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

by Natalie McLennan

  “Uh, what do you think I think?” I said. “But will anyone pay that?”

  “We’ll find out. Next call that comes in, I’m going for it.”

  His thinking was we would not only be making that much more money, we could use the notoriety that came with me being the most expensive girl in the city as a marketing tool for the entire agency.

  So we sat and waited. Twenty minutes went by. Nothing. Then the phone rang. It was a new client— Asian, in private equity. Perfect. Jason looked at me, smiled and took a chance. He asked the new client if he were looking at our Web site.

  “Look at Natalia’s page and click on the link to her reviews. Read a few and call me back.”

  He hung up the phone. We waited. A few minutes later, the phone rang, and we both smiled.

  Jason spoke first, “So what do you think?”

  He said something that made Jason laugh and respond, “She’s sitting right beside me. Are you ready to have the best sexual experience of your life?”

  Jason listened, then winked at me, “How much? Her rate is two thousand an hour, with a two-hour minimum.”

  I could almost see Jason’s pulse quicken. I couldn’t believe it—he was about to close this guy. Jason’s technique on the phone had been evolving. It was almost like the clients were being interviewed to see if they were deserving enough to see me.

  “So, tell me about yourself,” Jason said. “Well, you sound like someone who knows the best things in life don’t come cheap.”

  He had flipped the whole game around. It was absolutely fascinating to watch.

  “Excellent…. Where am I sending her? Better yet, how about this? We have a gorgeous loft in Tribeca…why don’t you come here?”

  My excitement vanished, and I did a little inward groan. I really, really didn’t like seeing clients at the loft. The energy of the place always interfered and made for a less than intimate experience.

  “Get over it,” I told myself. I didn’t want to let anything bring down this moment. I could see the adrenaline flowing through Jason’s veins as he reassured the guy I was going to be worth every penny.

  He hung up the phone.

  I squealed with delight.

  I was now, by the only measuring stick that mattered, the top escort in New York City.

  I looked up to see Mona’s reaction. She had daggers in her eyes.

  “Look at you, Natalia,” she said with a smirk. “You’d better be worth it…you know how Jason hates refunding clients.”

  I felt the tears welling in my eyes, about to stream down my face. It took everything I had to hold them back. I had sacrificed so much to get to this moment. Just three months earlier, I had been a nearly homeless out-of-work actress with a boyfriend who hit me, now I was poised to become the city’s most expensive date. Some of the richest men in the country were lining up to pay more than I had ever made in a month to be with me for a couple of hours. It had all become so unreal. When I started, I instantly became addicted to the pursuit of the ever elusive more : more sex, more fun, more money. Now my competitive nature had kicked into overdrive, and I was becoming addicted to the recognition—the idea that everyone would know me as the best. It seems so crazy in retrospect—who would want to be a famous escort? But I was so detached from the mores of the mainstream world, it had consumed my notion of self-worth. This moment. My Oscar. If only Mona would let me enjoy it.

  I had vowed not to let her hurt me. It wasn’t easy…her words were venomous. She wasn’t just our office manager, she was Jason’s ex-girlfriend, and she knew just how to get under my skin. Screw her, I told myself, they were just words. As Jason hung up, I challenged myself: turn this client into a regular and silence Mona. With this kind of money coming in, I could actually start to save, instead of blowing it all on drugs and clothes, and get out of the game and away from her for good.

  Hulbert walked into the loft carrying some canvases and shopping bags with his paints and brushes. Jason was letting him use the loft to paint as it added to the vibe.

  “Hey, Hulbert, I just booked Natalia a two-hour, four-thousand-dollar appointment. Am I the best or what?”

  “That’s what she should have been getting all along,” said Hulbert, as he gave me a quick smile.

  I loved Hulbert.

  * * *

  Despite my new-found underground celebrity, not all of my appointments ended with soul kisses and doggie bags of blow. Sometimes things would go seriously FUBAR, and it always seemed like it was up to me to keep the train from flying off the tracks.

