Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession

Morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers.

—John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

INTRODUCTION

When I was a small child, I was prone to insomnia and fits of the night terrors. To get me to fall asleep, my mother and father would fasten me into our family’s 1971 Toyota Carina, throw in an eight-track cassette of Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits and drive up and down South Main Street in Houston, Texas, to look at the prostitutes. The blinking neon signs of the no-tell motels, the bling of streetwalkers working their finery, and the day-glo hues of their billowing lingerie were too much stimulation even for a toddler; I would finally shut my eyes and stop struggling against the seat belt while Shadows in the Moonlight and the South Main ho stroll played on. I nodded off to sleep not only with visions of sugar plum fairies, but also of leather-clad fairies, common harlots, desperate dope fiends, glamorous go-girls, and rowdy rent-boys all gyrating in my little head.

It wasn’t my idea to expose me to a life on the street like that, but back in the 1980s, you had to get out of your house to experience life and love and also to look at prostitutes. Today you can just go to some live-stream dung dungeon and e-jaculate along with the rest of the blundering online nymphos to stuff you’re not even creative enough to imagine, or ask for.

Since then, I’ve visited prostitutes from Nuevo Laredo to Amsterdam, Hamburg to Tokyo, and Las Vegas to Havana, and one thing never changes: People are too quick to make assumptions about what visiting means. Where I’m from, visiting can mean anything from talking and catching up with folk to setting fire to a miniature pony, although I haven’t heard it used that way in ages. The point is, I miss the calming effect provided by those idealized streetwalkers of my youth.

What? You’re not buying the nostalgic visiting whores put me to sleep as a child excuse for writing a hooker book? The lecherous lullaby ride not convincing enough? That was a 100 percent true story, but here’s a more recent and possibly more accurate illustration of why I came to write Whore Stories, documented in an IM exchange last year between me and my agent, Jon Sternfeld. At the time, I was working on some leading-edge inventions, which is something I do when I am lonely and unemployed.

TSS: what’s the worst thing about europe?

JS: I don’t know. France?

TSS: making love in small cars.

JS: so?

TSS: kids keep having sex in those little Smart cars—I’ve seen it myself—and I think it spells future spinal trouble.

TSS: you there?

JS: yes.

TSS: So i’ve invented a car wash where you rent a limo with your manfriend or ladyfriend and it’s in a big limo—plenty of room. and palliative oils. it’ll be cheap. good tunes, too.

JS: A car-wash whorehouse?

TSS: a drive-thru love station with rain.

JS: hey, that’s something—you should write something about whores.

And so I did.

If you are offended that the politically correct term sex worker is not used to describe the characters in this book, I apologize. But then you try to write a book called Sex Worker Stories! See, even with the exclamation point, Sex Worker Stories! sounds more like a serialized bodice-ripper involving one nurse tech’s search for true love in a haunted sperm bank. Aside from the common term used in the title, the words slut, harlot, trick, chickenhawk, rent-boy, trollop, prossy, hooker, gigolo, etc. are used liberally within. What can I say? The lexicon of love is a bountiful trove.

Selective word choice aside, the biographical material in Whore Stories is essentially accurate, providing you, dear reader, with an informative, entertaining, and revealing look at the men and women who have blazed the bawdy trail of prostitution since the dawn of time. Some of these people have become legends for turning tricks, like Xaviera The Happy Hooker Hollander, La Belle Otero, and the self-proclaimed Rosa Parks of male prostitution, Markus Bestin. Others have traded sex for money at some point in their lives, and then became famous for other reasons, like Al Pacino, Malcolm X, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, and Valerie Solanas (she shot Andy Warhol). Still others have turned into man-eating spiders, like the Japanese whore-deity Jorogumo. And finally there are people who have no real claim to Fame: They are just intriguing individuals who happen to have been hookers.

The aim of this book, then, is a simple one: to look into some of the shadier corners of human history, and to shed a little light on an eternally compelling figure: the prostitute. And if you’re thinking of asking me any more questions about my field research, then making the international sign for doing it, I’ll tell you the same thing I told my agent: Cut it out, pervert. This is a historical document.

TSS

Chapter I

BORN TO WHORE

Do you believe in destiny? I don’t, especially when good things happen to people I hate. Then again, when good things happen to people I love, I usually end up hating them for their success in the long run anyway. So maybe that’s destiny.

