The Education of a Very Young Madam (15 page)

Colonel Ed claimed to have a way of reaching out to a bigger client base who would be particularly interested in the services we offered. He had somehow—I'm not sure exactly how—gathered an extensive list of e-mail addresses for likely customers we could contact directly. When Sandy heard about this, you could just see the dollar signs in her eyes. She did her best to keep Colonel Ed away from Doug, and she did a pretty good job. It didn't seem to occur to her, however, to keep Colonel Ed away from me.

Since I was doing most of the work booking appointments, Colonel Ed would often talk to me about business. It wasn't long before he realized that it made much more sense to leave Sandy out of things whenever possible. She was unstable and he knew it. He wasn't looking to get busted, so he preferred to deal with me. I came across as much more grounded by comparison.

Basically what Ed proposed was that we send out e-mail announcements to his mailing list and then he would take a fee for every appointment we booked for guys on his list. It turned out that he actually did have something worthwhile to sell, and the business always got a boost whenever we sent out an e-mail. I learned from talking to Colonel Ed that he also had contact lists for other places, in the United States. That's what made me realize that it was finally time, past time really, to make a change.

One day a request came in from a new client who wanted a girl for companionship only, no sex. He was a businessman passing through town who just didn't feel like being alone. When I saw that he'd asked specifically for an Asian girl, I jumped at the chance to take the call myself. He was offering good money for easy work, and I wanted it.

The guy's name was Paul, and he had some serious mental issues, one of which was a real fear of women. He paid $2,000 to have dinner with me and then go out clubbing. He even showed up with a pair of diamond earrings as a gift, as if it was a real date. I was happy to take them, even though I thought he was pretty pathetic to do something like that. I got him high as hell at the nightclub and then left his ass early that night.

After that, Paul was hooked on me. I guess he liked women who treated him badly. Normally I would have brushed him off, but in this case, I saw an opportunity. He was the perfect guy to help me get back into the United States.

I'd been reluctant to try to cross the border alone, because after September 11 security was tighter than ever and I still didn't have an ID. Besides that, I was still out on bail for those moving violations. I'd never shown up to court and never paid my fine. If anyone looked up my record, they were sure to catch me and send me back to jail.

I hadn't wanted to take any form of public transportation back to the United States because they tended to inspect people's IDs more closely at airports and train stations. I figured I might be able to get away with just flashing a fake ID at the border guards if I was in a private car. Paul had a BMW, and he offered to drive me to Boston, which was where I wanted to end up. I decided it was worth the risk. Before I left, however, I called child services and told them that all Sandy's kids would be better offwith their dads. I did it for the kids' safety. I was really sad to leave them behind. I also contacted Doug and told him what Sandy had been doing behind his back. I made that call because the bitch deserved it.

My plan for getting over the border worked like a charm. Paul was a real businessman and he had a nice car, so the border guard trusted us and let us through. Once I got to Boston, however, I ditched Paul as quickly as I could. I already had other plans, and he wasn't part of them.

My Boston plans revolved around a guy named Master Romeo. That was his screen name anyway. He was (and still is) a key player on the most well-known escort review Web sites out there. These review sites are independent, so people tend to trust the general consensus of opinion that emerges about a girl or an agency, the same way they do customer reviews of books on Amazon or restaurant reviews in Zagat. Beyond that, however, certain reviewers have become famous on the sites. They're unpaid, just like any other reviewer, but because of the depth of their experience and the way they turn a phrase, their reviews have attracted followings among like-minded men. Master Romeo and a select group of other reviewers have serious cachet with a whole lot of clients and potential clients of services like mine throughout the country and in Canada. They've developed reputations as "experts," and their screen names are known throughout the community of "hobbyists," as they often call themselves. Their reviews of the girls they've "dated" can even make or break careers. In fact, if I have a new girl who's not booking many appointments, I'll sometimes offer her to one of these guys for free in the very real hope that a good review, which acts almost like a celebrity endorsement, might kick-start her career.

Master Romeo and I had become friends in Montreal, and I made him an ally when I decided it was time to leave town. I knew that he and several other all-star reviewers were also members of an exclusive club of very wealthy Boston men. The club sponsored regular parties, and for each one they hired lots and lots of working girls to attend. They often used a big agency called Montreal Girlfriends to provide them with the talent they wanted, but when Master Romeo found out I was coming to town and looking to build up my business again, he said his friends would be happy to use all the girls I could bring him.

I had a full week's worth of bookings set up with Master Romeo's friends, and girls scheduled to come in from Montreal to fill them, all before I even made it into the country. At the end of my first week in Boston, I already had thousands of dollars in my pocket.

It was a great way to start over. Boston was just a temporary stopover, however. Colonel Ed had told me that he could do for me what he had done for Doug and Sandy's Montreal agency, only in an area of New Jersey that had relatively little competition. I was very interested in that idea, so I decided to look into his offer. And thanks to Master Romeo and his friends, I now had the seed money to do just that and even to start up again full force right away if I decided to.

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CHAPTER 9

A Brave New New Jersey

In Boston I got a chance to attend Master Romeo's "high-roller" parties, and that was a trip. I met all the big sharks, guys whose primary goal in life seemed to be to spend as much money as possible. There was one guy who was a real-life 40-Year-Old Virgin. He'd been too busy working on becoming a multimillionaire, I guess, to worry about getting laid when he was still young, but by the time I met him, he was doing his best to make up for lost time. He became an excellent regular customer. I also met a bunch of Montreal Girlfriends who were working the party, and that was useful too. One of those girls was named Mandy, and we became instant friends.

