By Ashley Powers

November 4, 2008

Reporting from Wells, Nev. — The women at Donna’s Ranch are crowded around the kitchen table on a warm summer night, dining on stir fry, tugging at thigh-high dresses, griping about depleted bank accounts. At this northeastern Nevada bordello, which marks a gravel road’s end, they woo grizzled truckers and weary travelers for a single reason: money.

Lately, the women don’t go home with much.

Amy, 58, once bought a $32,000 Toyota Tacoma in cash; now her $1,200 mortgage saps her dwindling pay. Some weeks, she could make more flipping burgers than flirting under a made-up name. Marisol’s daughters think she works at a resort; she struggles to keep up the ruse. It now takes months, not weeks, to bring $5,000 back to Southern California.

“Marisol,” one of her regulars tells her, “it costs me in gas what it takes for me to spend a half-hour with you.”

Tonight, she tries lingering at the dimly lighted bar that’s decorated with red Christmas lights and smells of hot dogs and beans. Wearing a shimmering strapless top, Marisol sips cheap champagne and tries to seduce travelers, some with thick guts and most with thin wallets. After 20 minutes, she gives up.

Signs of the economic free fall have cropped up in many of Nevada’s 25 or so legal brothels. The Mustang Ranch, for example, has a steady stream of customers, but the number of women vying for work has soared. Even a 74-year-old applied. This summer, the Shady Lady gave $50 gas cards to those who spent $300. The Moonlite Bunny Ranch offered extras to customers paying with their economic stimulus checks.

Here, 180 miles west of Salt Lake City, near the junction of Interstate 80 and Highway 93, Donna’s Ranch has seen its business plummet nearly 20%. More than three-quarters of its customers are long-haul truckers, and high fuel and food prices have drained them of “play money,” owner Geoff Arnold says. That cuts into pay for his 10-member staff and the “working girls.”

Marisol, 49, retreats to the kitchen, a homey nook with lemon-yellow walls and a plate of scones that another woman whipped up. Amy is staring at the Lazy Susan, snuffing out a Misty cigarette. “There are two guys,” Marisol says, her voice thick with frustration. “They want to relax and drink a beer and think about it.”

She plops into a chair, pushes open blue curtains and scans a parking lot, bathed in yellow and pink by the neon advertising DONNA’S. Her face puckers. It’s empty.

The brothel’s woes start with the barflies, who are hoarding what little money they’ve saved. Tonight, two of them slouch in their stools and bemoan the economic slump, their voices rising to near shouts.

“The government’s got to do something,” says Dean Hargis, a tattooed trucker who calls Springfield, Mo., home. “Everybody who eats or drinks anything, they’re going to hurt. It affects what I eat, it affects what motel I stay in, it affects what dog food I buy.”

David Zett, a long-hauler from Loretta, Wis., gulps a Miller Genuine Draft and bashes oil companies: “They’ve got you over a barrel and can do whatever they want to you, and they don’t even kiss you when they’re done.”

“Just like this place,” Hargis says.

“No,” Zett says. “They kiss you.”

The bartender, Gayle Salinas, shakes her head. She’s pinching pennies too. She used to take home $50 in tips at the end of most shifts. Now she might pocket $12. Her pay is linked to how much the prostitutes make — and customers aren’t choosing their most expensive offerings.

The women negotiate the price of “parties” and their duration, which the bartender tracks using kitchen timers. Ten to 15 minutes costs at least $100. Customers once regularly paid thousands of dollars for extras listed on a hot-pink “menu” — but these days, for example, few men desire the hot tub or mirrored fantasy room.

Earlier that night, Marisol had guided Rob Siddoway, a gangly, pony-tailed trucker from Tooele, Utah, into the fantasy room. This was his first brothel trip in a year; he used to stop by every few months. “See how comfortable you can get?” Marisol coos. She points to a red-blanketed, circular bed and a pillow stitched with the word LOVE.

“You can see yourself in the mirror,” she says. He looks instead at her: olive skin, substantial curves, dark, tired eyes. He passes on buying an expensive party. Marisol isn’t surprised. She had played a fortune-telling card game that afternoon; it showed the future would bring little cash.

About a dozen years ago, Arnold plunked down more than $1 million for Donna’s Ranch. He’s a certified public accountant in Boise, Idaho, and had combed the books of several brothels; buying one seemed business-savvy. He owns another in Battle Mountain, Nev.

“They’re easy to run,” says Arnold, president of the state brothel association. “If you keep the girls happy, you’re done. If the girls are happy, then the guys are happy. I can’t think of any other business as good as a brothel, except for a doctor’s office — they’re equally profitable.”

Billed as the West’s oldest continuously operating bordello, Donna’s Ranch greets drivers with a sign that depicts a cowboy-hatted, buxom brunet preening atop a truck bed. The red-roofed, single-story brothel is plagued with leaks; a recent earthquake cracked its beige exterior. The women’s rooms are small. Most have a double bed, a television and DVD player, and tables with assorted lotions, sex toys and toiletries. There’s also a handmade sign that reminds customers: Tips are appreciated.

From 2006 to 2007, the brothel’s revenue climbed 7.6%, to about $1 million. This year, Arnold expects to make about $200,000 less. Closing that gap is tricky: Brothel advertising is legal, but billboards and bus ads risk upsetting neighbors. So the bordello sponsors a soccer team in Boise and a rodeo in Wells. It also bought lights for the high school football field and gave local motels pens, which boast that Donna’s is “Your Biggest Bang for the Buck.”

Arnold’s staff clips coupons to slash the $3,300 monthly grocery bill. He brainstorms other cost-cutting measures. He owns 33 acres in Wells — enough room, by his calculation, for five to 10 cows that could feed his workers.

