The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

16. SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

The last time I got busted, the New York newspapers described one of my unfortunate codefendants as “Madam Xaviera’s pimp.” While this may have made good copy, it was hardly the truth. The truth is, modern madams of any stature don’t have pimps.

Street hookers have pimps, madams have boyfriends or lovers, or, in my case, both; and there is a demi-monde of difference between the two. Private call girls either have boyfriends or, occasionally, pimps.

A pimp lives off girls’ earnings, a boyfriend rarely does. I don’t deny there may be some fringe benefits attached to being the successful madam’s man, but as a rule her earnings, as with any other businesswoman, are her own. Apart from gifts for specific occasions, I have never spent money on a man, and I prefer it the other way around. But in Madeleine’s case, the man she made her fourth husband had an ex-wife and several kids to support, and she was very rich in real-estate investments and savings. My feeling there was that the poor little guy deserved some compensation for leaving his wife and kids.

Pimps are usually involved in gambling, drugs, and white slavery, and the pimp never wants the girl to get out of the business – unless she is no good at her work anymore – whereas the boyfriend does want his girl to give it up. My own boyfriend would love to see me, if not out altogether, then a one-hundred-percent nonparticipating executive madam.

The pimp is traditionally a polygamous animal who keeps several girls – “wives-in-law.” The structure is somewhat familylike, with the pimp as the master and the girls in friendly competition. Girls with pimps are known to work harder and longer (sometimes around the clock), and the pimp usually collects all the money – and no cheating around, or else he beats them up. It seems to me that it must be some kind of animal instinct that makes these girls enslave themselves to one man this way. Yet some girls do try to hold out money, and if he suspects this is going on, he will make spot checks of “his stable.” The pimp supplies the necessities for his girls – rent, furniture, and clothing; this latter often purchased “hot” from others in the life. On weekends he often takes them out to show off – to various nightclubs and discotheques and the more famous after-hour places.

The boyfriend, on the other hand, is generally monogamous. There is a rule in my house that the girls must respect the boyfriend, or lovers, of the madam, and any fooling around with “the old man” will result in instant dismissal of the girl.

In Georgette’s case the situation is a weird reverse. Georgette’s stockbroker boyfriend, Stephen, is interested only in drugs, booze, and broads, in that order. Her solution is to pay her own girls to sleep with him. That way, she rationalizes, he doesn’t have to stray – at least not outside her front door. He is not really what you call a pimp, yet Georgette is always crying poverty. As stingy as she is to her girls, that’s how generous she is to him. I’d estimate that ninety percent of her money goes to him – his “trips” and his girls.

In my house, the only one who cheats is me. My private life is like a perpetual triangle, with myself and my steady boyfriend, Larry, as the constant side, and the lovers who pass through – some quicker than others – as the variable third.

As I’ve said before, I am an emotional person, and I have my ups and downs, and if my boyfriend weren’t there, safe and sure, and if I did not occasionally fall in love, I would get very depressed and couldn’t keep my head straight.

Larry has been my backstop boyfriend since my first experience in Puerto Rico. On top of that, he functions as an administrative assistant, taking care of all banking, tips, payoffs, bad debts, bail, and any other money matters. If somebody tries to move in on me, he runs interference and checks them out like a private detective.

He is honest, reliable, loves me deeply, is solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Larry is not quite the intellectual I am looking for, and he does not share my interest in art, literature, music, or the theater, even though this concern has been sadly neglected since I became professional. He is not strong enough for me, either. What I really need is a man who is superintelligent and someone who will bang his fist on the table and say to me: “Goddamnit, this is it, now you do what I want.” Someone I can love, adore, and most of all, respect. I’d like him to be good-looking and masculine, but most important, I want him to be stronger in personality than I am.

My pet name for Larry is “El Schnuko,” the schnook – which in a friendly way means, the good-natured friend who does anything I want. In other words, he helps me around the house, does the vacuum-cleaning, empties the ashtrays, shops for groceries, takes care of stocking the bar, packs the cartons each time I have to move. And if I lay back and let him, he would turn me into a Jewish American Princess. But this doesn’t mean I don’t love Larry in my own way. He is tall and attractive and has a marvelous head of silver hair. When my friends or the girls refer to him as “the silver fox,” it’s meant strictly as a compliment.

