Read The Education of a Very Young Madam Online
Authors: Ma-Ling Lee
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Business, #Personal Memoirs
The Education of a Very Young Madam
2
The Education of a Very Young Madam
Ma - Lin Lee
with Christa Bourg
SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney
The events and people in this book are real. Only the names, including the author's, and some of the details have been changed.
Copyright © 2008 by John Boswell Management, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Scribner Hardcover edition January 2009
scribner
and design are trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or
[email protected]
.
DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBINC
Text set in Granjon
Manufactured in the United States of America
13579 10 8642
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008026342
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8975-7 ISBN-MM) 7452-8975-7
I've said there is no loyalty in money but you are the one exception. Through all the trials and tribulations,
I found the most exceptional soul in you and will love, appreciate, and cherish you forever.
You are my best friend, my only family, and the most beautiful person I have ever encountered.
No matter what life has in store for us, just know that you will forever remain in my heart.
6
The Education of a Very Young Madam
Ma-Ling Lee
with Christa Bourg
SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney
The events and people in this book are real. Only the names, including the author's, and some of the details have been changed.
Copyright © 2008 by John Boswell Management, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Scribner Hardcover edition January 2009
scribner
and design are trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or
[email protected]
.
DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBINC
Text set in Granjon
Manufactured in the United States of America
13579 10 8642
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008026342
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8975-7 ISBN-MM) 7452-8975-7
I've said there is no loyalty in money but you are the one exception. Through all the trials and tribulations,
I found the most exceptional soul in you and will love, appreciate, and cherish you forever.
You are my best friend, my only family, and the most beautiful person I have ever encountered.
No matter what life has in store for us, just know that you will forever remain in my heart.
10
Contents
12
The Education of a Very Young Madam
14
Prologue
It was summertime and I wanted to get out ofNew Jersey. A circuit seemed like the perfect way to do it. I'd thought about starting my own circuit for a long time, a sort of traveling ho show where I'd set up business in a city temporarily, advertise a few places, build up a local client list, and then move on to the next location before things got too hot. I'd never tried it before because it's too much work to handle on my own, but with my friend and new partner, Zoe, along to help book appointments and take most of the calls, I knew we could pull it off. And we did. We traveled all over the country, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with another girl or even two or three meeting us in places like D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Boston. And we made some serious cash that summer.
It was in Boston where my luck took a bad turn. Zoe and I had been riding high and managed to save more than $20,000 in cash, and that's after we went on a serious shopping spree. Newbury Street in Boston is one of my favorite places to shop in the whole world, and I have a serious designer shoe habit. Zoe, on the other hand, was not only a cheap and clueless ho when she started working for me, she dressed like one too. I had been slowly teaching her the difference between Prada and Payless, and the clients were beginning to notice the change.
We stayed in one upscale hotel while Zoe worked out of another one nearby. At the end of the week, however, I told Zoe to just use our room for her appointments since I wasn't going to be there. I planned to drive to New York to spend the weekend with a guy I had just started seeing. Scorpio, as he called himself, was a dancer— my favorite type of man—and I was really into him. Fully expecting to return a couple of days later, I packed up only a few clothes to bring with me. I left the rest of my belongings, including my computer, our stash of cash, and even my gun, behind with Zoe.
I got into New York Friday night and had a great time with Scorpio. On Saturday morning I woke up late and called Zoe's room just to check on her. A man answered the phone.
"Who's this?" I demanded, figuring Zoe had booked an early client who was cheeky enough to answer the phone. Either that or she'd gone out the night before with some friends and met someone.
"This is Officer Dan of the Boston Police Department. Who's this?" the man demanded right back.
I hung up the phone and freaked out.
CHAPTER I
A Very Young Madam
N
ow's probably the time to tell you, I'm a madam. I run an upscale escort agency that caters to professional clientele in suburban New Jersey. In fact, by most small business standards, I've been very successful. With up to ten girls working for me at a time, my agency generates up to $40,000 in income each week, mostly in cash.
When people ask, I tell them I'm in the service industry or in marketing, and that's really pretty close to the truth. Girlfriend Experience (GFE for short), which is one of the names my agency goes by, is about more than just sex. It's about customer satisfaction, about creating a pleasurable experience for our clients.
