go home.

  The rot was really setting into our relationship. Now I did all the giving and Paul the taking.

  My life was hectic at that time, as it always is in winter, when men are hornier for some reason or other. And the combination of the strain on the love affair and my professional life started to exhaust me.

  Our meetings became more infrequent and fleeting, and eventually reached the point where I lost all physical desire for Paul. I even started introducing him to my girl friends without feeling any jealousy whatsoever.

  However, Paul and I did share a mutual telephone hang-up, and we still spent many hours on the phone talking and joking. You may call it telephonitis. Or perhaps it was merely an extension of our Continental sense of humor. In any case, we continued to relate to each other on the phone.

  I love to groove on voices, and I sometimes think I can almost tell the way a person looks by talking to him on the phone for a while.

  I am often absolutely right – and occasionally disastrously wrong, as in the case of Nestor, the hot-line caller from Detroit.

  Nestor was given my name by a client of mine who came from Nestor’s own hometown. He took to making lengthy, expensive phone calls every day for weeks. He really sounded divine.

  From the sound of his voice I imagined him to be six-foot-three, built like a pro football player, and devastatingly handsome.

  He was a little arrogant, but in a nice way. He was rich, but not braggy. And he told me about his magnificent townhouse in a nice, unassuming way. His calls made me feel good while I was working, and I looked forward to hearing from him each afternoon.

  Eventually Nestor extended an invitation for me to spend a weekend with him in Detroit, and even hinted it could lead to more serious things. I accepted with alacrity.

  For the few days before our scheduled weekend together I was floating on air and telling everybody, “I think this is it, I think I’ve found the man I’m going to marry.”

  On the Friday when I was packing to leave, he called me and suggested I pack some dirty movies, just for laughs.

  “My projector broke down,” I lied to him. I didn’t want to convert this straight, masculine-sounding man into anything freaky. I wanted to start out on the right footing and remain there. “Never mind the projector,” he said. “I have a good one.”

  “Why are you stressing the point about those lousy movies?” I asked. “I’m getting away from that scene, and I don’t want to be faced with them on my weekend.”

  “Well, darling, just bring them along for the hell of it,” he urged.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But please don’t expect me to watch them.” Then I left for the airport. All the way to Detroit I fantasized about the weekend to come with this multimillionaire who, my friend had told me, had the reputation of also being very good in bed.

  Nestor was at the airport to meet me – all skinny five-foot-five of him. In rapid succession my dreams began to crumble. Not only had my hero feet of clay, but legs of matchwood and the face of a midget mustachioed magician. The nice arrogance that came through on the phone was in reality an almost insufferable snottiness.

  The only thing that was true to the image was his wealth. Nestor brought me to his magnificent townhouse, which had exquisitely decorated rooms and old masters on the walls.

  But apart from that, he had all the charm of a turtle and was as amusing as a traffic accident.

  The house was very quiet, and all I could hear was this cross-eyed Siamese cat with no claws meowing around the place.

  So Nestor played with the cat, fed it, turned the television on, and we watched all these people from the Apollo walking around on the moon.

  Around midnight I was starving hungry, so he finally put a brisket of beef in the oven, which was great. I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in a year, because I was just running out for a quick bite to eat in between working.

  You would think I would love this kind of country atmosphere, but in honesty, I was bored stiff.

  All this man did was fuck me, one, two, three times, turn on ten different vibrators and dildos, then start putting on all the movies, broke two of mine and promised to splice them in the morning, which he never did.

  Then at three-thirty A.M. we sat down to dinner, and at five A.M. we finally went to sleep.

  At nine A.M. I was up and peppy, and I wanted to make a few phone calls to New York. But Nestor was snoring away, and he got mad at me. “Why don’t you go to sleep till about three this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Sleep until three in the afternoon? In New York I am up and out at nine A.M. – always. I never sleep more than four hours,” I replied.

  So he got up irritably, and all he did was change the sheets and put the old ones in the Laundromat, wash the dishes, and give the cross-eyed cat some food.

  I helped him with the sheets, and I said, “I could do this at home, too. I wanted to have some interesting conversation, go to the theater or go out for a bite to eat, and perhaps see some of the city.”

  Then I made up my mind I wanted to take a plane back to New York. I called the airport and made a booking for four o’clock that afternoon.

  As we were sitting in the kitchen just before I was to leave, I said, “Since you offered on the phone to pay for my trip, would you mind giving me the eighty-four dollars before we get into the car; otherwise you might forget.”

