I use this expression, “take it out in trade,” a lot. I do indeed operate on a barter basis. A man who runs a private country club in New Jersey brings me most of my liquor in cases that he takes out of the club’s liquor supply. I give him a girl for a case of liquor and pay the girl $25. This man is usually quite horny, and once he wanted five girls in a night. He gave me three cases of liquor and a check for a hundred dollars. My florist gave me two beautiful big indoor plants worth $80 for one quickie. My jeweler gives me a good discount for a screw now and then, and there is even this old Jewish shoemaker down on Ninth Street who makes the finest shoes and takes his pay in a girl. He made me a beautiful pair of shoes worth easily $50, and when I came to get them he put me in the chair of his dirty little office, I only took my pants off, put my legs up and apart, and the old cobbler gets it up enough to get in me, and boom, boom, in less than two minutes he comes and I go off with the shoes.
A furniture manufacturer I know gave me two chairs and a chaise longue for a few blow-jobs, and even the staff of the Chinese restaurant downstairs in my building brings up Chinese food at a discount. In return I give these Chinese boys a girl for half-price, $25. This is in addition to their once-a-month freebie in exchange for free meals.
I tip the five doormen in the building $10 a week, but the superintendent prefers that I give him a girl twice a month, which in my system of accounting is worth one hundred dollars. The building manager I tip on the same basis, so it costs me $200 a month in trade to take care of the two of them. These gifts are worthwhile, because after an arrest a prostitute gets evicted right away, but this didn’t happen to me after my last, well-publicized arrest. I screwed the manager an extra time, and as a special favor fucked one of his friends as well. Thus I was allowed to stay in my apartment until I was ready to move at leisure into a new place.
It is always important to be friendly with the building personnel. I remember I came home from a friend’s party one night very horny and this tall 17-year-old Negro boy was on duty at the entrance to the building. I told him to come up to my apartment so I could give him his tip. He came up and I almost raped him. We fucked our brains out, plus I gave him ten dollars, and so he was quite happy with his “tip.” Trouble was, he fell in love with me. For me it was no more than washing my hands. Once I had him, I forgot him, but he kept calling me and giving me presents, such as records and flowers, and I had a hard time discouraging him from bothering me.
I also have a swinging druggist who gives me amyl nitrate without prescription and lets me have a good rate on the Koromex jelly and cosmetics I buy in quantity. Although I have never fucked the druggist, he sometimes sends me his special friends, whom I take care of. One of my girl friends has a beautifully furnished apartment, and she literally fucked it together. Everything in the apartment she got screwing manufacturers and salesmen.
As I mentioned, one of my big expenses is having my four telephones installed each time I have to move to a new apartment. This is a big job and takes two or three days, since I have a set of wall phones plus others in two locations. Fortunately, I have a friend at the telephone company, a telephone installer I call, when I need him. He comes over himself and does the job and I give him a girl when he finishes the job, or else fuck him myself.
While I was working for Madeleine I discovered a girl can even trade her way, around the world. I mean traveling in an airplane, not eating an ass. Madeleine came from South Africa, and she liked to go back to visit, except the trip was expensive, about $1,000 first class. One of her best customers was a very horny guy who was one of the owners of a foreign airline. For her round-trip ticket she would give this john girls worth the amount of the ticket, and thus, even after paying the girls their share, she saved fifty percent on the price of the trip.
When I started my own business this same guy came to me and wanted to trade tickets for my girls. I said I would work something out with him when I was ready to go to Holland again. This sort of trade deal is really worthwhile if you want to take a long trip to Hawaii or Australia. Then you can really feel the difference in working out the tickets in trade.
One travel agent who did indeed send me customers used to come around and want a girl for free. I have never been tempted to give it away free to someone just because he sends me customers. If you once start that, everybody is wanting it free for bringing in new customers, and it starts to snowball, and soon you’re screwing everybody for free. The travel agent tried to be businesslike. He pointed out that for every ten tickets he sold to Europe he got one for himself free. I told him I was very sorry, but I could not compete with the airline’s incentive program.
Nevertheless, at Christmastime, when some of my really big spenders call me, I give them a freebie myself as a sort of holiday celebration. And last Christmas I thought it was an appropriate time to send out a tasteful Christmas card to my customers and at the same time remind them of my existence and give them my latest address. After Christmas I received quite a few ‘phone calls from men who thanked me for letting them know my new number and where I was.
So this, then, is the story of my inCOME and outLAY as New York’s biggest madam. I think it proves that if my business could be made legal, the way off-track betting is in New York, I and women like me could make a big contribution to what Mayor Lindsay calls “Fun City,” and the city and state could derive the money in taxes and licensing fees that I pay off to crooked cops and political figures. Since the beginning of time no government has ever stopped prostitution, because men want it. The proof of this is that my best clients represent the highest echelon of government and business circles and keep me in business no matter how often I am harassed by the police and have to change addresses.
The coarse, thieving, aggressive street hookers are something else, I realize, but those of us who stay home quietly and merely take calls without soliciting on the street or in hotels should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to carry on our business in the delicate, hygienic, genteel manner in which I conduct mine.
15. FOR PLEASURE MORE THAN PROFIT
The old saying “Never mix business with pleasure” does not always apply to the business of pleasure.
If I didn’t have my heart literally in my work, or sometimes fall in love, I would go crazy. For example, I was in Miami that lonely Christmas after Carl left me, as the house guest of a swinging New York socialite, Dennis Tanner, and his bitchy Swedish wife. After she fell asleep at night, he would come to my room and make love to me till dawn. However, I wanted somebody for myself, to share the holiday fun with, a man to escort me around the parties and private clubs.
One evening a group of us went to a place called the Palm Bay Club, which was rather stuffy, but quite good fun. Even though my hosts made a point of including me in the conversation and the dancing, I was feeling acutely lonely. Once in a while I would do a little reconnaissance trip around the room, but the attractive men were all attached.
Toward the end of the evening, as I stood near the bar alone, my famous orange juice in my hand, the reveling crowd around me parted like the Sea of Galilee and out walked one of the most gorgeous men I had seen in Miami – alone.
He was so stunningly glamorous, he looked like the classic Cosmopolitan fiction illustration of the lover. His immaculate white suit accentuated his even suntan, and his face was crowned with black hair cut in Roman-boy style and rakishly long. I guessed him to be in his late thirties. He had, I hoped, a stranger’s lost look in his eyes.