THE PRICE
MY RISE AND FALL AS NATALIA,
NEW YORK’S #1 ESCORT
Natalie “Natalia” McLennan
This book is based on the true life exploits of Natalie McLennan. All dates, place names, titles and events in this account are factual to the best of Ms. McLennan’s recollection. However, to protect the rights of those whose paths have crossed the author’s and in accordance with the wishes of certain participants, some of the names have been changed in order to protect their privacy. What follows is her true story.
Copyright © 2008 Natalie McLennan & Phoenix Books, Inc.
All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.
The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author of this book and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or its affiliates.
ISBN-10: 1-59777-594-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-59777-594-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Available
Book Design by: Sonia Fiore
Conversion to ebook by wordzworth.com
Printed in the United States of America
Phoenix Books, Inc.
9465 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 840
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PROLOGUE
THE AUDITION
“Nat, get in a cab, I need you to meet someone,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “I’ve just met the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Typical Jason tact, I thought to myself.
Yes, I know, he was my pimp, and I was an escort, and yes, I know that for most people we were living in some sort of beyond good-and-evil, bizarro world where normal morality and feelings don’t apply, but just suspend your disbelief for a minute. Imagine your boyfriend saying that to you about another girl? Messed up, right? I guess I had kind of gotten used to it. It was like one of those quirks you think is cute at the beginning of a relationship, like a guy calling you “pumpkin,” but eventually you grow to hate it.
So I feigned enthusiasm, “Really? That’s so cool.”
When I arrived at the hotel, Jason brought me into the lobby and told me to check out a girl working behind the desk.
“Don’t stare!” he said.
He had just given this girl, Ashley he said her name was, one of his metal business cards and was standing in the lobby, watching her like a wolf. The cards were silver, razor-thin and read: New York Confidential: Rocket Fuel for Winners.
I checked her out. I had to hand it to him: Jason had the eye. She was hot. We milled around for a little while longer trying to look inconspicuous before Jason finally said, “Okay, let’s go. I just wanted you to see her. I’m hungry.”
We arrived home at the loft, hung out for a bit, had sex, I ordered sushi, did our weekly alcohol order (about a dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot, a dozen bottles of Grey Goose, and half a dozen bottles of Johnny Walker Blue) and then who should call?
The little lamb from the hotel.
I was relieved that she called so quickly. If this girl was going to work out, Jason wouldn’t need to sell her on the idea; she’d have to come to us. An hour later, she arrived at the loft. I was perched on my throne in my private sanctuary in front of a vanity mirror surrounded by twenty bright lights, all my fabulous clothes and shoes scattered around me, revitalized from doing a huge line of coke and feeling like the queen of my castle. I quickly checked myself out in the mirror. My rich, brown curls were perfect and shiny. My big brown eyes and pink lips were accentuated with mascara and some Lip Venom gloss. My skin looked great, especially considering how much I partied, and I’d had a manicure and pedicure done that morning to make myself appear fresh, even if my body was telling me otherwise. I have smallish breasts and a large surgery scar on my stomach, but I’ve always been reasonably happy with my figure. Some clients thought I was too skinny, but I was living in New York—everyone’s a little underweight or else they’re considered fat.
I was actually excited Ashley had shown up. She was even cuter than I remembered. Her face was adorable. She was tanned, with shiny, flowing brown hair. I could tell she was young, and I could sense that I was more street-smart than she was, but she had that hungry glimmer in her eye that told me she was game for anything. The fact was, I was happy to see anyone who seemed nice. It was lonely at the top, and I needed some friends.
Jason brought her into our bedroom to meet me in my closet. He always brought new people there to meet me. In smaller spaces, you can tune into a person’s energy so much better.
Ashley’s eyes lit up when she saw the theater dressing room-style lights around my mirror.
“This is so cool! I’ve always wanted a mirror like this.”
“Me too,” I said, smiling.
I patted the stool next to mine. She sat down and Jason leaned against the wall, trying not to be overbearing. He knew when to let girls be girls.
“I’m Natalia.”
“Ashley.”
Jason turned to me: “I told Ashley that you’re the number one-rated escort in the U.S. How cool would it be if Ashley became number two?” He laughed his Jason laugh.
I looked at Ashley to gage her reaction. Her eyes were sparkling. Jason had taken the words right out of her mouth. I had never seen this before. Every other girl who had come to work for the agency had either worked as an escort before or, like most of our girls, was new but had to be sold on the idea and have her hand held at every step.
Ashley appeared to be happier to have found us than we were to have her.
For the first time, I felt a little threatened. This business was all about attitude—guys feed off your enthusiasm, your raw energy and, for lack of a better term, positive vibe. This girl had the looks and the glow. I had always kept my jealousy and other ugly girlish instincts in check, but she was almost too good to be true. I had to tell myself to chill out.