Larry is comfortable to have around, especially on Saturdays and Sundays after a tough week of four hours’ sleep a night. As a hard-working madam I am not up to going out to football games, going to cocktail parties, or dropping in on friends. So Larry comes over and keeps me company.

He has been an absolute darling, considering what I have put him through. I have insulted him, hurt his feelings, and stepped on his heart. From time to time I have told Larry I am in love with someone, and many times I have cheated right under his nose. But I tell him they are all just ships passing in the night.

I let him know about the time I dragged the Negro doorman upstairs, screwed his pants off, and gave him a ten-dollar tip because he really deserved it. And the time the dentist’s laughing gas got me so horny I made him send the nurse on an errand, and we made love in the chair.

Larry gets hurt and angry when I tell him about these things, even though I have never led him to believe I am anything but promiscuous. I have also tried to include him in some of the extra activity, but it is usually a failure because he gets so jealous.

One time I took him to the nudist colony in New Jersey to join in the swinging there, and unfortunately for Larry, soon after we walked in I saw the beautifully shaped suntanned behind of an attractive man, and there was nothing I would rather do than stick my tongue in between his buttocks. No pussytime today. My mood is man.

The man was a gym teacher named Phil who was at the camp with his not-too-attractive girl friend, and they were both swingers looking for partners.

No problem, we were ready. At least I was. Larry was not turned on at all by the girl, and once inside their cabin he became petulant and just sat back there on the bed while she was going down on him. But not me: I was like a wolf after Phil’s ass.

Phil lay there, athletically shaped, and I squatted on the floor alongside him. He then wrapped his legs in a strong grip around my neck, which put me in a perfect position to devour his delicious buttocks and slowly work my way up to the more tantalizing parts of his body.

Larry was sneaking sidelong glances our way, and I could see he was angry, but I was too preoccupied with Phil to care about Larry’s jealousy.

Phil’s fresh-smelling body encouraged me to continue this devastating play. By now fully stimulated, I had crawled on the bed and was holding and caressing his pulsating penis, while he was exciting me tremendously with his vibrating tongue movements at my hardened clitoris. In ecstasy my hips were undulating up and down, to and fro in the classic rhythm of sex, and he in turn picked up the symphony of motion and proceeded to propel his manliness to the very depth of my warm succulent mouth. Our motion grew into a magnificent crescendo of our act of love.

For me, this is the most delicious way of making love to a man, if it is someone who knows what he is doing. But meanwhile, I have to eat his cock, feel that penis to such an extent that it is about to explode in my mouth. It is just as much a psychological as well as physical mixture. If a man lies between my legs and eats me, even though he may have a better angle of doing it, it does not turn me on as much as the mutual “lingus.” It has to be a two-way street, and both parties should be enjoying each other equally.

With Phil, who had multiple orgasms, it was the most fantastic experience. I climaxed almost immediately, breaking a promise Larry and I had made, that in swings we could give our bodies, but not our orgasms. Larry just sat there grinding his teeth to a powder and making fists of his hands. His poor partner must have gotten an inferiority complex when his usually big hard-on melted like an ice-cream stick.

Luckily Larry shut up until Phil and I had reached our climax, and then the fireworks started. “You did not keep your promise not to climax with another man. You even ate his ass, and you never eat mine!” he raged.

I suppose that last accusation could have justified his fury, because it is true, for some reason I never give Larry around-the-world. It’s just one of those things. But I never kiss him, either, because his mouth doesn’t turn me on. It is too thin and unsensuous.

However, as lovers go, Larry is not bad. He’s a damn sight better than when I first met him as a typical uptight Jewish man who had eaten pussy maybe once in his life, didn’t like it, and didn’t do it again. But, as with all my personal lovers, I taught him how to make love properly and how to please a woman.

However, I happen to like variety when I’m horny, and while I think I have made him understand this, it is impossible to make him accept it. Occasionally it drives him to fits of jealous anger. I am sure one of us will kill the other one day.

This almost happened in Puerto Rico last Christmas when Larry took me there for a week to rest and relax. We stayed at the El Conquistador, which is such a luxurious establishment that only very affluent older people and their young kids are there. A funicular train runs from the beach and pool up to the hotel. As far as action for me, there was nothing around except one beautiful-looking seventeen-year-old boy, tall as a sapling, with dark velvet eyes, sensuous, dramatic face, and that Continental-looking complexion that matched exactly with his longish golden-brown hair.

