Madam

That was not exactly the best upbringing for my line of work, but I’ve also found that it tempers the cynicism that is part and parcel of my profession and makes me – or so I’m told – reasonably pleasant to work with. Perhaps not the most overwhelming of compliments, but there are days when I’m willing to settle for reasonably pleasant.

It also means that I smile and acknowledge toll collectors as people, am overwhelmingly polite to telephone operators, and am, of course, kind to dogs and small children. Or is that children and small dogs? I never seem to get that one quite right.

In any case, what the South did give me, besides that take on life and an accent I still cannot entirely get rid of, was a wealth of literature. I love to read; I read everything that is ever been set in front of me, from cereal boxes to VCR instructions, but the voices of the South are what echo the loudest in my world, then and now.

Though proper Southern ladies might blanch at the thought of running an escort service, I haven’t really gone overboard after all. For many of these writers are the same ladies who embrace sexuality with gusto and imagination, who write obsessively and far into the night of breaking free from the oppression of white society (and, some of them, of male society), who tell of awakening to a world where they can be managers of their own destinies. I think that, in the end, some of them might even have applauded me.

It was perhaps under their guidance that I made the final decision about my new business – choosing a niche, an area of specialization, if you will. And when I chose it I was completely aware of the ladies’ voices telling me that it was the right thing to do.

I decided to focus on guys who wanted more than just sex. I know that may sound odd, coming from a madam; but while sex is the blanket under which we sleep, so to speak, it’s not all about sex. Far from it.

It’s about power, and it’s about loneliness, and it’s about a media that constantly tells people that they can Have It All, then springs Real Life on them like some cruel joke. Sex is the battlefield. Sex is the forum where all this stuff gets negotiated, worked out, and practiced. We make so much of sex because we make it mean far more than it was ever supposed to mean. It is only we Americans, with that puritanical past that we can’t seem to rid ourselves of, who see sex in terms of its excesses: as everything or as nothing.

So it’s not surprising that all of our issues either have to do with, or get worked out via, our sexuality. It’s a pity, but it’s a reality; and a business that aims to take advantage of Americans’ hang-ups does well to note that.

In the end, what I decided to do was provide girls who were educated or on their way to being educated, girls who could talk about politics or literature or current events and keep up with the conversation, girls who could do more than just be blonde. Those were the girls, I thought, who would bring in the clientele that I wanted – middle-class guys who want vanilla sex and a chat.

That’s not as crazy as it sounds. It wasn’t just that I wanted the distinction of running a literary escort agency, though there’s something to be said for that – it evokes images of people reading erotica to each other while getting undressed, which is an image that I have to say I rather like.

No, my decision was completely practical. I wanted those clients, first and foremost, because they are the lowest risk around.

They weren’t going to get too weird and hurt somebody. They weren’t going to threaten me with exposure because they would mostly be married (or at the very least, in a career of some sort) and in no position to seek exposure themselves. They were going to order up their entertainment like they ordered takeout – and I planned to be their favorite restaurant.

It was a great plan. Has it worked out? More or less.

And therein, I suppose, lies the rest of this tale.

NIGHT ONE CHEZ PEACH (#u33f14c4f-9104-531b-aac0-8d6d4d795a7a)

I placed my first ads in the After Dark section of the Boston Phoenix and waited with some trepidation for them to come out.

One of the ads was advertising for girls to come work for me (“education required,” I had written), and the other was for the service itself. Both had a boudoir-lace edging and stood out, if I do rather smugly say so myself, among all the screaming ads urging readers to “try out my tits” and to “cum all over my ass.”

I had already hedged my bets. During my transition between the suburbs and the Bay Village, I had been doing more than just decorating (although I have to say that my new apartment, with its skylights, exposed brick walls, and claw-footed bathtub, had indeed been absorbing quite a lot of my energy). I had also been talking to my former colleagues, asking them if they knew anyone who would like to work for me. That wasn’t stealing from Laura, I rationalized. I was employing a network, something altogether different. And of course I got names.

To tell the truth, I don’t always run the employment ad these days. Not every week, anyway. Maybe one week out of the month. The reality is that from the beginning I’ve had the most success getting potential employees through a network – friends, acquaintances, cousins, colleagues, fellow students.

It makes them happy, since they are referred by someone who knows how I work, who knows that I won’t be weird or dangerous or take advantage of them. It makes me happy, too, because referrals aren’t very likely to be cops.

So the first Thursday that the Phoenix came out with my ad, I was ready. The phone lines were set up: one for clients to call in on, one for my outgoing calls, another as a strictly personal line. I had voice mail, I had call waiting and call forwarding, and, just for security, I had my Yellow Pages. I had my textbooks. I had a stack of mindless magazines, a pen, some scrap paper. I was sitting in the middle of my canopied bed with my television on to keep me from getting too nervous, and I was ready.

My voice mail message implied much more than it said. “Hi, we’re busy right now, but someone can talk to you if you call us back after five today.” I could imagine what the caller might think when he heard those words, filled with a breathy double entendre. He probably was fantasizing that the place was filled with women, maybe having sex with each other while they wait. (That, I have discovered, is a premiere fantasy for most of my clients, the idea that women just can’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off every chance they get.) I know what callers had assumed when they called Laura’s place. Of course, in her case, they were correct – minus the jumping on each other part of it: a lot of beautiful girls, scantily clad, each one sitting patiently, just waiting for that one caller to ask for her. Well, chez Peach, it was a little different. It was just me.

But they didn’t have to know that.

