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

by Natalie McLennan

  “This sounds like the coolest guy in the world. He’s at the Mercer. His name is Alex. He’s an actor, thirty-two. You’re going to love him. An hour and a half, $1,800, cash. Take the limo—it’s still outside. Call me when you get there.”

  Wow, okay, I had gotten my wish. I skipped out of the loft.

  I could hear Jason say to Mel, Andrew and the girls, “Watch this, she’s going to get another 10/10 review.”

  As the limo pulled away, I made it my mission to come back with another perfect score.

  * * *

  Weeks went by and Ashley and I became closer with each passing sexcapade. She went from being my protégé, to being a friend and a partner in cri…I mean legally dubious, nocturnal activities. But I found that she still needed me to look out for her sometimes like a big sister.

  Ashley and I had done the post-club stretch at a loft near Union Square. She wasn’t used to what I called “activities,” or the more extreme “adventures,” so she looked a little worse for wear by the time we rolled back to the agency at around nine in the morning. She crawled into my bed and crashed out immediately.

  You can only sit around doing lines, listening to random, almost-strangers ramble on in never-ending coke-fueled diatribes so many times before it gets tiresome. I was over that. When I partied, which was usually everyday, I liked to do stuff. Nothing too stressful, nothing that required too much concentration or brainpower. Shopping was my favorite. Armed with sunglasses, flip-flops, a grand or two in my purse, I’d do a bump and be on my way.

  When we finally woke up, Ashley was not feeling so hot. She looked at me like I was insane when I suggested we go to D&G on West Broadway.

  I was used to that reaction by this point.

  “Ashley, trust me, once you get outside it’s fun.”

  She didn’t look impressed and needed some more convincing.

  “It’s an adventure,” I added.

  She reluctantly put on her oversized black Dior shades, and I grabbed her arm. We walked, and I chatted, trying to keep her mind occupied. I thought once we got to the store, she would feel better.

  I found a few things for her to try on, passed her a baggie and a straw, and let her go to the fitting rooms. I found the cutest shoes, asked for them in my size, and sat down and waited. What is taking her so long? I slipped my flip-flops back on and knocked on her door, “Where are you?”

  She opened the door a crack, and I peeked in. She was sitting on the little bench, the clothes still on their hangers, and a miserable expression on her face. I needed to get her out of there and back to the loft, quick. My shoes! Shit, they were beautiful, but I guess it would have been insensitive of me to make the poor girl wait while I tried on a pair of shoes when she obviously wasn’t well. We walked out onto West Broadway and luckily grabbed a cab immediately. SoHo can be tricky for cabs. She flopped over and laid her head on my shoulder.

  Lesson learned: shop solo.

  “We’ll be home in two minutes.”

  Shit, we were passing by Toys in Babeland, a great little sex store, and I was running dangerously low on condoms—never a good thing for an escort.

  Ashley’s exhaustion was contagious, and by the time we stumbled into the loft, I was ready to crash. We ripped our clothes off down to our undies and climbed into my enormous, super-soft bed, still wearing our sunglasses, and snuggled up for a nice nap. I kissed her forehead and thought, I’m going to have to take care of this girl a little better.

  A few hours later, Jason woke us up by snuggling with us on the bed. Somehow, I wasn’t the usual bitch I am when I’m woken up, and I actually smiled. Ashley rolled over, and Jason looked at me.

  “We partied a little too hard last night…I mean, this morning,” I said.

  “You’re crazy, Natalia,” Jason said. “Nobody can do as much coke as you. How is she going to work?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  I jumped out of bed, went to my makeup table and saw my mirror with a nice little line waiting for me. I felt Jason’s eyes on me. I kept walking into the bathroom, turned on the shower and sat down to pee. I was going to have to slow down. I wasn’t stupid. I’d seen Scarface.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BIRTHDAY BOY

  Ashley and I were right at the height of our mutual success. I’d been with New York Confidential for five action-packed months and had attained an impossible seventeen consecutive 10/10 reviews on TheEroticReview.com. Ashley was right behind me with many 10/10 and some 10/9 or 9/10 reviews and we were earning a minimum of $1,200 an hour.