  Ashley and I were lounging around the loft. It was past midnight. We hadn’t had a booking, and we were losing our energy. Then the phone rang. We could hear Jason answer it in the office upstairs, but we couldn’t catch what he was saying. We looked at each other in anticipation, hoping it would be a winner.

  Jason came down the stairs with the details: Me, Ash, plus a third girl to Finn’s pad on Wooster Street. Finn was the skin-mag publisher who had booked me in the early days. He had become one of my favorites. He knew how to treat a girl right. We’d be able to party, drink, and have a fun little sex-party in his massive designer loft for the next two hours and each walk away with $1,000 plus.

  Just what we needed to salvage our night.

  Then Jason threw in the monkey wrench.

  “And oh, I forgot to tell you. Brigit is the third girl.”

  I gave him the look. The you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look. Brigit is a pill-popping ex-stripper with way too much plastic surgery and a volatile ex-boyfriend who used to run a competing agency known for its party girls: escorts who doubled as drug dealers. The agency was busted, and he was residing under the care of the New York State Department of Correctional Services somewhere upstate. Brigit was an emotional time bomb waiting to explode. She was infamous for getting totally hammered and regaling her clients with tales about how she’d been raped multiple times, survived cervical cancer and was on the verge of getting kicked out of her apartment. Every guy’s fantasy, right?

  She was the polar opposite of a New York Confidential girl.

  Jason and I had had the Brigit discussion before. But I gave it another shot. I laid out why he should NEVER, under any circumstances, send her to a client. I didn’t want to deprive the girl of a living. But the ex-boyfriend was reason enough to stay clear, I argued. The guy was public enemy number one in the sex industry with law enforcement, which meant she was probably on their radar as well. I tried to explain to Jason that, if she were ever arrested, she would rat us out in a heartbeat to avoid going to jail. Hell, she might even be able to buy her man some time off in exchange for info on the city’s hottest agency. I’d watched enough cop shows to know how it worked. Furthermore, I explained, she was killing our rep. I detailed the numerous occasions she melted down in front of clients in my presence. Who knows what happened when I wasn’t around?

  Jason listened, but was having none of it.

  “Guys don’t care what comes out of a girl’s mouth if she’s got a hot body.”

  First off, she did not have a hot body. Most of it wasn’t even hers. And even if she did, his argument ran totally counter to the whole philosophy behind our little enterprise. We were selling healthy, positive encounters where everyone parts happy.

  She was poison in a push-up.

  Maybe he felt sorry for her and wanted to give her a break. Maybe he was a better man than I gave him credit for. Or maybe he was just a greedy bastard and wanted as many girls who liked money and sex as he could get his hands on, even if they were certifiable. To this day, why he kept her around is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a Trojan.

  Ashley looked on quizzically. She had not had the honor of meeting Brigit.

  “You’ll see,” I told her, admitting defeat.

  As Ashley and I arrived at the street entrance to Finn’s loft on Wooster, I tried to suppress my dread at seeing Brigit again.

  Finn opened the door with his arms spread open wide and grabbed me into a
hug.

  “Where have you been? I’ve fuckin’ missed you.”

  His eyes drifted to Ashley.

  “And who is this? Holy shit, Jason is not fucking around.”

  He was so obviously at home in his enormous SoHo loft. It fit him like a glove. The last time I’d been at Finn’s, we’d spent the last half hour of our appointment lying naked on the carpet in his living room, draped over each other. He pointed to each piece of art one by one and gave me a mini-art lesson.

  “That painting over there is a Damien Hirst.”

  One by one he listed their names: Kenny Scharf, Kostabi….

  “I’m waiting for a Warhol to be delivered. I don’t know what I’m going to get next, maybe a Keith Haring,” his deep, scratchy voice saying their names like they were guys he went to high school with.

  “This is Victoria,” I said, using Ashley’s professional name. I was as proud of my little protégé as he was to meet her. “Jason is stepping it up a notch, you know?”

  I giggled and jumped into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist. He spun me around, and I grabbed Ashley and pulled her into the apartment. I was going to show her how good this job could be.

