One day Hulbert came to see me at my new place, really upset. He told me that he, Mona and Clark had made a decision a few weeks back to create a secret stash for Jason, as Jason never paid himself a salary—he just spent whatever he wanted out of the agency’s account. But Mona’s extensive knowledge of the industry, plus the law enforcement risk, convinced Hulbert that Jason needed to stop using the account as a slush fund and keep large denominations in cash, so it could be kept safe from the authorities if they were ever raided. He told me that each day, they separated out half of the cash and put it in the floor safe. At the end of each week, Clark brought the stacks to a secret storage spot, away from the agency, and therefore theoretically safe. Can you see where this is going?
Mona was just getting started. One of the girls came forward and said Hulbert had raped her. Hulbert, the shy painter and consummate gentleman, had raped a girl? I freaked. I wished there were some way I could help him. For a couple of days, the office was in crisis. All of the girls were talking about it. Finally, Jason sat the girl down, and she recanted, but insisted they’d had sex. Apparently, that part was true. It seemed that she’d fallen in love with him and with Mona’s support and guidance had come to understand that he’d taken advantage of her. Raped her. Hulbert wasn’t fired, but like me, he was banned from the office—the penalty for having sex at the loft with an employee. Queen takes knight.
Hulbert sat me down and told me he was terrified Mona and Clark were stealing all the money from the agency through the secret stash they had created for Jason. Now that Hulbert was out, nothing was stopping them from taking all of the money. I could see it was tearing Hulbert apart. He had helped Mona and Clark create the perfect crime. It’s not like Jason could call the cops.
I asked who else knew. He said no one.
I said, “You’ve got to tell him.”
But Mona and Clark were one step ahead of the game. When Hulbert approached Jason, Jason looked at him as if he were crazy for being concerned.
“I just transferred the $25,000 they put away for me to a safe spot,” Jason told him, adding, “It is strange we don’t have more money…our accounts are almost empty. I know we have huge overhead, but this is ridiculous.”
Hulbert had no way of knowing how much Mona and Clark had been putting away, but it was certainly more than $25,000. Poor Jason, I thought. Then I realized what else this meant: poor me. If the accounts were almost empty, all of my money was gone, too.
To make matters even worse, while Rome was burning, Jason just fiddled harder. He started popping up in the gossip pages bragging, Howard Stern-style, that he was the “King of all Pimps.” All he seemed to care about was seeing his name there alongside Madonna and Gwyneth. It was a slow-motion train wreck. We had always been able to fly under the radar: the mob left us alone; the hotels were cool with us because we were discreet; the magazines took our ads; and even the NYPD seemed to give us a pass. We were just one of dozens of high-end escort agencies operating in the semi-open in New York City. But Jason, being Jason, had to push the limits. He literally became obsessed with Page Six. In one item, he even boasted that he wasn’t worried about getting shut down because “I have the cops on my side.”
I’ll never forget drinking my coffee early one afternoon and opening the paper to read that. I literally did a split take.
Later, a vice cop would tell New York magazine, “It was like he was daring us.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FALL OF NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL
Now that I was out of favor with King Jason, the kingdom divided. Hulbert looked out for me, but he wasn’t about to put his head on the chopping block. Ron had become my friend. He was going to protect his investment, the hours he’d put into filming, but he also stayed neutral. Most of the girls turned away from me. If you weren’t Jason’s friend, he was your enemy, and they knew it. They were there to make fast money, not friends. You’re either in, or you’re out, as Ms. Klum says.
Jordan was the one girlfriend who stayed loyal to me, but she was never really into the escort thing to begin with. She loved the loft and loved me, and I loved her back. So much. But that proved to be a mixed blessing. She moved into my new apartment with me and dropped out of art school, and we lived free for six months. She’d tried the escorting thing and occasionally went on bookings with me. We didn’t have to split anything with an agency, and my safe was always bursting with cash.
