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

by Natalie McLennan

  I asked her, “Do you think if you’d told him it was something in the past, he might have been okay with it?”

  “There was just too much,” she answered. “He couldn’t get over all the lies I’d told him. We never even got to all the guys I’d slept with while I was with him.”

  She said she was moving back to Connecticut to mend things with her family. To make matters worse, her fiancé, thinking she needed help from a larger support group, had taken it upon himself to fill them in on the awful truth right before he’d dumped her.

  “Nat, look at me,” she said. “You need to stop. I don’t want you to end up like me.”

  She went on about how what we did was destroying us.

  I listened and tried to take it in.

  As she was leaving, I asked her where she was going.

  She paused, and then said, “I…I’m going up to the W.”

  I mean, puh-leeze. Don’t tell me about how fucked your life is and tell me how I need to change my ways, and then tell me that.

  We kissed goodbye on the cheeks. I knew I probably would never see her again. As I headed back down through Tribeca to the loft, I couldn’t help but tear up. I felt so bad. I really did feel something like love for her, and even though she was a total hypocrite, as I walked through the empty streets, her warning started to get to me.

  Then, as I turned onto Worth Street and approached our little den of sin, the rationalizing part of my brain put her predicament into perspective. I am not Cheryl, I reassured myself. I don’t have a man who wants to marry me and thinks I’m something I’m not. I might be lying to my mom, but I’ve been doing that all my life. I’m living on my terms, and no one else is getting hurt.

  I knew I’d have to figure what I want to do with my life eventually, but I was twenty-four. Isn’t this the age when everything in our culture is telling us we’re supposed to be free-spirited and carefree? Shouldn’t I just focus on what I want now and live every minute as it comes? Wouldn’t that be the Zen thing?

  I only heard from Cheryl once more. A few weeks later, she called and wanted to know if I had any clients I could refer to her. I knew just the guy. I gave her William’s number.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE JASON SHOW

  I was dreaming. My ex, Paul, and I were in the shower. I could feel the water. I could feel the warmth of Paul’s body, but I couldn’t see anything, and I wasn’t breathing. Then I tasted water. It was going up my nose. I felt myself being pulled out of the shower, into the tiny bathroom, and I heard screaming…my own and Paul’s voice.

  “Stay with me, stay with me,” over and over again.

  I started taking deep breaths in and out, trying to do what Paul was telling me to do. I looked around and saw my bedroom, the loft. I was awake. I had just relived one of my many overdoses. One of the numerous times Paul saved my life before I left him.

  Everyone has nightmares, but these were different. They were more like flashbacks. These felt real, like I was reliving my overdoses over and over again in my sleep. It was actually worse than the actual event. One of the things about an overdose, the ones you survive, is they usually have a profound effect on the people who witness them, but usually have little or no effect on the person who actually takes the drugs. Even though the drug users are the ones most in need of a wake-up call because they’ve lost consciousness, they wake up as though nothing happened and go right back to whatever they were doing.

  It was like those dreams had a purpose. Like my subconscious was reaching out trying to remind me of just how dangerous I could be to my own well-being.

  I felt myself changing. My ego would like to argue that I was evolving, but that’s not what was happening. Evolution implies some type of progress and, while there were aspects of my life (notably the financial) that were so much better than before when I was with Paul, I was surely regressing in my connection to myself and who I was as a human being. I was lying more and more to my mother and ignoring the advice of well-meaning people like Taylor and Cheryl who were reaching out to me and trying to get me to look at how I was living. I wasn’t auditioning for any acting roles. I was doing more drugs than ever. The trauma of what I went through with Paul left me so wounded I was eager for a new identity and a new life. Now I was telling the normal world to fuck off and was being lavishly rewarded and praised for it. But it was turning me into a ruthless little girl who didn’t care about anything but having fun, making money and getting really, really high.

  * * *

  I rolled over and opened the bedside table drawer, which was always full of chocolate and candy. It was one of the little ways Jason tried to show me that he loved me. I was addicted to sugar—well, pretty much all white substances—and needed it to get out of bed.

  I starting popping peanut M&Ms as I stared at the ceiling, trying to let my white room blot out the darkness of my dream.

  We had a California king-size bed. It was so big, and I was so small that I could sprawl out into a star shape, and I still couldn’t touch the sides. We had

  Egyptian cotton linens with a 1,500 thread count and a huge fluffy duvet filled with the down of 10,000 virgin Canadian geese (okay, I made up that last part).

  Our cleaning lady, Valeria, changed our sheets every day (for obvious reasons), and they always smelled fabric-softener fresh. We had this really beautiful antique-style Asian wood table that was exceptionally high and long. Above it was one of my favorite things: a print of a photo by another artist we’d found on West Broadway. He sold his stuff across the street from where we met Hulbert. It was the richest, deepest blue color, and if you looked really close, you could see that it was a photo of water blown up. I love that color blue, and it worked like magic, taking me right out of the edgy, unsettled mood the nightmare had left me in.

  I finally got up, and I walked up to the office. I was wearing a super-cozy, short, black and pink nightie. I didn’t sleep naked so much anymore now that there were almost always people around in the mornings. I had a whole section in my wardrobe for things like little booty shorts and silk nighties.

