Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (35 page)

Table 8.3 shows a dramatic difference in setting where workers and clients meet, or more precisely where workers encountered their last client. While the street prostitutes’ initial contact with the customer began on the street, most of their sexual interactions occurred in cars or hotel rooms. Virtually none of the call girls reported “car dates,” in contrast to roughly one-third of the street prostitutes. Contrary to the stereotype of a call girl arriving at an out-of-towner’s hotel room, only one in six call girls saw her last client in a hotel; by contrast, more than one-third of the street prostitutes saw the last client in the client’s hotel room. Nearly two-thirds of call girls’ last interactions took place in the privacy and familiarity of either her home or the client’s. Surrounded by personal artifacts, the setting is likely to be pleasant and clean, perhaps even luxurious. Equally important as the lack of impersonality in the setting is the fact that sex on regular dates typically occurs in someone’s home, so the setting for intimacy with a call girl is often more like that of noncommercial intimate interaction than a commercial one. By contrast, hardly any street prostitutes (2%) saw their last customer in the workers’ home.

Table 8.3 also shows a dramatic difference in the amount of time spent with the client. Although close to one-quarter of the call girls spent less than a full hour with their last client, compared to more than half of street prostitutes, only one in 17 call girls spent less than 15 minutes, compared to one in three street prostitutes. One in five call girls had spent 5 or more hours with the last client, much as one might on a regular date. One in 10 street prostitutes spent that much time with her last client.

According to information offered by some of the call girls we interviewed, long “dates” sometimes include having lunch or dinner together, much like a regular date. Our informants say that some women charge for each hour of their time—even for nonsexual activities—whereas others cultivate the fantasy of wanting to be in a man’s company by not charging for time spent
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TA B L E 8 . 3 C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S O F L A S T T R A N S A C T I O N

S T R E E T C L I E N T S

C A L L G I R L C L I E N T S

( N = 9 9 8 ) ( % )

( N = 8 3 ) ( % )

Where interaction with client

last took place

Your home

2

30

His home

10

33

His hotel/motel

38

16

Your hotel/motel

9

0

Car or limo

32

2

Other

8

19

How much time spent with last client

Less than hour

56

23

(less than 15 minutes)

(32)

(6)

One hour

19

38

2–4 hours

16

19

5 or more hours

10

20

Note
: Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

dining. Some regular clients even get “sleepover” privileges, which accounts for some call girls’ reports of long hours for their last interaction.

As stated, the median cost of an encounter with a call girl was $200, nearly seven times the median of $30 spent on a street prostitute. In a society that believes “you get what you pay for,” it can be assumed that clients who spend more expect to get more time and services. Answers to our survey item about whether the last client gave the woman anything else besides money or drugs, either as a gift or as part of her payment, 21% of the call girls got something material, but so did 14% of the street prostitutes. The gifts most frequently reported by call girls were jewelry (one let her clients know her preference for antique jewelry), perfume, flowers, and champagne—the type of gifts a man might give to a girlfriend or wife. When street prostitutes reported receipt of something material, it was most often food, cigarettes, or alcohol, but a few reported receiving jewelry or flowers.

Table 8.4 shows that the use of drugs and alcohol often precedes or occurs during the interaction with a client. Sharing the same substance while together is an activity typical of real dates. “Partying together”—at least in terms of sharing alcohol—is more frequent with call girls than street prostitutes, yet it characterizes only a minority of interactions. Also, many more street prostitutes than call girls used drugs or alcohol prior to seeing their last client.

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TA B L E 8 . 4 D R U G A N D A L C O H O L C O N S U M P T I O N W I T H L A S T C L I E N T

S T R E E T C L I E N T S

C A L L G I R L C L I E N T S

( N = 9 9 8 ) ( % )

( N = 8 3 ) ( % )

Woman consumed substance before interaction

Alcohol

39

21

Drugs

51

6

Alcohol/drugs shared with last client

Alcohol

7

18

Drugs

8

4

Both

5

4

Table 8.5 highlights responses from a list of 20 possible activities engaged in with the last client. Respondents were shown a card listing sex acts and asked to indicate
all acts
they did during their last encounter. Table 8.5 shows the most common sexual activities performed, whether unusual sexual requests were granted, and the prevalence of sex acts performed on the prostitute’s genitals, as well as nonsexual activities that arguably sustain a feeling of intimacy.

The most common sexual activities are also considered among the most intimate sexual activities—vaginal intercourse and fellatio (oral sex performed on the male). These acts were the ones most common for both call girls and street prostitutes. Vaginal intercourse was more common with call girls, but call girls also supplied more manual stimulation of the client’s genitals—

possibly instead of oral or vaginal sex, but more likely in combination with other acts. About two-thirds of both the call girls (64%) and the street workers (68%) reported that they had used a condom with their last client. Greater differences in this aspect of sexual risk taking emerge when we examine activities with
all
clients in the week prior to our interview; 18% of call girls, compared to 39% of street workers, reported vaginal sex without a condom in the previous week.