I was finally living on my own terms, but with no loft to return to and no one to look out for me, Jordan and I slipped deeper into a dark haze. And that’s when we got addicted to heroin. We woke up one December morning, and we were sick. Heroin sick. So we did more. We both knew we were in trouble, but didn’t want to face it. I was broken. I’d lost my world, my fucked up Jason, my agency, and my title as reigning Internet Sex Queen. Even though I knew the escort lifestyle was wrong and destructive and unhealthy in so many ways, it was still everything I had.
This is how my subsequent fall from grace happened:
We were on a tear. We were young, rich, beautiful and in the greatest city in the world. Jordan quit school for a semester. We were convinced she was destined to be the next Kate Moss. We had the contacts to make it happen: photographers make models, and we knew all the great ones. Meanwhile, I kept seeing all my great clients, and I enlisted Jordan to be my assistant. I paid her fifteen percent of everything I earned and in return she kept me looking beautiful, helped me pack and got me to the airport on time for my almost weekly out-of-town dates.
Our average day went like this: we’d wake up from a twelve-hour sleep wrapped up in each other in my California king-size bed, and then we’d do a small, tiny bump of heroin and meth, though we both denied ever touching the latter to anyone that asked. We were chemical snobs and crystal was the Payless of illicit drugs, but it got us up and running. I’d jump on my laptop and check my emails while I flipped my cell on speaker and let my voicemails play. Jordan would connect with Gtox, our fabulous dealer, and make plans to meet up. We’d throw on some kick-ass clothes (our favorite: identical purple camouflage Adidas track suits and Oliver Peoples shades) call a car and zip downtown to Delancy Street. I’d drop five, six hundred bucks on the following:
An eight ball $200
A gram of pure heroin $150
Crystal $100
A few Valium, Ambien, Oxycontin, $50-$100
Forever the karmic soldier, Gtox would throw in a gram of the best weed ever (he was secretly trying to wean us off the hard stuff).
He’d flirt with us a little (he kept a framed black and white pic of me on the wall of his bathroom), and we’d be on our way. We’d run a few errands, taking advantage of our car service for a few hours—things like picking up dry cleaning, taking care of Jordan’s passport application and paying our cell phone bills. For some reason, in Manhattan it takes all day to do half a dozen things between traffic and getting sidetracked by sample sales or latte breaks. It’s never as easy as it should be.
Now for the fun stuff: tanning, manicures, late lunch at Balthazar and some shopping before going home, where we’d do bumps of heroin and coke, take a bath together, shave our legs, and then do a mini-fashion show to decide what to wear for the night. I’d receive a million phone calls along the way from half of the nightlife world, along with a booking or two from regular clients. Next, I’d go off to the hotel while Jordan hung at the apartment with some random boys from Brooklyn, smoking all of Gtox’s glorious pot.
We’d meet up at our first stop of the night, say NA on 14th Street, have a few drinks, do some more H and blow, dance, make out, and flirt more with each other than any of the guys trying to get with us. We’d maybe hit another club or three and then go home, sometimes alone, sometimes with a couple of worthy party friends to make things interesting. Often it all wrapped up with a threesome, then a nap.
Our circle of friends and associates was hardcore when it came to drugs, but no one was into needles. Being on the inner-periphery of the jet-set
crowd meant we had an image to maintain and sticking a needle in our arms was way too grunge. Even smoking was reserved for the veterans as almost everyone only snorted. The heroin Jordan and I got was top shelf and while it never felt good going up my nose, it worked really well. Sometimes we’d use a piece of aluminum foil and smoke it. That’s called “chasing the dragon,” but I almost like the high from snorting better.
Jordan was my guardian angel. While she was partying (almost) as much as I was, she was a few years younger with a cleaner liver and little to no emotional baggage. I was carrying around an ex in jail, the scars of an abusive relationship and at least a dozen clients wanting my love and attention. Jordan decided we needed to get a little healthier. She bundled me up in my new kelly-green J. Lindeberg parka and bright pink Coach winter boots, and we took a cab to Whole Foods just a few blocks away from our Chelsea apartment. I was in awe of the place and, if either of us had known how to cook, it would have been a whole new chapter for us. The produce section alone was enough to inspire you to become the next Julia Childs. I had a fantasy of Jordan and I in a beautiful granite kitchen, dressed in cute aprons and heels, preparing lots of mouthwatering gourmet meals.
