I had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. A client’s personal details—everything I didn’t need to know—was none of my business. But most of the time, clients wanted to talk about themselves, and I didn’t stop them.
William was married and lived in the suburbs. Our first meeting was actually perfectly pleasant. He booked a room at the Pierre Hotel, and I was a little late (as usual)—okay, very late. He wasn’t impressed and let me know it. But I must have won him over because over the next two months, he kept calling back again and again and wouldn’t take anyone else at the agency but me.
He was one of several of my regulars who would try to help me “reform.” He would tell me I should start auditioning again and find some other way to make money, that Jason was using me, that I could do so much better with my life. I laughed. Having sex with me was a funny way of getting me to stop having sex. I told him if he was intent on getting me out of the game, he should give me a job.
“My bosses are big on background checks,” he responded flatly.
I explained to him I was happy. This was a short-term thing. Jason knew I wasn’t going to be working forever.
One day I wasn’t available, and he booked Isabella. She returned to the loft within a half hour. He had sent her back. The smoking Colombian!
Jason made each client a promise that if they weren’t happy with the girl for any reason, the agency would give the client a credit or send another girl as soon as he could. I respected him for that, and it made sense. It kept clients coming back. We never baited and switched, like a lot of agencies. Our Web site had full-body pictures of each girl, most of which showed their faces. So the only variables left were personality and chemistry—subjective but important. William apparently didn’t vibe with Isabella, so he sent her back, like an undercooked steak. He waited in his hotel room until I was available two hours later.
When I arrived, he looked happy to finally see me. But he seemed put off. When I tried to make some light conversation, he wasn’t having it. Like most clients, I don’t think he liked the idea that he had to wait his turn while I serviced another man. No client, especially guys like William, likes to be reminded of that aspect of the arrangement.
The sex was rough…not his usual style. He held my wrists over my head, which I normally really liked, but it didn’t feel right this time. He was holding them too tight. There was anger in his face. It was hurting me a little. I pulled away, and he stopped and asked me what was wrong. I didn’t know what to do. I had a responsibility to my client to provide whatever he was into, right? It wasn’t so much he was physically hurting me; it was more his attitude that was freaking me out.
Wasn’t he paying for the right to be in whatever mood he wanted to be in?
Now isn’t the right time to deal with these questions, I told myself. I smiled at William and kissed him, “Nothing’s wrong, I moved my wrist weird…my fault.”
We got back into our rhythm. Even though I was still out of sorts, he didn’t seem to notice. As we lay on the bed afterwards, he turned to me, and apropos of nothing, said, “You know, Jason is going to get busted.”
My eyes flew open, “What do you mean?”
My mind reeled. Did he have some inside info?
“When he does, you will get arrested. Is that what you want?”
The answer seemed pretty obvious.
“Um, no,” I replied.
I waited for him to keep talking, to tell me what he meant, what he knew, but he just stopped.
As we lay there, I started to freak.
Finally, he broke the silence, “Natalia, if that is your real name.”
“It is!” I interrupted, eager to hear more. “Well, almost. It’s Natalie.”
“Can I call you Natalie, since you know my real name?”
He was fucking with me at this point. He didn’t care what my name was. He didn’t want to call me by it to feel closer to me, the real me. He just wanted to be on an even playing ground.
“Of course,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Let me fill you in on how things work, Natalie. The authorities know every agency in New York. One by one they shut them down. It’s very easy. They send in a client, someone who looks a lot like me, and they single out a girl, someone high profile, who has her pictures and reviews and identity all over the Internet. Someone like you. The ‘client’ meets with the prostitute regularly, has sex with her each time, establishing a pattern. Then they move in and shut down the agency, sending everyone to prison for a very long time. It’s that simple. It’s just a matter of time.”
He looked at me with eyes cold as ice.
I stared back. Was he trying to play games with me? Or was this something else? All sorts of scenarios went through my head. Did he know about an imminent crackdown and actually care enough about me to help me out? That doesn’t really make any sense, I thought to myself. If he does know of something specific, wouldn’t he be begging me to keep his name out of it? Then again, I thought, maybe he’s so connected he’s already cleared himself from any connection. Or maybe it’s just what it appears to be: a not-so-friendly warning.
My mind was reeling as we continued to lie there in silence.
Finally, our time was up. I said I had to take a shower and went into the bathroom.
Okay, new rules, I thought to myself: No more bringing any Class A offenses to appointments.
If I were arrested, having drugs on me would definitely not help my case, but that was a side issue. The larger question hung out there like a dark cloud. What was I thinking? What was going on with me that I would do something so risky? Believe it or not, I had never really honestly thought through the logical conclusion of what getting busted meant. I had totally blocked out the idea of prison altogether. Now it all came crashing down on me. I would never survive in prison. You had to be hard. I was the opposite of hard. I was soft jelly.
I thought I had it all figured out, especially when Jason introduced me to Mel Sachs, the legal eagle who assured me we had all of our bases covered. I thought that if I didn’t sell drugs or make stupid mistakes, I could go on doing this forever. It’s amazing what stacks of hundred-dollar bills will do to your powers of self-deception.