  We each did two shots of Grey Goose, sniffed from the three-foot line of coke on the black marble counter-top, and then I unzipped my Louis Vuitton duffel bag. Finn gave me his best bad-boy smirk.

  “Did you bring toys?”

  I smirked. Of course I’d brought toys. I’d brought toys and lingerie. I told Finn to turn up the music and soon the place was thumping with a killer house beat.

  I pulled Ashley into Finn’s bedroom and gave her a garter and some fishnets.

  “Put this on.”

  I went back out to see Finn right away. He was paying to feel like a king, and we were going to make him feel more regal than the Sultan of Brunei. I straddled him, and we started kissing. He squeezed his hands around my waist and then picked me up, flipped me onto my back and was about to climb on top of me when something caught his eye. I looked over and saw Ashley walking toward us. She was wearing the garter belt, thigh-high fishnets and stilettos, and she’d taken one of Finn’s ribbed wife beater tees and tied the front in a knot. I pushed Finn away from me, and he reached for Ashley, who leaned over him on the couch and gave him a nice long kiss. Then she turned her attention to me, and we starting kissing, slowly, then more intensely. I felt like I was in a trance. My mind was clear and empty of all thoughts other than how good this felt. The electricity between the two of us transfixed Finn. We were both such naturals. We were able to connect and focus huge amounts of energy on another person, so when we both turned that skill on each other, I’d never felt anything like it.

  She pulled my dress over my head and bit one of my nipples. I grabbed one of the cushions from the couch and tossed it on the floor as she slid to the carpet and lay back, resting her head on the padding. We were giving Finn the best, hottest sight ever. I pulled her panties to the side and licked her clit. I looked up at her, and we smiled at each other. I kept going and, as I felt Finn’s hand move up my leg, I moaned and couldn’t wait for him to touch me, to put his fingers inside me.

  Ashley’s top came off, then Finn’s. I knew exactly what to do next. I kissed Ashley one more time, and then we crawled toward Finn, who was kneeling a few feet away, his hand on his cock. We pulled down his underwear, and I licked the head of his penis. He sighed and leaned his head back. Ashley’s tongue joined mine and we slowly started giving him a blowjob together.

  After a few minutes, I got up to get some condoms and came back to the living room. Finn took Ashley’s hand and mine, and we all walked to the bedroom. Finn unwrapped a condom, and I got down on my knees, put him all the way in my mouth, sucking until I felt there was no way he could get any harder and then let Ashley put the condom on for him. I lay back on Finn’s bed. The sheets felt like butter on my skin. He pushed my legs open and slipped inside me. Ashley disappeared for a second and came back with a small glass dildo.

  She lay down beside us and, as I closed my eyes and arched my head back, I saw her slide it inside her.

  “I’ve got to see your ass,” he said as he flipped me over. I loved how good it felt. I came and let Finn shift his attention to Ashley. She straddled him, and I could tell he was about to come. I leaned down and licked his balls a little, and he came super hard and so did Ashley. I smiled, so happy, and let myself fall back against the mountain of pillows to chill for a bit.

  I lit a cigarette, took a few drags and then passed it to Ashley. She took a small puff as she didn’t smoke that much. The doorbell rang.

  Who the fuck is that? I wondered. Ashley looked at me and shrugged. BRIGIT!

  The human needle scratching across the record. Shit, I’d totally forgotten about her.

  “A little late, isn’t she?” Finn joked.

  She was almost two hours late. I had a bad feeling about this.

  She walked in like she owned the place, but didn’t much like it. She looked disapprovingly at the art on the walls. “Oh, hi, Natalia,” she said, and then made a beeline for the bottle of Grey Goose on the kitchen counter.

  “Brigit, this is Finn, and do you know Victoria? She’s new.”

  “Oh yeah? Is Jason giving her all the bookings? Is she why he hasn’t been calling me?”

  No, it’s because you’re fucking crazy, the voice in my head answered.

  She turned to Finn, “This is your place? How the fuck do you afford this?”

  Finn did not miss a beat, “How the fuck did you afford your tits?”