  Jason was sitting at our enormous mahogany dining room table, dozens of booking sheets laid out in front of him, talking on the phone. I sat on his knee and looked over them. It was an impressive testament to my work ethic. There were scores of entries each representing one of my recent bookings—the lowest was for $4,000 and the highest for $15,000.

  I took out my little black Moleskine book and started jotting down my upcoming appointments. I kept immaculate records of my schedule. I recorded the client’s first name and last initial, the number of hours and payment breakdown. I also did some quick checks on my outstanding payments. I was the only one who paid any attention to my earnings. Ever since I started, Jason had never paid me for my electronic billings. I was still making more cash than I could spend, but I wasn’t seeing the payouts from my big clients who paid with credit cards or wire transfers. So, ironically, the more I was earning, the less I actually got. At first, I thought I was protecting myself. I was wary of my “Canadian situation,” as I called it. I wasn’t about to get busted by the IRS, ICE or some other three-lettered bogeyman for cashing huge checks when I didn’t have a work visa, let alone a legit job. When Jason and I were on good terms, I felt safest keeping my money with him in the main agency account, which was basically his to do with as he pleased. But now, with things rocky between us, I was getting nervous. A quick calculation showed that I was owed somewhere north of $150,000.

  Even with all my Manolos and McQueens and sleepovers at the Mandarin, I had ended up in the same lousy situation as the hoochie on Bensonhurst Avenue: my pimp wasn’t paying me. I had once again let myself be forced into the victim role, first with my ex-boyfriend bullying and bruising me, and now with Jason booking me 24/7 and holding my money over my head. If I demanded he pay up, what leverage did I have? If I threatened to go on strike or walk away, I risked losing it all if he called my bluff. If I asked him nicely, he still could see it
as a signal that I didn’t trust him or that I was thinking about retiring, or even worse, defecting. If I forced the issue, it would throw off our already shaky dynamic—a dynamic that was so integral to the success of the business and my general happiness.

  I was so obsessed with keeping everything in our world positive and drama-free, I did what any ever-hopeful girl who wanted to work things out with her man would do, I sucked it up. Deep inside I really believed Jason loved me and that he would eventually pay me what I had earned. So I told myself that I’d bring it up later, at a better time.

  What happened next would only confirm in my mind I was making the right choice.

  * * *

  Jason hung up the phone, quickly shuffled the booking sheets into a pile, and turned to me.

  “Natalia, this guy keeps calling. He says he’s some TV producer, and he read about you on TER and wants to meet you.”

  My heart skipped a beat, “So?”

  “So, I told him he had to book an appointment with you if he wants to meet you.”

  Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed at Jason’s attitude, but he touched a nerve. The old Nat came flooding to the surface, and I felt a surge of adrenaline mixed with desperation. All the original reasons why I came to New York came rushing back.

  “He hasn’t stopped calling, and now he says he wants to meet me, too, and that he can turn us into superstars. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “You want to talk to him?”

  He pulled down a Post-It from the board filled with names, numbers and amounts of money owed, or credited. It read: “Joe Dinki,” along with a cell phone number.

  “His name is Joe Dinki? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Jason didn’t even blink. I mean that literally. He was famous for not blinking. It helped fuel his rep for being unfazed by whatever was falling apart around him.

  “So what? The guy’s got a funny name.”

  “If you worked in entertainment, or business, or anything except maybe the circus, and your name was Joe Dinki, wouldn’t you change it?”

  Jason ignored me and dialed his number. It was already ringing when he handed me the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is this Joe?”

  “Yes, and who’s this?”

  “Natalia.”

  I lived in a one-name world by this point, like Madonna. Or Bozo.

  “Well, hello, Natalia. You’re not an easy girl to get in touch with.”

  “Yeah, my agent Jason screens all my calls,” I joked.

  He laughed.

  “I don’t know how much Jason told you, but I know all about you. I’m a producer, and I’d really like to meet with you to tell you about a concept I have for a show.”

  I looked over at Jason.

  “Well, I’m going to have to pass you over to Jason, but I think that should be okay. We should definitely meet.”

  I handed the cordless to Jason, keeping my fingers crossed.

  “What are you doing right now?” Jason is a “right now” kind of person.

  He gave Joe the address to the loft, and I skipped to my closet. What do you wear when you are meeting the man who’s going to make you a star? The daydreams were already running through my head.

  Mister Dinki arrived within the hour. I played it cool and waited in the wings in my closet. I could hear him and Jason talking. Finally, Jason called for me.

  I waited a minute, for dramatic purposes, gathered my confidence and made my entrance.

  Joe looked more like a grip than a director or producer. Then he opened his mouth, and it went downhill from there.

  “Natalia, I came here to meet you, but at this point I’m way more interested in Jason. This guy is amazing. Where did you find him?”

  I gave a fake laugh and wandered over to the kitchen. Then I made a beeline back to my sanctuary. I had to regroup. What an idiot! Who says that? He’s either really smart, or really stupid, I thought. He might have realized that he would have to win over Jason in order to get to me to make this TV thing happen. That would make him smart. But he didn’t seem that sharp; he seemed like just another sucker eating up Jason’s bullshit.

