Again, against my better judgment; I agreed to give her another chance on the condition that she tighten up her game and not try any further deceit.
A few days later, as I was sitting in my bedroom going over accounts, I could hear the extension phone in the living room being repeatedly used. Normally I would never snoop on my girls, but Roberta was around, and I was no longer sure of her. Besides, it was my business phone she was tying up. As I lifted the receiver I heard her talking with another girl.
“Mr. Brennan doesn’t seem to know you, Roberta, and he wants more detail,” the other girl, evidently a little hooker, was saying. To which Roberta replied, “Just tell him you have been referred by Madam Xaviera.”
Not only was it my phone, in my house, but it was also one of my most regular customers. They were obviously approaching one of the names she had copied from my black book. I hit the ceiling.
I was so angry I was shaking, and Corinne had to restrain me from going out and throwing her bodily into the street.
“Get dressed, get out, and don’t bother to have Henri send me any yellow roses or make any attempt to contact me ever again!” was my farewell to Roberta.
Thankfully that kind of dishonesty is unusual, and generally speaking, my girls are very loyal to me. Because of our closeness in ages, we are more like girl friends than the traditional madam-prostitute relationship.
Whenever I can, I give the girls advice and assistance in both their professional and private lives.
It is known that most madams are bisexual, and I am no exception. Whenever a new girl joins me, I usually take her to bed and teach her some basic tricks of the trade, like how to eat, and simple hygiene.
Like most madams, I have my favorites and might tend to give her the pick of the customers or the best work, but each girl is dear to me, and I try always to be fair. I can also say I hardly ever cheat on my girls like some madams who tell them a customer was a $50 date, when in reality he paid $100 and she kept $75 and gave the girl only $25,
As much as I give them guidance in their professional life, if they require it personally I am there to help, too. Sometimes, if I think it is justified, I offer advice uninvited, as in the case of Sarah, a former employee of Madeleine’s and for a while a roommate of mine.
Sarah was a sweet-natured but lazy girl who earned the nickname “Dopey” because she was forever swallowing “up” and “down” pills. As a result, she was always half-doped and did nothing constructive with her private life. I hated to see such a waste, so I gave her the lecture: “Sarah, I would like to see you take more of an interest in life. Why don’t you pick up a book now and again and read it instead of lying around all day?”
As head of the household, occasionally I have to be tough with the girls, and with the customers as well, if one complains about the other.
If a customer tells me that a girl is uncooperative or crude, I call her aside and ask is something wrong. If more than one man complains, I have to caution her, and if it happens too often, I usually have to let her go.
On the other hand, if a girl complains that a customer is rough or drunk and giving a girl a hard time, I have to handle that, too. All she has to do is slip into one of the bathrooms that adjoin the bedrooms, call me discreetly in, and tell me.
I don’t scream or bitch the men the way Georgette would do with her drunks, or the way Madeleine would do to a man who rejected her. I knock on the bedroom door, respectfully request permission to enter, and tell him the young lady says he is treating her badly.
If I see her complaint is justified, I ask him to dress – or have a massage first if he wants to, and a coffee – but to leave the premises as soon as possible and come back again next week when he is sober.
The madam herself, generally speaking, is too busy to get involved in any sexual activity unless it is a complicated bondage scene that perhaps only she is qualified to do. This is especially so now that the complex call-line system has been installed and the client books have all been reorganized to correspond with each of the four different color phones.
So if a man specifically requests to have me and is willing to pay the higher fee, I might go to bed with him, but he has to put up with the phones ringing and me jumping up to answer them. Sometimes the phone interruptions can be a beautiful tease, and I laugh it off with, “Oh, darling, at least you can’t say I’ve rushed you, because we are going to start all over again.”
But if the coitus interruptus makes him mad and he says, “Screw the damn phones,” I give him this little talk: “Darling, you’re so nice and hard now, so cool it, cool it off a little bit, and we’ll start all over again.”
One great privilege of being a madam as opposed to a working girl is that she can choose for herself any customer she would like to go with. If a groovy-looking guy walks in, I can snap him up for myself. The perfect situation I try to engineer is for a great-looking guy to pay for a three-way scene with me and my favorite girl of the moment. That way I get to swing with them both and make money as well.
Being a successful madam has its liabilities as well as its rewards, as I tell any girl who wants to go into the business. One of the liabilities is that your time is no longer your own. When a working girl completes her “shift,” she is free to meet her boyfriend or husband and relax as she likes. When I was a single I took off Wednesday and Saturday, nights.
It so happens I love the work I am doing.
Nowadays there are few days off, but if I did not have day-long phone contact with clients and friends, I would sometimes go stir-crazy.
When fatigue builds up and I simply have to take a break, I try to fly off to Miami, Las Vegas, or the Caribbean for a few days – provided I can find a substitute madam to take over for me.
It is almost impossible to find a girl who is smart enough to handle the phones and the customers, sufficiently interested to see that all goes well, but not so ambitious that, in your absence, she will try to take away half the business for herself.
Last July 4 when I wanted to go to Curaçao for the long weekend, I had the choice of the Argentine girls who work for me or the Canadian girls, who lived in but who were recent arrivals from Montreal – and I could use none of them. First of all, for some reason, customers don’t want to hear a Spanish-accented voice answer the phone. I have no personal prejudices, but to them all Spanish accents are Puerto Rican. As for the Canadian girls, I knew that their dedication to the business did not go beyond making a quick few bucks.
The girl I finally found was Wanda, a professor of art and history at a New York university who had a good head on her shoulders, but whose only ambition in prostitution was to supplement her legitimate earnings by coming over now and again to make a quick hundred, and out.
Wanda is also honest and hard-working, but, as I found out when I returned, not tough enough. She was not able to control the girls, and I learned that a little fist fight even broke out between a Canadian and an Argentine over whether a man had a credit rating or not.
Also my books were all upside down and reshuffled, and I vowed that the next time I took a trip I would put in a recording of my voice over the line, although this is a thing I hate to do because I feel a responsibility to be available to my clients.
Madeleine used to shut up shop at three A.M. and take the phones off the hook until noon, but many of my men feel my place is their second home and that I am there twenty-four hours a day. Some of them even want to come over for breakfast dates, and many who work in the neighborhood show up for luncheon meetings. Instead of going out to eat, they jump over here and have food sent up. Then I have the cocktail business, which is relatively quiet until eleven P.M. The biggest hours are eleven to four A.M., and sometimes later.