Best Sex Writing 2009 (19 page)

What do the women think about why men come to them? As a companion project to Letters from Johns, I created Letters from Working Girls. While johns are eager to confess, letters from working girls are few and far between. But one high-end call girl I spoke to about the Spitzer affair said there are lots of reasons a man in such a prominent position might seek high-stakes sex with a prostitute. Why not just have an affair, which probably wouldn’t have destroyed his career? She said that Spitzer, if he did use prosti- tutes, was probably one of those men for whom the payoff was the excitement of doing something really taboo.“What could be more

taboo than going to an agency when you’re a crusader for all that is moral and good?” she theorized. “It’s only natural,” this call girl asserted,“that they’d hire a girl to get off.” She speculates that there was probably a “midlife crisis element” there too.

Of course, Spitzer was no ordinary middle-aged shlub. Agen- cies like the Emperors Club screen workers and clients alike, and discretion was part of what he’d have been paying for. Followers of Spitzergate have speculated as to what Client 9’s date, Kristen, knew when the club’s booker said that her famous client, who had been described by other girls as a “difficult” customer,“would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” The wording might imply something kinky, but it’s more likely that Client 9 was attempting to get Kristen to have sex without a con- dom—a common and unwelcome request, according to many sex workers. As one self-described twentysomething redhead I heard from (who solicited men on Craigslist to pay off her college loans) asked rhetorically, “How can someone even consider not using a condom with a woman who does it for a living?”That added risk factor may heighten the sexual excitement. For some guys the lure of that particular thrill can obscure any worries about long-term repercussions.

Over these last months I have seen one common thread in the johns’ stories: many remain conflicted about paying for sex. Was it right? Was it wrong? Is there more going on than just a need for sex? With his career a shambles, Spitzer may soon have more time than he’d like to contemplate those very questions.

oldest Profession 2.0: A new generation of local “Providers” and “hobbyists”

Create a Virtual red-light district

k eegan h amilton

If you’re researching auto repair on the Internet and stumble across www.stlasp
.com, you might well hit your web browser’s back but- ton before noticing anything amiss.

Read on, though, and you’ll raise an eyebrow. “This site is for entertainment purposes only. It is a place where users can post fan- tasies or stories for other members to view…The information on this site is intended for adult audiences only, by definition, in the state of Missouri, you must be 18 or older to view the information on this site….”

These folks must really love their cars!

Beyond the homepage, it quickly becomes evident that “STLASP” stands for “St. Louis Adult Service Providers”—an entirely different kind of body work. Here the “providers” are prostitutes—or, if you like your euphemisms, escorts—and their customers are “hobbyists.” STLASP is the virtual forum in which

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they discuss everything from gardening to philosophy to how they prefer one another’s pubic hair to be groomed. They alert each other to possible police stings and scam artists in the “Erotic Ser- vices” section of Craigslist. And customers—seemingly all of them men—write and post lengthy reviews of their experiences with the call girls.

An escort herself, the site’s creator says she founded STLASP in June of last year after moving to the St. Louis area from Southern California, where she’d been involved in a nearly identical online community. She found that the message board not only made her job safer by allowing her to screen her clients, it also created a tight-knit network of the region’s online escorts, providing a forum for them to share knowledge, including concerns about potentially dangerous johns.

“I’m trying to educate the women and give them a chance to feel safe and feel a connection with others that are in the same industry,” says the woman, who agreed to be interviewed for this story on the condition that she not reveal her real name and that she be referred to as “Mac.”

“There’s a lot of power in numbers. I’m trying to educate them to be as independent as they can and make smart choices.”

The idea of escorts on the Internet is nothing new—the old- est profession has long embraced twenty-first-century technology. But according to Stacey Swimme, cofounder of sex worker–rights organizations the Desiree Alliance and the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) Mac’s site is part of an emerging national trend: prostitutes have turned to the Internet and small, independently operated message boards as a means of empowerment.

“From what I’ve been researching about the sex industry over the past twenty-five years, that is the biggest change,” Swimme says. “Providers are talking to each other.That is a force to be reckoned

Best s ex Writing 2009

with.That is where political power comes from, is that sort of com- munity-building.”

STLASP’s “Reviews” section contains more than seven thou- sand posts. Many are based on a review template in which “hobby- ists” share their experiences with local providers.

Examples:

Did the ASP’s photos accurately portray her? Was she punctual?

Did she pressure you into tipping?

And, of course:Activities between consenting adults (what did you do)?

The reviews are peppered with abbreviations and jargon.An escort might be a “FOTC” (fuck of the century) or a DFE (“dead fish experience”). When johns say “CMD” (carpet matches drapes) or “Hardwood Floors,” they’re referring to their date’s body hair, not her taste in interior decorating.

While phrases like “She spoke French without an interpreter” and “We took a trip to the Mediterranean” carry one meaning in a newspaper travel section, on STLASP they refer to oral sex without a condom and anal sex, respectively.

Reviewers may wax passionate: “I would advise you to take your vitamins, drink lots of fluids, eat your Wheaties, and get plenty of rest before your date,” one recently wrote.“She will wear you out.”

Or merely state the obvious: “The massage is not therapeutic, not a professional style, muscle-relaxing type massage. But if you enjoy a very pretty girl spreading lotion all over your body, you will be pleased.”

The practice of posting online reviews of escorts dates back

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about ten years. David Elms, creator of the Erotic Review (www
. theeroticreview.com), claims his website was one of the first to en- courage men to provide feedback about their clandestine encoun- ters. Reached by phone in his Southern California office, Elms explains that he got the idea after being ripped off by a call girl.

“It was a way that people could be held accountable for their actions in this industry,” Elms says.“Now girls prefer that they find clients on the Erotic Review. It already tells a guy all the juicy de- tails, so he doesn’t have to ask stupid questions.”