It is perhaps a stretch to say that someone or another was truly born to whore. And while I believe that my neighbor Sarah was born to be wild (you can tell by the way she throws knives at the mailman), it’s probably selling many of these born whores short to say all they have to offer is their bodies. In fact, Madame de Pompadour, one of the most renowned prostitutes of all time, was known more for the brilliance that came out of her mouth than the unmentionables that went into it. The men and women that follow probably did (or will do) some other interesting things with their lives. But in the end, we’re going to remember these naturals for how they played on the field of prostitution. Either way, these prominent prossies deserve a chapter of their own, and here it is.

LAO AI

PROFILE

DAY JOB: Fraudulent eunuch

CLAIM TO FAME: Personal ho-go stick to the Empress Dowager

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: China in the Third Century B.C.

In imperial China’s most famous history book, Records of the Grand Historian (or Shiji), we’re told of a man named Lao Ai who had an enormous penis. The Grand Historian, an academic named Sima Qian, has the following story on good authority. As the Shiji tells it, Lü Buwei, a chancellor and regent for the Qin government (and illegitimate father to the boy who would become China’s notorious First Emperor), needs to find an impressive set of sex organs that he can keep on retainer and offer up to the Empress Dowager to keep her happy in his absence. He finds this prodigious penis in the person of Lao Ai, whom Lü presumably ran into at a hot springs or a truck stop. The Shiji goes on to explain:

At times [Lü Buwei] would indulge in song and music, making Lao Ai dance around with his penis stuck through a wheel of tong wood. He arranged for the Empress Dowager to hear about this, in order to entice her. When the Empress Dowager heard, as expected, she . . . covertly gave a generous bribe to the officer charged with castrations to falsely sentence him and to pluck out his eyebrows and beard to make him appear a eunuch. As a result, he was made a servant of the queen dowager.

We’re not sure how Lao Ai felt about this career change, but he was most likely a member of the peasantry, so almost anything was better than rice farming and slaving around with a slop bucket while festooned in manure. He was also rewarded with very rich gifts and eventually, all the affairs [in the royal house] were decided by Lao Ai. Unfortunately, all this attention and fame went to Lao Ai’s head and his lack of humility angered the emperor.

Once the emperor-to-be heard that Lao Ai was an obnoxious talking penis and not really a eunuch, and that he was banging his own mom, he lost patience with Lao and the Dowager, exiling the Empress, executing Lao by having him torn apart with horse-drawn carriages, throwing Lao’s two children into sacks and beating them to gore, and exterminating three generations of Lao’s relatives. But, the name Lao Ai has lived on for centuries, synonymous in China for anything to do with fornication and penises—and the actual Lao Ai, I suppose, whenever his name comes up in bar trivia.

VALERIA MESSALINA

PROFILE

DAY JOB: Roman empress

CLAIM TO FAME: Threw some of Rome’s most off-the-hook orgies; insatiable sex-hen

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: First-century Rome

The problem with royal inbreeding is that, with a long enough timeline, you’re going to have an increase in poor decision making and a decrease in your regal comeliness. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still party your jugs off. And that’s exactly what Valeria Messalina, third wife and second cousin of the Roman Emperor Claudius (of I, Claudius fame) did.

The year was 38 B.C. There was lots going on in the world, but a girl gets bored just farting around the building site for a new Colosseum, where, according to the press releases, nude dudes will be chased around and around by tigers. Yawn. If you’re Valeria Messalina, however, you hook up with Caligula and enjoy his legendary orgies until the civil engineers can get their act together. Time passes and life is good.

But then, by some labyrinthine turn of events that included political posturing, elaborate bloodline calculations, and arcane Roman protocols, Messalina and Claudius were married. They were a budding power couple, even though Claudius was kind of gimpy and given to drooling. Messalina quickly produced two children, both of whom bore an uncanny resemblance to Caligula. Claudius remained clueless, but after Caligula’s murder, the historically well-lubricated gears of the Roman orgy scene ground to a halt. Claudius was a new and different kind of emperor.

But this is not some PBS special, so let’s get back to the orgies and the toga parties. Have a look at Juvenal’s poem about Valeria’s clandestine easy riding while her spazzed-out husband snores and slobbers in his sleep:

Having concealed her raven locks under a light-colored peruke, she took her place in a brothel … under the feigned name of Lycisca, her nipples bare and gilded … she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee… Then … she took back to the imperial pillow all the odors of the stews.