“That’s what we’ve come to,” he says, chuckling at the idea. “Donna’s Ranch could be a real ranch.”

In the kitchen, Amy alternately smooths her black, rhinestone-trimmed mini-dress and reddened hair that falls to her waist. She appears about a decade younger than she is, with a trim figure, high cheekbones and a tendency to giggle.

She waits for the CB radio to crackle. During even-numbered hours, the women take turns sweet-talking truckers. (They cede the odd-numbered hours to Bella’s, the other brothel in this city of 1,300 people.) The tactic, which lures more than a third of Donna’s customers, is more vital now that business is slumping.

Amy is perched on a chair, legs crossed, a wedge heel dangling off French-manicured toes. At last, a trucker grunts through the airwaves: “Where you girls at?” Amy leans toward a microphone and urges him to pull off at Exit 352.

“Are you the Asian girl?” he asks.

“Bingo!” she says.

Amy has worked in brothels, on and off, for eight years. She needed cash to get her own place, but also blames “a broken heart.” Her grown son is the only person who’s figured out her line of work, something she admits with downcast eyes.

She typically does three-week stints, but starts wanting to go home to Utah after two. She used to pocket $6,000 each time — even after splitting money with the house and covering room and board, condoms, licenses and legally required medical tests. But what she wistfully terms the good old days — when she could see up to 13 men a day and afford to turn down customers — are gone.

Tonight, the bartender counts four brothel customers. Maybe, Salinas says, things will pick up. Some car buffs are in Wells for a show. “I don’t know,” Amy says. “They bring their wives.” The other women — who likewise use pseudonyms and hide their jobs from their children and friends — are discouraged too.

Tori, a blond veteran with a no-nonsense manner — she waves off questions about her age — commutes from the Reno area with an array of wigs and sequined get-ups. In the early ’90s, she was laid off from a Southern California real estate office; she eventually turned to the brothel circuit: winters in southern Nevada, summers up north. She wants to work in auto sales but makes do at Donna’s.

“Some other places want you to work 24 hours,” she says. “They don’t want you to sleep.”

Danielle, younger and more reserved than the other women, is passing time solving word puzzles. She is milky-skinned with a long brown ponytail. She ended up here after a divorce. She periodically flies to South Carolina — ticket prices have soared — and tries to return with at least $2,000. But most customers have been trying to bargain down their prices. Some are paying with credit cards — an indication they don’t have as much cash. (The receipts say Apache Wells Development Co., not Donna’s Ranch.)

“Whatever they have,” Amy says, “you have to take it.”

Earlier, when she was parrying with the trucker, Amy curled up at a folding table just big enough for a radio and mike, a water bottle, a gray stuffed kitten, an ashtray and a dry erase board listing selling points:

Free beer. Free chili. Free shower. SOUVENIRS.

“I’m going to bed,” the trucker tells her.

“Maybe come here and have a happy ending?” she purrs.

“Tell me what a happy ending is.”

“I can’t talk about it over the radio.”

Silence.

Thanks, the trucker says. Not tonight.

By Abigail Goldman
Sun, Dec 14, 2008 (2 a.m.)

The pleasure of Stacie’s company used to cost $450 an hour, but no longer. Her clients were capped at 35 and older; today she’s taking almost anyone. Sex acts once off the menu are suddenly back on — recession specials, served with a side of shrugging compromise.

If she doesn’t do more for less, Stacie says, another prostitute will. And her weekly income is still down by half.

The illegal prostitution economy in Clark County is a multimillion-dollar beast fed by a black market so diverse that it’s impossible to pin down. On one hand, midrange prostitutes like Stacie say they’re being crippled by the economy. On the other, high-end call girls claim they’re not feeling much pain. And the women charging the least reportedly are making the most these days — counterintuitive in an industry where bargains come with risks.

Consider the work of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who surveyed hundreds of high-end prostitutes in New York and discovered that 40 percent of “trades” in the sex economy never went beyond light petting or kissing.

In Las Vegas, the economy’s effect on call girls is even more complicated: The bulk of clients — or johns — here are from out of town, tourists or businessmen who spend days in convention halls and nights in hotel rooms with to-your-door entertainment. These men are bread and butter for local prostitutes, provided the clients come to town. And anybody in the hospitality industry — here that illicitly includes call girls too — can agree that fewer men are flying in, with less money to spend.

Meanwhile, more women reportedly are getting into the business, which creates a classic supply and demand squeeze. An escort agency owner told the Sun he’s getting about 40 interested applicants every day, the majority of whom are women running from the wreckage of lost finance jobs.

Now fold another factor into that dynamic: When the economy is bad, when people feel their mortgages closing in, they seek comfort: alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, pornography and perhaps prostitution.

When all these elements collide in the nebulous economy of escorting, a trend emerges: The Clark County call girl economy has a tipping point — about $650.

In Vegas, prostitutes who charge between $600 and $700 are being hit the hardest. The women (and the smaller number of men in the business) who charge in the $200 to $300 range are doing the same business as before, if not better, according to Susan Lopez, founder of the Sin City Alternative Professionals’ Association for local sex workers. And women who charge thousands of dollars for multi-hour appointments tell Lopez, and the Sun, that they’re not really being affected at all.

Although this is no scientific study — and people should be wary of any numbers that claim to definitively capture any element of the sex-for-pay market — the tipping point does make sense: People tightening their belts are downgrading to cheaper service; people who don’t need to tighten their belts aren’t really doing it at all. If you can buy a Bentley today, the logic goes, you’re probably going to be able to buy one tomorrow.