We are no wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of organization. My girls treat clients as if they are on the best date of their lives. They use videos and mood lighting, they wear lingerie, they ask about your fantasies. In the employee handbook that I give to all of my "entertainers," I offer a dozen different suggestions on ways they can personalize each encounter. That's right, we have an employee handbook, just like any other business, which should indicate to you that I am serious about the way I do things. It lays out what my girls are responsible for (paying for their own travel arrangements, being on time for appointments) and what's expected of them (treating customers with respect, cleaning up their hotel rooms before the next client arrives). It also offers some hints and tips about how to deliver truly exceptional service, from what to wear, to what kinds of background music are appropriate, to how to create a seductive atmosphere that will please any client.
Of course, what we're offering is a sure-thing date, which adds to the appeal. But my "sure things" are not always as sure as you might think. I book all the appointments, but every one of my girls has absolute veto power. If someone shows up at the door and turns a girl off in any way, for any reason—she gets a bad vibe or the guy scares her or he's too old or too drunk or even too black (I have one girl who is half black herself but will only do white guys...go figure)—then I let her off the hook without any questions. It's her life and her body, and she should be able to say no whenever she wants to.
When that kind of thing happens, I have to scramble to make the rejected guy feel better. We're a customer-service-oriented organization after all. I've found that the best thing to do in situations like these is to humble myself. I call the guy up and say, "I'm so sorry, honey, the girl just has some issues," which is not too hard to believe since most girls in this business have some issues. Then I say, "I should have known better. Let me make it up to you. Your next appointment is on me." (Or possibly just half price, depending on how mad he is.)
That always works. I've never had a guy say no to a freebie.
Girls in this business come in all sorts—different races, ages, economic backgrounds, religious affiliations, even education levels. Some are married; some aren't. Some have kids; some don't. Some have been married multiple times and have kids with multiple guys. They do this work for all sorts of reasons too—for money, for drugs, to get back at someone in their lives, to assert their independence, because they like it, because they don't like themselves—but one thing they seem to have in common is that they are all a little (or sometimes a lot) fucked up in the head.
One of my girls, for example, got stuck in Manhattan once and was looking for a way back to New Jersey. My driver was in the city and I didn't need him, so I called her up and said, "Why don't you just go back with my assistant?" She was really appreciative on the phone, but the next time I talked to her, she was furious with me.
"Why would you recommend that guy to me?" she screamed. "He was such a lousy lay. It was one of the worst nights of my life!"
"You slept with him?" I asked her. I was stunned. He was only nineteen, a reliable driver but kind of a tool, so I didn't understand why she'd do that.
"Of course I did. You told me to."
"I was only suggesting you get a ride with the guy, not that you actually ride him!" I said. "What were you thinking?"
"Oh," she replied, much more calmly now, "that makes more sense. I couldn't understand why you'd give me such bad advice about something like that. I thought maybe you were mad at me."
Who else but a ho would think I was offering her anything other than transportation? The girls I work with are even more likely to be nuts than your average hooker because I hire only professionals, which means they've been doing this for a while—no first-timers or girls who just want to see what it's like. Maybe it's not their exclusive profession—I've had housewives, students, artists ... lots of women who do it only part-time—but none of the women who work for me are new to this. If they were, I wouldn't hire them, because I want only girls who know how to give good service.
A business like mine that offers high-end service didn't even exist in this corner of the world until I got here. When I first came to New Jersey, the highest price anyone paid for a girl was around $175 an hour. Nobody charged anything close to what I do now—typically $300 to $350 for an hour or less—because they never would have gotten away with it. The agencies were all using untrained girls and booking them into seedy motels in bad neighborhoods. It wasn't that hard for me to get customers when I moved here, especially the kinds of regular, stable, upscale customers I wanted.
There is plenty of money in New Jersey, so that was never the problem. I can only assume that the kind of agency I run didn't exist then because no one knew how to run one. (Of course, now that I've had a successful agency for several years, copycats have begun to pop up all over the place.) I did very simple things to distinguish myself, like hire professionals who are experienced and know how to give quality care. I use only three-star or higher hotels, which, ironically, are often cheaper than those seedy motels when booked through discount Internet sites. It wasn't brain surgery, but still, customer service, discretion, and reliability are all qualities that can be difficult to come by in this business, and clients appreciate them. They also happily pay more for them. In fact, if you devalue your girls by offering discounted rates, it can take some of the thrill out of the whole experience for the client (not to mention the fact that girls, just like employees of any kind of business, won't work as hard if they're being paid subpar wages). A guy wants to feel like he's paying for something special, and, obviously, lessening the thrill is the last thing I want to do.