Food and pretty much all the drugs we did, save pot, don’t really mix, so we just bought a few things, mostly stuff that contained sugar and didn’t involve cooking. Jordan fell in love with miniature candy apples in a display case. They were tiny and so cute. I asked the girl behind the counter to wrap up two, and she leaned in and whispered, “I have to warn you, they’re $26 each.”
My mouth dropped open.
Whoa. I won’t blink at paying $600 for a pair of shoes, but $26 for a tiny candy apple?!
We bought four.
We stopped in at Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought a few more pillows (you can never have too many) and went home for the day. The snow was swirling around, and I wanted to snuggle with Jordan, do some H and watch (nod out) to a movie.
And we did, but Jordan was on a mission, and I admired her resolve. The next day she skipped over to me and shook my shoulder, waking me out of a nap, “Natalia, we need to join a gym. I was talking to Jeremy, that photographer guy, and he told me that if we want to meet casting directors and agents and people like that, we have to go to the Chelsea Equinox. They all go there.”
Made sense to me. “How do we join? What do you need?”
“Well, it’s probably a few hundred dollars each to join, and you should probably give me your I.D., too.”
I grabbed my wallet, pulled out a thousand dollars and my Canadian I.D. and handed it to her. She kissed me on the cheek and went to Equinox. She started going almost everyday. After a week, I started to feel like I should make the effort. I did a minimal amount of heroin, popped an Adderall and threw on some leggings and a tank top.
We got to the gym, and it was nice, really nice. She showed me the locker room, and we stored our stuff. We went up the stairs and landed on a floor that had a bunch of different cardio machines and weights and typical gym stuff, including a few beautiful people working out with their personal trainers.
Jordan suggested we get on the treadmills. I started slow, and it didn’t feel so bad. For about five minutes. Then I started to get nauseous. Jordan looked over at me, her ponytail bouncing up and down as she ran.
“Natalia, you should sit down.”
My face had turned a shade of green, at least that’s how I felt. I sat on a bench and chilled out. After a few minutes, Jordan came over to me and said, “Ok, Natalia, that was good for today. Why don’t we go steam?”
We went into the eucalyptus steam room, then the regular steam room and then showered and headed home, feeling like death warmed over.
The next few months blurred together. I made it back to the gym twice and only to use the steam room while Jordan was on the treadmill. As we got deeper and deeper into our heroin addictions, all the frenetic activity of our first month as roomies began to fade away and was replaced by lots of passing out on my couch. I’d hear my cell phone ring and sometimes manage to pick it up and look at the caller I.D. before it fell from my hand and landed on the floor. I had been the life of the loft back on Worth Street and bubbled with smiles and hugs for everyone. On heroin, I didn’t even have the energy to answer my phone. Clients called relentlessly, as did my mother and a few concerned friends. I did my best to make plans, to hold on to some thread of a life, but even when I did get where I was supposed to be, I was a ghost of my former self, a walking zombie.
Then I got to the point at which I would get physically sick when I ran out of H, and the panic would set it. It didn’t happen often. Unlike most of the other areas of my life, when drugs were involved, I was a planner and almost never ran out. But it’s inevitable that every once in a while Gtox and all my backup dealers would be M.I.A.
Jordan would get my phone calls, my crying, “help me” phone calls, and always come to my rescue, either with what I needed, or she would at least come home, climb into bed and hold me until my precious medicine arrived.
* * *
In the Behind the Music episode about my life, this is the part where the second album tanks, the drummer dies in a horrible motorcycle accident, and the lead singer’s drug addiction causes the band to miss Live Aid.
I had just made my bi-monthly visit to my doctor before I left for vacation. I had all my STD tests done and had my prescriptions for Xanax (anti-anxiety), Ambien (sleeping pill) and Adderall (ADD med) filled. He checked my blood pressure, which was low, and asked me how I was doing. I told him fine. He could tell I wasn’t fine. He’d been my doctor for almost the entire time I’d lived in New York. Despite being a respected doctor on the Upper East Side, he let me pay him a small cash fee. I was like his little pro bono project.