  The
n Nestor started yelling at me. “What do you think I am? I’m not one of your married ones that pay you, I am a bachelor. I didn’t hire you to come over.”

  “I know you didn’t hire a whore,” I said. “And I didn’t charge you for it. Because if I did charge you for being fucked five times, it would have cost you several hundred dollars. So all I ask you is that you keep your promise to pay for my ticket, because I’m not spending money to come over and see you.”

  “Girls come from all over the country to see me.” He started to preen slightly. “Even from California.”

  “Bully for them,” I said. “But I’m not a charity whore.”

  Then he started accusing me of being too independent.

  “You think you are one smart little chick,” he snarled, “because you have managed to save a lousy few thousand dollars. But if you were really smart,” he added, “you would marry a man like me.” He really wanted to keep me there.

  “I’m a nice Jewish boy, I’m thirty-five years old now, and my mother is getting upset because I’m not married. She’s always trying to fix me up with rich Jewish girls, but I don’t want a rich girl. I need a woman, I want to have children.”

  “Well, not with me, baby,” I said. “You bore me senseless.”

  “You’re insulting me,” he said. “I wanted you to marry me and have my children, and you are so ungrateful. Besides, think of all the good business I could have sent you from General Motors!”

  16. SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

  The last time I got busted, the New York newspapers described one of my unfortunate codefendants as “Madam Xaviera’s pimp.” While this may have made good copy, it was hardly the truth. The truth is, modern madams of any stature don’t have pimps.

  Street hookers have pimps, madams have boyfriends or lovers, or, in my case, both; and there is a demi-monde of difference between the two. Private call girls either have boyfriends or, occasionally, pimps.

  A pimp lives off girls’ earnings, a boyfriend rarely does. I don’t deny there may be some fringe benefits attached to being the successful madam’s man, but as a rule her earnings, as with any other businesswoman, are her own. Apart from gifts for specific occasions, I have never spent money on a man, and I prefer it the other way around. But in Madeleine’s case, the man she made her fourth husband had an ex-wife and several kids to support, and she was very rich in real-estate investments and savings. My feeling there was that the poor little guy deserved some compensation for leaving his wife and kids.

  Pimps are usually involved in gambling, drugs, and white slavery, and the pimp never wants the girl to get out of the business – unless she is no good at her work anymore – whereas the boyfriend does want his girl to give it up. My own boyfriend would love to see me, if not out altogether, then a one-hundred-percent nonparticipating executive madam.

  The pimp is traditionally a polygamous animal who keeps several girls – “wives-in-law.” The structure is somewhat familylike, with the pimp as the master and the girls in friendly competition. Girls with pimps are known to work harder and longer (sometimes around the clock), and the pimp usually collects all the money – and no cheating around, or else he beats them up. It seems to me that it must be some kind of animal instinct that makes these girls enslave themselves to one man this way. Yet some girls do try to hold out money, and if he suspects this is going on, he will make spot checks of “his stable.” The pimp supplies the necessities for his girls – rent, furniture, and clothing; this latter often purchased “hot” from others in the life. On weekends he often takes them out to show off – to various nightclubs and discotheques and the more famous after-hour places.

  The boyfriend, on the other hand, is generally monogamous. There is a rule in my house that the girls must respect the boyfriend, or lovers, of the madam, and any fooling around with “the old man” will result in instant dismissal of the girl.

  In Georgette’s case the situation is a weird reverse. Georgette’s stockbroker boyfriend, Stephen, is interested only in drugs, booze, and broads, in that order. Her solution is to pay her own girls to sleep with him. That way, she rationalizes, he doesn’t have to stray – at least not outside her front door. He is not really what you call a pimp, yet Georgette is always crying poverty. As stingy as she is to her girls, that’s how generous she is to him. I’d estimate that ninety percent of her money goes to him – his “trips” and his girls.

  In my house, the only one who cheats is me. My private life is like a perpetual triangle, with myself and my steady boyfriend, Larry, as the constant side, and the lovers who pass through – some quicker than others – as the variable third.

  As I’ve said before, I am an emotional person, and I have my ups and downs, and if my boyfriend weren’t there, safe and sure, and if I did not occasionally fall in love, I would get very depressed and couldn’t keep my head straight.