Or maybe you’ll buy an evening with Rebecca. She’s been a call girl in Las Vegas for several years, after leaving a job in finance behind. Winters are always slow, she says, but overall, the money is good. How good? Her best month was $32,000. An average month is more like $15,000.

“I get a lot of doctors and lawyers and they don’t even blink,” she said. “By January or February I’m fully expecting to raise my rates.”

Her rates, for now, are $2,000 to start. Overnights cost $4,000. Travel and multiple-day excursions are negotiable.

If you don’t believe people would pay that kind of money, consider the case of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, who authorities allege spent $80,000 on escorts in one year, despite having a lot more to lose than the cash.

Call girls difficult to count

Calculating Las Vegas’ call girl economy is, at best, a guessing game. Academics have estimated there are anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500 indoor working prostitutes in Las Vegas at any given time. Imagine, however, that only a fraction of them, say, 1,000, are working year-round. Now imagine that each sees only one client a day, and charges only $300. You still have an annual economy of $109.5 million. Imagine the number of working girls is even smaller — 500 prostitutes charging $250 a day. That’s still more than $45 million a year.

Trace our economy backward from bust to boom and you’ll hit the glory days that helped create the world of high-cost call girls. A glut of new millionaires, paired with a sex industry that seamlessly got online and off the streets, gave birth to agencies such as the Emperors Club — Spitzer’s alleged company of choice, where the cheapest dates still commanded $1,000 an hour.

Writing about this subject, The Wall Street Journal cited a study conducted by wealth research firm Prince & Associates, which surveyed 661 people rich enough to own private jets and found 34 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women had paid for sex. Now extend that group to people who are rich enough to own, say, a beach house, or a Porsche, or their own firm — and you get an idea of just how big the market could be.

Blogging on The Economist Web site, economist Allison Schrager notes that the prostitution market is countercyclical; less attractive and cheaper prostitutes, while available, aren’t always desirable. Prostitution, Schrager says, appears to be what’s called a “Giffen good” — a product for which demand rises with price.

Charging too little has dangers

When financial panic intrudes on the prostitution world, escorts often lower their rates in response, according to Amanda Brooks, author of the Internet Escorts Handbooks. That’s a mistake, she says, not just because established higher-end prostitutes are more immune to economic fluctuations, but because lowering rates changes the kind of clientele call girls attract.

Women who are getting into the industry for the first time also tend to price themselves too low, Brooks said, because they don’t understand that higher rates mean higher quality clients. There’s another side, too — the handful of prostitutes who Brooks says are taking on straight jobs to fill in the gaps between “dates.”

Women who price themselves at the tipping point, $600 or $700 for a few hours’ work, have “always had a difficult time. They’ve always been in a kind of limbo land, between the true high end and the rest,” she said. “Those girls are definitely feeling the crunch.”

For Stacie, who discounted her hourly rate by $100 or more, lowering costs also comes with increasing risks. She is forced to do more outcall work — going to clients’ rooms rather than the having them come to her hotel room, which makes her feel more vulnerable. She also agrees to a wider range of sex acts, which puts her at additional health risk.

“I can’t do this for too many years longer,” she said, “just until I save up enough.

“You always want to be safe, but you’re always lowering your standards.”

In the past, Stacie saved $1,000 a week — on top of the $5,000 she made and spent. Now she’s down to $3,000 and she’s not setting aside any money. Still, that’s an incredibly high salary for most people, which puts the working girls’ woes into context for others struggling with the bad economy.

Stacie and Rebecca, despite the difference in what they charge, are still part of what academics classify as the “indoor” sex trade — the vast majority of the illicit industry, though it’s largely invisible.

“Outdoor” sex workers, the stereotypical streetwalkers, are only 15 percent of the prostitution world, though they represent 85 to 90 percent of the vice arrests, according to a study by Venkatesh and “Freakonomics” author Steven Levitt, who found that street prostitutes in Chicago earn roughly $25 to $30 an hour.

How street prostitutes are faring in Las Vegas is unclear — even women with close ties to the industry, like Rebecca or Lopez, are so far removed from these prostitutes that they don’t know. None contacted by the Sun would agree to talk.

Women who work for escort services also face a strain that independents such as Stacie and Rebecca do not. The escort service charges a base fee of several hundred dollars, and it’s up to the escort to negotiate with the client on top of that — a tip determined upfront. One local escort, reflecting on the economy, said she knew things were getting bad when women who once would walk out of a room for anything less than a $1,500 tip were now hanging around for only a few hundred dollars.

But here’s the irony: When the economy is stable, women who charge midrange fees often end up making more money than call girls serving the high-end clientele, Lopez said. High-end call girl Rebecca makes $15,000 in an average month, but when times are good, Stacie, who charges midrange fees, can clear $25,000 — she just has to hustle much harder for it. It’s a trade-off that plays money against mental health and safety.

If the bad economy does anything to escorting, author Brooks figures, it will be this: Prostitutes will become better at marketing themselves.

“They going to be looking into Web sites, looking into blogging, getting a little more savvy about their marketing,” she said. “And the smart ones will compete for clients in a way that doesn’t impact the girls, not by lowering their prices and by giving more than they feel comfortable with, but by increasing their market savvy.”

One of those is Amber, a New York-based escort available for travel anywhere. She has been flown to Vegas a few times this year, by men who cover her expenses and pay about $5,000 on top of that.

“Vegas is very competitive, and you really feel it,” she said. “I’ve had to be a little more creative, a little more aggressive in my marketing.”

Even then, she added, “I travel the world, but I’m not living as lavishly as I was.”