  We were inseparable. We even found that we had a lot of friends in common. I could feel a lot of them start to wonder where our newfound riches were coming from. The fruits of our shopping sprees didn’t go unnoticed, especially by our girlfriends in the nightlife scene. No one had the guts to come straight out and ask Ashley and me, but it brought up two problems for our friendship.

  I’d become a little more comfortable with people learning I was an escort, specifically for Jason and New York Confidential. It was sort of a gradual thing. There wasn’t one moment when I actually came out of the closet. You could say I didn’t really have much of a choice considering Jason told everyone he met that he was the biggest pimp in New York, and I was his star. This reached a new level when he started running a weekly half-page ad for the agency with my face in the back of New York magazine shot by a really well-known fashion photographer.

  I actually thought it was all a waste of time and money. None of our clients were looking in the back of New York magazine. They were coming in through referrals from friends or the underground rep we’d earned over the last six months. Even with the money we were making, which was pretty insane at this point, the ads were a significant expense. They cost thousands of dollars per week. Jason knew the ad didn’t pay for itself, but that wasn’t the point. For him, it was about getting our name, and my face, out there in the world.

  Whatever. I drew the line when he suggested I should pay for half since it was my face and my name in the ad. I countered he should pay me for the same reasons.

  Ashley’s dreams of being the next diva meant she was not at all into anyone knowing how she was paying her rent. I messed up a few times and called her Victoria in front of her friends. I would always recover by joking it was my nickname for her, because she was posh like Victoria Beckham. Everyone bought it, but I could tell it still unnerved her.

  * * *

  One night, Victoria, sorry Ashley, and I found ourselves alone in the loft. It was a minor miracle. The phone lines at the agency forwarded to Jason’s cell. Hulbert had the night off—the first I’d ever seen him take. Mona and Clark were nowhere to be seen. The office was, for a brief moment in time, magically transformed from brothel into play den.

  “Yay! My sushi is here!”

  We went into the living room and had a little sushi party. I poured soy sauce in her belly button and dunked a big piece of tuna sashimi in it. She put wasabi on her nipples and dared me to lick it off. Of course I did and then ran around the loft with my sinuses on fire for the next five minutes. Wasabi and irritated sinuses due to prolonged cocaine use do not mix.

  Ashley popped in a custom house and hip-hop CD that our friend, the DJ Lee Kalt, had made especially for me. We were both so sick of Jason’s Frank Sinatra fixation, we could have puked. Ashley jumped up on the couch with the empty bottle of Tattinger we’d just polished off in two minutes flat and started singing along to Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama.” I flopped on the floor and rolled with laughter as I watched her shake her ass like a hoochie girl from a rap video.

  All of a sudden she froze, “Oh, my God, it’s Nas’ birthday! I almost forgot!”

  I shrugged. I mean, I like Nas as much as the next club-hopping white girl, but not enough to get broken up about not remembering (or knowing) it’s his birthday. Did she want to send him a card or something?

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me into my closet, “Come on, get dressed. We have to go to
Select.”

  Ashley was on one of her missions, and I was riding shotgun. She believed she could magically jump-start her music career if only she could be in the right place at the right time when the right producer could meet her and be blown away by her mere presence. She always talked about how Mariah Carey had swept hair at a salon and checked coats before Tommy Motolla discovered her working as a waitress in a cheesy Upper East Side bar. Ashley, then just a year younger than Mariah when she was catapulted into super-stardom, had way more connections than a random waitress, and she sure as hell had the drive.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed, “Hey, is he still there? Cool, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  She hung up and looked at me, “Nas is still there, we have to hurry.”

  I grabbed a tiny Miss Sixty dress, a pair of Manolos and my purse, tossing in a full baggie of blow. We jumped in a cab and were at Select in two minutes. One nice thing about living most of your life in the wee hours of the night is you miss the cross-town traffic.

