Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life

by Angell, Jeannette

  I knew from what I was reading in the more popular press and on the Internet that people were curious about more than just the handcuffs. Okay, so I was, too. I had had some experience with bondage and discipline; the boyfriend before Peter was into it, and I liked what I was learning with him. I liked it a lot.

  In that relationship, I was the submissive and Luke was the dominant. When I told my friend Irene about it, she wasn’t impressed.

  “Why should you play out the roles that you’re already forced into in the real world?” she demanded. “Sounds like you’re just reinforcing negative stereotypes.” I suspect that in certain situations, with certain couples, she would have been right. But for us, it was the right time and the right place for those roles.

  Back then, I was in the process of applying to doctoral programs. I had to be beyond competent, incredibly on top of things, because of the volume and breadth of materials required for the various schools to which I was applying. I was going on interviews, which forced me to invent a persona, someone who thought originally, had the necessary stamina to stay the course, was a good candidate to fill one of very few spaces available. I had to go out and sell myself, again and again and again. I had to be organized, impressive, and in charge of everything. Everywhere in my life I was making decisions, taking charge, dealing with problems. When Luke and I started doing the bondage and discipline scenes, even within our somewhat timid first attempts, the utter relief I felt at finally being able to give up control was intensely overwhelming. Because I trusted Luke completely, I was free to go as deeply into the role as I wanted. I learned things about myself that I never would have dreamed of understanding. It taught me more about who I was, about my inner core, than had any of my past therapy sessions, any of my myriad psychology courses.

  I was fortunate to have been with Luke, then. It takes a strong partnership to engage fully in a healthy B&D relationship. But that doesn’t mean that parts of the experience cannot be separated from it and used independently. The handcuffs are a favorite object and I think that a lot of men really wanted to go a little further, to try out the forbidden toys and acts, but were too embarrassed to ask. Even to ask a callgirl.

  As a point of fact, most of our clientele’s sexual needs and desires fell within certain predictable parameters. By and large, what they wanted (or ended up getting, if they were unable to ask for something else) was very vanilla sex. Different positions, sure. Unusual venues: on kitchen tables, out of doors, standing in a doorway, on a piece of exercise equipment. Lots of verbal stuff, so many of them wanted you to talk dirty to them, to use words that perhaps they themselves didn’t dare use.

  I was ready for the unusual, the odd, the kinky. What I didn’t know already, I read about. Alot of the stuff that I was reading about would have shocked the hell out of most of our clients.

  Well, that’s fine. A lot of what I was reading about shocked the hell out of me, too.

  I shook myself out of my reverie, gathered up my books and briefcase, and walked down the college corridor. Empty, of course. Only a few more finals to take, and liberation was theirs; and if anyone was actually studying for the finals, they weren’t doing it anywhere on campus.

  “You are turning into a curmudgeon,” I muttered to myself. “Just because you were an obsessive undergraduate doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be. Live and let live. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Don’t judge anyone until you’ve walked a mile in their moccasins.” I was silent for a moment, contemplating my thoughts. “Use fewer trite expressions,” I added.

  There was Excedrin in the glove compartment of my car. I clutched it with the fervor of a worshipper touching a holy icon. I swallowed three of them, just to be sure.

  Driving back to Allston, waiting impatiently for the Excedrin to kick in, I reflected again about how ironic it was that I was mildly disappointed in the lack of fetishes or unusual sexual practices among our clientele. What this means, I told myself sternly, is that you need some spice in your personal life. You can’t expect the clients to give you what you need, for heaven’s sake.

  So what do the clients (gross generalization time here) like?

  I’m clearer about what they don’t like. They are phenomenally particular about girls’ looks, and they don’t like women who are outside a narrowly defined perception of beauty. Curiously enough, a majority of the clients specifically don’t want to see girls who have any piercings at all, although in general I think that they were referring to belly buttons and eyebrows and lips, which I agree can be a bit off-putting. They were more open about nipple and labia pierc-ings, though even there, opinion was divided. Which meant, of course, that they had a smaller group to choose from, because it seemed that around that time nearly every girl in Boston who was in her twenties had at least one unusual piercing. Some of them, to quote Harlan Coban’s delicious phrase, looked very much as though they had fallen down a flight of stairs whilst carrying an open box of fishing tackle.

  But piercing one’s body is a fetish that is strictly for the young, and most of our clients were what the French describe as being “of a certain age,” less likely than the callgirls’ peers to appreciate their metallic embellishments.

  Almost all of them were into control, which probably spoke volumes about their self-esteem and things like that; a lot of them enjoyed using any situation to get and keep the upper hand over the girl doing the call. If she was late, for example, he might make a show of it, exaggerating the inconvenience to which she had subjected him, letting her know that he was already not pleased with her performance. Most of the girls who worked for Peach took this kind of game in stride; but if the girl was new, insecure, or if she actually believed his act, it could be hurtful. They knew that, too.

  There was a client who was famous among Peach’s callgirls. When we could, we compared notes. He had, we all agreed, the control thing down to an art.

