In Defense Of Prostitution

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...

You know, it's interesting, I was actually friends with a girl in college who did this, and she somewhat changed my attitude towards it. She was quite simply one of the most beautiful women I've ever had the pleasure to meet, and not in a made-up, silicone-injected, "look at me" way, I mean she was one of those rare women with a classic natural beauty that turned men's heads whenever she walked through the room. She was highly intelligent (graduated top of her class in HS, and in the top 5% of her graduating class in college), from a good but not wealthy family, and she had a classy and yet down to earth attitude about her. To make a long story short, she was the kind of woman every man wants to marry.

She was also a prostitute, or as she jokingly termed herself: "an expensive date". She told me once that she started simply to pay for college, but continued because she enjoyed it. Why did she enjoy it? Because she wasn't any stand on the streetcorner to turn a trick hooker...she saw the world with her clients. Her clients tended to be rich single men looking for "company" while travelling or vacationing. She once spent two weeks cruising the Med with a Greek billionaire on his yacht, she had been to Tahiti, Bali, Hawaii, Australia, Japan, and most of Europe with clients, and she enjoyed every minute of it. Rich clients like that weren't looking for sex (though they often [but not always] got it), they were more often looking for companionship, someone to hang out with on the beach, go to dinner with, and just generally enjoy themselves with without worrying about whether she was simply a gold-digger looking to marry him for his money (though also for the record, she did end up marrying some multi-millionaire from Georgia). Sex, to her clients, was simply a side benefit to her presence. And what did she make for enjoying herself and seeing the world? Depending on the client she has made anywhere from $10,000 to $120,000 per day!

She explained it to me this way once: "To most people, the idea that a poor Tennessee farm girl could grow up to date princes and billionaires sounds like a fantasy, something straight out of Cinderella, and it's something that they would encourage. So why is it wrong for these men to be generous with their money afterward? I would do the same thing with any of these men for free." And she meant that last part too. With clients like these, there is never a discussion about payment. They simply invited her on a vacation or date (sometimes it was just dinner), and paid her "for her troubles" or "as a gesture of their appreciation" when they dropped her off. The clients simply gave her what he felt was fair, and they were always generous. To her, it wasn't about turning a trick for a few bucks, it was a chance to mingle with the rich, famous, and powerful, and make a tidy profit in the process.

For the record, I never slept with her, though I probably would have if given the chance (I was in college and she was stunning...what more can I say?).

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