He was so gorgeous that I would think about him when Larry was making love to me.

But the closest we could get in the first couple of days was flirting across the casino tables under Larry’s hawklike gaze, or splashing each other in the pool during the day.

On the third night, when I saw him appear immaculately dressed in a black velvet suit and black tie, I decided to do something about my passion for the kid. I engineered an argument with Larry at the tables. “Listen, you are losing too much money on the tables, so if you want to keep gambling, count me out. I’m going for a walk,” I said, and left in a huff and rode the funicular down to the swimming pool, where I had already arranged to meet the kid.

When I arrived, I found he had his young brother with him; and he explained that his parents would not let one of them out without the other as chaperon.

Well, the two innocents lit up joints and started smoking them as we sat around the pool talking and kidding around. I was wearing a slinky décolleté dress, and the mosquitoes started biting my arms, so the kid gallantly suggested I go up to his room and protect myself. He was staying in his family’s huge suite, so he had to smuggle me inside by checking first to see if they were asleep, then leading me on tiptoe to his room, where he bolted the door behind us.

The whole scene of seducing this beautiful young boy while his mommy and daddy slept unaware in the next room was very exciting.

As I started to undress, the kid wrapped his arms around me and engaged me in the most exotic kiss as he skillfully started from my shoulders.

When I was as bare as the day I was born, the kid lowered me onto the bed like priceless porcelain and took off his own clothes, revealing that beautiful chest on which the hairs were not completely grown. I had a tantalizing glimpse of his young, strong penis before he snapped out the light and joined me.

As in my early days in Puerto Rico when I taught all the young boys the art of love, I was prepared to show my present lover the way. But before I could assume a lead, he started caressing and kissing me in a way that would make Don Juan look like an amateur, and he ate pussy perfectly.

Half an hour later, after making love passionately, we lay relaxing, and my curiosity about the sexual skills of this baby got the better of me.

“Tell me, how come you know so much about making a woman happy at your age?” I asked.

“My father is actually responsible for it in an indirect way,” he started telling me. “You see, he came to visit me on the West Coast, where I am studying cinematography, and while there introduced me to his mistress.

“During the course of an evening he became involved in a business discussion with an associate, and his mistress and I were left to ourselves and soon became interested in each other.

“When my father returned east, warning me never to let my mother know about his girl friend, she and I started seeing each other.”

Although I had been careful to conceal my profession from the kid, he told me his father’s mistress, whom he now secretly lived with, was a “business” girl and ten years older than himself.

As we talked lazily, I happened to look at my watch and discovered with horror that it was four A.M. – four hours since I had flounced out of the casino for a short walk.

“My God, I’ve got to get out of here,” I told my boy lover. “I’ve got a boyfriend waiting upstairs.”

As I threw my clothes on, the kid jumped into a pair of jeans, and, as any well-mannered man would do, insisted on escorting me home.

After waiting for the funicular for what seemed like an eternity, we rode up; we were to be confronted by the moon-washed outline of a very irate Larry standing on our balcony, which looked directly into each train car as it passed by.

There was no way he wouldn’t spot us, and no way he wouldn’t guess what we had been up to, since the kid was wearing a dinner suit when last seen, and suddenly he was in jeans.

We jumped off the funicular as it came to a halt, and hurried up to my floor. As we rounded the corridor corner, my bedroom door opened, and out into the hall came all my belongings – clothes, mirrors, brushes, combs, and luggage – onto the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if next came Larry with a knife in his hand, so I told the kid to vanish. “El splitto, go, don’t hang around.” But Larry didn’t appear in the hall. Instead the bedroom door slammed, and I could hear him yelling at the kid as he boarded the funicular. “You fucking bastard, you fucked my wife. I’m going to tell your mother and father about this!” he screamed from the balcony at the top of his voice.

Lights of rudely awakened guests started peppering the front facade of the hotel, while meantime I was desperately trying to turn my key in the lock to get inside and shut Larry up. But he had jammed the keyhole with a toothpick.