I guess I wasn’t in such good shape. He told me he was cutting off my prescriptions, which really sucked. I’d have to start buying my prescriptions from my main dealer. One Ambien from a drug dealer is $10. I tried to explain that when I used the pharmaceutical stuff I did fewer street drugs. For instance, when I took Adderall (which is basically pharmaceutical speed), I did less coke. It was true. But he wasn’t buying it. He suggested I get an intravenous drip of vitamins. So I got shot up like Keith Richards with a mix of B12, Vitamin C and calcium. I don’t know if it really worked or if it was just a placebo, but the shot in combination with my weekly visits to the tanning salon helped me feel better.
So I went down to Miami with a Prada bag full of over-priced meds and a condom full of smack stuffed where the TSA wouldn’t look.
I was down there for the Winter Music Conference, which is basically a week-long rave, featuring hundreds of the world’s best electronic DJs and tens of thousands of the world’s most drugged-out club kids. I was actually feeling a little better after lying in the sun for five days. I had rented out an apartment with two friends and was pretty low key the whole time. The guy was a heroin dealer to celebrities, so I didn’t have to worry about getting any bad shit, and the girl was cool to suntan with.
I was planning to stay a little longer, but a call from Neil, the CEO from Cincinnati (a.k.a. my #1 client), saying he wanted to see me in New York, meant my vacation was cut short.
I sat in the bathroom at the airport with all of my pill bottles and my baggie of heroin trying to figure what my body—what my addiction—needed right then and there. I didn’t want to take Ambien or Xanax, and I didn’t have any coke. I definitely needed to do some downtown so I sniffed a bump and then looked at my Adderall. If I took one, I’d be wired, and I really I needed to sleep on the plane if I were going to be rested for my most lucrative client. So I wrapped what was left into a condom, knotted it and put it inside me. Crazy, I know, but it was a really small package, and I wasn’t going to get caught—I’d done it at least a dozen times before.
I felt fine as we boarded. I usually leaned up against the window and let the change in cabin pressure put me to sleep. Not this time. Because I’d bought my ticket so last minute, the
re were no window seats left, so I got to my middle seat and tried to make myself comfortable…but I could already feel myself nodding off. I remember flopping around a little before being woken up by a Jet Blue flight attendant. She quietly told me I was going to have to get off the plane. I was in a daze. It wasn’t until I was halfway down the aisle that I realized what was going on.
I have an obscure memory of the rest of the passengers staring at me with a mixture of fear and pity. At least it felt like they were looking at me. I was too high to actually focus on anyone’s face.
When she left me at the gate, I vaguely came back to life and said, “Wait, I have a medical condition. Are you not letting me fly because I was falling asleep?”
She told me she couldn’t stay and listen. There was a plane full of people waiting, and she had to get back on board, but she told me to go to one of the airline’s customer service counters. My luggage would be waiting for me in New York.
I explained to the customer service guy that I was narcoleptic. I showed him my prescription bottle for Adderall (it just said amphetamine on the label), told him that I had forgotten to take my medication, and now I didn’t have a flight. He apologized profusely, put me on the next flight and gave me a number to call right away to file a complaint. I got three round-trip vouchers and a very nice letter of apology.
It should have been a wake-up call, but in my mind, the only lesson I’d learned was how to scam the airlines.
* * *
It was just before Christmas. I was still talking to a few people from the agency, including Hulbert. In the midst of my heroin haze, I got a voicemail from Katie, another escort/heroin lover. She was freaking out. Apparently, Ashley had been arrested. She ranted about how we were all going down, the kind of end-of-the-world, doomsday-style stuff that I rarely paid attention to, but this time, my ears pricked up. Jail was not an option. I was so far gone with my H addiction that I thought if I were ever busted I’d just end it all—jump off a building, or mainline a huge baggie. There was no way I’d end up sober and alone in jail.
The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort Page 18
