Exit!

by Grizelda Grootboom

  One man overheard us, immediately booked me and bought me drinks, which kept coming. When he left, I followed him to his car. He took me to his guest house, we had sex, and then we slept. I earned R300, I got an overnight stay, had a hot shower, was able to freshen up, and then had breakfast the next morning. I didn’t think that was too bad.

  That was the importance of making a good impression with the bar ladies.

  But Johannesburg was becoming less kind to me – there was too much moving around, and every day was a battle, with new places and people, which meant I always had to be alert. I needed to settle with a club for a while where money was good. I was getting more professional, and I still needed to feed my drug habit.

  What else was there for me?

  I went to visit Lisa, who persuaded me to go back to Port Elizabeth to a more exclusive escort agency owned by Sunette. I had met Sunette in Port Elizabeth the first time I was there, and had heard about her posh escort strip club. Lisa suggested that I had a good chance of working there now.

  Outside Johannesburg I walked on the highways and then hitchhiked with several lorry drivers to Port Elizabeth. In return for the rides, the drivers received my services, but some of them abused me. They had a bad tendency of spitting on me, and they often told me they thought that what I was doing was disgusting.

  After having sex, one trucker spat on me, saying I was a useless woman. I still remember his saliva on my face – another blow to my fragile self-esteem.

  When I arrived at Sunette’s escort agency in central Port Elizabeth, I found a dreary building squashed between two double-storey houses on a small street. It was painted blue on the outside and had a black roof. A sign outside read ‘Lounge Bar’. It wasn’t very inviting, not what I had expected from this upmarket club. The windows were painted black.

  Inside was a downstairs bar/lounge, and tables with poles. Upstairs, clients could use the themed rooms for their entertainment – there were Indian- or Asian-themed rooms, and rooms with different colour schemes.

  I found out later that most of the clients were Afrikaners engaged in the trading of perlemeon, so money was always forthcoming.

  I had never stayed for very long in any other place, but I ended up being employed by this escort agency for three years, until I was twenty-six.

  The club was quiet and had more mature ladies. While I was there, I managed to have my own place to stay, although I was not permitted to have clients at my place, and I had some freedom and some protection. All of us girls who worked there had our own advertising in newspapers and on websites, and when we weren’t working we were mostly inside the escort agency waiting to be picked up. I could also be contacted on my cellphone by clients who had read my adverts.

  Sunette’s club gave me the personal security I had been craving – I felt safe. But my income wasn’t that stable as it depended on how many clients I had. I never knew how much money I would get, so I had to go easy with my drugs. It was easy enough to get them, though – nearby, I could buy coke, weed, anything.

  Apart from condoms, I never used protection against pregnancy. Some clients would give more money if they didn’t use a condom. But now that I was there, I wasn’t concerned about anything other than getting high.

  When I arrived at the escort agency every evening, I would already be high on coke. Then I would take a blue ecstasy tablet. Ecstasy lasts a long time in the system and, along with my drinks, would hold me over from 7pm to midnight. There are different strengths of the drug: green, blue and white, with green the strongest and white the weakest.

  During the early-evening hours, my mind would be reeling, trying to prepare for the night’s clients. But the escort agency would be quiet, and that’s when I would play on the poles with my songs, working on new moves, just enjoying it.

  I had always loved stripping. I was on the pole every minute I could be. This kept my body very firm, and made me feel sexy. I’d entertain myself by grabbing a pole and wrapping my body around it, dancing to the music.

  That’s why I enjoyed stripping: it took my mind out of the escort agency.

  Sunette was an Afrikaans lady in her late thirties. She was chubby, with dark hair, and was very confident. She was protective about our safety because she knew she needed us for business. She was also an aggressive negotiator, both with the girls and with clients. Nobody messed with Sunette! Sometimes, regular clients would chat with Sunette at the bar for a while, maybe to make friends – but a new client didn’t get to have social chats with the boss.

  She didn’t negotiate with clients on price. If the client didn’t want to pay for a full hour, then she would tell them to go away. If they then said they only wanted half an hour, she wouldn’t agree either, because she knew that the Viagra would last an hour anyway. Some guys thought they could negotiate pricing this way, but Sunette didn’t play around: she’d state up front what had to be paid, no cutting corners.

  When they were talking about me, I once overheard a footballer say, ‘But she’s a black chick,’ as though I was worth less money than the white girls. I told Sunette that I won’t go with this client if I was going to be insulted like that. She was mostly interested in the cash, though: she told me not to worry as the guy would have to pay up front.

  Sunette was clever. I might complain about having to go out to do a strip show when I’d rather go on a booking with a client, because travelling to an outside strip show was not paid time – I could earn more money having lots of clients than I could doing one strip show outside the escort agency. When we complained, she shut us up by giving us drugs. The drugs worked and we’d end up doing what she wanted anyway. When she liked our work, she’d give us a bottle of alcohol as a reward.

