Secret Lives: Real Lives in the World’S Oldest Profession

By Dr. Diana Prince

Secret Lives

This book explores the fascinating and dangerous world of the American prostitute. Dr. Prince's landmark study in 1985 was the largest study on prostitution ever conducted with over 450 subjects. The requests for that study from law enforcement and social services agencies led to additional research since that time.
This unique book is taken from hundreds of hours of interviews with call girls, street walkers, and brothel workers in California and Nevada.
Told in the words of the women, themselves, the reader gets a glimpse into a profession that is usually shrouded in stereotypes and misinformation. The book provides a rare insight into these women and their world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477259573

Dr. Diana Prince

Dr. Diana Prince has a Master’s Degree in English and a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from California State University at San Diego. She has a PhD in Psychology from United States International University.

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© 2012 by Dr. Diana Prince. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/22/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5958-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5956-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5957-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914587

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Preface

WORKING THE STREETS

Beverly

Denise

Jennifer

ELITE CALL GIRLS

Jean

April

Lori

Babe

Rene

NEVADA BROTHEL WORKERS

Amy

Carla

I am grateful to the many women who have touched my life during the writing of this book. Each of them has shared her story with clarity, frankness and an open heart.

Preface

This is a book about real women in the world’s oldest profession. For several years I have studied the intriguing world of the American prostitute. I first become interested in 1985 when I completed a PhD dissertation about these women and their unique and complicated lives. That study of 450 subjects was the largest of its kind. I interviewed call girls, streetwalkers, and brothel workers in California and rural Nevada. This book explores the lives of these women, who by choice or circumstance have found themselves in society’s most controversial profession.

As the world’s oldest profession, prostitution has been a permanent feature of all civilized societies. Despite all efforts, it has managed to survive legal, religious and political attempts to destroy it. The women, themselves, remain figures of intrigue and infamy, rejected by society or tacitly tolerated.

In Victorian times, some men frequented prostitutes instead of making offensive sexual demands on their wives. The philosopher, Rollo May, in his book Love and Will, observed that the Victorian ideal was having love that was not contaminated by sex, while men in our own time seek to have sex that is not contaminated with love.

Prostitutes have always embodied the darker side—the projected fears and anger of men. There is, for such a woman, an inherent problem for her to exist simultaneously as a sexual human being and as a respected, thinking, moral human being. Women, and prostitutes in particular, are dichotomized into making a choice between two polarities that are mutually exclusive. A man does not similarly experience his own sexuality as an aspect of his life at odds with the other aspects of his human self, nor is he judged by it.

We appear to find ourselves today in an undefined sexual dilemma. There is rampant, meaningless sex that does not nourish either spirit or body. Instead of satisfaction, there is an interminable hunger—a soulless and joyless sex, that has left both sexes bewildered.

I did not know what to expect when I began this exploration. I hoped that speaking with these women would bring some clarity to the problem, if not a solution. We are in a society that has only become more permissive in the past few decades. Sexual expectations permeate this culture, and assault us relentlessly on television, in advertising and our everyday lives more than in any generation before us. Sexual availability from pornography to explicit sites for meeting sexual partners has fueled the obsession.

I have met many young women in our mainstream culture, who do not even question impersonal or recreational sex. These young girls feel obliged to reciprocate with sex as the price of a date or a good dinner. Considering our current sexualized society, we might ask why it would even be possible for prostitution to still exist, much less flourish.

With prostitution, sex is not given for free for the price of a steak dinner. It has, over time, been bartered for services received and put into the context of a business arrangement. So there are clearly other factors at work to explain the longevity of the world’s oldest profession. These were questions that I hoped to answer.

What would I find when I spoke with these women? Would I find the stereotype of the streetwalker, with vulnerability and a heart of gold that alternated with the motivation of cold hard cash? Old novels and movies told us tragic tales with predictable endings. In Dumas’ novel later adapted in the George Cukor film, Camille, we saw a fragile courtesan, caught between her tragic life choices and her heart.

Would I meet women with the conviction that they were only doing prostitution for now, with a Pollyanna optimism that true love was just around the corner? Would there be a young girl, barely fourteen, who could swear like a sailor and make love as dispassionately? Would I find a woman with a permanent chip on her shoulder, despising a world which recoiled from her, even as it used her?

In the end, what did I find? I found the answers to my questions in their words. And I found more, much more. I found reasons, I found excuses, I found cynicism, and clear-eyed optimism. And I found despair and vulnerable hearts. Some of them have paid a terrible price. And some of them astonished me with their candor and insight into the experiences that touch the lives of every human being—especially regarding the complex alliance of heart and body. This book tells their stories. I wanted to touch and comprehend their world, but found instead that they touched mine.

