Sex companionship is far from free
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Sex and companionship in the U.S. can be far from free.
Whether a gentleman picks up the tab on a date, puts a nice rock on the finger of his new trophy wife, tips a stripper for a lap dance, or hires a prostitute to join him for the night, he's paying a price for companionship. Of course, if you take a big risk, you could pay the price with your career, like former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, who had engaged the services of a prostitute.
Reporter and author Anna David dove into the topic of paying for sexual services in L.A. for a Details magazine piece in 2004 and recently fictionalized her research for her new novel “Bought.” The novel follows a gorgeous, intelligent and manipulative woman named Jessica who trades sex for goods rather than hard cash.
“Basically, what I did was I took what I'd observed from 10 years of living in L.A., and then I combined it with the information that I'd gleaned as a reporter,” David said. “It's sort of a satire of dating in L.A.”
210SA chatted with David about her journalistic research and her fictionalization of prostitution in L.A.
You reported on the subject of illegal prostitution long before you wrote the fiction novel “Bought.” How did you get interested in the subject?
I've been a journalist for about 10 years. I was doing a story for Details magazine about crystal meth use in Hollywood, and somebody that I was interviewing for that piece, it was one of the Hollywood bigwigs, said, “The story you should really be doing is about high-class prostitution in Hollywood.” And then I ended up spending about six months infiltrating this world that I knew nothing about and discovered these exploitative madams and these people in the businesses who had been busted and were cooperating with the FBI. I ended up gathering all this information, and the story was just a 1,200 word magazine story. And I never ended up using most of the interesting information I'd learned, so I decided to fictionalize it and make it into a novel.
A lot of the characters in your book are variations on the typical prostitute. They trade sex for goods, such as expensive handbags. How close is that practice to reality?
The girls I was interviewing (for the magazine story), they were strictly money. They were cash. I know that, obviously, (trading sex for goods and services) goes on. I know a girl in L.A. who was always being flown everywhere. She was in the south of France and then she was in Japan. And it's always on some rich dude's dime. I sort of took that kind of thing and made it into a business. ... Since the book came out, I found out about SeekingArrangement.com. I've since talked to a lot of the girls from there. It's not quite what I made up in the book, either. They don't have contracts, and it's not a well-rounded, well-thought-out situation. But, what they're doing is way more in the vein of what I wrote about.
What about the main character, the highly educated, über-seductive, semi-prostitute named Jessica? How did you develop her character?
With the Jessica character, I wanted to create this character that is incredibly captivating and brilliant and well-educated and all of these qualities that I did not see in any of the girls that I interviewed for the Details piece. And since the book came out, I met Brooke Taylor. And, no, she didn't go to Yale. But she is smart and interesting and a hell of a lot sweeter than Jessica and all of these things that I was like, “Oh, please. This only exists in my mind, this incredibly thoughtful, well-read, articulate prostitute.” Guess what? I met someone who is that.
What types of clients are purchasing these services?
I expected when I got that list of clients for it to be famous men, Charlie Sheen types. It was all these men, and they were all very Googleable. But they were all, like, the biggest car dealer in Iowa or a big attorney in Idaho. They were very successful men who stayed out of the news.
What was the price range for the types of services you researched?
I never saw any checks, so this is all based on what people were telling me. But they were outlandish, crazy numbers. There were girls who were supposedly getting up to $100,000 a night. Those were the girls who were “famous.” They were porn stars and Playmates and Penthouse Pets. It wasn’t anything they were doing. It was who they were that was getting them all that money. But they would tell me as little as $5,000. ... The average was $10,000 that I heard.
From your research on the topic, are more women turning to this as a source of income since the economic downturn began?
I definitely have heard that. It certainly makes sense. I’ve heard anecdotally about women losing finance jobs or women needing to contribute to family income because their husbands lost their job. ... But the kind of men that are paying over $10,000 a night, these are not men that are affected particularly by the economy.
Do you find college students putting themselves through school doing this?
That was definitely the vibe I got from SeekingArrangement.com, and I know that's what that site targets. ... It was different than the girls I talked to for the Details story who were going to be in the sex business for the rest of their lives. The girls from SeekingArrangement.com, I talked to one who had a law degree from an Ivy League school. And most of them talked about wanting to fall in love with their benefactor.
Where do you draw the line between companionship and prostitution?
I think it’s a really hard line to draw. Everyone’s mind and level of denial works differently. I don’t think any of it is a moral choice. ... It’s how you were raised. Did you get the message that you need to find a man to support you, or did you get the message from your parents that you were supposed to go out and pave your own way? The messages I got were very confusing. It was sort of like, you need to go out and pave your own way, but it would sure be great if you could marry a doctor or a lawyer. I don’t fault any women for making these choices because it’s a very confusing thing to navigate.
Jennifer Lloyd | 210SA
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