  The bookings went like this:

  Sex meant intercourse or penetration. A blow job was a different fee. Lap dance was touch-and-feel while dancing naked, but no sex. If the client wanted to climax, he had to pay me extra, right there and then, and that became my money. The anal fee was higher, and involved penetration – I never did that one. It was left to the girls who couldn’t get other clients. If a client paid R600 for a short session, I needed to be prepared to give him the works, and he would decide along the way. A threesome was two girls and one guy; it brought in R700 an hour, which we girls split.

  There was a girl at the agency, Tammy, who started to perform threesomes with me. Sometimes a client wanted a white and a black girl to satisfy a fantasy. Or Tammy and I would play, offering the client the impression of being innocent and young. Tammy had long black hair but a boyish body – she looked like a rock star. I would rub my skin with oil mixed with black hair spray so it was a shiny pitch-black, and my hair would be pulled back flat as if it was shaved. We’d ‘play’ like this, with the lights dimmed.

  A fantasy booking meant playing a character; it cost more since clothes and room decoration was involved. Some of the fantasies I had to play were being a young girl, an innocent young Afrikaans girl on a farm, or being raped by an uncle. I felt I had enough experience to make this look realistic, and I relied on my drugs to stop my emotions from overwhelming me.

  It’s a competitive business, so I had to learn how to keep my clients happy, how to satisfy them, so they would keep coming back to me. I could give a massage as an ‘extra’, and there were also clients who wanted you to swallow when they ejaculated – that needed an extra payment as well. We weren’t supposed to do this, because all money was supposed to go through the escort agency. Some regular clients were on credit, so Sunette would lose money if they didn’t pay her directly for a booking.

  If a regular client wanted to negotiate price with me once we were alone in the room, and didn’t pull out his money, I would say no. If he asked for extra first without showing he intended to pay, I wouldn’t even bother – I took it as an indication that he might tell our secrets to the boss.

  But if a regular or a new client put out the cash so I can see it, then I would go ahead and give him extra service anyway.
No words said. I could get into trouble with the agency management if I encouraged such clients, but my excuse was that I didn’t know if a client had already paid for the booking or not.

  For new clients, we girls would see if he had money to spend by giving more than what he had booked for. After fifty minutes, the boss would knock on the door to indicate that time was nearly up. It was then, in the last five or so minutes of the hour-long session, when the client was about to get dressed and while his trousers were still open, that the extra service was given. She’d then get the extra cash directly from him. But with regular clients, we would do what they had booked for, unless they first showed their cash up front. And we never talked about it.

  You can also get clients who wanted to get their service in private areas, or in cars, or with violence. I never used to fight them back, because by then I expected it. I lived each day for the drugs alone – violence was the price I felt I had to pay to feed my habit.

  We girls spent a lot of time naked, both at the agency and when we were at home resting. On Sundays especially, we girls were always nude, pampering our bodies to make them clean and soft.

  Stripping at the club required a lot of energy drinks because we didn’t eat much while we were working. Because of that and the drugs, we developed pimples. So Sundays were our days to put lemon juice on our pimples so that they healed, and we’d drink lots of water to cleanse ourselves.

  Sundays were also Windhoek beer days. We would have 24s of Windhoek beer, which we’d then pour into a bath. Flipping through beauty magazines we’d collected or stolen from doctors’ rooms, we’d bath ourselves in this Windhoek magic, sometimes sharing two or three girls to the bath, soaking ourselves until our skin was baby soft.

  This Port Elizabeth escort agency had various ways of creating hype and making extra money, and one of these was holding competitions.

  The owner came up with a few sex games to turn on the clients. Sometimes a client would have come into the club and seen the strip show by 1am. To get the most cash out of the clients, the club owner designed these games for the later hours, 3 or 4am, when everyone was high, so that clients would get interested all over again, and make a new booking.

  One game involved holding a burning cigarette in your cookie while holding your legs up and open. We’d be on our bums with our hands on the floor, legs wide open in the air holding the cigarette without it falling. Sometimes the cigarette would go out, so someone would come and light it again. And some of the girls were too drunk to keep holding the cigarette. This game turned on some clients big time. They would catcall and root for you to keep going. It made the guys so horny and they loved it!

  We’d get burnt a lot, but as a result of this game, the muscles in my vagina became very strong, which worked for me.

  Another way of making more money was for the clients to buy body shots. I would lie naked on the bar and the clients’ drinks were put on my body, on my nipples and cookie. I had to be sure my body was well covered with baby oil. As they took the shots from my body, they would buy more drinks and get drunk faster. If a client booked me, I’d get off the bar top and go off with him.

  These games were always done at the end of the month, when money flowed.

  Sunette’s agency was unusually good for gaining stripping experience because part of the business was to advertise for shows at outside venues.

  Most of the time, outside bookings were for strip shows, mainly at bachelor parties. End-of-year parties kept us very busy as many guys got married then. We girls made a lot of money from strip shows then, but I would never know where I was going.

  In November 2005 a football team from West Africa was in town to play in the Nelson Mandela Challenge, and one night half of them arrived at our escort agency. That night, I shook my body at them as I swung round the pole. When they saw me, the only black chick in the club, they immediately booked me for two days at their hotel. I was happy that these African men wanted a black girl, and I felt honoured by the colour of my skin. I was glad they were tired of watching the white women.