“Wait, wait. Before we go there, Ashley, I’m going to have to see you naked,” Jason interjected.
My eyes darted back to her.
She squinted a little, trying to figure how to react.
“That’s normal, right?” she asked.
She looked to me.
“I got naked for him. I’ve never worked anywhere else, so I can’t really say, but it’s normal here,” I said.
I left out the part that when I got naked, it was during a twenty-four-hour MDMA-fueled threesome with Jason’s girlfriend at the time. Not that I’d mind doing that again—with Ashley—but the agency was moving into a new era. We were getting serious about the operation. Just the other night, Jason and I checked into a room at the Gansevoort that we’d been using all day for clients and hired an escort for ourselves to see how the competition was doing. Everything she did was just wrong. She was candid and honest about all the wrong things—no one wants to hear about your drug problem or the fact you don’t talk with your family. We made mental notes and gave our girls a refresher on what not to do.
“If you want, I’ll stay in the room, too,” I offered.
If a new girl was really shy, I’d stay in the room with my back turned. It made them more comfortable.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind taking my clothes off,” she chirped.
She disappeared with Jason into the bedroom. I threw on a mix CD, and in two minutes they were back.
“So?” I joked, “It’s a no, right?”
It had been totally unnecessary for Ashley to do the naked thin
g. It was obvious she had a near-perfect body, but it was a reminder to her who called the shots.
Everyone laughed and I got a bottle of champagne. I popped it, poured some for all of us and raised my glass. After I swigged, I got back to business.
“Every girl starts at $800 an hour. If and when that changes is dependent on the reviews you earn. Reviews are posted by clients on a site called TheEroticReview.com, and they have a huge impact on your success. Our clients are rich, handsome, smart and fun. I’ve been really lucky, and I’ve gotten a string of great reviews.”
“The best reviews ever written,” Jason added.
“What makes them the best?” Ashley asked.
I explained the rating system. “My rate has gone up from $800 to $1200 an hour because I earned so many great reviews. You’ll have to start at $800, but if everything works out, it won’t take long for you to earn more than that.”
I was the pioneer, the girl who had made all this possible. The agency had grown so quickly in the last month, partly as a result of my reputation, that the demand far exceeded our supply of great girls.
We talked about how she should dress for appointments, and I showed her some examples of what I wore on bookings. She freaked over my shoes.
I asked her what she wanted her name to be. She really didn’t know. She was drawing a blank. Jason started throwing out names: Melissa, Brooke (“we already have a Brooke,” I reminded him), Morgan….
I looked at her. She had Dior sunglasses on her head and had a sort of well-bred, suburban look to her. Her curves were extreme, her body screamed sexy, and her voice was a little throaty and cute.
I had the perfect name.
“Victoria.”
We smiled at each other, already seeing the fabulous future that awaited us.
CHAPTER ONE
CANADIAN CHAMP
The Canadian Junior National Tap Dancing Championships were exactly what you’d imagine them to do be: pale, overweight showbiz moms and their robotic brats battling for a shot out of Canadian mediocrity. My mother wasn’t an obnoxious showbiz mom, but she had been taking me to dance lessons since I could barely walk. It was 1996 and I was now sixteen. So this was her moment as much as it was mine. She was a bundle of nerves as I took the stage to perform a swing dance number my instructor had choreographed especially for the competition.
Swing is best with a partner. But I spun and jumped and tapped like it was 1942 and I was at the Savoy Ballroom. As I walked off-stage, I knew the girl from Manitoba with her poodle skirt and bows had no chance.
When they announced I was national champ, my mom starting balling like I had just beat out Kerri Strug for Olympic gold. She held me as tight as she ever had and whispered in my ear, “Honey, I am so proud of you.”
I wish I could have bottled up that moment and kept it under my pillow.
* * *
My mom had it rough. One snowy night right before Christmas, my dad, who owned a tow truck business, told her he was going to help get a friend’s car out of a drift. He never came home.
At least that’s how my mom tells the story. I wasn’t even a year old, so I don’t really remember, at least not consciously. My earliest clear memory comes two years later. I was three. My dad had moved to upstate New York with his new girlfriend and had come around to take us to see his mother on Christmas Day. My mom loaded my nine-year-old brother and me into my dad’s big American car. We were bundled up in our snowsuits, and it was freezing, the windows were all fogged up, and I couldn’t see outside. I was scared and confused.
I turned to my brother and asked, “Who is that man?”
“That’s our dad,” he answered.
My father didn’t say anything.
He dropped us off at his mother’s and drove off.
That was the last time I saw him, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered he had moved to Texas. My entire childhood I had no idea where in the world he lived, or if he was even still alive.
