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Should Call Girls Kiss and Tell?
Brendan McDermid / Reuters
On the anniversary of Eliot Spitzer’s exposed liaison with Ashley Dupre, a madam is considering releasing the names in her little black book. What ever happened to discretion?
As public trainwrecks go, Spitzergate was a doozy. This week, we observe the one-year anniversary of the resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who, after a successful career busting escort agencies, was himself felled by revelations that he was a high-paying john. Ashley Dupre, one of the escorts he was seeing, feels he’s been “punished enough.”
The real casualties of his downfall, however, are people whose sin was trying to earn a living in one of New York's more durable service industries—among them Kristin Davis, who is reported to have played matchmaker for the governor and spent three months in Rikers Island for operating an escort business. (Until one of her escorts spotted Spitzer in a local newspaper, Davis says she had no idea who she was dealing with.)
“With the service I provide comes the peace-of-mind knowing that I won't wilt when Katie Couric comes knocking for an exclusive interview,” says one escort.
Davis has just released a memoir, The Manhattan Madam, about running America's “most successful” prostitution ring. Never mind if “successful” in her time-honored profession used to mean staying out of jail. Davis, no slave to traditional values, sees herself as a trailblazing madam. And perhaps she is.
On her website, a beguiling pop-up called The Black Book Poll asks what Davis should do with her client list: “Give it to the media,” “Sell it & make my money back,” “Put it online for free,” or “Hide it & forever remain silent.”
Which made me wonder: what ever happened to the sacred cow of customer privacy that has helped define the demimonde of high-class hooking for so long?
Well, it's 2009. It's called “sex work” now. If it's just a job, a transaction like any other, does it still have to be a secret? What kind of discretion, if any, should a client now expect from a modern madam after his payment has been processed and his session has ended?
I put in a call to Natalie McLennan, author of The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, New York’s #1 Escort. Natalie worked in the industry for one fast, crazy year, faced felony charges in 2005, and spent 26 days in jail before returning to Montreal. She’s a 21st-century escort whose brief career was accelerated by the Internet, but her response when asked what Davis should do with her client list is surprisingly old school: a dainty gasp.
“Hide it, of course! Destroy it!” she says. “Why destroy everybody’s life? Does she feel abused? Were they bad to her?” Natalie admits she never got past her “honeymoon” period as an escort. Her year in the life sounds dizzying, but there is nothing dizzy about her vehement refusal to name names. When shopping her memoir to publishers, she says, she was routinely asked if she would name her clients, “but naming names wasn’t even an option.” As a memoirist, she says, “I wanted to be honest with myself, but I kept everybody else’s skeletons in the closet. I was discreet about people’s identities and personal details.”
A generational world away is Janice, a madam in her early seventies who never felt at home on the Internet. I wasn’t surprised by her reaction to the possibility of Davis revealing her list.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
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Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
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Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Can it be that someone in sex work does not indiscriminately say who their john was, because that meant they would then be exposed and they would then go to jail? But if they are already in jail, they have nothing to lose?
Same people who want truth and honesty from their government want their private life being kept secret? Their is a double standard here.
More glorification of professional sex--prostitution. The victims of the Spitzer's fall are prostitutes? Read no further! How did this person get access to this corner of the public marketplace of ideas? Who assigned her the the human interest whore beat?
There is something sick going on here. This is like the mass media representing casual drug use as harmless and acceptable socialization indulged in without consequences by likable characters. The drug and the prostitution industries can't buy better advertising.
The frequent cycling of such feature pieces about prostitution on these web pages can be seen as nothing less than condoning and promoting prostitution. Who do you think your readers are: Bill Clinton wannabes?
Give this talented writer some other beat with possible constructive benefits to society: Why not have her spend a week in the the New York City Library to write a piece on how Gottfried Leibniz's view of time as perceptual differed from Isaac Newton's materialistic view of time and how that might affect the current 30 plus year lack of progress in fundamental physics?
That might be boring--depending on how good a writer she is, but at least she won't be encouraging young women to think there is anything attractive about being a prostitute.
Civic virtue: it is a thing to strive for.
The only time I could see outing clients is if they actively worked to make prostitution illegal or pursued something else that was innately hypocritical. Someone like Spitzer who make life rougher for both escorts and their clients should be out'ed. Someone like Vitter who has been a strong advocate of "family values" (meaning not seeing prostitutes) deserve to be outed because of the total hypocrisy involved.
However, exposing other clients, including other public officials, is just something I couldn't do and live with myself.
Hey, Issywise ( the answer is NO, you're not).....
sex work is not drug addiction. If you want a diatribe on theoretical physics or math, go see Stephen Hawking.
He isn't as good looking as Tracy Quan, but if you are
into guys in wheelchairs..... and he has been married
more times than either Tracy, imho, or me.
Clients using "corporate accounts and corporate credit cards", that's another reason to name names, to expose such illegal and irresponsible use of corporate funds.
She should try to sell it in a book deal. The scumbags that she serviced were mis-using coporate funds. If no one cares to buy it, then put it on the internet for free. Lets face it this kind of work should be legalized anyway. I don't care who engages in these transactions, but I do care when they use funds that are not their own. That's criminal.