  Ashley gave the magic word to the 500-pound doorman, and the velvet ropes parted like the Red Sea. But when we walked in, it was sort of anti-climatic. It was around 1:00 a.m. and the place was almost empty. Not what I was expecting considering he was one of the most famous rappers on the planet. I counted thirty guests in a club that could probably hold twenty or more times that.

  The first hip-hop industry party I’d ever been to, just a few months after I moved to New York, was a Wu-Tang Clan release party. It was mayhem. I was the only white girl that I could see there and had to escape to the kitchen a few times. The guys were getting a little crazy, and I was too green to know how to fend them off.

  So when I saw an empty dance floor and a small group of people lounging around Nas and his then-girlfriend (now wife), the singer Kelis, I was sort of relieved. Both of them were tearing up the charts. Kelis’ “Milkshake” song was the anthem of the summer, and Nas was, well, Nas. If you’re not into hip-hop, you won’t understand.

  The owner came over and set us up at the table next to them. It hit me. Wow, so there was Nas. I used to dance my ass off to his tracks, like “One Mic.” I was never that into rappers, but he was definitely one of my favorites. He’s strong and smart at the same time, and he’s never succumbed to all the hip-hop clichés about busting caps in people’s asses or calling women bitches every other line. He’s an innovator and seeing him sitting right across from us was a thrill. He exuded that fame-glow I came to recognize from people who had ascended the heights. There is an intangible aura famous people have—a certain quality that lights up rooms and makes people turn their heads. Maybe it’s their skin products.

  I was excited, but Ashley was absolutely giddy. She could barely contain herself. For her, this was how I would feel sitting next to DiCaprio or De Niro.

  I had a cool idea.

  “Ash, let’s buy Nas a bottle of champagne for his birthday.”

  She looked at me a little confused. Then like I was crazy. Then she gave me a big smile, and nodded.

  “I’ll go find out what they have,” I said.

  I skipped over to the owner and asked what kind of champagne they had. Veuve Clicquot and Dom Perignon. I asked how much they were. Three-fifty for the Veuve, four-fifty for the Dom. We decided to go for the Dom. So much cooler. Five hundred clams between the two of us was nothing.

  I put in the order, and both of us sat there feeling a little gangster, a little hip-hop, and very rich.

  While we waited for the waitress to bring the bottle, Ashley explained how we were able to crash Nas’ apparently super-private party. The owner had given invites only to people Nas personally approved, but Ashley had told him about her dreams of making it as a recording artist, and I’m sure flirted her ass off, and he gave her two invites without bothering to check in with the birthday boy. She was like Charlie getting the gold-wrapped candy bar.

  The waitress delivered our birthday present to Nas’ table with our best wishes. Nas looked up confused, and then motioned for us to come over to his table. Ashley put on her game face.

  We introduced ourselves. I made sure to give Kelis the vibe that we weren’t groupies on the prowl, and it was just an innocent birthday toast. We hung out with them for a while. Two of his boys zeroed in on us, and it took some polite maneuvering on our part to keep our distance. Our time was money, and we were here to rub shoulders with Nas, not some of his boys.

  It was getting late, but I was fresh off a bathroom (code word for coke) break and enjoying a little surge in energy, when I came up with another brilliant idea.

  “Why doesn’t everyone come back to my place?” I chirped.

  Nas looked to Kelis uncertainly. She shrugged. We all piled into two Escalades, and I gave directions as we barreled downtown toward Tribeca.

  They all, including Nas, did a double take when they walked into the loft. I’d bought them a bottle of champagne, but this was another story. Just the height of the ceilings was enough to blow most people’s minds.

  “You live here?” one of the guys asked.

  “Yes, she does. All by herself,” Ashley answered for me.

  I put on the killer house CD we’d been listening to before and made everyone drinks—some of Jason’s Johnnie Walker Blue for the boys and more champagne for the girls. I felt a little guilty about serving Jason’s scotch to these guys, but we hadn’t had many mega-platinum recording artists come by (okay, none), so I figured I should represent. We mingled for a minute, but then as quick as it started, the party was over. Nas and Kelis rounded up their entourage, said their thanks, and were gone. Unfortunately, two of the posse stayed.