]]> http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/usa-escorts/not-even-prostitution-is-immune-to-economics-of-supply-demand.htm/feed 1 http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/escort-industry/financial-crisis-tames-demand-for-world%e2%80%99s-oldest-service.htm http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/escort-industry/financial-crisis-tames-demand-for-world%e2%80%99s-oldest-service.htm#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:13:48 +0000 Support http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/?p=65

PRAGUE — On a recent night at Big Sister, which calls itself the world’s biggest Internet brothel, a middle-aged man selected a prostitute by pressing an electronic menu on a flat-screen TV to review the age, hair color, weight and languages spoken by the women on offer.

Once he had chosen an 18-year-old brunette, he put on a mandatory terry-cloth robe and proceeded to one of the brothel’s luridly lighted theme rooms: an Alpine suite decorated with foam rubber mountains covered with fake snow.

Nearby, in the brothel’s cramped control room, two young technicians worked dozens of hidden cameras that would film the man’s performance and stream it, live, onto Big Sister’s Web site.

Customers can have sex free of charge at Big Sister, in return for signing a release form allowing the brothel to film their sexual exploits.

But even with this financial incentive, Carl Borowitz, 26, Big Sister’s marketing manager, a Moravian computer engineer, lamented that the global financial crisis had diminished the number of sex tourists coming to Prague.

“Sex is a steady demand, because everyone needs it, and it used to be taboo, which made a service like ours all the more attractive,” said Mr. Borowitz, who looks more like Harry Potter than Larry Flynt. “But the problem today is that there is too much competition and our clients don’t have as much disposable income as before.”

In the Czech Republic, where prostitution operates in a legal gray zone, the sex industry is big business, generating more than $500 million in annual revenues, 60 percent of which is derived from foreign visitors, according to Mag Consulting, a Prague-based research firm that studies the industry.

Big Sister is not the only brothel suffering the effects of a battered global economy. While the world’s oldest profession may also be one of its most recession-proof businesses, brothel owners in Europe and the United States say the global financial crisis is hurting a once lucrative industry.

Egbert Krumeich, the manager of Artemis, Berlin’s largest brothel, said that in November, usually peak season for the sex trade, revenues were down by 20 percent. In Reno, Nev., the famed Mustang Ranch recently laid off 30 percent of its staff, citing a decline in high-spending clients.

Big Sister is not struggling as much as some of its more traditional rivals, since its revenues are largely derived from the 30 euros a month, or about $38, its 10,000 clients pay to gain access to its site.

But Mr. Borowitz said Big Sister hoped to offset a 15 percent drop in revenues over the past quarter by expanding into the United States. The brothel also produces cable TV shows that air on Sky Italia and Britain’s Television X, as well as DVDs like “World Cup Love Truck.”

Ester, an 18-year-old prostitute at Big Sister who declined to give her last name, said that big-spending clients had diminished, but that she was still earning nearly 2,000 euros a month — enough to pay the rent and buy Louis Vuitton bags. “The reason to do this is for the money,” she said, after gyrating half-naked on a pole. Being filmed, she added, made her feel more like an actress than a sex object.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the Czech Republic has become a major transit and destination country for women and girls trafficked from countries farther east like Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Moldova, according to the police.

For nearly 20 years, tens of thousands of sex tourists have streamed into Prague, the pristinely beautiful Czech capital, drawn by inexpensive erotic services, an atmosphere of anonymity for customers and a liberal population tolerant of adultery. According to Mag Consulting, 14 percent of Czech men admit to having sex with prostitutes, compared with a European Union average of 10 percent.

Dozens of cheap flights to Prague have also ensured a flow of bachelor parties from across Europe, with multiple daily flights from Britain alone.

Jaromir Beranek, an analyst with Mag Consulting, said the strength of the Czech crown against the euro, lower spending power and competition from lower-cost sex capitals like Riga, Latvia, and Krakow, Poland, were threatening one of the country’s most thriving sectors.

Many Czechs are more than happy to see Prague shrug off its reputation as one of the world’s top 20 sex destinations. But some in the hotel industry are so alarmed by the drop in tourists that they are lobbying the government to legalize the trade, in the hope that it will help lure more clients.

While some critics have warned that legalization would effectively transform the Czech state into the country’s biggest pimp, the Czech government is considering whether to emulate the Netherlands and Germany by regulating prostitution like any other industry. It is considering passing legislation by the end of the year that would require the Czech Republic’s estimated 10,000 prostitutes to register with the local authorities.

Dzamila Stehlikova, a minister from the Green Party, who is shepherding the bill through Parliament, argued that by forcing the business out into the open, it would make it harder for human traffickers to thrive, while helping to ensure mandatory health checkups for prostitutes. Other advocates argued that legalization would generate millions of euros in lost tax revenue from an industry that was largely underground.

Not everyone is enthusiastic; the prostitutes themselves say that being issued prostitution identification cards would further stigmatize them.

Hana Malinova, director of Bliss Without Risk, a prostitution outreach group, said she feared the current credit crunch was pushing more poor women into prostitution, since they could make more money selling their bodies — about 120 euros for a half-hour session at some upscale sex clubs in Prague — than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

Even with the downturn, she added, prostitution was far more resilient than other industries, though the downturn was discouraging adultery.

“An Austrian farmer from a remote area who is not married will still cross the border to the Czech Republic looking for sex,” she said. “On the other hand, the recession is helping to keep husbands at home who might otherwise be cheating on their wives.”

In Czech towns near the German border in northern Bohemia, long blighted by a daily influx of sex tourists, many are happy that the business is suffering.

Only a few years ago the town of Dubi was so overrun by prostitution that a nearby orphanage was opened to provide refuge for dozens of unwanted babies of prostitutes and their German clients. Sex could be purchased for as little as 5 euros — the price of a few beers in Dresden — drawing a daily influx of more than 1,000 sex tourists.