Instead of gripping all of this, I focused my anger at William. What was his problem? Why did he want to make me feel so bad? I slammed my purse down on the vanity and pulled out my baggie and straw, did a quick bump, put my hair in a ponytail and jumped in the shower. I got lathered up with some fruity-smelling shower gel and let the warm water drench my body. By the time I had dried off and put my black La Perla G-string back on and pulled my dress over my head, I had pushed all of his negativity out of my mind.
William pulled me close and gave me a kiss goodbye and made no more additions to his cryptic warning. As I walked down the ornate hallway of the Pierre to the elevator, the anger came back. Tears started flowing down my face. Instead of taking his sobering warning to heart, all I could think about was what an asshole he was. If only I were working independently, I thought to myself, and not for Jason, I could refuse clients I didn’t want, like William. And I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this mind-game bullshit.
By the time I got to the lobby, my eyes were dry, and I was already wondering what new adventure I was going to go on that night.
* * *
Before there was Samantha, Natalia or Victoria, there was Cheryl.
She was spoken about in legendary terms. She was New York Confidential’s first girl. If I helped build the agency from the ground up, she laid down the foundation. She was actually the one who invented the New York Confidential “This is my boyfriend of six months” mantra Jason made all girls say before they hooked up with a client. She was also the first girl to go from $800 to $1,200 an hour, and she had had her own streak of 10/10 reviews on TER.
But she retired before I showed up. Quit while she was ahead, I presumed. I always wondered what made her so special. I used her as a sort of benchmark to keep me motivate
d. It worked pretty well. Then one day the phone rang. Cheryl wanted back in the game.
Jason was on top of the world. He was actually careful to make sure I didn’t feel put out, but I could see the excitement on his face. He felt like the Gods were on his side, giving him back Cheryl.
“With you and Cheryl, I can take over the world,” he said.
I have to give it to Cheryl, she was smooth. She treated me with respect. She didn’t patronize me or any of the other girls. But you could tell she knew she was the shit.
I liked the way she dealt with Jason. She laid some ground rules. Unlike the other girls, she was to be paid in cash after each booking, regardless of the client’s method of payment. The other girls (except for me) received a weekly check for their credit card bookings and cash for cash bookings. Cheryl wasn’t having any of that.
We got along really well. She was sweet and beautiful and pristine. She was a contemporary dancer and a former ballerina. She was twenty-five with dark blond hair, sapphire blue eyes, a smooth, angular face and a taut body. She was extremely flexible and moved like a lioness. She was intelligent and sultry at the same time. Like a lot of people, she didn’t approve of my drug use, but she tolerated it. She lived with her boyfriend, a shoe designer (you can imagine her shoe collection), and didn’t like to talk about how she felt about lying to him. I came to learn through the loft gossip mill that she was torn about the whole thing. She loved the guy, but either loved or was addicted to escorting. Whether it was the money or the sex, or both, I never found out. But she couldn’t stop.
She had been retired for almost a year. But once news spread online that Cheryl was back, she was booked solid. This was actually great for me. I was burnt out. I had been working since May 17th, the date of my first ever appointment, for seven nonstop months, at an average of six hours a day, seven days a week—and that was just my bookable hours. On top of that, add in the travel, which was taking me all over the country at least twice a month. I didn’t mind working every day, but it was nice not to feel pressure from Jason to be working every single minute. Now, because one of us was always with a client, he was always making top rates, and he was happy.
It got even better when Cheryl and I started working together—we were so in sync that clients were flipping out. Jason set our rate at $4,800 for two hours, and we had a waiting list ten deep.
It was late on a Friday night and Cheryl and I were sitting in my closet, hanging out. We had an eleven o’clock appointment together booked—the client had asked for midnight, but Cheryl had a curfew, so eleven it was. In very uncharacteristic Cheryl style, she’d had more than one glass of champagne, and I even think she got a little drunk. I still knew better than to offer her any blow, and I’m glad I didn’t because as we were sitting there in front of my mirror she turned to me and said, “Natalia, I know you’re a big girl, and I don’t mean to nag you about the drugs. You know it’s because I really care about you, right?”
She didn’t need to say anything else.
“I know it is. Thank you. I really love you,” I told her.
She hugged me and whispered in my ear, “If you need anything, let me know.”
I pulled away and quickly changed the subject.
“So. What’s going on with Craig?”
She hesitated.
“He proposed.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Yeah, on our roof. It was so romantic.”
They lived in an amazing Upper West Side townhouse, full of books, a spiral staircase and a lived-in kitchen, with a spectacular private roof—a perfect pad to start a family.
Something was going on inside her. I could see it in her eyes. Her lip was shaking a little. She was even more beautiful than I had remembered.
“I think I have to tell him.”
I stopped mid-sip. I couldn’t even put down my glass.
I started to speak and then stopped myself.
Whoa. This was big.
“I get it.” I told her. You can’t build a life together that’s full of secrets and walls. In my opinion, she had to either break up or tell him. She really believed this was the guy, so she had no choice.
She was totally surprised.
