The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort

by Natalie McLennan

In retrospect I guess I should be happy I escaped that poor woman’s fate, especially after I told him he was a loser on numerous occasions. At the time, it just seemed like another chapter in my going-nowhere life.

  I tried my best to stay optimistic, but I had this increasing sense that a black cloud was following me.

  * * *

  A month later, I scored a lead role in a low-budget psychological thriller. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, my luck was changing. I figured it would be good to get out of the city for a while. But the filmmakers weren’t paying me, and I had to keep paying rent on my Manhattan apartment. It was shooting in the middle of nowhere, two hours northeast of Montreal. So by the time the film wrapped seven weeks later, I had blown through my entire savings.

  Even worse, Paul was in really bad shape. He progressed from yelling at me to smacking me around. We went from all out screaming matches to full-contact wrestling matches. I never felt more vulnerable, more hopeless, or less in control of my own life. I needed a change, and I needed it fast.

  A few days later, as I walked up Second Avenue, fed up with having my throat grabbed, no auditions on the horizon and $78 to my name, I thought about Jason and the ice princess and that quick $310 I had earned doing something I liked doing anyway. I took out my phone and dialed his number. He didn’t pick up. I left a rambling message.

  Over the next two weeks, I left three messages. I was getting desperate. Rent was due in two weeks, and I didn’t have it.

  Finally, he called me back. He told me he was sending a car service to pick me up and bring me to his apartment so we could talk. I put on a pair of jeans, a wife beater and some heels. It was the middle of the day—I wanted to look hot, but not like I was trying too hard.

  An hour later, a sleek black town car pulled up in front of my apartment. The driver told me we had to make a stop along the way. We pulled up outside a luxury building on Central Park South and waited…and waited…. A half hour went by; I sat silently. Finally, a gorgeous blonde in a small red dress and with the most incredible full, round tits I had ever seen casually strolled out of the building and got in beside me. She looked me up and down, gave me a friendly smile and said her name was Samantha.

  The driver said hello like he knew her well and pulled out. As we headed downtown, Samantha and I chatted about clothes and lip-gloss. But mostly about clubs and restaurants and partying: the sum of our existences at that point. I could detect a slight Russian accent, but she was almost completely Americanized. As soon as I saw her big black Dior purse, I knew we didn’t shop at the same places. She’d probably never even heard of Century 21.

  When the car pulled into the Holland Tunnel, I gave her a quizzical look.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Hoboken,” Samantha said with a wink.

  Jersey? I’d never been. Ever.

  Shortly after, we arrived at Jason’s pied-à-terre.

  By the time we got to the fifth floor of the walkup, I was winded and skeptical. If I had known I was going to Hoboken, I would have told the driver to turn around and take me home.

  Decorated in light purple pop-art silhouettes of naked women and plush caramel velour couches with pastel beanbag pillows, the railroad apartment was Austin Powers by way of North Jersey. Jason, with his huge, beaming white smile, greeted us as if he were welcoming us to the penthouse at Trump Tower.

  He kissed Samantha on the mouth and me on my cheek. He told me he was so happy to see me and asked if I’d seen Peter recently. I told him no, I’d just gotten back to New York from filming my movie. I was busy with auditions and looking for a new apartment. I left out the part about the boyfriend who was hitting me.

  For the first hour, his phone rang incessantly, and we barely talked. Girls in short dresses would pop in, drop off money, smoke a cigarette, do a line and then disappear.

  Finally, Jason got a break and walked over to me and apologized for not calling me back. I asked him to explain what I could expect to make if I came to work for him.

  He said I could make between five and ten thousand dollars—a week.

  Really? The calculator in my head whirled. With that kind of money, I could set myself up with a whole new life. I could finally live in New York on my own terms without having to rely on another asshole boyfriend.

  “Samantha, why don’t you fill Natalie in on how we work,” he said, as he walked away to take another call.