Today, more than three dozen brothels have been winnowed down to four; several were converted into goulash restaurants or golf clubs.

Petr Pipal, Dubi’s conservative mayor whose zero-tolerance policy was a key reason for the change, said that installing surveillance cameras and police officers at the entrance of brothels had deterred sex tourists. Rising prices for sex services and the global financial crisis, he added, were also helping to tame demand.

“Two or three years ago, we would get 1,000 men coming here for sex on a Friday night, which is a lot for a town of 8,000 people,” he said. “The one good thing about the economic crisis is that it is helping to keep sex tourists away.”

In Prague, even brothels in the most touristy areas complain they are suffering from economic hardship. On a recent night near Wenceslas Square in Prague, dozens of young men loitered outside a row of neon-lighted sex clubs, beckoning passing tourists with offers of complementary alcohol and racy strip shows.

Inside Darling, a multilevel cabaret famous for cancan shows modeled on the Moulin Rouge in Paris, young women gyrated on a stage, surrounded by leopard skin couches, flashing disco balls and paintings of naked women.

Suzana Brezinova, the club’s marketing director, said some high-spending businessmen still visited Darling to shrug off economic doldrums.

“People have less money,” she said. “But hard times also mean that people want to be cheered up.”

Jan Krcmar contributed reporting from Prague, and Victor Homola from Berlin.

Katie David
Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: Commentary

The world’s oldest profession seems to be very “in” right now. Between the Eliot Spitzer scandal, an NBC special on “The Business of High-End Prostitution,” a Showtime series about a London “escort” entitled The Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Ashley Dupré’s (Spitzer’s infamous call girl) media tour, the American public is very interested in prostitution. However, the media is not showing images of what many consider the typical victim of the sex trade, such as an impoverished and malnourished woman selling her body for crack. Clearly, that image is too disturbing for the middle-class American living room. Instead, the media focuses on “high-end” prostitution, where women are paid thousands for their services, which range from sex to compliments (seriously). While the data for this industry is difficult to track, the media is most likely not focusing on these “escort services” because they pose a deep societal problem. Instead the media probably sees what many young women today observe when examining the dynamics of high-end prostitution: how closely it resembles the dating situation for young women today.

Ashley Dupré and I have something in common. Neither of us has a degree in sociology or is really qualified to make sweeping statements about cultural movements. But we do it anyway. In Ashley’s recent interview with People magazine, she explains how the dynamics of prostitution have permeated the mainstream.

“This wasn’t any different than going on a date with someone you barely knew and hooking up with them,” she reasoned. “The only difference is I can pay my rent.”

In short, the relationship between sex and money is apparent outside the industry of high-end prostitution. Many young women today often joke about becoming trophy wives. I must admit that once I realized that no profession I was interested in could make me rich, that lifestyle seemed appealing to me. Women who “marry up” or “marry rich” are only lightly chastised by public opinion when what they are doing, offering up their bodies and looks for wealth, is not so different from high-end prostitution.

More pervasive, however, is how young women are responding to offers of wealth in exchange for the “hook-ups” Ashley describes. In our parents’ generation, women could expect men to pay for them and it was considered chivalrous. Today for us young women, when a boy buys dinner for us, we often feel guilty if we don’t give him something in return. In this post-feminist era, women are having trouble finding their place in the relationship balance and money only complicates that dilemma. Women are no longer burning their bras, but instead finding men who will buy them expensive ones.

According to CNBC, the most popular item offered by escorts today is called the Girlfriend Experience (or GFE). While there isn’t a standard definition, most in the industry agree that it involves some facsimile of real romance, including dinners, vacations and gifts in addition to original payments. With the advent of online dating, reality shows like The Girls Next Door (documenting the lives of the ultimate high-end prostitutes, Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends) and the sex trade evolving into the “relationship trade,” more and more people are approaching dating like a business transaction instead of a search for companionship. And the media’s glamorization of high-end prostitution is not helping. If our society, especially young women like myself, continue to think this way, perhaps all relationships will simply become glorified “girlfriend experiences.” Chivalry may not be dead, but it could come at a hefty price.

By Maya Dollarhide

(LifeWire) — Eight years ago, Natalie McLennan, a leggy brunette, moved to New York City from Montreal to pursue an acting career. At a cocktail party, she met Jason Itzler, the self-proclaimed “‘king of all pimps” and owner of the now-defunct New York Confidential escort agency. When Itzler suggested McLennan, then 28, work for him, she decided “dating” guys beat waiting tables while she continued looking for acting gigs.

By 2004, McLennan was earning around $2,000 an hour, sometimes more, seeing “two to three clients a day for at least two to three hours each.”

When it came to catering to the needs of her well-heeled customers, “I was always on call.”

Natalie — known as Natalia — had hit it big; in July 2005, she was profiled for a New York magazine cover story. Three months after the interview hit the newsstands, the agency was shut down. McLennan was arrested for prostitution, spending 26 days in jail.

Thirty-year-old “Celeste,” who didn’t want her real name used, says she started turning tricks in Minnesota at 15. For her, prostitution was a job, not a path to a celebrity lifestyle. In a good year, the young wife and mother saw up to four clients a day, men she describes as “just guys, like the ones you see at the supermarket or fixing something in your house” and earned up to $300 for 30 minutes of her services. She found her customers through online personals, chat rooms and telephone talk lines for singles.

“I needed that money. I had debt, credit card debt. Then later, when I had a child, I needed the money to pay for food and things for my baby,” she says. In May of this year, Celeste says, she decided to quit for good after a client, a doctor, hurt her during sex. “I figured he of all people would know the limitations of a person’s body, but he didn’t and I thought I was going to die.”

