Floating City

by Sudhir Venkatesh

  When she finally had to go, Cathy offered to hook me up with her friends too. She seemed to understand my n problem instinctively, actually volunteering concern that she would be able to get me a wide enough sample to represent the full range of upper-end sex workers operating in the city. “The industry is changing so quickly,” she said. “You have to talk to as many people as possible. Some of us like hotels, some are online only. There’s a wide variety.”

  Within a week, I had talked with fourteen high-end sex workers, all white, all from middle-class backgrounds, 80 percent from outside New York. They broke down into two basic groups. First, the aspiring artist type, who came to the city to act, model, or dance. They worked as massage therapists or physical trainers and supplemented their incomes through sex work once every few weeks, earning between thirty thousand and sixty thousand dollars a year. Sex work helped keep their American dream alive.

  The second group came from the lower rungs of the business world, mostly saleswomen, paralegals, administrative assistants, or human resource associates. They were a few years older than the aspiring artists; like Margot, many had turned to sex work after divorce or professional frustration. For them, hooking was just a way to get by and maybe even settle the score a little—to make men pay for their sins.

  For all of these women, sex had become a general currency. In exchange for referrals, they slept with bellhops, hotel clerks, strip club employees, and gypsy cab drivers. For medical care, they slept with doctors and dentists. When money was tight, they borrowed from strip club managers, bartenders, and clients, and sex often became their means of repayment. Strip club managers were particularly notorious for using debt to force women to sleep with patrons and friends.

  The material seemed so rich. Soon after, I got permission from Columbia to start a long-term research study and quickly landed a major research grant. I began to hire assistants. Separately, with my own funds, I also hired a videographer, filmed a dozen of the interviews, and began trying to raise money to make the documentary. Finally, all my efforts seemed to be gaining momentum.

  • • •

  Cathy called me again a month later. She was no longer working for Darlene. “I work for Tori now,” she gushed. “I couldn’t believe it when she said she was about to see you!”

  At that moment, I was just heading out of my apartment for my first interview with Tori, an Ivy League graduate who managed a very exclusive agency on the Upper East Side and also invested in several strip clubs in New York and Florida. Her clients were such prominent people, she had been very reluctant to grant the interview, so I was surprised she had blabbed about it to Cathy. “Tori told you I was going to speak with her?” I asked.

  “I’m the reason you’re talking to her!” Cathy said. “Tori and I go way back. We took dance together for years. She wasn’t going to call you, but I told her you were a nice person.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she cried in her excitable way. “And I have something else that you are definitely going to like—one of my clients wants to talk to you!”

  “A john?”

  “Martin. He’s a really nice guy.”

  This surprised me. Except for my inspiring experience with Mortimer, johns were the one part of the sex work equation I had barely explored. There was already plenty to do with the drug dealers and sex workers and I probably assumed that most men wouldn’t want to talk about paying for sex. But Cathy said she’d been telling Martin about how open I was and that I never made her feel like a criminal. “I think he just wants to talk with someone,” she said. “He hasn’t been feeling so hot lately.”

  I didn’t see myself in the role of analyst for frustrated men, I said.

  Cathy became indignant. “You said you wanted to learn all about this world, didn’t you? Well, he’s part of this world. It wouldn’t even exist without him.”

  A few days later, I found myself sitting across from Martin in yet another hotel bar. He was a tall, lanky man wearing a tailored tweed suit with a blue pocket square, his straight blond hair falling over his eyes as he spoke. He kept pushing it back as if each strand had been assigned a particular place on his head. “I guess it started about three years ago,” he began, “when things started to fall apart.”

  I hadn’t even asked a question! We were barely past hello. Slow down, I told him, and began taking him through my standard disclosure conversation: that I work for Columbia, that I wasn’t actually studying johns in a formal way at that time, that I wouldn’t use his real name, that I—

  “I’m not worried,” Martin cut in. “I trust Cathy completely.”

  “Martin, I’m obligated to make sure you under—”

  “Did I tell you about how many guys I know are in the same situation?” he continued. “At least twenty! It’s like the dirty little company secret. But we’re not deadbeats, okay? I want you to know that. We are responsible people who are unhappy with our wives for one reason or another, you know, and we all have our personal flaws and compulsions. But we don’t want to break up our families.” He repeated his key line. “We are responsible people.”

  But didn’t compulsive and secretive behavior suggest something more serious? Wasn’t sex addiction a possibility?

  An expression of scorn crossed his face. “I read that stuff in the media. It makes no sense to me. Bottom line, my wife doesn’t listen to me. Cathy listens.”

  Either he anticipated skepticism or my face revealed it, because he launched into a protest before I could even get out a response. “Most of the time, I don’t even have sex with Cathy! I can count if you want—Cathy said you liked numbers. Last week, I met her twice—no sex. The week before, we were intimate once and not the other time. Before that, it was June and we had …” He thought for a moment. “Six meetings, I believe, and sex three times. So we’re averaging 50 percent sex.”

  But if the emotional exchange was half the point, I asked, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a real affair? Then at least you’d know your paramour wasn’t being nice just for the money.