This kind of thing would be tantamount to ex-Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s wife, actress Veronica Lario, creeping out of the Palazzo Grazioli master bedroom in a blonde wig with Goldschläger bottle caps affixed to her nipples, and hitting the street using the provocative moniker, She-Wolf. Back in Claudius’s time, you didn’t have the politirazzi snapping photos of your night moves, so Valeria did all she could to make her sexcapades common knowledge. At one point she even engaged in a public sex battle (like a rap battle, but with less rhyming and more pubic hair) with a prostitute to see who could service the most men in one day. Winner: Valeria.

It was, alas, her insatiable sexual appetite that got her killed. When Claudius learned that Valeria had not only married his political rival, Silius, but also consummated their union before a large live crowd of sex-show enthusiasts, he had no choice but to have her head removed. Silius’s, too, because c’mon, man.

SHAI SHAHAR

PROFILE

DAY JOBS: U.S. Armed Services; struggling actor; amateur psychologist

CLAIM TO FAME: Live sex show trailblazer

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Israel, Amsterdam

Before Shai Shahar became one of the modern era’s most famous gigolos, he was visited by the specter of his rabbi. Never complain about your destiny until you know what it is, said the rabbi, leading Mr. Shahar headlong into whoring himself.

Indeed, Shai Shahar has the distinction of being the first male ever to exhibit himself in one of the flesh-market window displays of Amsterdam’s famous red-light district. Innovation is the key to success, but it doesn’t hurt to keep an ear open for prescient rabbis speaking from the grave.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1954, Shai Shahar joined the United States Army for a tour of duty, then emigrated to Israel in 1980, where he found a wife, had a daughter, and did some more soldiering in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) until the aforementioned magic rabbi entreated with him to move to Holland, where his dreary destiny might float away, like panties in the wind. And, sure enough, it did.

Shahar’s career lasted over a decade, an eternity in whore years, and his clientele included royalty, housewives, politicians, starlets, and pretty much everyone in between. His fee was an impressive $1,000+ per night. In an interview with Heeb magazine, Shahar explained the secrets behind his amorous expertise:

I learned everything I know from reading sex magazines when I was young. I later graduated into watching porn films and practicing with girlfriends. I was 35 when I started, so I came to the job with a fair degree of life and love experience.

Sex magazines? You don’t get the strongest gigolo gig around looking at Swank all day. So what was Shahar’s trick, so to speak? How did the man have so much game? As he told it:

The game is a simple thumbnail psychology ditty that has one describe her favorite color, favorite animal, how it feels to be in water, lots of water . . . and how it feels to be in a white-room with no doors.

It seems a fool’s errand to try and recommend this technique to anyone not looking to get about-faced by a petrified customer. And what exactly is a psychological ditty? Only the Good Die Jung? We can only speculate.

A one-of-a-kind creature in the world of whoredom, Shahar got out of the gigolo game after amassing a small fortune. He reached the ne plus ultra of high-profile sex vocations when he starred as half of a live-sex duo at Amsterdam’s noted Casa Rosso and Moulin Rouge Theaters—a cushy gig, almost like a Siegfried and Roy extravaganza of sex. Shahar hung up his he-whore act a number of years ago, but it seems the rabbi may be urging him on to greater things, as he explains that his fantasy is to appear on Broadway in Guys and Dolls.

BLANCHE DUMAS

PROFILE

DAY JOB: Sideshow attraction

CLAIM TO FAME: The Three-Legged Courtesan

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Martinique; Paris

Here’s a variation on the Riddle of the Sphinx: What has three legs, four breasts, two vaginas, and a voracious sexual appetite that can only be satisfied by a Portuguese man with three legs, twenty-eight toes, three testicles, two penises, and is so randy that, according to the photographer C. D. Fredericks, the mere sight of a female is sufficient to excite his amorous propensities, a man who functionates with both of the penes, finishing with one, then continu[ing] with the other?

Answer You Probably Thought: A newspaper

Correct Answer: Blanche Dumas, the Three-Legged Courtesan

Blanche Dumas was born in the French colony of Martinique in 1860 to parents of normal physical appearance. Examined by doctors and documented in the Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, a twenty-five-year-old Blanche is described as having:

a modified duplication of the lower body. There was a third leg attached to a continuation of the processus coccygeus of the sacrum. . . . There were two vaginæ and two well-developed vulvæ, both having equally developed sensations. The sexual appetite was markedly developed, and coitus was practised in both vaginæ.