As I poked and prodded, a well-dressed guest coming home late from the casino appeared in the hall.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” I said, “but, my lock seems to have stuck. I wonder, could you help me?”

The poor man looked a little tired, but he did his best to oblige. As he was bending down squinting into the stubborn lock, the door flew open to reveal a furious-faced Larry.

“You’re trying to fuck my wife, too,” he accused the poor passerby. “I’ll fix you all.”

Everybody started coming out into the hall, and it was excruciatingly embarrassing. I had to stop his paranoia at once, so I gave him a terrific shove back into the room, jumped inside, and slammed the door. Then the battle was on. We went for each other hammer and tongs, and I, being the stronger of the two, knocked Larry down onto the floor, grabbed his thick silver hair, and started pounding his head on the marble floor. One, two, three times I whammed it, until I realized that the next strike could kill him.

I let him up on the promise he would calm down and forget about what had happened. I spent the rest of the night trying to placate him, and the next morning we decided to move out of the hotel, taking the seven-A.M. helicopter down to the El San Juan.

The next day Larry took off for New York, and I stayed around. It was Christmas Eve, and all the crowd from the El Conquistador came over to my new hotel for the occasion.

When they saw me, they said, “You’re the girl who cheated on her husband and seduced the young boy.” They laughed and said the story had traveled all around the hotel like a flash fire.

Larry eventually got over the incident and forgave me. He knows that when I am horny I have to find a victim. Besides, those episodes are like ships that pass in the night. It’s the ships that dock for a while that really drive him mad. I occasionally have an affair with a man I might meet on the job that could go on for weeks or months.

Last winter I fell in love with a thirty-three-year-old banker named Skip, who looked like Sean Connery in his younger years. Larry knew about it, but accepted the situation as long as the man paid me. If there was a check from him in the morning when Larry came by, he would feel reassured, but if it was missing he would be angry. Which is hypocritical in a way, because I could still love my banker whether he paid me or not. Although sometimes I love to mix emotions with physical pleasure and business, and Skip used to pay a considerable sum to spend the night with me. He was fabulous-looking, with a fantastic body, and a witty sense of humor.

Skip used to come by around nine P.M., mingle with the group of people in the living room, tease the girls, and drive them out of their mind – since he knew he was a good-looking flirt, being very conceited indeed. At times he would parade around the house in one of Larry’s silk morning gowns, and while chatting on the couch, he would reveal certain parts of his body by letting the gown drop open halfway “accidentally.” All my girls liked him, and if it wasn’t for my house rule, the code of ethics – “Don’t touch Madam Xaviera’s lover” – they sure as hell would have liked to make a pass at him “for free.”

While being with Skip, I didn’t care for anyone else, and it was a divine feeling to really love someone again. During peak hours he would jokingly help me out by serving drinks to my thirsty customers, and walk around with a white towel on his sleeve as if he really were the butler. In between we would make love and have long, sentimental conversations.

Skip’s favorite thirst quencher was beer. I can’t remember how many dozens of cans of beer I got him during those months we saw each other. He would even send my maid out to get it, and give her a generous tip afterward.

However, my “James Bond” was more jealous than Larry even. If Skip was in the house, I was not even allowed to close the bedroom door and discuss, in private, finances with my customers, since he thought I would “make it” with that man. Nor could I “chip in” on a swing or a threesome without Skip immediately threatening to walk out on me. Granted that I might have lost some income by giving up these extra activities, but Skip’s overall generosity, his fine body and mind – not to speak of the many red roses he sent – gave me quite some happiness for several months. Finally a combination of family problems and business pressures reduced our relationship to one of friendship, but we remain good friends, and there is still a warm and tender feeling for each other.

As Skip was sent sailing off, another ship docked, tied up, and looked as though it was here to stay. A Greek boy, Takis, about twenty-nine, came to see me about two girls he wanted me to meet. They were from Montreal, he said, and wanted to become my roommates. The doorbell rang, and here was this gorgeous young man built like an Adonis, dark hair, and green eyes exactly the same color as mine, except that he has got long black eyelashes. He has a baby smile on his sensuous, dramatic face. Only his nose is a bit small, in my. opinion, definitely non-Greek.