  I would have to make him fall in love with me. It felt strange. I wasn’t used to being in competition with Jason for people’s attention, but these were not normal circumstances. This was our future at stake.

  I composed myself and went back out to see Jason and Joe. Jason welcomed me onto his lap, and I looked Joe in the eyes.

  “I’ve read all your reviews, Natalia. Do you know how famous you are on the Internet?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “So what’s the deal, are you going to make me really famous?”

  “If Jason will let me, I’ll make you both huge stars.”

  “And how will you do that?”

  “I want to shoot a reality show about you and Jason. All he can talk about is how amazing you are and how in love with you he is. I just watched him book a client over the phone, and I was going nuts that I don’t have a camera here right now. I want to shoot a pilot. I know you guys are busy…two, maybe three days of filming and then sell the show to a network. I know a lot of people at VH1, and they would freak over you two.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I responded.

  * * *

  The next day, I found Jason laid out on the couch, a huge L-shaped chocolate brown leather sectional with a view of almost the entire loft. I happily lay down on his lap.

  He was finishing up a call with his step-dad.

  “Dad, I’m so happy we’ve talked about this,” he said. “Mel Sachs is calling me back any minute. I’ll keep you up to date.”

  He hung up the phone and said, “My father thinks we should do the show.”

  Wow, that was a surprise. Jason called his step-dad “dad.” He was really the only family he had left, aside from an estranged sister. His step-dad had distanced himself from Jason after a brouhaha over a loan for one of Jason’s borderline-legal start-ups. In his twenties, Jason had made millions on his phone-sex business in Miami. He’d hung out with guys like Chris Paciello, the notorious club owner who dated Madonna and was later convicted of murder, at the height of the Miami club craze. But that business tanked, and he ended up owing creditors more than four million dollars at thirty-six-percent interest and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1997. He lost everything, including an Aston Martin and probably his most savvy investment ever, ownership of the URL: pussy.com. Shortly after, he moved to New York and started his second doomed brainchild, SoHo Models. Then came the Details exposé and the feet dangling over the ledge. He tried to kill himself twice: once with a knife, the second time with “a milk shake,” which he later told New York magazine contained “75 Valium, 75 Klonopin, and a couple bottles of Scotch.”

  I don’t know which of Jason’s sketchy career moves his step-dad had gotten caught up in, but whatever it was he had learned his lesson and kept his distance when it came to money. But they were somehow still close.

  I was definitely surprised to hear the old man had given his blessing to Jason’s latest and greatest big idea. Jason explained that his step-dad agreed this could help him finally make a move into the mainstream. I wasn’t quite sure how his step-dad equated reality TV with respectability, but I guess when it came to Jason it was all relative. The important thing was Jason would now do everything he could to make his “dad” proud. That’s all I cared about.

  * * *

  Jason called for Hulbert.

  He sauntered down the stairs wearing his uniform: jeans, motorcycle boots, black bandana on his head and a lot of awesome chunky silver jewelry. His muscles rippled under his wife beater.

  He stood in front of us, like a soldier standing at attention, ready to take orders from his commanding officer.

  “No, no, sit down,” Jason told him.

  The ringing house phone cut him off.

  “Mel!” Jason said, looking over at us excitedly. “S
o what’s the verdict…are we shooting this show or what?”

  Mel Sachs had been working his magic on Joe Dinki, getting him to agree to give Jason a cut of the show.

  Jason reached into his back pocket to get his cell phone, which started to blare its Usher ringtone. I had to jump off his lap so I wouldn’t fall off.

  I sat beside Hulbert as we became spectators.

  “Mel, hang on,” Jason said, as he flipped open his cell. “Hello? …Mr. Dinki!”

  My eyes lit up. I started bouncing up and down on the couch. Could I be more excited?

  “I’m just on the phone with my lawyer, Mel Sachs.”

  Namedropper!

  “Can I call you back?”

  He hung up his cell and went back to Mel.

  “Mel, talk to me…how does the deal look?”

  Jason got up, wandered over to our bedroom and closed the door. What could he have to talk about that Hulbert and I couldn’t hear?

  All right, there was plenty, but I was dying to know the details.

  “What’s up, Natalia?”

  Hulbert broke me out of my thought.

  “This producer wants to shoot a reality show about me and Jason and the agency.”

  “Whoa, cool,” he said. “Do you think there’s room for me in there? I would love to get my paintings on TV.”

  We were sitting underneath Hulbert’s masterpiece, the commission that had brought him into this crazy world. Out of anyone else’s mouth that question would seem blatantly opportunistic, but not from Hulbert.

  “I think the genius painter/escort booker would make a fantastic character on the show. You have to be in it. Too bad Monster Mona and Clark Kent will probably be in it, too.”

  “I don’t know about that, Natalia. I don’t think they’ll be too enthusiastic about this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Natalia, they don’t care about life the way you and Jason do. They are here for the money, that’s it. And Clark’s got a day job…not sure he’d want his face up there.”