Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker - My Own Story

“I’m not the type to be hustled for my money,” he said the first night. However, he did not quibble about the staggering tab for the several girls he had, and I am sure had I demanded it, he would have paid more. But I am not the type to put my hands around a man’s wallet and squeeze. Besides, he was so groovy that even if he were broke I would have let him go for free. He was happy to pay for his pleasure. “I would much rather spend my money on a bunch of prostitutes who are more honest than my wife,” he said.

So a contemporary brothel must be many things to many people; and for many reasons.

It is obvious what it is to most! A pay-for-play parlor, but believe it or not, some even use my house not to get laid!

Still others come because a discreet prostitute is the only person to whom they dare expose the sexual hang-ups they conceal from their wives and girl friends to avoid creating a scandal.

A statistic that surprises most people is the percentage of eligible bachelors who patronize my house, when, in this day of sexual liberation, there is so much free stuff around.

The fact that the single man turns up mostly after eleven P.M. is testimony in itself as to why he came.

He has taken a girl on a date, wined and dined her, enjoyed her company, been turned on, made the eternal overture, and she has responded with some unflattering excuse such as: “I have to go home and wash my hair.”

His ardor for her dimmed, but his appetite not sated, he takes out his black book and calls his favorite madam, and for less money than the cost of his evening out in most cases, can discharge his desires without any hassle.

Married men, who make up the largest slice of brothel business, come for a variety of reasons. Geographically they may be out-of-town businessmen, or perhaps recently separated or divorced and not yet fixed up with a new girl friend. Others are wanting the exotic and unusual that they don’t see at home and are fed up with DIB (dead-in-bed) wives who just lie there like a starfish.

Whatever it is a man is looking for, a high-class house should provide it.

What happens when a man walks through a brothel door? Let me take you on a guided tour of my house, explain a few trade secrets, explode a few old myths, and try to establish the fact that a modern house no longer deserves the title “house of ill fame” or “ill repute,” but “house of pleasure.”

On any weekday night there are four to seven girls on hand to entertain the customers, to say nothing of my book listing four hundred better-class hookers in the city who can be called in. That is not to say the house is like a sex supermarket; it is more like a boutique where exclusivity and good taste prevail.

Mine is an international establishment, full of birds of different plume. I have blonds, brunets, redheads, Scandinavians, Eurasians, American Indians, Negroes, and several South American girls from Chile, Ecuador, and Argentina. The latter are famous for their big boobs and their love of sex.

With girls like this a man from any corner of the world can walk through my door and be welcomed in his own language. I personally speak English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Afrikaans, and some Yiddish.

On entering our calling, the girls usually choose a professional name for themselves, dropping their last name and adopting names like Red Peril, Rainbow, Blondie, Mia Cara, Teardrop; April, May, June; and one girl was even called Shan-da-Lear (as in “swinging from”).

The girls who, work for me are expected to obey house rules when it comes to dress. Outmoded is the old idea that a brothel is a collection of girls all semi-dressed in baby-doll pajamas or their underwear. This to me represents a sleazy atmosphere, and the only one permitted to wear a negligee is myself. This is always an expensive figure-fitting Pucci or something similar from the best stores like Saks Fifth Avenue or Bergdorf Goodman.

However, my rules aren’t nearly as strict as the most famous house in the world, Madam Claude’s in Paris, where the girls are expected to look immaculate all the time. Madam Claude, whose girls are dispatched as far east as Beirut and as far west as London, insists her girls buy their clothes from certain couturiers and are coiffed at certain hairdressers. She, no doubt, gets her own little kickbacks from these places.

My girls aren’t given strict guidelines on what to wear, but rather what not to wear. I don’t want flashy, whorish clothes in the house. Look like a whore and you’ll be treated like one is my belief.

I try to set an example in appearance for the girls, and I come on as natural as possible. I don’t wear any makeup, and my hair is always hanging loosely to my shoulders, arid always shiny clean. I try to make the natural atmosphere clear through my personality, and not so much through my looks, although my looks are good enough, I suppose. I don’t cover them up with artificial eyelashes, wigs, and false nails as a lot of girls do. I don’t even wear nail varnish, except on my toes.

I look like a fresh contemporary girl, which is one of the reasons I do pretty well. My personality comes on strong, and this is one of the things that distinguishes one house from another – the personality of the madam. And that is also, why I am careful never to hire a girl with a stronger personality.

As far as the girls’ choice of dress goes, they usually decide on something to flatter their particular physical attributes – a décolleté gown for a girl whose best feature is her bosom, hot pants with matching panty hose for a girl who has great legs, and so on.

Hot pants are big with men, because legs turn a man on. Surprisingly enough, when a man comes into a brothel he doesn’t seem to care much what the girl’s face looks like. Obviously, he’s not going to make a grab at one who looks like Phyllis Diller, but to a customer, boobs, bottoms, and legs, in that order, are more important.

Age, of course, is another factor in a man’s choice of bed companion. Somewhere along the line most men think girls should all be nineteen or twenty years old. A girl can deceive them a few years, but you can’t claim a girl who is twenty-nine is twenty-one. It doesn’t work.

Men in their late twenties to forties don’t mind a slightly older girl, and if she has a good personality, she can even be older.

I have one girl working for me, Carol, who is thirty-six and the mother of two teen-agers. Carol has a groovy head – that means she is well-read and intelligent – and genuinely loves men, and they can see it. American men crave affection from prostitutes, and Carol knows how to give it to them. If a bashful man walks in, she puts him at his ease by taking him to the bar, charms him, then guides him into bed. They seem to forget this girl is not eighteen, but twice that age. Of course, the soft lighting in the living room helps, too.

A lot of customers have a problem choosing a girl, either out of shyness or because they are overwhelmed at the possibilities for selection. If that happens, it is up to me. I stand near him at the bar in a slinky outfit, softly put my hands on his leg at the inner thigh to put him at ease, and turn him on a little, then ask, “Would you like to make your choice?”

Some are slightly embarrassed or don’t wish to embarrass the girl, so they will call me into the bedroom and say, “May I have the redhead sitting on the couch?” Or, “I like the girl in the white blouse.”

Sometimes a hayseed from Chattanooga, Tennessee, is too confused to make a suggestion, so I make it for him. For me, making the decision is sometimes difficult, because all the girls are equally nice and dear to me, and I hate to favor one over the other.

However, the girls who live in and pay rent have the priority over the callers.