Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker - My Own Story

It was only a matter of time before the pennies dropped and they got an open line on my activity. As would be appropriate at a consulate, my superior suggested diplomatically I would be better off working somewhere else, and even advised me of an available position at a United Nations mission, and gave me a good reference.

I took the suggestion, knowing that there was little alternative, and went through a series of multilingual typing and translating tests at the foreign mission. I was hired and started work on November 1, 1969. The job was administrative, but almost as dull as the one I had left, and it was just as well, because I wasn’t up to concentrating much effort or energy taking dictation from my boss, the horny little ambassador, after a hard night’s work.

Running my apartment was also a chore I could live without. It was too big and too much work, and besides, I used only the bedroom. So around the time I took the new job, I found a studio apartment near First Avenue in the lower Fifties, five minutes’ walk from the office.

Something happened during my move from one apartment to the other that started reinforcing my feelings that in an illicit profession like prostitution you are vulnerable to all kinds of harassment. First the phony policeman, and now a nuisance named Murray the Mover.

Murray the Mover was a big bear of a Turkish Jew who had more in mind than moving my belongings, and persisted in a conversation which I found irritating at the time, but in view of subsequent events was somewhat significant.

“I bet you’re a girl who likes fun and games, Miss Xaviera,” Murray said with an ill-concealed smirk after the last piece of furniture was out of the service elevator.

“Murray,” I replied coldly, “what I like happens to be none of your business.”

“Don’t be too upset, lady,” he went on, “because I could help a girl like you out in a lot of different ways.”

“I don’t see how I can use you except to get this furniture out of the hallway. Otherwise I can pretty well help myself.”

But Murray the Mover had more to say, and after his assistants were dismissed, he still hung around.

“This sure is a beautiful location for your line of work, miss,” he said.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“I happen to know this is a cool building, and you can work here as a hooker as long as you like. Just make sure you take care of the doormen.”

“Okay, Murray, groovy.” I didn’t admit anything, and really wanted to get rid of him, but I was intrigued.

“You look like you’re new in the business, fresh and natural. Stay that way. Be careful you don’t get yourself into any trouble, because this can be a rough racket. But if you do, give me a call.” He handed me a square of paper with his name and number scribbled on it.

“Fine, Murray. I hope I’ll never need your help, but thanks anyway. Good-bye now, I’ve got work to do.” Murray the Mover left, and I straightened up my studio for the coming night’s business.

Life was well organized and ran smoothly for the next couple of months, although my job at the mission was even less agreeable than that at the consulate. I was made to feel like an “office foreigner,” even though I could speak their language. And sometimes they would lapse into a national dialect to exclude me from conversations. Still, the atmosphere didn’t bother me too much, as my professional night life was becoming more important, more active, and more profitable than the day job.

I could even manage to run home during lunch hours and turn a couple of tricks in my studio, or sometimes Madeleine or even Georgette would call up and ask me could I handle a midday quickie.

Madeleine especially liked me to do her freak, bondage, slaves-and-masters scenes, which is when I got into the whips. These paid more than the straight clients, but they were a lot more time-consuming, and I would ask Madeleine to try to give me advance notice so I could at least wear the appropriate clothing, such as a leather jacket or skirt, black turtleneck sweater, or something else tough- or vicious-looking, and save the time of changing in the lunch hour.

One thing I liked about doing jobs for Madeleine was the discreet way she asked me on the office phones. “Xaviera, I’ve got a Scotch meaning $50 customer] or a champagne [meaning $100]; will you be available for a drink around noon or one P.M.?’

She would often crack up because she had never known a little secretary who made a few hundred extra dollars a week in her lunch hours. The idea of running down and performing a complex slave scene amused her even more.

However, some of my customers were not so diplomatic when they called up, which is what led to the beginning of the end at my new job. My biggest problem at the mission turned out to be the aging spinster switchboard operator, who, I later learned, listened in on all my calls. And some of them weren’t what one would call very subtle. “Xaviera,” they would say, “I want to get laid at one P.M. Meet you at your house. Okay?”

The fifty-year-old spinster didn’t suspect it was for money, and started spreading the talk that Mademoiselle Xaviera was “the greatest courtisane of the mission permanente de Nations Unies. Scandale! Horrible!”

I sensed imminent disaster in the air and figured the only way to save my head was to seduce the horny little ambassador. If the heat really was on, it would help to have him on my side.

On a Friday afternoon the bespectacled little ambassador came to my place for drinks and, in his mind, a slow Continental-type love scene. But I couldn’t spare the time for romance that day because a couple of stockbrokers were expected around seven P.M.

I poured the ambassador a cognac and sat him on the sofa. “Xaviera,” he began, “how long I have dreamed of this moment.” As he launched on a tale of romance, and desire, I removed his coat, tie, shirt, and shoes, and by the time he got around to how he was going to gently kiss my hair, my ears, my throat – ad nauseum – he was clad only in his birthday suit.

I quickly made love to him, giving him my best efforts, considering the time available. He must have enjoyed it, because for the next couple of weeks, as I sat on his knee taking dictation, he would ask me, “Xaviera, are you free for an hour after work?” He would have had cardiac arrest if I told him I was rarely free these days, but I didn’t charge him, so he didn’t know the truth. “Oh, Mr. Ambassador,” I would answer, “you’re invited to my place this evening at six P.M.”

Things, however, were getting so unfriendly at the office that soon not even his intervention could help me. Certain staff members, whipped along by the narrow-minded spinster who was by now getting wise, demanded an investigation into my ability to dress so well on a secretary’s salary, and the meaning of all the “obscene” phone calls.

One morning when I breezed into work my desk had been opened and my little address books, which I stupidly kept in the office, had been commandeered. So, within three months of starting at the mission, my legitimate life as a secretary was over forever.

I was still working at the United Nations mission when I discovered what a vicious racket there is in New York in blackmailing vulnerable girls and married women who might try to make a little extra money in prostitution. These blackmailers are even more dangerous to part-time hookers than the police.

I was living in my new studio apartment in the low East Fifties when the blackmailers, who had obviously been watching me for some time, paid me a call.

It was a raw, cold evening toward the end of November when I came home from the office and found an envelope stuck under my door. My first thought, when I opened the door and stooped down to pick up the envelope, was that it was a rent notice from the landlord. It was only two weeks since that hood moving man, Murray, had put my furniture in the apartment, and as yet I had not paid any rent besides the deposit.