McLennan and Celeste represent two sides of an industry that perennially generates headlines and pop culture buzz. Tabloid tales of high-priced call girls and politicians — like former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer — have heightened interest in TV fare such as Showtime’s “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl.” There are also reports of a new series being developed for HBO based on the novel “Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl” and a proposed MTV reality series starring Spitzer’s favorite paid date, Ashley Dupre.

While these moments in the sun tend to glamorize prostitution, women in the sex industry and those who study them say a prostitute’s real life can also be difficult and dangerous. What’s harder to get agreement on is whether the sex industry victimizes women.

Risks and rewards

When Celeste met her first pimp at a gas station hang-out, she was vulnerable and alone. Her family had neglected her, she says, and she was often the target of psychological abuse. She “didn’t have enough self-esteem” to say no when her new boyfriend suggested she work for him. “He was very handsome and smooth,” she says. “I wanted him to like me and be my boyfriend. I was living on my own, mainly, and he took care of me.”

McLennan, on the other hand, felt more in control and says she enjoyed aspects of her former job, especially the money and the opportunity to “party with rock stars.”

“I never felt that I was a victim, as opposed to the girls on the street,” says McLennan. “There was definitely anxiety at the beginning, but it got easier almost immediately because the agency’s clientele mainly consisted of successful, well-mannered business men. We were marketed as princesses and the men who hired us treated us as such.”

Celeste was not so lucky. “I was always afraid, every single time,” she recalls. “I did this for 15 years and I never stopped being afraid. The job isn’t like in the movies.”

Victims or not?

McLennan and Celeste both say working for a high-end escort agency or as a call girl is preferable to working in the streets because the money is better and it’s less risky than walking the streets. Researchers, meanwhile, are divided over whether the sex industry victimizes the women.

“Prostitution causes deep psychological harm,” says Melissa Farley, Ph.D., a research and clinical psychologist and founder and executive director of the nonprofit group Prostitution Research and Education in San Francisco. “The words that are said to these women on the job, the names they are called by their [customers] and pimps hurt them emotionally. They are frequently abused physically. Not to mention that the shelf life of women in prostitution is short — if women manage to stay alive in it, they don’t last a long time.”

Farley, who spent two years investigating eight legalized brothels says, “Nevada brothels are scary, scary places.” Her research, which was supported by a U.S. State Department grant, found that 81 percent of the women in brothels don’t want to be there.

Other researchers disagree with Farley’s findings and contend that by legalizing prostitution in the form of brothels, women in the sex industry can gain a modicum of legitimacy.

Brothels, a legal solution

Sociologist Barb Brents of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has spent the last 10 years researching the legal brothel industry in Nevada. She disagrees with Farley’s position that all women working as prostitutes — even legally in brothels — are victims.

Most women working in brothels, Brents says, are doing it for the money, like any other job. “You have women coming in from low-paying service jobs… who decide to work in a brothel because they need more money to make ends meet,” she says. “Then you have former prostitutes, women who want to get away from stress of working illegally. Then you have the ‘professionals,’ women from the legal porn industry or former dancers who see their work as a profession or a calling.”

While Brents agrees that abuse and violence can and does occur in the sex industry, it rarely happens in legalized brothels, she says. “These women can leave their jobs. They can walk out the door and quit. They are not prisoners there. And most of them stay because the money is good.”

Fifty-year-old Marisol, who asked that her real name not be used, works at Donna’s Ranch, a legal brothel in northeastern Nevada. At Donna’s, sex workers have access to medical care, are regularly tested for HIV, and have the option of refusing a client. For Marisol, however, it’s the money that makes being a sex worker appealing.

“It’s a job. I am a single mother and this job allowed me to pay for my daughters’ education, our mortgage and our car. I could not do that working at Wal-Mart.”

Getting out, or trying to

Still, the women interviewed for this article agree that even under the best circumstances, being a sex worker isn’t a job that they want to pursue forever. Retirement seems like a good idea to ex-call girl McLennan, who says she is happy to be done with that part of her life, in part because her short prison time was an eye-opener to the risks of her profession. Still, her experiences provided for her: She is writing a memoir, “The Price” (Phoenix Books), due out in November.

She’s also planning to set up blog “where I can offer other girls advice and guidance. I have made a lot of bold choices in my life but I think many of them have been misguided.”

Celeste wants to volunteer to baby-sit at the non-profit where she once received counseling and comfort. “A lot of women there have babies or young children and they need someone to watch them while they get help,” she says. “I want to be able to give back to the organization someday.”

For now, Celeste is concentrating on raising her daughter. But despite the harm and fear her last client caused her, she still hasn’t changed her phone number — the one that keeps her attached to her former clients. Without that number, she’s officially out of business.

“I keep meaning to change it,” she says, “but then I think, what if I need to earn some money fast? It’s hard to let go.”

HIGH COST, HIGH PRICE: McLennan

by CHRIS BARRY

Montreal has certainly had its share of quality celebrity exports over the years: Leonard Cohen, Captain Kirk, Patsy Gallant, to name a few. Yet what’s a hack like Leonard Cohen ever done to merit his glowing international rep? Exactly.

But Natalie “Natalia” McLennan, hey, now there’s another story. Born and raised in Montreal West, the Royal West Academy graduate and former tap dancing protégé left town a few years back looking for fame and fortune in the Big Apple, and actually found it. Yes, our hometown gal scaled the heights to become the top prostitute in a town chock-full of whores, earning herself a cool $2,000-an-hour warming the willies of Wall Street big shots, celebrity athletes, politicians and other studs with way too much money to burn.