There comes a time in a person’s life when he or she must evaluate his or her assets, take stock of what really matters, and make a move. For Blanche, that move was to Paris, where she made a handsome living as a courtesan and served as a refreshing novelty for the more curious-minded sex-seeker. Unfortunately, Blanche’s sexual desires were still left unfulfilled. It was a dark and disappointing time for a three-legged, multivaginaed working girl from the colonies. But wait! Here comes Juan Baptista dos Santos, the only man on the planet capable of satisfying her rabid lust, and vice-versa. Baptista dos Santos was not as profligate with his talent (two penises, both locked, loaded, and ready to party), often turning down great sums of money to display his double trouble.

But upon hearing dos Santos was passing through Paris, Blanche made contact and the two developed a special connection, their postcoital triage no doubt resembling a garage sale of helixed genitalia and assorted anatomical oddities. In the end, Dumas and dos Santos appear to have lived happily ever after, with Dumas saying goodbye to the courtesan life and dos Santos saying hello to the kind of gnarly and bone-breaking sex life I once imagined when I ate the bad acid.

XAVIERA HOLLANDER

PROFILE

DAY JOB: Secretary, Dutch Consulate

CLAIM TO FAME: Authoring one of the most successful memoirs in history, The Happy Hooker; legendary NYC madam; gave new meaning to the expression doggy-style.

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Manhattan

It’s a rare thing for the sex industry to produce a fairy tale scenario that doesn’t involve a trick towel and a hefty credit card bill. So let’s get acquainted with Xaviera Hollander, otherwise known as The Happy Hooker. Unlike so many unfortunate souls who’ve sold their bodies to the night, Ms. Hollander has come out of the whole affair unscathed. Rather, the ex-prostitute and madam is now a millionaire memoirist and business tycoon whose musings and advice have appeared in the Penthouse column Call Me Madam for more than thirty years.

Born Vera de Vries in 1943 in what is now Indonesia, Hollander once held the dubious distinction of being selected Miss Tick (better known as Holland’s Greatest Secretary) before moving to New York and starting one of the most successful brothels the city has ever known, The Vertical Whorehouse.

The Vertical Whorehouse, which Hollander operated from 1969 to 1971, was located in a high-rise at Seventy-Third Street and York Avenue in Manhattan, and advertised un-ironically in the New York Times real estate section as having the ultimate in services and conveniences, canine companions notwithstanding.

In a Pygmalionian career arc that took her from serving as a lowly secretary at the Dutch consulate to reigning as the Big Apple’s most sought-after madam in a matter of a few years, Hollander raised a few eyebrows, along with other assorted body parts, even among FBI agents and local law enforcement charged with bringing her down. This kind of thing doesn’t look good, so authorities came and shut down the Vertical Whorehouse for good. The Happy Hooker was promptly booted out of the country to relocate in Toronto.

But, not all Hollander’s brilliance proved to be along the x-axis. Her landmark 1972 memoir, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, launched this prostitute into the cultural stratosphere. With a genital warts-and-all attitude toward discussing her experiences in the sex trade, The Happy Hooker went on to become an international bestseller and the only memoir on the list where the protagonist copulates with a German shepherd during a sojourn in South Africa. I’d be a moral fraud if I ignored it, she noted with no apparent sense of irony.

Today, with numerous bestsellers to her name, a client list for the ages, and a couple of quaint B&Bs in Amsterdam and Marbella, the Happy Hooker is still living the high life. . . . HEY! You still there? It’s okay—nobody blames you—we’re all still thinking about the German shepherd, too.

MADAME DE POMPADOUR

PROFILE

DAY JOB: Bourgeois loafer

CLAIM TO FAME: Mistress of Louis XV

THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Versailles, France

(eighteenth century)

Jeanne Antoinette-Poisson was born in 1721 in Paris and died forty-two years later as Madame de Pompadour, the most-favored mistress of King Louis XV and European trend-setter/courtesan extraordinaire. Upon her death, the Enlightenment bigwig, Voltaire, mourned her loss, writing, I was indebted to her and I mourn her out of gratitude. I’m so sure, Voltaire. Your gratitude no doubt comes from not