Issywise, why don't you just STOP READING HER BLOG, and you will be a happier person...this is The Daily Beast. Deal with it.
...and you may wanna read her bio for some background on why she writes about these matters.
Until the law treats the clients in the same way as the worker, I think its just fine for these women to let the beans out the bag.
If the workers livelihood is to be taken away, then the reputation of the client can go as well, thus their livelihood... especially when these guys are using corporate funds (in many cases) to pay.
to the Questions: "Am I willing to go to jail for 10 years to keep my client list in secrecy?". There has yet to be any evidence that exposing clients has stopped a criminal action against a worker or agency.
We don't go to jail because we refuse to expose our clients. We go to jail because our right to negotiate for our labor and work conditions are criminalize.
New York prostitutes would do well to use the spitzer case as the means to sue the state of NY for un equal enforcement/protection like they did in Rhode Island did back in the 1970's and won decriminalized indoor prostitution.
We obviously need a law for hookers providing and requiring what lawyers and doctors practice: hooker-client privilege.
Hey wake up everyone, why do you think guys go to hookers?
Call girls are in the business to make money. While confidentiality is a valuable commodity, so is gossip. You want confidentiality, pay for it. And pay more than the gossip mongers. Or face the consequences. Might be useful for a number of movers-and-shakers-types to keep their pants zipped and their privacy protected.
Just a thought....
ISSYWISE: There you go again with your constipated view of sexuality. Maybe other people aren't as repressed as you. Maybe they don't have sick perversions secretly hidden in the recesses of their minds that make them so guilty as to feel it necessary to admonish everyone who is at all interested in sex. And, some of us have quite a good time with casual drug use. Some of us see an 8ball shared with two or three of their favorite strippers as a great way to spend a saturday evening. Maybe you have the problem.
That being said. Why do we have to get the hooker chronicles every other week? This chick is a one show pony.
Kiss and tell? Only to make themselves famous? Hell no! I think Ms. Dupre has over stayed her time in the limelight. What is she famous for giving BJs? C'mon folks. Next she will be an expert commentator on sex and appearing on TV news shows. OMG!
PS This lady chose to be a pimp now she is pissed that all the Johns didn't get busted as well. It is like a drug bust; you don't bust the users, you bust the dealers. And anyone who would rat out her clientele because she is just pissed is scum. What is the saying? Snitches get Stiches?
I have a problem with people like this getting rich from being the low-life scumbags of society! And your "anniversary" only helps her put her back in the spotlight to cash in. So, STFU and let her 15 minutes of fame go away unrewarded!!!
The ethics of the profession seem to require confidentiality. But is this absolute, true in every situation? I'm not sure. Tracy Quan has done a masterful job in exploring the intricacies of "the business." Much more interesting than an article on Leibniz.
I don't know what I find harder to believe, this story or that a real little black book exists in the 21st century.
A person who still uses a paper book, regardless if it is black, pink or pokka dotted, or claims too, should be suspect and avoided like the plague.
Though it beggars belief, that anyone who wasn't using a device with password protection, really had an intent to protect privacy at all, it beggars belief even more. than Ms. Quan is writing an article about anything to do with discretion.
No wonder the absurdity of a little black book was not at issue at all, in this article.
To understand the meaning of propriety and discretion, one would need some common sense.
Of course, if a person was really being discreet, they would have no evidence, no case, no book, no list.
As far as I can see, these people collect info, so one day they can write a book, or sell the book, or sell the info, or get caught, with the info, to become an issue for a book or what have you based on the info.
I wouldn't blame them at all. But I do blame them for lying about it, and pretending that there was a serious attempt being made to successfully maintain discretion and decorum, when there couldn't have been.
Why have a list, if it wasn't to sell the fact you had a list long enough to make a book interesting.
Ask Ms. Quan what her claim to fame would be, she might say, being symmetrical and her books coming a close second.
I always hate when one of my teams goons gets involved in a scandal. that's why stupid politicians should stick to real issues. We have seen this pattern far too often:
Against Prostitution? You will be caught nailing a hooker.
Against gay marriage? You will be found waste deep in boys.
Against drugs? Turns out you're doing tons of coke.
Pro Life? Somehow, you'll be caught mid-abortion.
Let's stick to wars and the economy losers. Blago and Spitzer are definite dents in the Democratic name. Luckily the Republicans are always nine scandals ahead.
That is the hypocrisy, they go on and say this a victimless crime, in one breath, and in the other breath they drop names, lists, books, while flaunting their symmetrical features which I guess is the bait for the hook and the book.
Honestly, I can't believe the things we choose to make illegal in the first place. Then it's hard to square who pays for the crime & who doesn't. Personally, my biggest concern is after it is all said & done can we then leave people be. Case in point, Mr Spitzer authored a very interesting article on Slate but I heard no mention from anyone on Sunday Talk or anywhere else. This is the stuff we should be studying, debating, and enacting-NO More Pointless Arguments!http://www.slate.com/?id=2212534
I personally don't care if prostitutes keep lists or release names. Either one is fine with me.
What I am wondering about and waiting for is the spotlight to come off Spitzer and the girls and move onto the machinations and extraordinary lengths and rule stretching that the Republicans went to in order to SPY on Eliot Spitzer. When are we going to have that conversation, I wonder.
Thank you.
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