Along the way, she got entangled in one of the most delicious scandals New York has seen in a long time, when it was discovered that Governor Eliot Spitzer had been a regular client of New York Confidential, allegedly forking over some 80 grand to the escort agency run by Natalie’s mega-unsavoury ex-boyfriend, Jason “King of All Pimps” Itzler.

Despite having left the agency just before the bust and the attendant media circus accompanying it, our heroine, who’d picked up a minor drug habit on her path to greatness, found herself looking at some potentially serious prison time.

Now safe and sound in Montreal living the straight, simple life working at a downtown spa, Natalie’s recounting of her ordeal, The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, is available from fine booksellers everywhere.

Mirror: When did you get back into town?

Natalie McLennan: About a year ago. I’m living in the Plateau now, rediscovering the city—it’s great. I pretty much came back to reconnect with my family and because I couldn’t get shit done in New York. So many distractions there, parties to go to, restaurants to eat at, friends to hang out with. So I knew Montreal would be a good place to just come and do what needed to be done, which was finish my book.

M: You’ve notably declined to name any of your famous clients. Was that a difficult decision to make or simply obvious?

NM: It was obvious. Revealing names wasn’t even an option. When I was first working out my publishing deal, there were quite a few publishers who only wanted me to write a tell-all in the extreme sense and rip everybody’s private lives wide open. But I wouldn’t budge on that—not ever.

M: So, as a prostitute, you were getting 2K an hour with a two-hour minimum and–

NM: Crazy, right?

M: I’ll say. So how does it feel to just be giving it away now? Is it a sort of, “Hey, I used to get 4K for this, and now, like, at best all I’ll get is an orgasm” kind of thing?

NM: (laughing) Ah, but Chris, don’t we all really just give it away?

M: Huh? Um, I dunno. I guess it’s really two different things anyway, right? Fucking for money and fucking for pleasure.

NM: Yes, it’s two totally different things.

Too much money

M: When you’re earning that kind of insane money selling the simple pleasures of your company, do you tend to strut around thinking, “Goddamn, I’m as hot a chick as has ever walked the earth, look at me, I’m absolutely spectacular?”

NM: You know, it was so surreal. I was in this weird little fantasyland, walking around with way too much money. There was definitely a lot of pressure too though. But I clued in right away what my niche was: a really awesome fun girl to hang out with. And I was pretty and I’m a sexual person, so the whole package really put it together. I made sure I was always in a good mood when I was with clients. I was also very fortunate to never lose a sense of who I was within the business, you know? Like, it’s true I got caught up and swept away a little, but even in those moments, I made of point of checking in with myself to make sure I was always true to myself.

M: Do you have any advice for other girls looking to earn themselves a cool 2K an hour as prostitutes?

NM: Um… Ah, I dunno.

M: Seriously, what would you suggest? Like, “Always brush your teeth, comb your hair, make sure you’re clean down there.” What sort of–

NM: Oh my God. I really don’t know. I guess I’d tell them to be careful. It’s true I got lucky but that’s not the case for everyone. My worst nightmare is some girl reading my book and saying “Oh my gosh, wow, that’s something I could totally do and feel comfortable with” and then not going into the right part of the industry and getting hurt. But if they’d already made up their minds, I’d tell them to make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons, to get a good therapist, and make sure they’ve got some good friends and family around. That’s it.

M: If you had a hot-looking daughter, might you recommend a career in whoring to her?

NM: I would never recommend or try and steer someone else into it. I know it was okay for me at the time when I did it. But everybody is different. Everybody deals with situations differently. Some people are better at handling different things.

Shits and giggles

M: When you’re charging 2K an hour for sexual services, is pretty well everything a go? Like, at that price, if a client is into scatting, do you just smile demurely while he takes a good old-fashioned beer shit on you? Going, “Ah, this is wonderful, baby, let’s roll around in it afterwards while we make sweet love?”

NM: I have to tell you that… It wasn’t… Oh God. Um, okay. With anything goes… Lemme think. (long pause) No, I definitely had my boundaries and I definitely maintained them. I knew what I was comfortable with and knew what felt good to me. And really, that’s the thing. I think the number of clients who’d want to engage in something that someone else doesn’t enjoy is really a small percentage and probably not the kind of client you want anyway.

M: I guess so. But I think if I was spending 4,000 bucks to see the high-diving act, I would make sure that I saw the high-diving act, you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn’t care if the diving horse I was paying all that money to didn’t enjoy diving. Too bad. Then again, I guess if you’ve got that big a budget for whores to begin with, you’re not really thinking about dollar value in the same way someone of more modest means might. Did you have a preferred sex act with clients?

NM: Wow, what an awesome question, no one has ever asked me that before.

M: Are you kidding me?

NM: People tend to tiptoe around certain things, or they just don’t go there. Um, my preferred sex act. Well, I think that’s a little private. Which I know sounds crazy since I just wrote a book about it.

M: Well yeah, I’m not exactly asking what you think about when you’re masturbating or anything especially personal, you know? Just what, as a professional, was your preferred sex act. Like, was it the quickest, easiest thing or….

NM: Um, okay. Let me transport myself back to the world of escorting for a minute. (Pause) Okay, I really don’t know.

M: Alright, so be it. So how often would you genuinely wind up having a bang-up enjoyable time with a client?

NM: Most of the time. I made sure I did, I made sure it was fun. Just imagine having a job where it’s fun, easy and you’re making insane money. Those are all the positives.

Women in prison

M: So why did you leave New York Confidential then?

