It so happens I love the work I am doing.

Nowadays there are few days off, but if I did not have day-long phone contact with clients and friends, I would sometimes go stir-crazy.

When fatigue builds up and I simply have to take a break, I try to fly off to Miami, Las Vegas, or the Caribbean for a few days – provided I can find a substitute madam to take over for me.

It is almost impossible to find a girl who is smart enough to handle the phones and the customers, sufficiently interested to see that all goes well, but not so ambitious that, in your absence, she will try to take away half the business for herself.

Last July 4 when I wanted to go to Curaçao for the long weekend, I had the choice of the Argentine girls who work for me or the Canadian girls, who lived in but who were recent arrivals from Montreal – and I could use none of them. First of all, for some reason, customers don’t want to hear a Spanish-accented voice answer the phone. I have no personal prejudices, but to them all Spanish accents are Puerto Rican. As for the Canadian girls, I knew that their dedication to the business did not go beyond making a quick few bucks.

The girl I finally found was Wanda, a professor of art and history at a New York university who had a good head on her shoulders, but whose only ambition in prostitution was to supplement her legitimate earnings by coming over now and again to make a quick hundred, and out.

Wanda is also honest and hard-working, but, as I found out when I returned, not tough enough. She was not able to control the girls, and I learned that a little fist fight even broke out between a Canadian and an Argentine over whether a man had a credit rating or not.

Also my books were all upside down and reshuffled, and I vowed that the next time I took a trip I would put in a recording of my voice over the line, although this is a thing I hate to do because I feel a responsibility to be available to my clients.

Madeleine used to shut up shop at three A.M. and take the phones off the hook until noon, but many of my men feel my place is their second home and that I am there twenty-four hours a day. Some of them even want to come over for breakfast dates, and many who work in the neighborhood show up for luncheon meetings. Instead of going out to eat, they jump over here and have food sent up. Then I have the cocktail business, which is relatively quiet until eleven P.M. The biggest hours are eleven to four A.M., and sometimes later.

Another thing I miss now that I am a madam is the personal touch I used to have with a man. By being in bed and making love – on the order of the madam, of course – that half-hour brought me closer to the man and his problems than anything else.

I miss the intimacy now that I am a madam walking around in a Pucci gown, putting people in bedrooms, collecting money, sometimes having to be brusque or abrupt to keep things moving along.

Lately I find I give away freebies every night just to feel the closeness of a man. So most nights I pick out the best-looking man, preferably in his thirties, who does not have a wife waiting for him and does not care to go back to his hotel alone. I let him wait around until I close shop, have him sleep over, because I hate to sleep alone no matter how late it is. But being so late at night, we are usually both so exhausted that it is just a quick screw and falling asleep as the sun comes up.

The thing I detest most about that situation is when he wakes up in the morning with a beautiful hard-on, perfect for making gentle love; he has just enough time to give me another quick screw before taking the early plane to Houston.

Then my phone rings, and somebody wants a breakfast date, and if I am lucky, one of my roommates will do it, but if none of the girls has stayed over, I’ll do it myself, because I hate to turn one of my men down.

You can call me mercenary, or call me madam, but, as I always tell my customers – just call me anytime!

10. THE OLDEST PROFESSION UPDATED; OR: BEHIND OPEN DOORS

STORY ONE: He’s twenty-nine, and he’s terrified. He has never been with a woman before, and from the way he trembles, you would think he was going to get circumcised instead of seduced.

The shy, prematurely balding young man in clean, faded jeans has been sent to me by a respected New York City psychiatrist. He is one of the many whose sexual hang-ups I have cured.

My method? Basically the same principle as Masters and Johnson, only they charge thousands and it’s called therapy. I charge $50 and it’s called prostitution.

With this young man, however, I reduce the fee because I have heard he is on a tight budget. He is a recent law-school graduate, attractive, and polite, and I would like to help him make some girl a nice boyfriend.

To put him at his ease I tell him some things about myself, among which, that I am bisexual. This breaks the ice, and he awkwardly confesses something he – has not told even his analyst after twelve years in therapy – several years ago he performed fellatio on a college mate.

To me this is a good sign. The fact he committed the deed indicates he is the aggressor and can more easily be led into a straight life than a passive male.

However, in order to get into his head and find out where his deep tendencies lie, I show him several books full of erotic pictures of heterosexual and homosexual lovers – male and female – as well as men and women in leather outfits with whips, manacles, and handcuffs. The last he rejects immediately, so that eliminates sado-masochism.

“What turned you on the most, the men’s penises or the girls’ vaginas?” I asked.

“The men,” he said. “I would feel much safer in a homosexual relationship because it doesn’t represent such a big responsibility and obligation.” But he was turned off by the gay world in general – the gay bars, the faggot-looking drag queens at gay parties, and the heavy emotional involvement, because homosexual affairs can be much more dramatic than heterosexual ones after a while.

“Tell me,” I asked, “did you find the women repulsive?”

He answered no.

“Then let’s go into the bedroom, shall we?” The young man followed me like he was going to the gallows, and once inside, sat down in a chair with his hands unconsciously going to his lap to protect his threatened virtue. His knees still shook a little.

“Why don’t you take off your tie and jacket and relax while I slip into the bathroom,” I suggested, and left the room to freshen and perfume myself with some sweet lotions. But when I returned ten minutes later, clad in a scant orange towel, he was still glued to the chair.

The seduction would have to be mine. Softly I started kissing his neck and blowing suggestive words into his ears as I removed his jacket, shirt, and tie.

“I don’t know what you’re doing to me,” he sort of stammered, “but I never felt this kind of feeling before.” Goose bumps came out on his chest and arms.

I happen to get turned on by seducing young virgin boys, and my heart was really in my work. I slowly revealed my body by letting the towel drop to the floor; I lay down on the bed under the circular ceiling mirror and started stroking my body. “It looks like a wonderful movie in the mirror,” I whispered; “come over and look with me.”

Bashfully he removed the rest of his things and lay down too. The undulating images in the golden glass so turned him on that he reached for his glasses to get a better view.

“Please let me do that to you,” he said, and clumsily started stroking my breasts. Then he started sucking them, which was kind of funny – not at all well done, but certainly well meant. So I taught him how to caress a woman’s breasts and where to go with his tongue to give her the most pleasure. I did the same to him, and his nipples stood up erect. Dread had been replaced by desire.