Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker - My Own Story

I was angry in a way, but at the same time grateful that pictures were the only thing they found, because stashed away in my pocketbooks, luggage lining, and even my passport were bundles of fifties, twenties, and tens, which represented most of my three months’ earnings.

I had already sent a substantial sum back to New York with a man named Larry, who has since become my permanent boyfriend. Nevertheless, it was a risky practice leaving so much money around, especially since the people I lived with weren’t what could exactly be called honest, particularly David.

To show you what he was like, in the nighttime we would all get dressed up, and he would take us to the most expensive restaurants in San Juan in a hot VW and pay for the multicourse banquets with stolen credit cards. If he could do something straight, he would reject it, because he got a great deal of genuine pleasure out of being crooked.

As the weeks went on, our behavior became more and more reckless and abandoned, and we would do almost anything that had an air of escapade about it, which is why one day David suggested we all get stoned on mescaline.

As I mentioned, I don’t use stimulants of any sort, not even coffee, so at first I was naturally scared. But David assured me everything would be all right, especially as we would all take a pill each together and the effects would last no longer than eight or nine hours.

David knew all about drugs – as well as turning on to them, he also pushed them on occasional trips to Miami – so we took his word for it.

It was a Friday morning when we went on our “trip.” We took the pills around noon as we left the guest house and in a “temporarily borrowed” Volkswagen drove to a small secluded beach ten minutes from San Juan.

By the time we arrived the pill had already started to work, and we piled out of the car onto the white-sand crescent and tore off all our clothes. Even Hood, the timid one, came out of his shell, and soon we were all rolling around in the sand near the water’s edge making love. Somebody tried to make Polaroid pictures of the scene, but the camera kept falling out of our hands, and after about two exposures it fell gurgling into the sea.

Then I remember wanting to have a pee, which I would normally be embarrassed to do with people around, unless it’s a freak scene and somebody wants to get peed on. But that day I was so abandoned I said, “Okay, baby, I’m going to pee.” I stood there naked doing it in front of the others while they were all stoned out of their heads, digging up the sand.

The whole scene was like standing apart and watching ourselves in a fast-action film, yet being involved at the same time. Colors became very vibrant. The sun was like a golden ball dangling above our heads, and the sea was like blue Jell-O oozing to shore and out again. We ran into the hills and made love with a background of palm trees threaded by a sandy road that we must have come along, which appeared to lead into a small village.

As we were freaking out and jumping around, a maroon car passed on the road, looking as if it were from a different world, but somehow very close, and inside was a Negro who looked out, waved, and drove on.

You don’t entirely lose your head on mescaline, and even though you’re stoned, you still know what’s happening. Pretty soon the same maroon car was back again, this time carrying three Negroes, all waving, and it went away again.

Five minutes later, or an hour – we cannot judge time anymore – the same car came along followed by a sightseeing bus full of Negroes all staring at those nude people jumping around out there.

The bus slowed, stopped, then took off again, but the three Negroes parked the maroon car near the palm trees and started wading through the water to us. As they got closer, I got this obsession that I wanted to see them jerking off. I had never made love with a black man, but I had heard the story that they are all huge. So I started indicating my desire by making the manual gesture, up and down, and indeed one of them took out his cock and started jerking off! Then the others started doing it, too.

Just then a bunch of schoolkids with their satchels on their backs appeared. The Negroes retreated into the bushes, so we began sucking and fucking again, and the children were walking backward looking at us with eyes like saucers.

From beneath the palm trees the Negroes started trying to hit us with coconuts, and this was the point we started to realize we should split. But by now we were so freaked out we could not control anything anymore.

“Xaviera, get dressed, put your clothes on,” one of the boys said. So I grabbed my bikini underpants and tied them around my neck, which was my way of covering up in front of the kids and the Negroes.

We tried to gather up our belongings from the sand, but for some reason our fingers were insensitive, and we could not hold them, and combs, lipsticks, wallets, and suntan oil dropped from our hands. We left them in the sand and ran to the VW.

Nobody was really capable of driving, but Ricky took the wheel, and we zigzagged back to San Juan, almost hitting a tree and a boy on a bicycle, and came to a stop inside the garden of the El San Juan Hotel.

It was the cocktail hour, nearly dusk, and as we jumped from the car all the Jewish American Princesses started moving away from us with the look of, “Oh, boy, look at those animals.” I took one look at myself in a car mirror, with my eyes like red frisbees, made a dash to the water, and paddled out to sea on David’s raft.

By around nine that night the pill had almost worn off, but we hadn’t been home to change, so I went to work just as I was, wearing pigtails and my bikini bottoms and a little beachdress, slightly high, and giggling.

I looked more like a crazy little beach virgin than a hooker, and I turned on quite a few older men, who paid a fortune, and it was my biggest night apart from the Mafia blow-jobs.

As Easter approached, three months after I arrived for three days in Puerto Rico, I started getting bored. Among other things, all the boys had gone home, except David, who was down on his luck and depended on me for ten- and twenty-dollar handouts every now and again. I even let him live in my room, as I had more or less moved into a gorgeous penthouse with a gambler named Norris, who wasn’t a john and would not pay me, but let me have anything 1 needed in the way of clothes or food.

Two days before Easter David said he was going to Miami on a dope deal to make a lot of money and would be away for a week, leaving at six o’clock that evening.

After the other boys left David and I had an intense kind of platonic friendship, so I wanted to get back from the beach early and say good-bye and perhaps go with him to the airport. But as I returned from the beach around four o’clock I could sense something was wrong. All was quiet in my room, and as I walked in the door I was horrified to find it looked like a tornado had hit it.

Drawers and dressers were inside out, clothes were all over the place, my luggage was lying open in the room, and the lining had been ripped open and the money stolen.

I ran to my closet and plunged my hand into every pocket on every dress I had, and they, were all empty. Even my pocketbook had been cleaned out, and the notes stuffed into my passport were also missing.

Whoever did it really cleaned me out. There was enough to make one phone call, two nickels.

I had to find David. He was due to leave in a couple of hours, but if I could get to him first, he might be able to help me out, because he knew every thief in Puerto Rico.

I ran down to the beach where Beegee, his little hippie girl friend, hung around pushing grass. “Have you seen David around?” I asked her.