In the course of this study, I have met some of the well-known personalities associated with this subject. These include Xaviera Hollander who wrote the landmark book, The Happy Hooker. Another was Norma Jean Almodovar, a former Libertarian candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, who wrote the book, From Cop to Call Girl. Another prominent person was Sidney Biddle Barrows, the controversial Mayflower Madam, who was portrayed by Candace Bergen in a movie about her life. Still another, was the articulate and interesting Karen Wilkening, formerly known as The Rolodex Madam. And one of the key figures I spoke with was Margo St. James who began the Prostitutes Rights Movement in this country when she founded COYOTE in 1973.

I visited 18 of the 36 legal brothels in Nevada. I spoke with streetwalkers in several California cities, primarily San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. I met and interviewed over 450 prostitutes for the original study, and have continued to do extensive research.

I have seen some changes evolve over time in this profession, but more often I have seen the persistence of the traditional prejudices and taboos that continue to isolate these women from society’s mainstream. Despite today’s open and often blatant attitudes toward sex, the profession remains today as much of an enigma as it has always been.

The purpose of this book is not to sensationalize, but to present a portrait of these women that is real, compelling and very human. It explores the minds and perspectives of individuals in a profession that is perplexing, dangerous, and sometimes tragic. More importantly, the stories are told in the words of the women themselves. The names of the subjects have been changed, but it was the women, themselves, who chose the names which are used in this book.

In this book, call girls, streetwalkers and brothel workers speak about the factors that brought them into this sex work, and keep them there. Compiled from hundreds of hours of taped interviews, their choices and experiences paint an absorbing portrait of life in this profession.

So these are their stories, in their words. I present them without the clutter of judgment—without defending their lifestyle, and without condemning it. There is no attempt here to advocate prostitution or exonerate it.

These are the real voices of real women. These are their stories in their own words. I know that the reader will find them as compelling, revealing and extraordinary as I have found them.

Diana Prince, PhD.

July 22, 2012

The author, Diana Prince, has a PhD. in Psychology from United States International University, and holds Master’s Degrees from San Diego State University in Philosophy and English. She has taught at San Diego State University and National University.

Dr. Prince worked as a proposal and engineering writer in the aerospace industry for fourteen years, and was the Feature Editor for San Diego Celebrity Magazine. She also spent over ten years investigating child abuse as a social worker for the County of San Diego.

WORKING

THE STREETS

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Chapter One

Beverly

Streetwalker, San Diego

Beverly is an attractive black girl, thirty-five years old, with a distinctive sense of style. She looks, at first glance, as if she is a model emerging from the pages of a young women’s magazine. She is impeccably neat and stylish.

She speaks frankly about her incest experiences which seriously affected her life. She had several bandages on her legs when we met. To my inquiry about them, she responded, These are from a customer. He pushed me out of his car when I wouldn’t have sex for $15.

This interview took place in a car in Presidio Park, a few miles from a downtown area that is frequented by prostitutes.

I first got involved in this work after my husband and I broke up, and I had to carry the household on my own. I got on drugs. And when I was younger, there was incest with my father. And that affected me a lot. Basically, that’s how I got into this.

I was five years old when the incest started, and it went on for several years. It went on for a very long time. By the time I went into this line of work, I was bitter. Really bitter.

I have only told very few people about my incest experiences. To me, I thought I was the only person, until years later when I talked to a social worker.

The main reason I think that men will go to working girls is that their wives are set in their ways, and most often they won’t have oral sex. So their husband goes out looking for that. That’s one reason. Another reason could be that the guy might not be the handsomest man in the world, and would have trouble finding someone. Or sometimes, he will be looking for affection.

Military guys do it because they’ve been out to sea for such a long time. And masturbation is healthy. My major in college was physical education, so I know that. Masturbation is healthy, but not all the time. They get tired of doing that. So they come out in the streets and look for the ladies.

I’ve only been here in San Diego for two years. And I’ve been on these streets for about four months. I came here with a positive attitude. I wasn’t intending to go back into prostitution when I came to San Diego. And some things differ from place to place. In some cities, they may have on silk dresses, and you can tell they’re hookers. But the ladies here normally dress in jeans. They might wear those jeans five days out of the week. And the jeans would probably stand up by themselves when they pull them off. But not me. I’m clean. I can’t do that.

Honestly, some of the time I try to get out of intercourse. I try to talk the guy out of it, and do something else like oral sex. Because I, myself, am getting old, and my body’s getting old. And I’ll try to tell the guy something to make him sympathize with me. And I’ll cry real tears. Girl, I’ll cry real tears, because it is real. The situation that I’m in is real, not fake. So the tears will automatically come. And sometimes he’ll say, Take the money and go right on. Sometimes that will work. That’s my way, because I don’t like sex. I’ve never liked it, but my father made me. And I think that’s how I really, really got into it, and didn’t give a hoot.