Elms says his website, created in 1999, now attracts more than 300,000 visitors a day, and that half of the site’s users log on more than once a day. He collects information about each person who registers an account and says the average hobbyist is between thirty- five and fifty-five years old with a median income of eighty thou- sand dollars.

From the sex worker–rights perspective, Swimme has no qualms about the commodification that is taking place. She suggests that the practice of posting reviews adds legitimacy to an otherwise il- licit transaction.“I think that having reviews in the sex industry to some degree makes a lot of sense,” she says.“It brings it into a realm that says: this is a commercial exchange, a profession, a service.”

Elms goes as far as to compare the john-escort dynamic to the purchase of expensive electronics: “It’s like a consumer-reports magazine that has buyer reviews of car-stereo performance.”

The quest for rave reviews and the booming business that comes with them can be hypercompetitive. One of the oldest and most popular review websites, bigdoggie.net, issues a twice-daily top- 100 ranking of escorts from across the nation based on ratings tal- lied from user reviews.

The practice does have its critics.Amanda Brooks, author of
The Internet Escort’s Handbook,
a three-part series first published in 2006

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that professes to “address every question that a woman could ask before she becomes a sex worker who advertises through the In- ternet,” points out that women can be pressured into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t do, for fear of the online backlash.

“It has turned into, ‘This girl is totally great, she’s going to do this and this and this,’ ” says Brooks, who also contributes to Bound, Not Gagged, a sex worker–rights blog. “That’s a big problem, be- cause girls will do sex activities that push boundaries, but they do them because they could get a good review and make money.”

At STLASP, Mac says when she first got into the business, the creator of one review site pressured her to have sex with him in exchange for positive reviews.“He said he could make me or break me because his site was national, and if I was smart I would come visit him and have an appointment with him for free,” she recalls. “I told him no way.”

Despite that experience, Mac remains a strong advocate of posting the critiques “for the sake of quality control.” She admits, however, to having to frequently mediate disputes about authentic- ity and accuracy. Several times women have been caught creating fake profiles in order to post positive evaluations of themselves. Once, Mac says, a man posted a negative review that an escort later claimed was completely off base.

“I told her that she could write a rebuttal to the review and she chose not to,” Mac notes.

Elms says he has confronted similar issues. “I look at the his- tory of the reviewer,” he says.“If, consistently, this reviewer’s history shows he’s been accurate, no one has ever contested anything, and he has long-term membership, then I know that this is probably pretty solid.”

Then again, Elms adds, reviews are rarely two thumbs down. “When you tell a story to a couple of friends, obviously you’re

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going to put yourself in a good light,” he notes.“When you tell a story here, you’re telling it to 100,000 of your closest friends.You still have the male ego to deal with.”

When Mac debuted STLASP a year ago, she promoted it with a mere two posts on Craigslist. Since then an average of fifty new people per day have registered for user names.A counter at the bot- tom of the site’s main page tallies the current membership at nearly 2,500; altogether they account for more than 19,000 posts.

Registration is free, and all that is required to access the forums is an email address, a user name, and a password. Fearing the site has began to attract too much attention, Mac recently posted a message saying she is considering a moratorium on new memberships.

For a site that specializes in sex, STLASP’s appearance is remark- ably sterile: blue text on a plain gray-and-white background. The site is divided into several sections, each of which contains its own message boards. “Administration” features a glossary of “hobby”- related abbreviations. In “Providers” users can see which women are “Available Today” and browse the personal web pages of two dozen escorts. Most of the posts are found in the “Hobbyists” sec- tion, which features the “Discussion” board, where the men and women tell jokes, swap stories, and ask each other questions about nearly everything under the sun.

Unlike other sites of its kind, STLASP is devoid of advertise- ments. Mac says she has invested several hundred dollars in soft- ware, server space, and the domain name. She estimates that she generally spends multiple hours each week dealing with program- ming glitches, creating new features, and moderating disputes between users. Having had no prior web-design experience, she concedes she may have gotten in over her head with her not-for- profit endeavor.

“This does not define who I am as a person,” Mac says. “It’s a

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very small aspect of my life.The more I invest time into it, the more it becomes a bigger part of my life. And since I’ve been spending like five hours a night on this website, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s taking over now.’ ”

Swimme is impressed that the mind behind STLASP is a woman’s. “I love to see when it’s actually service providers who are out founding these sites,” Stacey Swimme says. “It’s much more com- mon for hobbyists to create these communities.As an advocate, I’m always thrilled to support the work of individual sex workers who

pioneer their own free-speech spaces.”

In the world of STLASP, however, “free speech” is a relative term. One of Mac’s earliest posts under her “Admin” handle is a lengthy “code of ethics” that lays out rules for maintaining civil discourse. “Do unto others, as you would have them do to you,” she writes.“Do not post against somebody in a rude or nasty man- ner…We all have a different perspective on life and general topics so respect others and they will respect you.”

The software for the forums automatically censors some con- tent. Try to type the words“sex” or“money” into a post and they’re instantly altered to “sensual fun” and “donation.”

Such safeguards don’t bar the site’s users from self-indulgence. Women post pictures of themselves, often blurring their faces (but not much else) in hopes of concealing their identity. Men ask which local strip clubs offer “full service” and tip each other off to “UTR” (under the radar) adult establishments, such as a salon in a St. Louis suburb that offers a haircut with a happy ending. They frequently poke fun at their “Auto Specialists” pretext with threads like: “Pole position—how do you prefer to start the race.”

Some exchanges border on the cerebral. Observes one user in a February post on a lengthy thread entitled “Morality, Ethics, and the Hobby”: “Our Western society’s anti-sensuality attitude