The incidence of anal intercourse, domination fantasies (B&D, i.e.,

“bondage and discipline”), and group sex is very low in both samples, although more frequent with call girls. The low incidence of these acts (see Table 8.5) may dispel one myth about why men use prostitutes. Kinsey suggested that men go to prostitutes to obtain types of sexual activity that they cannot get elsewhere, and his examples included oral sex, sadomasochism, fetishes, and group sex.12 Letting 732 male clients explain their own motives, Winick found that when men said a prostitute “gives me something different”

or “what I want,” they were mostly referring to a variation in body type from
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TA B L E 8 . 5 A C T S E N G A G E D I N W I T H L A S T C L I E N T

S T R E E T C L I E N T S

C A L L G I R L C L I E N T S

( N = 9 9 8 ) ( % )

( N = 8 3 ) ( % )

Give him “hand job”

7

26

Give him oral sex

57

45

Vaginal intercourse

51

66

Anal intercourse

0

1

Domination/B&D

0

8

Two or more sex workers together

1

7

Touch woman’s genitals

4

26

Give her oral sex

4

17

Nonsexual massage

2

30

Conversation

5

51

Caress, kiss, and hug

3

42

their regular sex partner rather than a variation in sex acts.13 More recent surveys of clients confirm that most clients seek vaginal and oral sex, rather than unusual variants of sex act.14 Commenting on what men ask for (not necessarily what they get), some women characterized requests as “normal” or

“straight” sex.

Clients who purchase sex acts may or may not engage in acts intended to arouse the female partner. While some men’s own arousal is heightened by stimulating a woman’s genitals orally or manually, another motive for these acts may be to give pleasure and not just receive it. When we look at sex acts performed on the female partner, the differences between samples are strong.

Over one-quarter (26%) of call girls had their genitals touched by the client, compared to only 4% of street workers, while customers performed oral sex on 17% of the call girls but only 4% of the street prostitutes.

The comparison to the frequency of cunnilingus in noncommercial encounters is interesting. In the recent national probability study reported by University of Chicago researchers, 17% of the married women surveyed reported that they had received oral sex during their last sexual event with their husbands.15 In other words, this sample of call girls was just as likely as to receive oral sex from clients as wives were from their husbands.

When we focus on the intimacies of nonsexual massage, conversation, caressing, kissing, and hugging, the differences are even stronger. Nonsexual massage performed on the client is done to relax and arouse him, and this sensual touch adds to the sense of intimacy of the encounter; 30% of call girls’

clients received this personal service compared to only 2% of street workers’

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JANET LEVER AND DEANNE DOLNICK

clients (the third who were in a car were obviously limited, but two-thirds had the same spatial opportunities of most call girls). A few call girls explained how the massage is as much for their sake as the man’s because it fills time so the client thinks he got a lot for the fee. One call girl said: “If we jumped right into sex and he came in 5 minutes, he’d want to come again for his $200.”

For most women intimacy includes talk—small talk and deep talk—and research on gender and marital relationships indicates that many men resist this aspect of intimacy.16 But some men want more talk, too. A poll found that 16% of married men said they were dissatisfied with “the amount of time

[they and their] partner spend talking openly about things that are on your mind.”17

Whether clients get and give verbal intimacy in the form of self-disclosure or listening to the other’s disclosures in their noncommercial relationships is not known, but talk
is
included in what most men get in the situation of limited reciprocity with a call girl. Half of the last clients got conversation as part of their interaction with a call girl, compared to only one in 20 on the street. The men’s work was the most common topic discussed with the four women who kept post-session diaries, and they claimed it was discussed in great detail. In contrast, a primary complaint of the divorced wives studied by Riessman was that their ex-husbands had refused to relate what goes on in their work world.18 The diaries revealed that the clients also discussed their children and politics; one talked about his wife and bad marriage. One informant believed she created a “safe space” for her clients, many of whom alleviated their insecurities by asking about the adequacy of their penis size or asking advice about their sexual approach with women, presuming a professional has expertise on these subjects.

Several call girls described having at least one client who wanted only to talk, or to be held. One woman told of holding a client who cried for his entire hour. Another described a new client who cried during his screening interview when he revealed that his wife had left him a year before. Several call girls recognized a parallel between their work and the psychotherapist’s; in fact, seeing oneself as a type of therapist is one source of pride for some call girls.

Although most call girls say that they do not like to kiss clients, and that they keep “necking” to a minimum with other diversionary tactics, 42%

reported that they did “kiss, caress, and hug” their last client, compared to only 3% of street prostitutes. The literature on street prostitutes consistently shows that they avoid kissing precisely because they perceive it as “too intimate” or as a feature of romance. Kissing is more difficult for call girls to avoid. As one call girl explained: “The street women are just selling sex, they don’t have to play the games we do. We make believe we want to be with the
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CALL GIRLS AND STREET PROSTITUTES: SELLING SEX AND INTIMACY

guy, and if you want to be with him, then you’d want to kiss him, right? Guys expect a lot for a lot of money.” Another call girl stated, “The majority of my clients want to hold you really tight—I don’t know if that’s a sexual or emotional need—they just want to feel close to someone.”

C O N C L U S I O N

We hypothesized that call girls provide greater emotional services to clients than street prostitutes. In particular, clients expect call girls to create at least the illusion of intimacy in the exchange. The data culled from the L.A.

Women’s Health Study show that call girls are more likely to establish ongoing relationships with regular clients (regardless of their marital status), and some of these relationships last for years. Interactions with call girls are far more likely to take place in settings that are personal, and these settings seem conducive to conversation and affectionate touching as well as sex acts.

Call girls are more likely to have their own genitals touched or to receive oral sex, akin to normal intimate relationships, although most clients are more focused on receiving than reciprocating sexual pleasure.

It seems that call girls in effect are selling increments of their time, more typically measured in hours than in minutes, while street prostitutes offer only as much time as needed for the particular sex act agreed on. Call girls’ higher prices could be justified by access to cleaner, safer, more comfortable, and more private environments as well as more attractive sex partners, but, in addition to all those advantages, male clients have come to expect more affection and intimacy as well as sex. Moreover, because there is more time, greater familiarity can develop and there is opportunity to do more “ordinary” things together, such as sharing a meal or drinks.