After he left, my mom would still make us go over to our grandmother’s every Christmas. To make matters even worse, we had to take the bus in the peak of the Canadian winter. My mother would revert back to being this wounded bird around my grandmother. Each year, shortly before we left, she would muster up the courage and ask, “Do you know where Bill is?” and my grandmother, a petite, proper Scottish immigrant, would give the same curt answer, “No, I have no idea.”
My mom would look down and mumble, “Oh, okay. Thanks.”
My grandmother would look off into the distance and then change the subject.
My mom ran a mini-daycare out of our apartment. There were always half a dozen kids running around, which is great when you’re little. You never run out of kids to play with. But when you’re a teenager living in a small two-bedroom apartment and waking up every morning to babies screaming, it’s easy to forget that your mom is trying really hard and really easy to start hating your life.
She tried to make sure we had the right clothes, the right school, the right friends, but it was hard. We were social outcasts—poor English-speakers in a heavily French part of Montreal. My mom became hypersensitive about everything, especially our appearance. No matter how broke we were, she always made sure my clothes were spotless and perfectly pressed, and my unruly curly hair was tamed and bowed.
My dad’s leaving was especially hard on my brother. As I got older, I began to feel that he blamed me for our dad leaving. My dad bolted shortly after I was born, after all. I could see how a six-year-old could make the correlation, and he probably wasn’t too off base.
My mom tried to shield us from all of the pain. She never said anything bad about my dad. So she never really said much of anything about him at all. He became like a phantom. All I have are these snapshots in my head, all tainted with anger and confusion.
My final memory of anything connected to my dad comes from when I was five. It was my birthday, and he’d sent me a present. My mom had to force me to open the package, a Cabbage Patch doll—one of three I would get that day. Later, when I would play with them, I’d always make sure his doll was the one who had to wear the clothes I didn’t like and never got served tea at the Cabbage Patch parties.
My mom never dated again. Even though I was a little girl and had no business knowing anything about adult relationships, I remember thinking it was because she was scared she would get hurt again—scared we would all get hurt again. She just closed herself off from the world of romance and sex. She gained weight and lost all her confidence as a single woman, and she focused all of her attention on raising my brother and me.
I lived in a perpetual state of “no.” If I asked to go to a friend’s house for a sleepover, the first response was always no. She always erred on the side of safety, trying to be the father figure. I had to argue or bargain or try any other tactic I could think of in order to stand a chance of getting what I wanted.
For my brother, this parenting style worked. But for me, it backfired. It created a rebellious streak that kicked in at the slightest attempt at control.
My mom’s solution was dance lessons. I was three when she first took me to learn how to tap dance.
I was a little phenom. I took classes three times a week and private lessons at the teacher’s house on weekends. Instructors would show me the steps once, and I would repeat them right back at them. It blew their minds. At age twelve, I started going to competitions. I wasn’t really into competing, but I loved to perform. And when I started to win, I could see how happy it made my mom, so I kept doing it—and kept winning.
It was grueling and deathly boring at times, and on numerous occasions, I begged her to let me quit. But she would lay down the law, “I never force you to do anything, but this is the one activity you have to stick with.”
She would threaten to take away what little else I had, like school dances, if I didn’t keep on.
Tap led to other things, like acting and singing. When I was twelve, Disney came to town and h
eld a huge open audition for the Mickey Mouse Club.
It was a big deal. I got my picture on the front page of the Montreal Gazette for dazzling the judges and getting to the final round. As I waited for word from the producers, I remember having this fantasy that one day my dad would see me on TV and think to himself, “Wow, I really screwed up not being her dad.”
When I didn’t get the role1, I sat in my room under a big poster of Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block, crying my eyes out until I suddenly realized that I wasn’t crying about not getting the gig. Who wants to be a lame-ass Mouseketeer anyway? I was crying because I wasn’t going to get the chance to show my dad what an awesome, talented daughter he had walked out on.
Screw him, I finally said to myself, he’s not someone who deserves to be in my life. He is the only who is missing out.
I resolved that I would do everything in my power from that point on not to have a sad life, just to prove to him that he couldn’t hurt me.
* * *
As I entered my teenage years, the “no’s” from my mom became more and more common, and my rebellious streak went into overdrive.
I had two identities. To my mom and our family friends, I was the responsible, hardworking, dutiful daughter. I would bring home my tap trophies and report cards with straight A’s, and somehow my mom never noticed my bloodshot eyes and the skirts that kept getting shorter and shorter. I had an older girlfriend who had a boyfriend who was a dealer. She’d supply me with pot, ‘shrooms, acid, anything she could get her hands on, which I would then sell to my classmates at the elite magnet school my mom was so proud I’d been accepted into. My illicit lunch money gave me a sense of independence and made me something of a legend around campus. I was the bad girl whom all the guys loved, and the girls were sort of scared of. No one could figure out how I got such good grades yet could be so wild. It all came so easy. And when you keep getting away with it, after time, you start to believe you’re invincible.
The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort Page 1