  His need, clearly, was to insinuate himself into your life. He was severely handicapped – he had a heart condition, a number of ancillary diseases, and easily weighed well over four hundred pounds. I’m not exaggerating; the only sex that ever happened with Abe was a furtive handjob, performed after locating his penis under folds and folds of flesh. He used that, of course. He started by preying on your sympathy, establishing himself as a victim. It worked; of course it worked women are all suckers for a victim.

  He got information from you, amazing information. You found yourself saying things to Abe that you would never have said to anyone else. He stored the information, kept it hidden, waiting, until he needed it.

  One of Peach’s callgirls, Estée, worked part-time at a Newbury Comics CD shop. She had mentioned to Abe, one night, in passing, that she worked in a music store; he called every one in Boston until he found her. After that, he’d call her at the shop, sometimes to arrange a call, sometimes just to talk. Estée wasn’t supposed to take personal calls while she was on shift. Sometimes, when Abe called, she would have a line of impatient customers in front of her. “I can’t talk now, it’s busy here,” she’d say to Abe; and he would become indignant, calling her back over and over again, telling her that if she didn’t take his call then he’d tell Peach that she had seen him outside of the agency.

  He knew that was Peach’s one and only rule: Thou shalt not steal clients.

  It was difficult not to “steal” Abe, however. He practically insisted on it. He refused any repeat visits through Peach, telling the call-girl that if she really cared she’d see him apart from the agency. It wasn’t about the fee, either. It was about the time. It was about control.

  Like many others before me, I accepted Abe’s insistence and saw him without telling Peach. Boy, can I make bad decisions.

  He asked me to spend the night. Just spend the night, he said, I’ll pay four hundred dollars. We’ll listen to music (he had hooked into my taste by dazzling me with his array of really good operatic recordings), we’ll drink wine, we’ll play, and we’ll sleep. It would be rela
xed, with no jangling telephone call to take me away.

  Why not, I thought. Four hundred dollars, I’m gone in the morning, no problem.

  I’d done overnights with clients before. You drink, you get high, you have sex, you go to sleep. Not a bad gig.

  Abe, however, had different plans. Sleeping was, apparently, out of the question. I had to rub his back, his neck. I had to bring him things to drink. I had to kiss him, kiss him a lot, make him feel sexy. “I’m so sleepy,” I protested at one point, it had to be after three in the morning. “I’m not,” he said. “Play with my cock.” I played with his cock, I massaged his legs; I kissed his mouth, his neck, his chest, his fingers. I brought him his medications. I brought him wine. I brought him food. I even – I swear to God that this is true – was roused from my semi-somnolent state at around five o’clock in the morning to feed his cat.

  Clearly, if he was paying me, Abe expected service.

  Morning finally dawned; I had fully experienced Alaistair McLean’s Night Without End. I was expected to cook, serve breakfast, and to wash up after it. When I mentioned leaving, he became indignant: “Why are you in such a hurry? The money is all that matters to you! I need you to be here, I need you to hold me, so that I can face the world again.”

  Now, you’re thinking, enough is enough, walk out, right? And that would be a great idea. Except for the fact that Abe still hadn’t paid me, and apparently wasn’t going to until he had sucked everything from me that he could.

  I put away and took out CDs. I chatted. I cleaned his living room and sat on his bed next to him and dutifully listened while he sang along to Don Giovanni, Rigoletto, and The Barber of Seville. I put together lunch for him. I finally invented a one o’clock meeting that I had to attend, could not miss. He spent another twenty minutes trying to find out where the meeting was (he only asked, of course, so that he could tell me how long it would take me to get there), trying to find out what it was about, asking if I couldn’t come back afterwards, complaining that I was in way too much of a hurry to leave and maybe he shouldn’t pay me the full amount, after all.

  As soon as I could, I got out of there. It wasn’t easy. Up to the very end he hesitated about paying me, insisting that I should come back later, that he would pay me then for this and more. I refused, saying I had prior plans for the evening. Abe naturally pounced on that; any delaying tactic would do. What plans? With whom? What did I like to do? He only asked, of course, because he loved me so much, he wanted to be able to picture me moving through my day…

  I took the four hundred and fled.

  It didn’t stop there. He invited me to his house for dinner – payment and extracurricular activities unclear – and I refused. Abe didn’t like refusals. “You teach somewhere,” he said abruptly.

  I froze. There was a tight coldness in my stomach that hadn’t been there before. No. This wasn’t happening. “How do you know that?” I asked. Before I ever saw Abe, Peach had cautioned me about telling him too much. I had told him I was a freelance writer, that I worked from home.

  “Someone else told me.” Oh, great, thanks, ladies. I wasn’t particularly surprised; Abe had a way of getting information from people without them realizing it. I probably at some point told him things I shouldn’t have.

