Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker - My Own Story

I helped him with the sheets, and I said, “I could do this at home, too. I wanted to have some interesting conversation, go to the theater or go out for a bite to eat, and perhaps see some of the city.”

Then I made up my mind I wanted to take a plane back to New York. I called the airport and made a booking for four o’clock that afternoon.

As we were sitting in the kitchen just before I was to leave, I said, “Since you offered on the phone to pay for my trip, would you mind giving me the eighty-four dollars before we get into the car; otherwise you might forget.”

Then Nestor started yelling at me. “What do you think I am? I’m not one of your married ones that pay you, I am a bachelor. I didn’t hire you to come over.”

“I know you didn’t hire a whore,” I said. “And I didn’t charge you for it. Because if I did charge you for being fucked five times, it would have cost you several hundred dollars. So all I ask you is that you keep your promise to pay for my ticket, because I’m not spending money to come over and see you.”

“Girls come from all over the country to see me.” He started to preen slightly. “Even from California.”

“Bully for them,” I said. “But I’m not a charity whore.”

Then he started accusing me of being too independent.

“You think you are one smart little chick,” he snarled, “because you have managed to save a lousy few thousand dollars. But if you were really smart,” he added, “you would marry a man like me.” He really wanted to keep me there.

“I’m a nice Jewish boy, I’m thirty-five years old now, and my mother is getting upset because I’m not married. She’s always trying to fix me up with rich Jewish girls, but I don’t want a rich girl. I need a woman, I want to have children.”

“Well, not with me, baby,” I said. “You bore me senseless.”

“You’re insulting me,” he said. “I wanted you to marry me and have my children, and you are so ungrateful. Besides, think of all the good business I could have sent you from General Motors!”

The last time I got busted, the New York newspapers described one of my unfortunate codefendants as “Madam Xaviera’s pimp.” While this may have made good copy, it was hardly the truth. The truth is, modern madams of any stature don’t have pimps.

Street hookers have pimps, madams have boyfriends or lovers, or, in my case, both; and there is a demi-monde of difference between the two. Private call girls either have boyfriends or, occasionally, pimps.

A pimp lives off girls’ earnings, a boyfriend rarely does. I don’t deny there may be some fringe benefits attached to being the successful madam’s man, but as a rule her earnings, as with any other businesswoman, are her own. Apart from gifts for specific occasions, I have never spent money on a man, and I prefer it the other way around. But in Madeleine’s case, the man she made her fourth husband had an ex-wife and several kids to support, and she was very rich in real-estate investments and savings. My feeling there was that the poor little guy deserved some compensation for leaving his wife and kids.

Pimps are usually involved in gambling, drugs, and white slavery, and the pimp never wants the girl to get out of the business – unless she is no good at her work anymore – whereas the boyfriend does want his girl to give it up. My own boyfriend would love to see me, if not out altogether, then a one-hundred-percent nonparticipating executive madam.

The pimp is traditionally a polygamous animal who keeps several girls – “wives-in-law.” The structure is somewhat familylike, with the pimp as the master and the girls in friendly competition. Girls with pimps are known to work harder and longer (sometimes around the clock), and the pimp usually collects all the money – and no cheating around, or else he beats them up. It seems to me that it must be some kind of animal instinct that makes these girls enslave themselves to one man this way. Yet some girls do try to hold out money, and if he suspects this is going on, he will make spot checks of “his stable.” The pimp supplies the necessities for his girls – rent, furniture, and clothing; this latter often purchased “hot” from others in the life. On weekends he often takes them out to show off – to various nightclubs and discotheques and the more famous after-hour places.

The boyfriend, on the other hand, is generally monogamous. There is a rule in my house that the girls must respect the boyfriend, or lovers, of the madam, and any fooling around with “the old man” will result in instant dismissal of the girl.

In Georgette’s case the situation is a weird reverse. Georgette’s stockbroker boyfriend, Stephen, is interested only in drugs, booze, and broads, in that order. Her solution is to pay her own girls to sleep with him. That way, she rationalizes, he doesn’t have to stray – at least not outside her front door. He is not really what you call a pimp, yet Georgette is always crying poverty. As stingy as she is to her girls, that’s how generous she is to him. I’d estimate that ninety percent of her money goes to him – his “trips” and his girls.

In my house, the only one who cheats is me. My private life is like a perpetual triangle, with myself and my steady boyfriend, Larry, as the constant side, and the lovers who pass through – some quicker than others – as the variable third.

As I’ve said before, I am an emotional person, and I have my ups and downs, and if my boyfriend weren’t there, safe and sure, and if I did not occasionally fall in love, I would get very depressed and couldn’t keep my head straight.

Larry has been my backstop boyfriend since my first experience in Puerto Rico. On top of that, he functions as an administrative assistant, taking care of all banking, tips, payoffs, bad debts, bail, and any other money matters. If somebody tries to move in on me, he runs interference and checks them out like a private detective.

He is honest, reliable, loves me deeply, is solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Larry is not quite the intellectual I am looking for, and he does not share my interest in art, literature, music, or the theater, even though this concern has been sadly neglected since I became professional. He is not strong enough for me, either. What I really need is a man who is superintelligent and someone who will bang his fist on the table and say to me: “Goddamnit, this is it, now you do what I want.” Someone I can love, adore, and most of all, respect. I’d like him to be good-looking and masculine, but most important, I want him to be stronger in personality than I am.

My pet name for Larry is “El Schnuko,” the schnook – which in a friendly way means, the good-natured friend who does anything I want. In other words, he helps me around the house, does the vacuum-cleaning, empties the ashtrays, shops for groceries, takes care of stocking the bar, packs the cartons each time I have to move. And if I lay back and let him, he would turn me into a Jewish American Princess. But this doesn’t mean I don’t love Larry in my own way. He is tall and attractive and has a marvelous head of silver hair. When my friends or the girls refer to him as “the silver fox,” it’s meant strictly as a compliment.

Larry is comfortable to have around, especially on Saturdays and Sundays after a tough week of four hours’ sleep a night. As a hard-working madam I am not up to going out to football games, going to cocktail parties, or dropping in on friends. So Larry comes over and keeps me company.

He has been an absolute darling, considering what I have put him through. I have insulted him, hurt his feelings, and stepped on his heart. From time to time I have told Larry I am in love with someone, and many times I have cheated right under his nose. But I tell him they are all just ships passing in the night.