  Then he turned to me and asked, “Natalia, you want a roofie?”

  Dude was hardcore. Who pops roofies on purpose? Roofie is the nickname for Rohypnol, a.k.a. “the date-rape drug.” Finn swore by them. He preferred them to Valium or Xanax as a comedown from coke. I knew what Finn really meant was, “I’m ready to call it a night.”

  I followed him into the bedroom. He handed me a few pills.

  “I don’t even know what to say. I’ll get her out of here,” I said.

  We heard a loud pop!

  “She just opened my champagne,” Finn said, dejectedly.

  I went into damage control mode. Brigit was flailing around the living room in her underwear, waving the bottle around.

  Oh God, fucking Cristal! Who pops a $500 bottle of someone else’s champagne at four in the morning— and drinks out of the bottle?

  She flopped on the sofa, her dirty feet flying up in the air. She fumbled through her purse with one hand, nearly spilling the champagne on the carpet with the other.

  Ashley looked like a deer in headlights.

  I did a quick line of coke for courage and motioned for Ashley to come over to me. I handed her the straw and said, “Do a line and then get all our stuff together. We gotta get out of here before all hell breaks loose.”

  I started sorting though everyone’s clothes, which were scattered all over the loft’s giant main area. Finn was nowhere to be seen, but my first guess was that he was on the phone with Jason. Not good.

  Luckily, Ashley was gripping her situation. She’d located her skirt and shirt and was ready to walk out the door. I was now dressed and holding the loco bitch’s clothes.

  “Brigit? We’re gonna go.”

  “Okay, have fun, bye!”

  She popped what looked like three Vicodins.

  “No, we all have to go.”

  “Well, I just got here. Am I going to get paid? Jason told me this was a three-hour booking!”

  “Brigit, you were two hours late.”

  “Motherfucker!” she swore and stomped toward the bedroom.

  “You had better pay me!” she screamed in Finn’s direction.

  This was going from bad to worse.

  “Of course you’ll get paid. Come on, let’s go to the loft,” I pleaded.

  She disappeared into the bathroom. We followed with her clothes and made her look presentable. I dug around in my duffel until I found my sunglasses and we
nt to find Finn. He was sitting on his bed, his head in his hands. When you lay down the kind of money he did, this is not how you imagine the night is going to end. I felt for him.

  He looked up at me, and I was relieved. He seemed annoyed, but it looked like he’d get over it.

  He stood and asked, “You going to be okay?”

  “What do you think?” I chuckled.

  I’m indestructible…didn’t he know?

  He smiled and kissed my forehead. We were cool, at least.

  When we burst through the front door to the street, the sun was just coming up. The cover of darkness was gone. I had to get our sideshow act off the streets, and quick.

  Brigit stumbled and almost took a nosedive off the curb. She caught herself and took a big swig of champagne. Holy shit! What was she doing with the champagne?

  This was so not good. Three escorts with a duffel bag full of sex toys, condoms, lube, a wad of hundreds and a credit card imprint slip with all Finn’s info on it. Plus, I had a non-negligible bag of blow in my purse. If a cop drove by, Courtney Love here would take us all down.

  I’d never been more happy to see a cab barrel down Broadway. I waved my arms like I was on a deserted island, and it was my rescue plane. The cab swooped over to pick us up.

  I wouldn’t have stopped if I were him, but I’m not a man.

  I held off calling Jason while we were in the cab. The driver was already way too interested in us. Jason would see for himself soon enough what he had wrought for ignoring my sage advice.

  Now at this point, you’re saying to yourself, It’s impossible that every client was a mega-rich, art-collecting, party-animal stud, and you’re right. I didn’t mind if the guy was packing a couple of extra pounds or had less than a full head of hair. If he was a nice guy and had a good heart, I liked being with him. What I couldn’t stand were the Type A assholes, and as you can imagine, at my price point I got more than my fair share. At the top of that list was my high-ranking government official. He seemed to be some kind of head honcho at a powerful federal agency. We met during my early days at New York Confidential, and about once a month he called to see me.