Takis and I caught fire from that very first moment we met. We made love almost immediately after his appearance, and he then more or less moved into my life and my apartment. The ship had docked. His tongue was warm and fast, and, I must confess, there has been no feeling nicer than having this Greek boy giving me head. He also knew exactly where to touch my body, blow kisses on my neck, and make love to me. Our rhythm was that of the ever-moving waves of the ocean. Come and go, up and down, back and forward. That’s how his lovemaking affected me.

Takis, a very emotional and sensitive person as it turned out, became one of the sweetest things in my life. He was good, kind, never impolite or rude. He was lazy in a way, since he loved to sleep late in the day, but so did my roommates, the two Canadians he had meanwhile introduced to me. They also had moved in with me, and all of a sudden the house was full of laughter and happy young people. Takis, to my knowledge, had never slept with either of the two Canadians. He had told me that in Montreal he used to be the boyfriend of a rather well-known Madam Carmine. So in other words he was used to the late hours, the many different men who came to patronize the house of Carmine. She had been about ten years in this business and managed to save a good deal of money, with which she was said to be rather generous.

Being Greek, Takis had one of the famous Greek weaknesses, and that was gambling. He would not, like most men might do, cheat on his girl friend, but the few nights that he did come home in the early morning hours he always confessed to me that he had gone to some after-hours gambling joint, where preferably his favorite Armenian game of “barbout,” a game similar to crap shooting, was played. Takis was constantly broke. I used to support him, not in great sums like Carmine allegedly did, but with a ten- or twenty-dollar bill here and there. One night when he left, all he had in his pocket was twelve dollars, but when he came home at ten the next day, he was exhausted but very satisfied – he showed me proudly how he had won with his small sum the big sum of two thousand dollars.

However, the money seemed somehow to burn the proverbial hole in his pocket, and like a masochist he had to go back to the tables and lose it all. Since it was not actually money from my savings or anything like that, I could never really get mad at him. Of course, I wished he would save his winnings or get a steady job, but lazy as he was at that time, he preferred to be the boyfriend, almost gigololike, of Madam Xaviera. Not that he ever purposely took advantage of me – that I can guarantee. It was always my own idea when I decided to be generous with him. And he never asked for a thing. Some days I would take him downtown and buy him some new shirts or some jockey underpants or a nice woolen sweater that revealed his sexy body even more. All this while, we really were tremendously turned on by each other, and used to make love night after night till sunup.

To be sure, it didn’t take Larry long to realize that my Greek boy who acted as bartender and played gin rummy with the customers was actually living in the apartment.

“Have you fucked Xaviera, Takis?” Larry asked bluntly on more than one occasion.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Takis would answer. “We are friends. I am happy to get the work and a place to sleep.”

I always denied that I made love to Takis, but Larry, of course, knew me too well to believe it, and finally, stupidly, I admitted that Takis and I did it. I am too honest to be able to lie.

When Larry heard this, he virtually threw Takis and me out of my own house, stating that since the apartment lease was in his name, I had no right to put another man in the house.

That morning, like a beaten-up dog, my Greek packed his one big suitcase and I checked him into a little hotel not too far away from where I lived. I paid the bill for the coming week, and at night he would sneak back into my house, when he knew that the coast was clear and that no jealous maniac, namely Larry, was there anymore.

This was an impossible situation, and it was ridiculous to pay a hotel on the side, while he as a matter of fact was still spending every night except the weekends – then Larry was there – with me. After a week I said to Takis, “This is crazy. Let’s stop throwing money away on the hotel. We’ll face reality and tell Larry he can’t stop us, from being together anymore.”

I decided to tell Larry about our deep feelings for each other. Amazingly, Larry took the news very bravely, almost fatherlike, although it was very hard for him to accept the three-way situation. Once again he was being cheated with his eyes wide open. His ego was crushed, and, what’s more, he liked Takis, who is truly an amiable person. Still, Larry couldn’t really blame me for being in love with this gorgeous boy so much younger than he, and finally agreed to accept the situation so long as I didn’t treat him badly or embarrass him in front of other people.

The high – or low – point of this uneasy triangle came when we spent a summer weekend at the beach home of friends in Westhampton. Larry and I had a bedroom together, with an adjoining bathroom, and beyond the bathroom was the bedroom given to Takis.

