Posted on 08/21/2003 7:06:56 AM PDT by dogbrain
TEN YEARS AGO, I WAS ARRESTED AT MY HOME IN BEVERLY HILLS for pandering, which the dictionary defines as acting as "a go-between in sexual intrigue." In other words, I was a madam. After a jury convicted me of three counts of pandering, the verdicts were thrown out, but the government didn't give up. It made me the Al Capone of prostitution. I spent three years in a federal penitentiary in Dublin, Calif., for conspiracy, tax evasion, and money laundering. But it was the sex that got me in trouble.
When I was a Hollywood madam, I had between 20 and 70 girls working for me and once made $97,000 in a single day on commissions. My take was 40 percent of whatever fee my girls received and of any tips over $1,000. (Compare that to prison, where I made about a dime an hour cleaning pots and taking out the trash.)
When I was in the sex trade, I ran an 85 percent cash business. I dealt with the richest people on earth—men who run countries and this country's top businesses. Most of them preferred to pay in cash. The actor Charlie Sheen was one of my few customers who wrote checks, but looking back I now realize he was a class act. He paid his bills, girls liked him, and he was well-endowed.
I didn't get involved in prostitution because I needed money. I had the kind of childhood that everyone dreams about, with five brothers and sisters, camping trips, pillow fights, and marathon Monopoly games. We weren't like the Britney Spears generation—the girls today who look like they're ready to have sex at 9. I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than that and soon all the parents in the neighborhood wanted me to watch over their children. Even then I had an innate business sense. I started farming out my friends to meet the demand. My mother showered me with love and my father, a pediatrician, would ask me at the dinner table, "What did you learn today?"
At 19, I began dating a 57-year-old multimillionaire. The relationship was good, but when it ended I realized that he had won every fight we had because I had no career, nothing to stand on. So I got a license in real estate. But before long, I was wrapped up in an entirely different world. I began going to Helena's, a popular nightclub in Los Angeles run by Jack Nicholson's former housekeeper, and met a bookie who later introduced me to Madam Alex, a "businesswoman" whose employees were known for their good looks and popularity. (I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.) I was expecting a sexy glamour queen like Faye Dunaway in the TV movie Beverly Hills Madam. But Madam Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina in a transparent muu muu. We hit it off.
My first john—I was then 22—was gorgeous. I would have slept with him for free if I had met him in a bar or on a blind date. We had a great night, and I made $3,000 after Madam Alex's 40-percent cut was deducted from my fee.
I'm glad I learned the business in the trenches, but my career as a hooker was short-lived. I'm not the California dream girl, and sexually, I'm lazy. The profession didn't play to my strengths, which lie in business, not bed. After Madam Alex and I had a falling-out in 1989, I decided to leave prostitution altogether and go back to college to become an art curator. (I had dropped out of junior college during my first semester when I was 17.)
So why did I become a madam? I had tons of beautiful friends and lots of great connections from traveling the world with my ex-boyfriend. One day I just realized that I could run a sex business better than anyone else I knew. My first client was a Swiss businessman who was in Los Angeles with six acquaintances. I set the men up with some girls I knew and all of them were very happy. The word spread and demand snowballed after that. I tried to stay in college and run the business at the same time, but it was too hard skipping out of class to arrange get-togethers over the school's pay phone.
I would fly girls to meet clients in St. Tropez, London, or wherever they were in the world. Just from talking to a man, I knew what kind of girl he'd be interested in.
I made sure never to send a prostitute into an unsafe situation or one where she felt humiliated or degraded. I was always conscious of how prostitution could lower a woman's self-esteem and I didn't want anyone who worked for me to feel that way. My clients were some of the richest men in the world. They wanted to look the best and live the longest. They were at the doctors regularly. I never had one girl come down with an STD, not even crabs. But I told my girls that if they ever felt uncomfortable with a client, they should call me and I would get them out of there—no matter where they were. I made my first million after only four months in the business.
I wouldn't recommend prostitution as a career because it doesn't have great long-term prospects. Still, a woman should have the right to do what she wants with her body...
(Excerpt) Read more at legalaffairs.org ...
If you pay a girl $500 for the act of sex it is illegal. But... if you pay a girl $500 for the act of sex, film it and sell it, it is a legitimate business called porn. What is the difference?
And yet not one of them seems truly happy. The majority of them exist in abusive relationships and blow their money on alcohol, drugs or silly 'luxuries' like breast implants and fake nails (which are actually an effort to make themselves more physically attractive, because they feel that is all they have to offer the world).
Very sad.
It didn't say in one year - it said the first time.
oh, I didn't know YOU were an ex-sub sailor too!
You are right though it's got to be some lawyer double speak to see any difference in the two.
Hey, that's why they are actors. Maybe the Academy should recognize "Forrest Hump" in its next awards ceremony.
In all seriousness, though, you do know that there are awards for the pornographic film industry similar to the Emmys or the Academy Awards. I can't think of what they are called off the top of my head, but maybe it'll come to me. No pun intended.
Possibly.
What a sick world we live in.
It would appear so....
What do you call a woman who marries into an ocean view home,
a Mercedes, a daily massage, and is filing for divorce a year later?
(pats pockets...checks wallet...)
Not today!
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