  At first Samantha was restrained. She told me most of the clients were great, the money was amazing, and there was nothing to be afraid of. I might even get to travel, depending how good I was. All of the things I needed and wanted to hear. But Jason was on the phone a long time. As Samantha became more comfortable with me, and we became more like giggly girlfriends—the pure MDMA we were snorting didn’t hurt—she opened up and started getting real.

  Samantha proceeded to expound on the nitty-gritty of her personal escort style. For one, she got off by not showering between clients. It was her little inside joke. She also revealed that the clients never interested her sexually or otherwise, no matter how rich or good-looking they were.

  “The cash makes me svet,” she said, her Slavic bleeding through.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean the cash, the dollars, in my hand. It makes me wet.”

  Oh, right.

  She added that she was thinking about breaking into porn, and that you can really make some money if you become a star.

  I was speechless. She was truly all about the Benjamins.

  But I loved her. The funny thing about Samantha was that she was so beautiful, clearly educated and actually kind of prim, that when these outrageous things would come out of her mouth it made it so much more shocking and hilarious. She started telling me about her favorite clients, what they did together, where they took her to dinner. She had one client that paid twice her rate. He liked to take her to swingers’ clubs, one in particular that I’d heard of and that was known for being really skeezy.

  “You’re not worried about someone seeing you there?”

  “He’s paying me minimum $10,000 each time. He could film me for that money and show it to my parents, I wouldn’t care.”

  Samantha’s Advanced Escorting for the Postmodern Woman seminar was interrupted by a screaming match that had erupted across the apartment.

  Jason was yelling into the phone at the top of his lungs.

  “Bruce, I gave you my lawyer’s number. I won’t waste my time talking to a criminal like you. If you want to be an asshole, talk to my lawyer, that’s what I pay him for, to deal with losers like you. If you want to be a gentleman, we can both save a lot of money…I’m listening.”

  The guy on the other end said something, and Jason’s jaw clenched.

  “Are you threatening me? Are you threatening me? I know you didn’t just do that. Are you asking me to call the cops on you?”

  He leaned back in his chair, kicking his leg on his desk, which exposed something around his ankle.

  “Oh, my God,” I thought to myself. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I was pretty sure he was wearing some kind of electronic tracking device. The kind you attach to endangered polar bears on ice floes, or criminals you don’t want skipping town. He was a pimp. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised he was also an ex-con. As he continued to pound away at the guy on the other end of the line, I started to freak. What if he treated me like that ?

  I thought if I told him that I didn’t like to be spoken to that way, he’d respect me and everything would be okay.

  When he finally hung up, I let the dust settle and walked over to him.

  “If you want to get me to do what you want to do, you can’t be like that with me,” I said, trying to sound assertive. “I respond to nice.”

  “I prefer nice,” he said. “It’s just some people have to be dealt with in a certain way. That got a little insane, I know. But that guy is insane. We’ve known each other for a while. That’s how
we talk. Relax babe.”

  Satisfied with his answer, I went over a poured myself some more wine. As I would come to learn about myself later, when it came to denial, my mom had nothing on me.

  * * *

  I ended up more or less moving in with Jason, while Samantha disappeared back to the city.

  One day, Jason nonchalantly mentioned that his probation officer was going to be stopping by sometime in the afternoon. I freaked. The place was a drug den. There were semi-naked girls lounging around everywhere. But he wasn’t fazed. He roused a couple of girls and told them to clean up and went back to working the phones.

  As the appointment time neared, he demanded that all of the girls stick around. We put on some clothes and tried not to look like drugged-out hos. It was Jason’s way of showing his girls that he had it all under control. More importantly, it was his way of giving the finger to the law.

  The probation officer walked in, gave a funny smile, but didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say. He asked Jason a bunch of perfunctory questions and left.