  Larry has been my backstop boyfriend since my first experience in Puerto Rico. On top of that, he functions as an administrative assistant, taking care of all banking, tips, payoffs, bad debts, bail, and any other money matters. If somebody tries to move in on me, he runs interference and checks them out like a private detective.

  He is honest, reliable, loves me deeply, is solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Larry is not quite the intellectual I am looking for, and he does not share my interest in art, literature, music, or the theater, even though this concern has been sadly neglected since I became professional. He is not strong enough for me, either. What I really need is a man who is superintelligent and someone who will bang his fist on the table and say to me: “Goddamnit, this is it, now you do what I want.” Someone I can love, adore, and most of all, respect. I’d like him to be good-looking and masculine, but most important, I want him to be stronger in personality than I am.

  My pet name for Larry is “El Schnuko,” the schnook – which in a friendly way means, the good-natured friend who does anything I want. In other words, he helps me around the house, does the vacuum-cleaning, empties the ashtrays, shops for groceries, takes care of stocking the bar, packs the cartons each time I have to move. And if I lay back and let him, he would turn me into a Jewish American Princess. But this doesn’t mean I don’t love Larry in my own way. He is tall and attractive and has a marvelous head of silver hair. When my friends or the girls refer to him as “the silver fox,” it’s meant strictly as a compliment.

  Larry is comfortable to have around, especially on Saturdays and Sundays after a tough week of four hours’ sleep a night. As a hard-working madam I am not up to going out to football games, going to cocktail parties, or dropping in on friends. So Larry comes over and keeps me company.

  He has been an absolute darling, considering what I have put him through. I have insulted him, hurt his feelings, and stepped on his heart. From time to time I have told Larry I am in love with someone, and many times I have cheated right under his nose. But I tell him they are all just ships passing in the night.

  I let him know about the time I dragged the Negro doorman upstairs, screwed his pants off, and gave him a ten-dollar tip because he really deserved it. And the time the dentist’s laughing gas got me so horny I made him send the nurse on an errand, and we made love in the chair.

  Larry gets hurt and angry when I tell him about these things, even though I have never led him to believe I am anything but promiscuous. I have also tried to include him in some of the extra activity, but it is usually a failure because he gets so jealous.

  One time I took him to the nudist colony in New Jersey to join in the swinging there, and unfortunately for Larry, soon after we walked in I saw the beautifully shaped suntanned behind of an attractive man, and there was nothing I would rather do than stick my tongue in between his buttocks. No pussytime today. My mood is man.

  The man was a gym teacher named Phil who was at the camp with his not-too-attractive girl friend, and they were both swingers looking for partners.

  No problem, we were ready. At least I was. Larry was not turned on at
all by the girl, and once inside their cabin he became petulant and just sat back there on the bed while she was going down on him. But not me: I was like a wolf after Phil’s ass.

  Phil lay there, athletically shaped, and I squatted on the floor alongside him. He then wrapped his legs in a strong grip around my neck, which put me in a perfect position to devour his delicious buttocks and slowly work my way up to the more tantalizing parts of his body.

  Larry was sneaking sidelong glances our way, and I could see he was angry, but I was too preoccupied with Phil to care about Larry’s jealousy.

  Phil’s fresh-smelling body encouraged me to continue this devastating play. By now fully stimulated, I had crawled on the bed and was holding and caressing his pulsating penis, while he was exciting me tremendously with his vibrating tongue movements at my hardened clitoris. In ecstasy my hips were undulating up and down, to and fro in the classic rhythm of sex, and he in turn picked up the symphony of motion and proceeded to propel his manliness to the very depth of my warm succulent mouth. Our motion grew into a magnificent crescendo of our act of love.

  For me, this is the most delicious way of making love to a man, if it is someone who knows what he is doing. But meanwhile, I have to eat his cock, feel that penis to such an extent that it is about to explode in my mouth. It is just as much a psychological as well as physical mixture. If a man lies between my legs and eats me, even though he may have a better angle of doing it, it does not turn me on as much as the mutual “lingus.” It has to be a two-way street, and both parties should be enjoying each other equally.

  With Phil, who had multiple orgasms, it was the most fantastic experience. I climaxed almost immediately, breaking a promise Larry and I had made, that in swings we could give our bodies, but not our orgasms. Larry just sat there grinding his teeth to a powder and making fists of his hands. His poor partner must have gotten an inferiority complex when his usually big hard-on melted like an ice-cream stick.