  I still didn’t get it, Martin said. Affairs were too risky, too irresponsible. The exchange of money protected him. “See, it’s not like an affair, because I’m not interested in Cathy for anything long term. Cathy is good for me because she knows that I am married and I’m not going to leave my wife. She’s there to take the pressure off. Hell, if my wife knew as much about me as Cathy does, she’d be sending her thank-you cards!”

  “So seeing prostitutes is good for your marriage,” I said, the sarcasm naked in my voice.

  “Of course,” Martin said. He seemed exasperated for a moment, then he asked me quietly, “Haven’t you ever had marriage troubles?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Then you understand.”

  If he meant the hunger to be with a friendly young woman who did not think you were a bad and repulsive person, I certainly did. But it offended me to be drawn into his world in this way. I wasn’t here to talk about me. I was the scientist, not the subject. (I realize now how defensive this sounds, but I was raw enough from my personal troubles, and the act of observation seems to require a certain protective distance.)

  “It sounds like what you really need is a marriage counselor,” I said. “Or a psychologist.”

  Martin shook his head. “I’m not into the therapy thing. This feels better. Talking to Cathy, that feels a lot better.”

  With that, he began to unspool the message he’d come to deliver, an odd mixture of apology and boasting. “The thing you have to understand is, guys like me, we’re big earners. High achievers. We were jocks in school, we’re rising stars at investment banks and law firms, and we aren’t going to a goddamn therapist to sit there and whine about how Mommy didn’t love us. That guy is a loser. But a guy who spends a thousand dollars to command the attention of a beautiful young girl, especially if he doesn’t even fuck her, that guy is a player. And when that g
uy goes home, he’s going to be less stressed out and angry. He’s going to be a better husband.”

  As Martin continued, he chose his words carefully, loading them with just the right amount of emphasis, putting on a performance that was supposed to impress me with its brilliant, blinding honesty. “You’re a good listener,” he said when he was finished.

  With a bit of embarrassment, I realized that I was filling the role Cathy usually played for him. At the same time, I was starting to fantasize about yet another documentary, about the complicated lives and complex motives of the high-end john.

  “I think a bunch of my friends are itching to talk to you about this,” Martin said. “Do you mind if they call you?”

  “I—I—I don’t know what to say,” I stammered.

  But Martin’s phone was vibrating on the table. “Sorry, that’s my office. Gotta go.”

  He rushed out, leaving me sitting at the table.

  • • •

  When I got home that night, my empty apartment greeted me like a tomb. I hated coming home. All the things my wife had left behind reminded me that I had failed. The coffee table mocked me. The lamps rebuked me. I wanted to burn them all. On one visit to my parents’ house I was so upset, I threw away nearly every trophy, picture, and memento I had saved from my childhood, as if those years were somehow responsible for how badly things had gone wrong. All this made me more eager to plunge into a new round of interviews.

  But sometimes even that backfired. One spring night, I came home and saw I had a voice mail message. I felt that little burst of hope. Maybe it would be something good!

  Instead, it was Margot with shocking news. “Carla just robbed a client,” she said.

  What!? I couldn’t believe it. Little frightened Carla, so recently the victim of an assault? Who had been so excited to work for Margot? Who had been so determined to break out of her cultural trap and achieve something? It seemed impossible. Just a few nights earlier, Margot was telling me that she’d sent Carla out on three dates so far and all the clients had given very positive feedback. She finally had that fiery young ethnic girl. She was thanking me. What could possibly have gone wrong?

  The voice mail continued with more detail: Carla had gone to an expensive hotel with a businessman, attacked him, stolen five thousand dollars, and fled. Now he was threatening to call the police unless he got his money back.

  That was all she knew. Carla wouldn’t return her calls. “You’re part of this,” Margot said. “You have to help me find her.”

  This was now officially one of my worst nightmares. I was a researcher, a disinterested academic. I couldn’t get involved in sorting out assaults and robberies. But I felt I owed Margot. And Carla was in trouble. I had to think of her too.

  Do the right thing, I told myself. Picking up the phone, I punched the numbers for Margot’s office. I was prepared to tell her that I would go to Carla’s apartment immediately and do whatever I could to sort this out.

  Instead, Margot started yelling at me. “I can’t believe you spoke to Darlene’s girls! Why would you do that without talking to me? Didn’t I tell you I didn’t think it was a good idea? And then you go and do it behind my back?”

  Taken completely by surprise, I felt my voice get shaky. “I—I’m sorry. I thought Darlene was going to tell you.”

  How could this have happened between her message and my call? It couldn’t have been twenty minutes.

  “She did tell me! She told me she’s really pissed because that girl Cathy told you all this shit she shouldn’t have told you!”

  I wheedled and pleaded, insisting Cathy hadn’t told me anything confidential or damaging. But Margot wouldn’t yield. She’d trusted me and I took advantage of her and now this little twit Cathy was telling all her friends that I was going to help them organize for better pay and better working conditions and maybe even make them famous with my documentary.

  “What?” I said.