I had hoped for some modest business. Maybe a couple of calls on my first night, some contacts for future work. I knew that my voice, with its Southern undertones of peach blossom and bourbon and hot nights, was seductive but businesslike. I knew that anybody who called could easily be enticed to call again. I had some confidence and I expected a nice opening night.

What I got was an avalanche.

This was a step on the learning curve. Clients, I learned, absolutely love new girls, girls they have never seen before, girls who are new to the business. They adore them. I don’t know if it’s some sort of little sick initiation rite that they’re imagining doing, or something leftover from the ever-popular deflowering-the-virgin concept, but whatever it is, they love new girls.

Their assumption was that a new agency must be full of them.

I was hard-pressed to handle all my calls that night. Some weren’t serious, they were just checking me out, testing the waters, trying to pull me into some erotic chat, but my time at Laura’s had taught me how to deflect them – I wasn’t going to play their reindeer games. Others were dead serious: who did I have that I could send out to them right now? There were the perusers of menus, sitting back comfortably, perhaps with a snifter of brandy to hand, asking me to go through my offerings one course at a time. “Ah, yes, and you said that you might have someone else a little older? Can you tell me about her, too? Okay, now remind me again – the one named Tina …?”

There I was, in the midst of it all, answering phones, putting people on hold, racking my brains to keep names straight and numbers remembered, trying to screen these guys so that I wouldn’t send someone out to see a homicidal maniac my first night in business.

The three women I had lined up already were frantically working the telephones, themselves calling up possible recruits.

“Hi, Peach? This is Kara, I’m a friend of Stacey’s, she asked me to call you.”

I cut right to the chase. “Super. What do you look like?”

Kara, no beginner herself, was clearly used to the drill and rattled her stats off in a practiced manner. “I’m a redhead, shoulder-length hair, I’m twenty-two. C cup bra. I weigh 123 pounds, five-foot-six, and I’ve got a car.”

The last part snagged me right away. “Okay. Can you get over to Newton in half an hour?”

“Sure.” She sounded amused.

I riffled through my scribbled notes, most of them in the margins of my textbook. If anyone were ever to read it after me, they’d be in for a shock as the pages were scrawled with my notes … CARL AT THEFOUR SEASONS, BLONDE …

I found what I was looking for. “Okay, give this guy a call, Bill Thompson, 555-5454. Call me back after you talk to him, to confirm.” I disconnected, then called Bill myself. “I’ve got this adorable redhead who’s dying to see you. She’ll give you a call in a minute, and she can be there in half an hour. Her name is Kara. Just give her directions.” I hung up before Bill could say anything. This was not the time to chat: I was on a roll.

“Hello? Hi, yes, this is Peach. Where are you located, sir? The Plaza? Can I confirm your name with the reception desk? Great. Do you have any particular preferences? Okay, yes, I do have a stunning blonde, she’s a college student, she’s 34-24-32 and weighs 110 pounds. Her name is Lacey. I know that you’ll like her.”

Looking back, I don’t know how I got through that night. I don’t even remember what was on television (for me, that’s an extraordinary statement, because TV is definitely my friend). My magazines and Yellow Pages had been kicked off the bed. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarettes I had lit and then forgotten. I was setting up calls one after the other, stretching out late into the night. “Pam? Honey, can you take another two calls? You’re the best, thanks. I have John in Cambridge and Louis at the Four Seasons, in that order. You can call them both now. Here are their numbers. Do you have something to write on?”

Finally, I had to begin telling people they needed to call back the next day. Some took it well; others, not so well. I remember hanging up the phone after one guy called me names at the top of his voice, tiredly massaging the back of my neck, the realization dawning that this was going to work.

It wasn’t until three-thirty in the morning that I shut off the phones, padded into the kitchen, opened the bottle of Veuve Cliquot that I had left chilling in the refrigerator, and toasted myself. My new agency – Avanti – lived!

I had suddenly, mysteriously, become a madam.

A HEAD FOR NUMBERS (#u33f14c4f-9104-531b-aac0-8d6d4d795a7a)

I don’t think that I left my apartment for three days after that.

I was blessed with a great memory for numbers, so I didn’t need to develop a routine for keeping information that would leave traces behind: no one will ever break into my place and find a mythical “little black book,” because it simply doesn’t exist. I found that the memorization skills that had served me well in school were again coming to the fore, and that I could, absurdly, remember nearly all the numbers of the people who had called me that first crazy night.

I probably found the only job in the world where my favorite party trick is a professional asset.

I had hired Jake, a driver, through one of the girls I’d met at Laura’s place. It was the girl’s brother, actually, who worked for a taxi service by day and picked up whatever jobs he could find in the evenings; she said he spent all his time and money at the Suffolk Downs horse races. Since three of the girls working for me that first night didn’t have cars, I’d kept him busy. He stopped by my apartment at the end of the night and dropped off the money the girls had given him to hold for me, my part of what they had earned. Back then, my agency fee was sixty dollars an hour, and I just asked the girls to give the fees to Jake. They paid him out of their own take from the call, usually around $20, depending on the distance he had to drive.

Now I called him and asked him to meet up with the girls who had their own cars and pick up their fees, as well; I wasn’t about to leave anyone holding my money for too long. Not this soon in the relationship, anyway.

I sat on my bed and counted my money. Then I counted it again. And again. I had put out eighteen calls that first night, at $60 a call for me. I had calculated what to charge based on what I had learned from Laura – and a few surreptitious calls to some other agencies. Prepared, that’s me.

Even better than all that, I had a waiting list for the next couple of days.