I love to groove on voices, and I sometimes think I can almost tell the way a person looks by talking to him on the phone for a while.

I am often absolutely right – and occasionally disastrously wrong, as in the case of Nestor, the hot-line caller from Detroit.

Nestor was given my name by a client of mine who came from Nestor’s own hometown. He took to making lengthy, expensive phone calls every day for weeks. He really sounded divine.

From the sound of his voice I imagined him to be six-foot-three, built like a pro football player, and devastatingly handsome.

He was a little arrogant, but in a nice way. He was rich, but not braggy. And he told me about his magnificent townhouse in a nice, unassuming way. His calls made me feel good while I was working, and I looked forward to hearing from him each afternoon.

Eventually Nestor extended an invitation for me to spend a weekend with him in Detroit, and even hinted it could lead to more serious things. I accepted with alacrity.

For the few days before our scheduled weekend together I was floating on air and telling everybody, “I think this is it, I think I’ve found the man I’m going to marry.”

On the Friday when I was packing to leave, he called me and suggested I pack some dirty movies, just for laughs.

“My projector broke down,” I lied to him. I didn’t want to convert this straight, masculine-sounding man into anything freaky. I wanted to start out on the right footing and remain there. “Never mind the projector,” he said. “I have a good one.”

“Why are you stressing the point about those lousy movies?” I asked. “I’m getting away from that scene, and I don’t want to be faced with them on my weekend.”

“Well, darling, just bring them along for the hell of it,” he urged.

“Okay,” I agreed. “But please don’t expect me to watch them.” Then I left for the airport. All the way to Detroit I fantasized about the weekend to come with this multimillionaire who, my friend had told me, had the reputation of also being very good in bed.

Nestor was at the airport to meet me – all skinny five-foot-five of him. In rapid succession my dreams began to crumble. Not only had my hero feet of clay, but legs of matchwood and the face of a midget mustachioed magician. The nice arrogance that came through on the phone was in reality an almost insufferable snottiness.

The only thing that was true to the image was his wealth. Nestor brought me to his magnificent townhouse, which had exquisitely decorated rooms and old masters on the walls.

But apart from that, he had all the charm of a turtle and was as amusing as a traffic accident.

The house was very quiet, and all I could hear was this cross-eyed Siamese cat with no claws meowing around the place.

So Nestor played with the cat, fed it, turned the television on, and we watched all these people from the Apollo walking around on the moon.

Around midnight I was starving hungry, so he finally put a brisket of beef in the oven, which was great. I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in a year, because I was just running out for a quick bite to eat in between working.

You would think I would love this kind of country atmosphere, but in honesty, I was bored stiff.

All this man did was fuck me, one, two, three times, turn on ten different vibrators and dildos, then start putting on all the movies, broke two of mine and promised to splice them in the morning, which he never did.

Then at three-thirty A.M. we sat down to dinner, and at five A.M. we finally went to sleep.

At nine A.M. I was up and peppy, and I wanted to make a few phone calls to New York. But Nestor was snoring away, and he got mad at me. “Why don’t you go to sleep till about three this afternoon?” he asked.

“Sleep until three in the afternoon? In New York I am up and out at nine A.M. – always. I never sleep more than four hours,” I replied.

So he got up irritably, and all he did was change the sheets and put the old ones in the Laundromat, wash the dishes, and give the cross-eyed cat some food.

I helped him with the sheets, and I said, “I could do this at home, too. I wanted to have some interesting conversation, go to the theater or go out for a bite to eat, and perhaps see some of the city.”

Then I made up my mind I wanted to take a plane back to New York. I called the airport and made a booking for four o’clock that afternoon.

As we were sitting in the kitchen just before I was to leave, I said, “Since you offered on the phone to pay for my trip, would you mind giving me the eighty-four dollars before we get into the car; otherwise you might forget.”

Then Nestor started yelling at me. “What do you think I am? I’m not one of your married ones that pay you, I am a bachelor. I didn’t hire you to come over.”

“I know you didn’t hire a whore,” I said. “And I didn’t charge you for it. Because if I did charge you for being fucked five times, it would have cost you several hundred dollars. So all I ask you is that you keep your promise to pay for my ticket, because I’m not spending money to come over and see you.”

“Girls come from all over the country to see me.” He started to preen slightly. “Even from California.”

“Bully for them,” I said. “But I’m not a charity whore.”

Then he started accusing me of being too independent.

“You think you are one smart little chick,” he snarled, “because you have managed to save a lousy few thousand dollars. But if you were really smart,” he added, “you would marry a man like me.” He really wanted to keep me there.

“I’m a nice Jewish boy, I’m thirty-five years old now, and my mother is getting upset because I’m not married. She’s always trying to fix me up with rich Jewish girls, but I don’t want a rich girl. I need a woman, I want to have children.”

“Well, not with me, baby,” I said. “You bore me senseless.”

“You’re insulting me,” he said. “I wanted you to marry me and have my children, and you are so ungrateful. Besides, think of all the good business I could have sent you from General Motors!”

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.