NM: My relationship with Jason was deteriorating, I didn’t feel safe there anymore, I didn’t feel happy there anymore, there were some new managers that came in who were really mean, negative people. It changed the whole vibe of the agency. Like, we had this whole sex utopia going on there and it just vanished, you know? So at that point, I just figured, well, why am I here? So I decided to leave.

M: And then, a month later, they got busted. You ended up doing time at Rikers? How did that come about?

NM: I’m sorry, I really can’t discuss the details of my case, but yeah, I did, only because they set my bail so high, $250,000. That’s why I went to jail for 26 days, three days longer than Paris Hilton. Jail is a terrible place. When I was growing up watching Law and Order, I would always cringe whenever the jail doors would slam, and then, ah, like, fast-forward 15 years. It was really brutal. One thing I know for sure is that I’ll never be in that situation again. It’s a nightmarish experience.

M: Were you especially popular with some of the more, how do you say, masculine girls at Rikers?

NM: Honestly, I don’t want to burst anybody’s balloon, but when you’re at Rikers, it’s really just a survival thing. Nobody is at that stage of it yet. When you go upstate and you actually get sentenced to do time, that reality exists. But for me, it was more about not getting hurt. The girls in there were really aggressive. Really aggressive.

M: And to you especially, I’d assume, the famous 2k-an-hour call girl. After all, they get the New York Post in Rikers.

NM: Yes, exactly, they do! And they published this full-page picture of me that everyone was walking around with. Everyone in there was really resentful because I had a good lawyer and regular court dates to try and resolve my situation. A lot of girls there don’t have those opportunities to get themselves to a better place.

M: And they all think you’re loaded too, right? Which is both good and bad in jail.

NM: Yes, exactly.

Looking for local fun

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: McLennan, a Montrealer again

M: Were you able to walk away from the business with any money?

NM: No, there was a lot of money owed to me that I never got. Money that was sitting in an account which I believe got seized. It’s probably all for the best—it might have gotten me into a lot more trouble and I probably still wouldn’t have it. So hey, I came back to my humble beginnings in Montreal and now I’m trying something new.

M: Do you resent that Ashley Dupree, who you turned on to big money whoring, has somewhat successfully cashed in on all the notoriety from the Spitzer scandal?

NM: Well, has she really? She sold 500,000 copies of her single on iTunes, so that’s good, but she’s kind of disappeared now, hasn’t she? I know she’s still popping in and out of hotels, she’s in the press for that, but I’ll be very curious to see how the music career she’s working on will be received, how far she’ll be able to go. Actually, she’s a cool, down-to-earth, awesome girl. I only wish her the best. She just got caught up in a huge situation, this crazy scandal.

M: What do you think you’ll do for a career now?

NM: Well, the book is out and I love writing. I studied acting and still really love that whole world. So I dunno, I think I’m due for a light bulb moment soon. I can sense it coming. I’m enjoying living in Montreal again a lot. Except for winter, which sucks. I really need to find a winter activity to keep myself sane this year. So if anybody out there wants to teach me how to snowboard, tell them to get in touch with me. I’m totally open to learning, because I really need something fun to do now.

As far as Nancy’s concerned, Edmonton’s the best city in Canada to work as an escort.

“There’s more money and less grief,” she says. “The police are excellent for helping us, the cost of living is good compared to bigger cities and the licensing system works.”

FAR FROM RISK-FREE

Edmonton escorts routinely charge up to $600 per hour, but Nancy warns that it’s far from risk-free.

“This business will weed you out,” she says. “A lot of very naive girls get into it, but it’s survival of the fittest. If you last, it means you’ve learned, or grown up.”

But if you don’t learn, she adds darkly, “You could die.”

Edmonton’s so-called inside sex trade has been rocked this year by two high-profile deaths. The body of Brianna Torvalson, 21, who had been working over the Internet, was found on Feb. 21 on an acreage in Strathcona County. No charges have been laid in her slaying.

Then on June 30, the body of Chantel Robertson, 20, was found in a shallow grave behind a south-side house. She had been strangled. Matthew Todd Barrett, 24, has been charged with first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a body.

Robertson was last seen at 2:30 a.m. June 28 when she was dropped off at a client’s house in the same neighbourhood. Sources said her cellphone – an escort’s “lifeline” – had been switched off and no one was able to make contact with her.

Nancy, a veteran of the business, says escorts quickly learn to size up a situation and determine whether it’s safe.

It begins on the phone. She gets a feel for new customers simply by talking to them. Are they nervous? Do they sound high? What are they into, sexually?

When she arrives, Nancy makes sure everything is as discussed. Are there extra people in the room? Did he lie about his appearance? Does he behave differently than he did on the phone?

“About 95% of the guys are totally fine,” she says. “Mostly, they’re just square dummies.”

She’d rather deal with someone high on crack than a drunk, any day.

“You just raise your voice and the crackheads are going, ‘Sshh, I don’t want any trouble,’ ” she says. “Drunks are the ones you have to watch out for. Booze makes people aggressive.”

Nancy prides herself on her ability to “de-escalate” volatile situations and talk herself out of trouble. Failing that, however, she says she can defend herself if things get out of hand. But in the three decades she’s been an escort, it never has.

“I know we’re taking chances,” she says. “Either you don’t allow yourself to think of it or it just doesn’t enter your mind.”

NO STRAIGHT JOB

Nancy doesn’t even consider getting out of the business and taking a straight job.

“Most women in this business don’t hate the business. It’s a good-paying job,” she says. “How many secretaries get their asses pinched for $10 an hour?”

David Aitken of the city’s bylaw department said there are about 160 licensed escorts in Edmonton, mostly working for any of the nine agencies. Of those, 13 have independent escort licenses.

However, Aitken said that over the past three or four years, there’s been a “significant” increase in prostitution activity over the Internet.