CALL GIRL DISCRETION

It’s been a year since New York Governer, Eliot Spitzer slipped into a personal and professional media nightmare, after being caught banging a call girl.

Ashley Dupre, to be exact.

You, me and Dupre..

With the internet, tabloids and big bucks ruling the day, and various incarcerated madams choosing to release their confidentaial client lists, The Daily Beast discusses whether or not whoring has lost its soul.

SHOULD CALL GIRLS KISS AND TELL?

As public trainwrecks go, Spitzergate was a doozy. This week, we observe the one-year anniversary of the resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who, after a successful career busting escort agencies, was himself felled by revelations that he was a high-paying john. Ashley Dupre, one of the escorts he was seeing, feels he’s been “punished enough.”

The real casualties of his downfall, however, are people whose sin was trying to earn a living in one of New York’s more durable service industries—among them Kristin Davis, who is reported to have played matchmaker for the governor and spent three months in Rikers Island for operating an escort business. (Until one of her escorts spotted Spitzer in a local newspaper, Davis says she had no idea who she was dealing with.)

Davis has just released a memoir, The Manhattan Madam, about running America’s “most successful” prostitution ring. Never mind if “successful” in her time-honored profession used to mean staying out of jail. Davis, no slave to traditional values, sees herself as a trailblazing madam. And perhaps she is.

On her website, a beguiling pop-up called The Black Book Poll asks what Davis should do with her client list: “Give it to the media,” “Sell it & make my money back,” “Put it online for free,” or “Hide it & forever remain silent.”

Which made me wonder: what ever happened to the sacred cow of customer privacy that has helped define the demimonde of high-class hooking for so long?

Well, it’s 2009. It’s called “sex work” now. If it’s just a job, a transaction like any other, does it still have to be a secret? What kind of discretion, if any, should a client now expect from a modern madam after his payment has been processed and his session has ended?

I put in a call to Natalie McLennan, author of The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, New York’s #1 Escort. Natalie worked in the industry for one fast, crazy year, faced felony charges in 2005, and spent 26 days in jail before returning to Montreal. She’s a 21st-century escort whose brief career was accelerated by the Internet, but her response when asked what Davis should do with her client list is surprisingly old school: a dainty gasp.

“Hide it, of course! Destroy it!” she says. “Why destroy everybody’s life? Does she feel abused? Were they bad to her?” Natalie admits she never got past her “honeymoon” period as an escort. Her year in the life sounds dizzying, but there is nothing dizzy about her vehement refusal to name names. When shopping her memoir to publishers, she says, she was routinely asked if she would name her clients, “but naming names wasn’t even an option.” As a memoirist, she says, “I wanted to be honest with myself, but I kept everybody else’s skeletons in the closet. I was discreet about people’s identities and personal details.”

A generational world away is Janice, a madam in her early seventies who never felt at home on the Internet. I wasn’t surprised by her reaction to the possibility of Davis revealing her list.

[read more here]

Did I tell you about when The Silent Assassin, Chester and I nearly became male prostitutes in London? True story. We got damn close. Had the forms and everything. Thought it would make sense – earn money AND get some much needed action..

But something happened which stopped us from doing.

Oh ja, we got jobs at Cafe Uno on the Chiswick High Street. With Roy, the bizarre manager and Gabi the smoking hot waitress. The Insurance Broker pulled her.

Hottest pull he’s ever had.

He still talks about it.