  That night, I finally got the nerve to ask Jason what the ankle bracelet was all about. Jason explained that he had been busted at the Newark airport for trying to smuggle in four thousand ecstasy tablets on a flight from Amsterdam. Hmmm, I thought, not quite Oceans 11. He had done a year and a half in a Jersey prison and was now out on probation. The electronic ankle bracelet made sure he stayed in Jersey. The probation officer visits made sure he was staying clean.

  After our little talk, we decided to celebrate. Jason didn’t do any coke because he was getting tested the next day. But he could do other drugs they didn’t test for, like Ketamine, or Special K, a tranquilizer popular with veterinarians that puts you into a deep trance-like state called a “K-Hole.” I thought, “When in Rome, do like the Romans” and, in the kingdom of Hoboken, Jason was Caesar, and Caesar was high on animal anesthetic.

  So I did a few bumps, sat down beside him on the couch and was immediately sucked into the weird void so specific to that drug. Your emotions don’t even come into it, the rest of you is so messed up. You just sink into yourself like you’re slowly drowning in quicksand. Drowning in quicksand may not sound like a good trip—but, trust me, if your body can take it, it’s one of the deepest and most intense highs, or I should say lows, around.

  Jason and I stayed like that, side by side on the couch, for hours. When we came out of it, everyone else was gone. I looked over at him, and all of a sudden I liked him. I was okay with all of his chaos and aggression— that was just business. I could see he was really a big kid. He seemed unafraid to be himself and open up to me, and I felt like I could be myself, totally uncensored and uninhibited.

  He snuggled up to me, and we lay together closer. My mind started racing, Why did this feel so good? I told myself to be quiet and melted into him a little more. He was hot in his own bad-boy Jewish way. On one shoulder he has a really intense dragon tattoo, and on the other, Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god of strength and loyalty—star of the Hindu fairy tale, the Ramayana. On his wrist he wore a classic Cartier watch. It was a mishmash of totally sexy contradictions.

  When he kissed me the first time, I felt like we were meant to be together. It sounds incredibly cheesy, but it was something I’d never thought about anyone else. I fell in love with him right there.

  Can you tell the grandkids that their grandparents fell in love over a gram of horse tranquilizer? Probably not. But it was our moment, and it was real.

  A couple of hours later, Samantha came back and joined the party. As Samantha and I were cuddling together on his bed after our totally intense threesome, he finally turned to me and asked, “Are you ready to go to work?”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  He didn’t need to convince me.

  He convinced me by not convincing me.

  He’s a sales genius.

  And I am a curious cat.

  “Great,” he said. “And by the way, your new name is Natalia.”

  “My new name?” I said. “But people already call me Natalia—Peter calls me Natalia. I thought the whole point of adopting a second name was to stay under the radar. Or at least become like a character or something, some kind of fantasy for the client?”

  “Well, is there another name you want to use?”

  I thought about it for a few minutes. I didn’t want anything that sounded too stripper-y or porn-esque, like Candy, Angel or Bambi.

  What was a killer, sexy name that I felt suited me?

  “You’re right, Natalia is hot,” I said.

  It just felt right. It had an exotic ring to it, and it was real. I decided then and there what my mission would be: I would bring my own brand of honesty and realness to my work.

  I got up to get dressed and looked at my phone. Yikes. Thirty missed calls from Paul, a few from my mother and some girlfriends. I called back a girlfriend and chatted. I let her know that I was alive, safe, hanging out at a friend’s house in Jersey—yes, New Jersey, it’s that far away land on the other side of the river—and would be back…eventually.

  * * *

  Jason got to work. As I listened to him on the phone, he was promising prospective clients that I was drop-dead beautiful, with the best ass he’d ever seen and from what he’d been told, super-talented in bed.

  My anxiety started setting in. Drop-dead gorgeous? No one’s ever accused me of that. I did have a great ass. And yes, I was wild in bed.

  Maybe I could pull it off.