The first night, as soon as I thought Larry was asleep, I sneaked into the bathroom and locked the door to Larry’s and my room and went into Takis’ room. But Larry was not asleep and was listening at the bathroom door, trying to peep through the keyhole. Takis and I were so horny, I first gave him a blow-job, and as I later found out, Larry heard me washing my mouth out afterward. Then he even heard when I put my diaphragm in and went back to Takis for my straight lovemaking. When I finally returned to the room I shared with Larry, he was furious, and we had a big fight and he threatened to walk out. While I didn’t want to lose Larry, I could understand that the weekend was going to be a depressing experience for him if I were horny for Takis all the time. We went to bed, still together, but still upset. Whatever I do, it is not in my mind ever consciously to hurt Larry.

The next day Takis, in a very suave and civilized manner, asked why we couldn’t lead a three-way relationship – in other words, why can’t two men love one woman at the same time? Often a man has an affair with two girls, he reasoned. Why not vice versa? However, even for me, working out this arrangement was a very weird experience. Larry gave in to it because there was no way out. He knew I would choose Takis if I were forced to pick between them, and he did not want to lose me completely, I guess.

So on Sunday morning we decided to make our strange little ménage à trois start to work. The weather at the beach wasn’t too good that day, and not many people were out. We walked down to a secluded part of the beach, where nobody was in sight, the sun was behind a heavy cloud cover, and we put a towel down on the sand.

I lay in the middle of the big beach towel, and Larry rolled my bikini down a bit and began to play with my clitoris. My head was resting on Takis’ lap, and I could feel his powerful hard-on against my shoulder. He was caressing my breasts and kissing my mouth – I never kiss Larry, as I have mentioned, but Takis has the most sensuous mouth, and a beautiful way of kissing me. Soon I was having a delicious climax, wriggling like crazy all over the two of them, although at the same time I was also conscious that I was being selfish, since the two men had not been able to enjoy the same pleasure all the way.

After this beautiful one-way sex ritual with my two lovers, I began to notice what was going on around me. Several men had pulled their beach chairs closer to us and were looking our way through their sunglasses. It was time to leave. People were getting too curious. We decided to drive back to the city late that afternoon, and I thought it would be nice to give both of them a blow-job on the way back. But they were both too embarrassed to expose themselves in front of each other, so I ended up putting my head on Larry’s lap while he drove, and my toes teased Takis’ prick. Back in New York we all had dinner together, and then Larry had to go home to visit his kids. By then Larry had realized I was in love with Takis, my steady paramour now.

“Good night, Takis. Have a nice evening,” Larry ground out between his teeth when we parted. He gave me a bitter smile.

It was all very depressing, because I really hated to hurt Larry in any way. After all, we had been together for so long. So I have instructed both my lovers that I want no more scenes like that. And as of now, when we are together, we all keep our cool at all times. If I want to make love to Larry, which basically happens only once a week during the weekend, Takis is asleep or else he goes out or we close the door tightly. Nobody shows any emotion.

And now, ironically enough, I find Takis becoming more and more jealous of my other swings just for kicks.

I was invited to the home of New York’s most notorious pimp, a Jewish boy. I didn’t bring either Larry or Takis with me. This pimp, who was written up in a much-discussed two-part story in New York magazine, has a swimming pool in his Greenwich Village townhouse – and weekly orgies. The night I attended one of them, after a refreshing dip in the pool I fucked and sucked five male guests in and around the pool. I also ate a delicious young girl, who somehow had gotten involved in all this, while the other guests looked on from a balcony and cheered. Somehow Takis found out and was outraged. He wouldn’t make love to me for several days. I began to wonder about Takis’ sense of my life. Larry, in the long run, is so much more understanding in spite of his temper.

At least my real lovers do understand one thing about me: when I make love to a regular customer, nothing happens to me, just to my body. I made my men understand this by quoting to them what one of my boyfriends in Holland once used to say as he made love to me – this, of course, was long before I became a prostitute.

“I give you my sperm! I give you my soul!” If he fucked another girl he would say, “I just gave that girl my sperm, I didn’t cheat on you.”

Thus, if you have someone you truly feel close to, I believe that this love is a complete giving and taking of the mind, the soul, and the body. I have to give and receive all three, or there is no relationship. It’s just ships passing in the night.