  They were the biggest and least friendly of the bunch. And that was saying a lot. They paced around the loft, checking out everything from the flat-screen, to the stereo, to the chandeliers.

  My phone rang, and I walked over to the coffee table with one eye on our guests. I winced. Right next to my purse was this week’s New York magazine, conveniently opened to the page with our ad with my airbrushed face staring out. I quickly turned it over, wondering if they’d seen it. I looked at my missed calls. Shit, five, all Jason. I dialed him and headed across the loft and into my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

  “Where have you been?” he asked me. “I have a booking for you.”

  Oh no, not now. It was late.

  “Jason, I’m so tired.”

  “C’mon Natal, it’s only an hour.”

  “I don’t do one-hour bookings, Jason!”

  “Fifteen hundred, hun, for one hour. Write down the info.”

  I sighed and picked up a pen, scribbled down 60 Thompson, the guy’s name and room number, and hung up the phone. It was at one of the hippest hotels in the city, so it might not be too bad, I thought.

  I called out to Ashley, and she came into my bedroom.

  “I have a booking,” I said.

  Her mouth dropped.

  “We have to get them out of here,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t just kick them out. Or could we? I had to do something. There was no way I was going to leave Ashley alone in my house with two thugs.

  I went into the loft and told them that I was really tired, but maybe we’d see them again sometime. I put their numbers in my phone (then deleted them) and walked them to the door. I said Ashley was already lying down, she was exhausted, too. I waited a few minutes and made sure I had everything I needed for my appointment, including a credit card imprint slip. The appointment was $1,500 cash, but my past experiences at 60 Thompson at this time of night involved copious amounts of drugs and lasted for hours. I slipped out the door and into a cab.

  A few weeks later, the loft door buzzed. When Hulbert went down to check it out, four massive black guys rushed the door. Luckily, Hulbert was able to push them back. As he struggled, he could see that they were carrying metal pipes and bats. He was just able to push the door closed and lock the bolt. They jumped into an SUV and peeled off.
>
  Jason, his lawyers, and everyone else around, freaked out. They all had their own theory about who was behind it. The Russians, the Armenians, the Mob, a rival agency, dirty cops. Ashley and I had the best guess, but we never told anyone. If we had, we’d have had to explain why we’d thought it was a good idea to invite a bunch of thugs into a loft full of tens of thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment, piles of cash, enough drugs to keep Amy Winehouse high for a month, and a closet full of designer duds to keep Carrie Bradshaw happy for a year.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE $2,000-AN-HOUR WOMAN

  As the months went by, the clients got more and more exclusive, and the piles of cash grew larger and larger. Everything Jason had envisioned was coming to fruition. It was eerie. There was an almost magical sense to everything that was happening. Our drug-fueled 3:00 a.m. fantasies were actually coming true.

  Then Jason came up with another one of his brilliant ideas. He believed in the Grey Goose-marketing strategy. The more you charge, the more they’ll think you’re worth—even if you’re basically selling the same formula of fermented grain or the same girl with the same ass, pussy and mouth.

  “Natal, I’m going to up your rate to two grand. What do you think?”

  This would mean my hourly rate would be more than double what most of the top high-end escorts in the city were charging, including ours. You could make the argument I had earned it. Thanks to the full-color ad with my face in New York magazine and an unprecedented run of seventeen perfect ten out of ten client reviews on the TheEroticReview.com, I had become something of an underground legend. Everyone wanted to know what was so special about “Natalia,” New York’s hottest escort.

  Here’s the crazy thing: I am not a supermodel— far from it. I’m cute, but nowhere close to drop-dead hot. I do have a great ass, and I enjoy sex like a true nymphomaniac,3 but my secret was I made guys want to hang out with me. I listened to them when they bragged about how much money they made or went on and on about their favorite baseball team. We joked, we partied, and then I fucked their brains out.