“Oh, my God, everyone else thinks I’m crazy.”
“You have to,” I said.
She looked relieved, like she knew she’d been right all along.
We decided to walk to the hotel. Damien, the client, was at the Ritz Carlton in Battery Park, a twenty-minute walk from the loft. We both wore really short skirts, made of the same torn-up silk in different colors, heels designed by her fiancé (was that wrong?) and slinky off-the-shoulder tops. We held hands and turned down Church Street, with the Chrysler Building shining like a beacon behind us. Somewhere around Fulton Street, we heard a crack of thunder and the sky just opened up. We ducked into a doorway as it started pouring. We hoped we’d see a taxi, but there are never any taxis in that part of the city late on a Friday night.
“What do we do?” she asked.
I looked at her. We were already a little wet.
“Keep walking, I guess.”
We arrived at the Ritz, soaked through to our skin. We giggled and ran to the elevator. It opened, and we went in. Cheryl pushed me to the wall and started kissing me. I kissed her back, our tongues moving together. She kissed my neck, and the doors opened.
We arrived at the client’s door draped over each other, soaking wet in every way. Our client had high expectations. We were the famous Cheryl and Natalia, and he had made the trip from L.A. to New York especially to see us, but nothing prepared him for the sight of the two of us.
He smiled and laughed a nervous laugh, then recovered and said, “I can’t believe I expected anything less from the two of you.”
He invited us in. There was a bit of a dilemma: we were booked for two hours. I didn’t think we should take our clothes off right away, but we were soaking wet and while we had made the best entrance ever, once we were in the room, we were just wet. Our client came to the rescue.
He pulled two small bags out of the closet: La Perla. Cheryl and I unwrapped identical slips and g-strings—mine in black, hers in light pink. We smiled at our client and slipped into the bathroom, out of our clothes and into our presents. I looked at the two of us in the mirror. “Wait,” I said. I pulled off my undies and gestured for her to do the same. We traded and put them back on. Now I had on a black slip and pink undies and Cheryl the opposite. Perfect.
We left the bathroom, and Damien, an entertainment lawyer, handed us some champagne, and we all clinked glasses. I kissed Cheryl and smiled at Damien, and we all sat on the bed. It was kind of funny. I could tell he really wanted to hang with us, but he couldn’t focus on conversation and really wanted to have both of us immediately. Cheryl and I made him wait a little longer. She lay back on the big bed, and I kissed her and got on top of her. I pulled down the strap of her slip and sucked on her nipple a little, then covered her back up again. She lifted my slip up over my ass and pulled me closer to her so that I could feel how wet she was. We slowly turned our attention to Damien. She kissed him slowly on the mouth, and I started to undo his shirt. I lay back on the bed for a minute and watched them, then got up again and started to rub Cheryl’s pussy through her panties. She moaned, and we took off Damien’s shirt. We undid his pants and started giving him a blowjob together. It only got better from there.
For the next hour and a half, we had really deep, really intense sex. I came a few times, and I know Cheryl did, too. Damien came twice.
We all lay in bed together. Cheryl and I were both warm and glowing and snuggling into each other.
Damien was laying on his side looking at us. He talked about L.A., and we told him about our lives in New York. Cheryl left out the part about her fiancé. We were so similar. She was herself but knew what to talk about when. She told him about her horse that she kept in Long Island. She’d bought it with the money she’d made before her “retirement.” Now she wanted
to save and invest some money over the next few months.
I slipped away to the bathroom to do a bump and check on our clothes. They were dry enough to wear. Our time was almost up, and Cheryl had to get home to her fiancé before she turned into a pumpkin.
We told Damien how much fun we’d had.
He said, “You girls don’t even know.”
He promised to write us a review. I had a feeling we were going to earn another 10/10.
* * *
A week went by, and no one had heard from Cheryl. I was worried, so I texted her proposing coffee in the Tribeca Grand Hotel lobby.
She looked horrible.
She had told him, and her world had collapsed in on itself. She thought the depth of his love for her would enable him to work through the reality of what she had been doing behind his back, and they would live happily ever after. I guess he couldn’t see past the betrayal. He flipped out and rescinded his marriage proposal, which maybe wasn’t so surprising in retrospect. After a week of crying and talking and sleeping in separate beds, he cut her out of his life forever.
I was just happy to see she wasn’t suicidal or anything. As we sipped our cappuccinos in the atrium of the trendy hotel, where between the two of us we had probably been with more than twenty guys, she changed the subject and asked me how everyone was doing: Jason, Mona, Clark.
I told her fine. “Forget us,” I said, “How are you?”
She teared up right away, “I just miss him so much.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I felt for her, but I didn’t feel guilty for giving her the advice that I did. I don’t think she had a choice. If her escorting had been in her past, before she met the guy, it might have been a different story. But she had been doing it through most of the time they had been dating. She’d taken time off, but then she’d come back for more. If she really loved him, he deserved the truth. Furthermore, if this was his reaction, it was better to make the break now than to start a life together, have kids, get older and lose some of her killer looks, and then have him find out and have it all ripped out from under her.
The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort Page 13