  They paid up front, and the next night the bouncer and driver took me to their hotel. I was worried, though, because my drug supply was low.

  The whole team was there, and my jaw was very active that night – they all wanted blow jobs.

  And then my jaw became locked while I was doing a blow job. When I cried out in pain, the guy just went ahead with his mission, and spilled sperm all over my face. What a freak! Thankfully, he was the second last guy to have me.

  Our bar lady from the agency, Tracy, was called to come help. She walked in the room and punched me hard on both of my cheeks to release my jaw. Then we put a lot of ice on my face and down my throat.

  When I told them I was done for the night, the oldest guy in the team said he wanted to book me out again.

  It was different for officials, community leaders, public figures, fat cats and politicians. They never came to the escort agency themselves, but they’d send an official. You’re booked and you go, never knowing where to.

  When I got to a VIP’s house, we’d negotiate whether he wanted an hour over and above the booking. If so, and before I undressed, he would pay me directly. I would call the agency to report that he had booked for an extra hour, and then I’d give the money to the bouncer, who’d deliver it to the agency later. This kept me safe and secured me more money. And I’d know the bouncer and driver would be outside. The MPs or official who booked me would also often give me extra cash after it all was finished.

  Someone at the University of Port Elizabeth once booked me for a strip show that was for young male graduates and some teachers. I had to perform in the middle of a very big hall, and I had taken the blue ecstasy tablet to help me, because I knew there would be lots of people.

  There was only a little light in the room, and I used candle wax, with another girl pouring it on me. During a strip show, I would always observe the faces in the crowd in case they wanted to find me and book me later. But these guys just gasped and went ‘Yoh, yoh!’ in utter surprise! They didn’t seem to know anything about stripping or that black strippers even existed.

  These guys weren’t turned on and they weren’t even horny – just totally shocked! To think I had taken a blue tablet just to shock them!

  Sixteen

  PART OF THE RISKINESS OF prostitution – even when it’s organised with an escort club – was allowing a paying client to beat me up, hurting my body. I let the abuse happen. This is why it was better to be high when I let a client have his way with me – it’s part of the reason why drugs were so important to me. I couldn’t have done my job otherwise.

  The escort agency had rules, though. One of them was that we were not supposed to smoke the client’s coke with the client: you did so at your own risk. I had my own stash of drugs, but when I was in a private club room, it was a risk I took. I was not going to sit at the bar without a client. So if a client wanted to abuse me, I’d let it happen as long as he provided the drugs.

  It was all kept quiet, because we were both breaking the rules. But if I didn’t let him do what he wanted with me and that made him unhappy with me, he could tell the boss that we were coking in the room. Then, I’d be in trouble.

  That’s the power of money and drugs.

  Another reason why the club needed rules was that a client could actually be a cop trying to catch out the club for having drugs. That’s why I would ask a new client to take off all his clothes and have sex first, before I took any drugs with him. Then he wouldn’t be able to lock me up because he’d already had sex with me – I could have said that he had raped me. My logic was that he could not pay at the club reception for a sexual service, and then lock me up for drugs.

  We assessed new clients by figuring out whether any of the girls already knew him, and using our own intuition about whether he was ‘real’ or an undercover cop. If a client was someone we didn’t know, someone who’d just dropped into the club for the first time, then we w
ouldn’t mess with him or his drug stash.

  I once had a client who was a cop, and when I went to untie his trousers, he immediately showed resistance. I then felt his badge and pistol. I stopped what I had been doing.

  ‘If you’re not going to have sex, then you can get a refund,’ I said. I left the private room ‘to get a cigarette’ and gave a sign to the club management that I was with a cop.

  At other times, someone would tip off the cops that there were drugs at the club, and then the cops would raid. And so we girls were arrested a lot. We’d laugh about having ‘a rest’, which meant going to a jail cell to get some sleep.

  We were usually dressed in our bikinis when we were picked up, and only sometimes did we manage to grab a jacket as we were herded by the police out of the club.

  With our hands handcuffed behind our backs, we would plead with the cop: ‘Please, wrap the jacket around my shoulders, please, please, please …!’ It was so cold outside in our little bikinis!

  The owners of the club would bring out their lawyers. We girls in the jail would tell the lawyers that if they didn’t bail us out, we would talk: we’d disclose that the club did have drugs. In the end, the owners would use money we had earned to bail us out – so we lost that income. It was cruel that they did that; it felt like punishment. When we were let out of the cells the next day, the club owners would just give us a packet of cigarettes, R100 and one gram of coke. But the money for our labour was gone. Of course the owners themselves were never caught. I don’t know why.

  We were once taken to court for having drugs, but there was no trial because the cops couldn’t find the actual drugs at the bar. Most of the time, we girls wouldn’t bring our own coke to the clubs – instead, we would just pop ecstasy tablets.

  It was only Tracy, our bar lady, who would hide coke behind the bar. It was brought to the club by these tall Afrikaner guys who carried out illegal abalone harvesting. They would always arrive high, with their hair still wet from their dives in the ocean, and they would stay the whole night. The cops were always looking for these guys.