  But it wasn’t the end of the world; there really wasn’t much he could do with that little information. I decided to go for indifference. “Well, I teach sometimes, yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry about dinner, but –”

  He cut me off. “And I know that your real name is Jen, I know that you live in Allston, and I can find out the rest. I’m really doing a disservice to the school, you know, not telling them the truth about their faculty. They’d hate to know that you do drugs, you see. They’d hate to know that you work for an escort service. All I’m asking for is dinner, just one dinner. That’s not so much, is it?”

  He was brilliant. A brilliant detective, brilliant with people. He questioned callgirls about themselves and each other, pretending to already have the information he was trying to extract from them. “You know that Tia told me her real name, you can tell me yours…” He called up cab companies and bartered his famous store of Percocet – a drug that’s always in demand; he had a virtually endless ongoing prescription for one of his many pain problems – for information on where girls had been dropped off after they left his place, and when. He sat in that little apartment like it was Information Central, and he learned, and used his knowledge.

  Another of Peach’s callgirls, Anne, was going through a hard time not long after that. She was working for Peach while spending all of her free time doing music gigs wherever she could get them, using her money for individual voice lessons. She had a goal she was working toward. But the Bogie Man had found her; her late nights and pressured career took their toll. She was drinking too much, doing too many drugs. She was seeing Abe through the service and seeing him outside of the service. Anne was young; she listened to his assurance that he cared about her, and she believed him. When her boyfriend beat her up, it was Abe that she turned to. And Abe welcomed her with open arms. No pressure, he assured her. She slept on his sofa and gave him sex, companionship, a sense of worth; and she talked to him a lot.

  She should never have talked to him.

  Anne got stronger, of course. That’s what happens: either you get sucked in, or you get stronger. There aren’t a lot of other alternatives. Anne finally saw her life clearly and she decided to make changes. She stopped drinking, stopped doing cocaine and taking Percocets, and focused on her music. She started going to AA. She still worked for Peach, but only took “early” clients. She was back at Abe’s apartment and falling asleep on his sofa by ten. It was a fairytale with a happy ending.

  For everyone, that is, but Abe. He needed people to need him. He needed Anne to be sick, to be addicted, to be shaking and coming down off a cocaine high while he held her, making her feel secure and safe. He would give her Percocet tablets and she would take the pills. They helped her down off the high, made the world prettier around the edges, as that particular drug usually does. She became soft, gentle, pliable, grateful. She would admit that she could not live without him. She would massage his back, massage his ego, give him what he wanted in return for his support so that she could finally go to sleep…

  He was losing all that when she started getting stronger. She got an important break; somebody from the Royal Opera House in London was in town, heard her, had suggestions, showed interest. She was clean and she was feeling better about herself. She thanked Abe for his friendship, his help, and she prepared to move into an apartment by herself.

  Abe couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle her not needing him, losing control over her. Couldn’t handle her having a dream, a vision for her life that had nothing to do with him.

  So he told her that he was going to call her parents and tell them that their daughter was working as a prostitute.

  Abe needed, for whatever reasons, to control the women he took into his orbit. He lured us by preying on our sympathy (“Peach calls after an hour! She doesn’t understand, with my disabilities, I’m not like everyone else.”). He reinforced the illusional relationship by being flattering, pathetic, or helpful – whatever it took.

  I had been feeling cynical about the level of general culture around me; he honed in on that, played operas for me, aspired to more intellectual capacity than he actually possessed. For Anne, he became a safe haven. For other callgirls he morphed into other things. Then he turned on us. He would blackmail us by threatening to tell Peach, or use information we had innocently given him to make us do what he wanted.

  He did it with Peach, too, which floored me because I thought that she was impervious to that sort of thing. But the bottom line for Peach was always the money; and Abe was a very regular client, using all of his disability check to procure companionship. So she put up with Abe. He called her at all hours. If she needed to hang up or take another call, he was hurt, affronted, nearly indignant. She wou
ld call him back, later, to assuage his feelings… After she told me that, I felt less compelled to be courteous to Abe. His neediness may well have been real, but he used it to control and hurt – and feel that he had some sort of grasp on life. He was pathetic, and he was dangerous. He was not exactly, in this business, an exception.

  After Abe, the guys who wanted to use ropes, cuffs, and harsh words were small potatoes.

  Their attraction to minor B&D routines and accessories made perfect sense in the context that they all, to some extent or another, were like Abe. If the guy was already into controlling the escort, then any way that he could continue to keep her emotionally under his control, any way it could get played out sexually – well, that was icing on the cake.

  Of course, no client was ever as controlling as he thought he was. A callgirl picks up on the clients’ desires, and if she sees he wants to be controlling, then she’ll play his game. It’s his dime, after all. But in our little world, the one in this situation who was ultimately in control, all the time, was Peach. Anything else is illusion, a game in which the moves are secretly predetermined – in short, a visit from a callgirl.

  Bondage and discipline, if played with at all, could only be of the most mild variety, a flavor only slightly more tangy than vanilla. If the relationship is only one hour in duration, and one knows nothing about one’s partner going into it, it is hard to imagine a B&D scene being successful.