  “Yeah, you’re like Cesar Chavez for these women. Darlene thinks you’re trying to poach her girls.”

  “Poach her girls? That’s absolutely insane.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you, genius. When these psychotic ladies find someone who listens to their sob stories, they think he’s Prince Charming. And suddenly it’s Professor Venkatesh this and Sudhir that and I have Darlene screaming in my ear.”

  She went on for some time, telling me I should have listened to her and my judgment was suspect and thanks but no thanks for the offer of help with Carla but there was real life involved here, it wasn’t some kind of research project …

  When she hung up, I felt horrible. I had made my fair share of fumbles in my work, but this was on another level. I knew that doors opened only a few times before they closed forever. I had finally gained enough access to carry out a study of sex across the entire region if I wanted—I was ready to make appointments with strip club managers, hotel clerks, bartenders—and I had blown it all by becoming too eager. My dreams of success were falling like a mist.

  The worst part was, Margot was right. I should have anticipated this kind of problem. In nearly every study I’d done of illegal worlds, I had experienced the shocking speed of rumor. That’s why I was usually so patient, waiting months to ensure that people knew exactly what my intentions and research questions were. This was all because of the divorce, because of my impatience and my hunger. I should have gone more slowly. I got greedy. And I really should have kept Margot in the loop. She was the one who was speaking up for me, opening doors for me. What would I do now? Was there any way to win back her trust? Or was it hopeless and broken like every other goddamn thing in my miserable life?

  • • •

  The answering machine taketh away, but the answering machine giveth also. After Margot’s message there was a second one, from Martin. With great excitement in his voice, he said he wanted me to meet him for a drink. He named a private club on Forty-fourth Street.

  I said I’d come right down.

  On the way, I thought about telling Martin what had just happened with Margot. If anyone knew how difficult “easy women” could be, he would be the guy. And we’d bond and I’d get the access I needed and write the study and make the documentary and all would be glorious again. But as I got closer to the club, walking past the elegant hotels of Midtown, the idea began to disturb instead of comfort me. This was the portal to the high-end sex trade. The doormen I passed were actually middlemen. The valet could put you in a cab to a brothel. Looking through Martin’s eyes, I saw a glutton’s feast. But when I looked through my own eyes, even though I was after information instead of sex, I also saw a glutton’s feast—and I didn’t want to have anything in common with Martin.

  Inside the bar, Martin was sitting with two other well-dressed businessmen. They were loud and happy, well into their first drink at just past three in the afternoon. They greeted me as if they’d known me for a lifetime. “Sit, sit,” one of the men said, pushing a chair into a more welcoming angle.

  Martin was grinning. “I told you there’d be interest in this,” he said.

  The men shot out their hands. “I’m Jonathan,” one said. “This is Nate.”

  I ordered a drink as Jonathan continued with the story he was telling, something about a fight at the office. When my drink came, Nate cut him off. “Enough about the office. Let’s talk about sex.”

  They all looked at me. I looked back at them. Nobody wanted to start.

  Finally, Nate laughed. “Let’s start with this—what do you think about us?”

  I didn’t know what to say. First I had to get to know them, I said.

  “It’s not a crime,” Nate said. “What we’re doing is not a crime.”

  “Actually, paying for sex is a crime,” I said. It felt cleaner that way. But oddly, that seemed to spark them.

  “Paying for a good time is not a crime,” Nate said.

  “You’re writing a book?” Jonathan asked.

  “Not sure. I’ve been movin
g to documentaries lately.”

  Jonathan studied me for a moment. “No faces, right?”

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “You gotta put us behind a screen and disguise us with those Darth Vader voices.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was expose them as individuals, I explained. I was going to add that using false names to protect privacy was actually part of the university rules, but that just reminded me that I had no interest in studying them. I started to get anxious. I wanted to get out of the world of johns.

  But Jonathan took a breath and made up his mind. “Ask me anything. I have no shame.”

  Again, I wasn’t sure what to ask. Jonathan helped me. “You’re looking for the Big Reason. The Big Why. Why do we do it? Why put our marriages at risk? Why risk the scandal? But it’s really not that complicated.”

  Nate shook his head in violent disagreement. “It is complicated. I mean, it sure can get complicated. That’s why you have to keep seeing different women. Don’t get attached.”

  “And what if they get attached to you?”

  Nate looked glum. Clearly, attachment was a big issue that I’d never considered.

  Jonathan leaned closer and confided, “Nate just went through this. What was her name? The one who rented an apartment on your block because she thought you loved her!”

  Nate put his head in his hands, theatrically ashamed. “I should never have taken her to the fucking Caribbean.”

  “One ride in first class and she’s yours forever,” Jonathan said with an evil laugh.

  Nate began telling the story, his voice ranging between comedy act and confession. Then Jonathan jumped in with a story of his own, the prison of his marriage to a woman he married too young.

  Eventually, Martin stepped in. “Sudhir, the thing all men ask themselves”—he always used my name before he said what was really on his mind, I noticed—“is a very simple question. Do you want to do it again? Knowing what you know, risking what you risk, do you still want to meet the next lithe young woman in the next expensive hotel?”