Also I felt some control by getting money for it. And there probably were some feelings of spite and getting back at men. I had anger against men, because of what my father did.

I’m pretty much of a loner, and independent. I don’t associate myself with a lot of other working girls. And I don’t usually get into deep conversations or anything like that with them. But I have noticed that most of them give their money to their men, like a pimp-prostitute type of thing. Instead of being a lady-of-leisure, or trying to pay their rent, or put food in their mouths, or keep a roof over their heads, or food in their kid’s mouth, they give all their money to their men. Those men aren’t always pimps, but are sometimes their husbands or boyfriends.

Here in San Diego not all girls have pimps. But in cities like L.A. you almost have to have pimps, because it’s a larger city. And a lot of cities won’t allow girls to outlaw like that. That’s what they call it—outlawing. They also call it renegading because the women are out there by themselves, and they don’t have a man.

I don’t think someone needs a pimp. No, Ma’am. What I see is that all the pimp does is stand around and wait until the lady brings him the money. He just sort of stands there holding the post up.

But a lot of these girls are weak. And they are girls to me, because some of them are very young. They think they need the pimp. Even when I first started back home, I never had a pimp. I couldn’t see myself, laying on my back and taking the abuse, and then giving some man my money. And you’re the one taking the risks in this business. One day, you might have a client that treats you like roses. And the next one might jog you—you know, some man might be jumping inside you and pushing hard, and you could get hurt. I just can’t see turning over the money after you’ve had to go through all that to make it. I just couldn’t do it.

A lot of the men who see working girls have problems. And many of them are big time people, believe me. I’ve been in a lot of cities, and I’ve dealt with a lot of topnotch people. I’m not talking about sailors and chiefs, and people like that. I’m talking about senators and men in high positions. I think their wives are like stereotypes in a lot of cases. They’re used to the missionary-position type of sex, and that’s it. A man goes to his job, and don’t say he doesn’t discuss sex, because he does, believe it or not. And he can’t say what his wife is doing so he’s going to talk about what his girlfriend is doing. And oral sex is something that most men like.

There can be a real conflict if you’re working the streets, and if you’re also in a relationship with somebody you really care about. It will interfere with your real relationship a whole lot. Some men could look at it as being just a job, but most men don’t. It can cause a man to be very angry, and ruin any affection he has for you.

If I were in a committed relationship, like a marriage, and really cared about somebody, I would definitely be sexually faithful to that person. I’m a one-man woman. I’m like my mother. I do have that trait of hers. But I just don’t like to be hurt. And when I’m hurt, that’s when the vindictiveness comes out of me. I’m not gonna lie, because it does. And I get back. Even if I have to go find Jimmy-Joe-Willie-John and talk to him in his face, or find some way to hurt him. But I’ll do it, just to get back at him.

Now, there are times when you might suspect that some man is a police officer, and they do have to tell you, if you ask them directly. But one day this guy called me over to his truck, and I didn’t know if he was asking me for directions or what. And then he says, I’ve got $20. I said, For what? But by me getting into that truck, that was saying that I committed myself to doing something. He arrested me, and that was entrapment, because I never agreed to do anything.

Because of the arrest, my family found out what I had been doing. My Momma was real hurt. My father, he showed no emotions at all. But my mother felt real bad. And I told her everything, when I was locked up, because I felt like she should know.

My mom had known a long time before I got locked up about the incest with my father. But I had never told her about the prostitution. To me, she was not only my mother, but I felt like she was also like my sister and best friend, so I felt that she should know everything. Afterwards, I felt good that I had been honest with her. And for a long time I did beautifully. And then I just got really down. I was almost at rock bottom. Being in the street, I try not to deal with people other than who I know. I don’t just deal with Tom-Dick-Joe-Willie-John if I can help it. I try to deal with someone that I know, that I’ve had as a client before, and I know that they’re safe.

There are some really dangerous things out there like sadomasochism, where a man will want to beat the woman, or be beaten by her. And I draw the line at something like that.

It is also more dangerous working the street, than it would be for call girls. You see what I’m saying? It’s nothing that I’d want my sister to get into. And if I ever thought that she got into it, I think me and her would lock our knuckles together. And, I wouldn’t want to hurt her, but I would try to knock some sense into her. Because this life is nothing. It’s a dead-end street. It’s just like drugs. It can be habit-forming.

I really don’t see any advantages in this for myself. Except for getting