  I focused in on my clothes. Samantha had thankfully left me something to wear in case I went to see a client. A backless silk shirt and a short black skirt that actually looked great. I didn’t exactly have a perfect purse to carry and that messed with my confidence, which will sound ridiculous to any guy reading this. But women will understand. I shut that part of my brain off and went into the bathroom to check myself out. Shit! I had a hickey on my neck. I wondered who was responsible: Samantha or Jason? I had a flashback of sitting on top of Jason with his dick inside me and Samantha behind me with her hands on my hips grinding my hips back and forth and her mouth connecting with my neck and sucking really hard until I came.

  Samantha.

  Whoa. I shook myself back to the present.

  What was I going to do about the hickey? I looked in my makeup bag. I didn’t have much with me. I hadn’t been planning to stay more than a few hours. In typical New York style, my things were scattered at a few different apartments.

  Most of my stuff was at Paul’s, where I’d been living for more than two years. Since I’d left Paul, I didn’t want to impose on any one friend, so I was kind of bouncing around. I found some concealer and covered it up as best I could. I hadn’t even started working and already I was making myself “un-sellable.” I went into the living room to show Jason, a stressed expression on my face.

  “What? The hickey? You can barely see it,” he said.

  It was big and purple; of course you could see it.

  “Guys will think it’s hot. It’s like proof that you’re a sexual person.”

  Won’t me showing up to have sex for money be proof of that enough? I thought.

  The phone rang, and Jason started chatting with another prospective client. He smiled at me and said into the phone, “Hey, do you think, if you’re fooling around with a girl, and she has a hickey on her neck that it’s hot? That’s what I thought. Here, can I put you on the phone with a girl, and you tell her what you just told me?”

  He handed me the cordless. I put it to my ear.

  “Hi, this is Natalia.”

  “Hi, Natalia,” said a deep, rough voice. Very New York.

  “I would not be turned off by a hickey. I’d just want to give you a bigger, badder one.”

  Wow, I thought, that’s cool.

  I laughed and said, “Well, it was a girl who gave it to me.”

  “Well, in that case, put Jason on the phone… you’re coming over right now.”

  I laughed and handed t
he phone back to Jason. This was going to be a fun life. I went back to the bathroom to finish with my makeup. I wiped the concealer off my neck and wore my hickey proudly, like a new tattoo. I was ready for my first appointment. Okay, this was technically the second, there was the Asian guy Mona had sent me to three months prior, back in February, but that didn’t really count in my head. I’d done that as an experiment, for research purposes. I thought back to that first appointment and, except for Mona and her attitude, the whole experience had been pretty great.

  I could hear Jason filling out the booking sheet with the client, getting all his details. I heard him hang up the phone, and I went back to the living room. I was surprised at how excited I was, my heart even skipped a little, but when I looked down at the sheet, there was some other girl’s name on it. Jason saw the confusion on my face and said, “Natalia, I already have an amazing appointment for you lined up, didn’t I tell you?”

  * * *

  The first date Jason sent me on was with Kevin, a law school graduate, whose dad had bought him two escorts for his graduation present. He was a nice guy, but completely overwhelmed by Isabella and me.

  Isabella was a stunning Colombian girl, nineteen years old, five-foot-nine, and maybe a little skinny for some guys. She swore she hadn’t had implants, which was ludicrous because her tits were perfect and stuck out like baseballs. I was the first girl she was ever with. Even though it was my first appointment, I found it very easy because he wasn’t intimidating.

  Isabella and I were naturals together, and we both knew how to put on a show: making out with each other, eating each other out like sex-crazed demons, sucking his cock together, pushing each other off like we each wanted it for ourselves and couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t the first time I had done it, but everything felt new and really, really hot.

  As I walked out into the night, $600 richer, my underwear ripped, the skirt Samantha had lent me totally stretched out, I didn’t justify what I had gotten into by trying to convince myself that I was “saving marriages” by becoming some kind of sex therapist. I wanted to make money and change my life. Fast.