Mandy was a nut job. She had a psychotic boyfriend who was on lithium, and they were always on the verge of killing each other. Her boyfriend was allergic to shellfish, and when she was mad at him, she'd do things that were completely crazy like put pieces of shrimp in his toothpaste. But she made me laugh. After we met, she was always trying to get me to go places and do things with her. She had gotten this idea in her head that after she was done working in Boston she wanted to fly out to San Francisco just to go to this gay club where the guys supposedly jerked off onstage. I had just banked off of the millionaires, so I thought, What the hell? I went with her.

While we were in California together, I told Mandy about

What happened was not much. We booked maybe four or five appointments over the course of a full week. Mandy met the clients at a local hotel and said they were fine—decent guys and decent tippers—but if I could get only a handful of appointments for the one girl I was running that week, how was I ever going to find enough work to keep several girls busy at a time? I wasn't very hopeful.

A couple weeks later I wrote an e-mail with a similarly worded offer that the Colonel sent out to everyone on his mailing list. We did nothing else but send out that e-mail blast, and, in short, we banked that week. We brought in just over $10,000 in five days, and Mandy walked home with $7,000 in profit. The response was unbelievable. I had to scramble around to find last-minute hotel rooms so that Mandy had a place for all her appointments. (Because I wasn't expecting much, I had booked her a room for only a couple of days.) I even had to turn guys away, and many asked when we'd be coming back. We were both worn out by the end of the week, but I had also made up my mind. This mailing list idea was the way to go. I told Colonel Ed I'd buy his list. The price we agreed on was $50,000.

I thought it was a pretty good deal because I figured I could make that back in just a few months. But it was also more, by far, than I'd ever invested in anything. Besides, I'd done Web sites before but never e-mail lists, and Colonel Ed made it sound hard. He offered to stay on and help me with the technical stuff in exchange for a fee of $500 per girl per week. I went for it. I quickly raised the money I needed, and the Colonel and I became business partners in New Jersey.

One of the first things I did was create an identity for my business. That's when I came up with the name Girlfriend Experience, which tells clients what type of service we offer because most people familiar with the escort industry are familiar with that term. I decided on this because my research into what was already being

Colonel Ed and his offer to help me start a business in New Jersey. Colonel Ed had told me he had an e-mail list of eight thousand potential clients in a relatively untapped area of northern New Jersey. He said that someone could use his list to set up a small, quiet but lucrative escort agency there without having to place ads in magazines or on the Internet, which could draw unwanted attention. The problem with ads, which were the way I had always started up my businesses before, is that anyone—potential clients, potential employees, as well as potential problems in the way of police or community groups who look for such things—can find them. Even regular people can cause trouble if they make enough noise. But with an e-mail list, I'd have direct and private access to customers so that I could be as discreet as I wanted to be.

It sounded like a great opportunity, which I have a hard time passing up, but I was uncertain about the whole thing. I had never worked in a place like that before. Sure, I had lived with Andre in New Jersey, so I knew the area a little bit, and I'd had my brothels in New York, which isn't very far away, but this would be different. In New Jersey I wouldn't be working out of a big city like I'd done with all my other businesses. This was more like the suburbs, with houses and families. It would have to be a completely different kind of setup than I'd ever had before.

"Maybe he'll let us try it out," Mandy suggested, which was a fantastic idea. She agreed to be my guinea pig. After our trip to San Francisco, we went to test the New Jersey waters and this list of Colonel Ed's.

We decided that the best way to test the effectiveness of Ed's list was to compare it to my old way of starting up a business. First, I used my usual tactic of placing ads in the kinds of magazines and newspapers that I thought locals who might be interested in escort services would see. We advertised that Mandy was in the area for a special visit, one week only, and then sat back and waited to see what would happen.

offered in the area showed that it was all pretty much straight sex, no frills, and not a lot of options. Standing out in that pack was easy. I decided to highlight the fact that we were offering more than just sex; we were offering an erotic
experience.
I figured that would not only set us apart but appeal to the kinds of high-end customers I wanted, the kinds who are professional, stable, and have enough money to use our services regularly.

When we sent out the first e-mail to Colonel Ed's list introducing our new escort agency, I phrased it as if I were offering them admission to an exclusive club. It said, "You have been specially selected to receive a free membership upon approval of your credentials and status. Only qualified applicants are considered for this limited offer." Again, I was appealing to the kinds of customers I wanted, the ones who would be attracted to exclusivity and luxury and who would appreciate, even require, that we be discreet.

I also set up a Web site that customers could go to for more information about us and our girls and included the Web address in the e-mail. After that, I sat back and waited for my phone to ring. It rang almost immediately.

I didn't bother to check a guy out until he called to set up an appointment. But once he did call, he wasn't allowed to go any further until he gave me some basic biographical information: his name, where he worked, his office phone, his home phone. I often had to coax the information out of people, but I didn't mind that. I'd just tell them, "Listen, sweetie, I know this makes you uncomfortable, but it's really best for all of us. You wouldn't want me to send you a girl I hadn't checked out beforehand, would you? Everyone has to be screened or none of us are safe. Besides, once you're cleared, I won't hang on to your information," which was mostly true; since I have a good memory, I keep most of it, except for the e-mail addresses, in my head. Then I'd continue: "I don't want your personal information exposed any more than you do." I was always happy to give a new guy that speech, and it nearly always worked. In fact, the more hesitant a guy was to give me his personal information, the better I felt about him. I've turned down customers just because they sounded too eager on the phone.

Once I had a guy's info, I'd tell him I would call him back after he'd been fully screened and okayed. It sounded very official, but I would actually begin the process the same place you probably would, by simply Googling him. I would also call his office to verify that he actually worked there. Sometimes I called home and talked to his wife while pretending to be a telemarketer. The kinds of questions I asked depended on what sort of feeling I got about a person, but I kept asking until I felt comfortable. And if I didn't feel comfortable, then I just never called him back.