Love for Rent

Well, Charley, here you are. Miami Beach, at last. You've worked on your tan. You've played the horses and the dogs. You've watched jai alai. You've made your calls and made your deals. You've played around with boats and water skis and tennis rackets and golf clubs. But now it's time to get something to eat, have some drinks, listen to some sounds, parade around in your fancy threads, boogie, rap, swallow some smoke, cruise a little and then--certainly by then it will be time to get laid.

But there wasn't anything interesting at those convention meetings. Those committee sessions didn't turn up anything. Big Daddy's. The Boom-Boom Room. Four twats at a table, giggling and eyeballing around. Nine ball-bearing characters lined up at every bar, pretending to be unconcerned, aloof, above and beyond it all. Nobody notices those scrapes and scars on the front of the bar where those secret hard-ons have been chipping away for years.

So you flip through one of those giveaway magazines. We can't speak for all of them, but some will promise you your very own personal pick of dozens of girls: Oriental and subservient; sexy and daring; multilingual or homegrown; sophisticated or country. There are quickie dates. There are branch offices. If you are looking for a hot investment, you can even pick up a franchise.

Models. Guides. Hospitality. Twenty-four-hour service. Master Charge. Carte Blanche. Members of the Chamber of Commerce. Jazzed-up logos with business addresses. Do it now. Telephone numbers just waiting for your fingers.

So call one. The voice will be sweet and seductive, enough to give you an instant electronic erection. No regional accent. Tones carefully modulated. Diction perfect. Inquire about renting a date. Don't use any cornball code phrases, like: "Is the lady liberal?" Don't worry. The odds are pretty good that she's liberal. The going rate is quoted at about $45 for four hours. If you agree and if she doesn't hang up on you immediately because you're a creep or a perv, she will check to see what girls are available. Asking for your age, your business, your home town and what type of woman you prefer, she promises to call you right back and takes your name, hotel and room number.

Smoke a cigarette. Have a drink. Understand that they are checking you out. Several times a day they get calls from phonies. So wait. The phone rings. Mr. Charles Dork? Yes. OK. There are several girls available. Discuss the matter. Make your decision. It is then explained that a collector will arrive in a half hour for the fee. Smoke. Wait. Knock-knock. Here's a big, beefy guy in his 50s with flat feet, shortness of breath and a beeper on his belt. You pay him. He may try to wheedle you for a ten-dollar tip, explaining that he can see to it that you get something extra-special. He may also hit you for a five-dollar service charge because it is after ten o'clock. He may also want a four-dollar "sales tax." He calls in. You are OK.

Shortly afterward, the phone rings. The girl is downstairs in the lobby. And from now on, several things can happen. If she is bold, she may come right up, knock on the door, size you up at a glance, proposition you and then, boom-boom. You're in. But sex is not part of the original fee. It comes extra. The highest asking price is $200, the lowest, $50. Par is about $100.

If the girl is smart, she will assume you are a cop, no matter what you look like, no matter what you say. She will ask for a personal I.D. She will make you sign a simple contract, using whatever name you choose. You agree to behave like a gentleman; no excessive alcohol, no public embarrassment, no rough stuff; nice, legal and no entrapment intended. If you don't conduct yourself properly, the date is off. There are no refunds.

The girl will call the agency and say the date is on. You can take her out to dinner, dancing, drinking or whatever. The usual minimum is a few drinks at the bar as a warm-up. And then, at your option, the date is over. She calls the agency and tells them. You are satisfied and the agency has earned its fee. You are so satisfied that you are willing to give her a personal tip. Like, say, $100.

And now that you are both legally unencumbered and unemployed, you are perfectly free, as consenting adults acting in private, to go on up to your room and fuck.

•

Bonnie Joy is her trick name. She likes to use Ms. and her favorite words are lady and gentleman. Her business card lists her occupation as public relations. Her hair is dyed auburn, her body is thin, her face made up. She wears no bra but does wear very long fake fingernails that are silver with pink dots. Resentful of being called a girl, she insists with modulated sultry tones, "I am a woman." Only when she relaxes does she get tough and pushy, and then the brittleness of her Bronx accent comes out. Very easily, she admits to being 34. She has been in the business about a year.

Although Bonnie hides many of the facts of her background, she admits others quite candidly. She describes four of her personal selves--the mother; the housewife with teenaged kids, completely involved with her neighbors, upset by all the violence in the current movies; the escort who goes artfully passive to please her clients; and "me," the woman with the temper she never controls, the individual concerned about her personal freedom, who doesn't want responsibility but could live with a man as long as she could remain independent.

What Bonnie does not tell is that her husband. Frank, operates the escort service she works for. They started out as swingers. After moving to Miami, Bonnie worked at all the other dating outfits then in business until they set up for themselves. She admits she has been bisexual with other couples but never with a single woman. She rolls her eyes nervously as she says it.

Bonnie's children think she works for a dancing school and goes to dances every night where she sells lesson contracts. This explains the phone calls, dressing up and going out, the part-time nature of her work. She never takes men to the apartment and is always home before midnight.

The escort service closes at ten o'clock. Frank and Bonnie believe that anyone who calls after that must be either a drunk or a loser. In spite of the slump in business because of the depression and the lack of tourists, they run a very strict operation. Their women must be reliable and careful. They want no hookers. The women must be either separated or widowed and must have children. Attractive and intelligent, not over 35, they can be zaftig but not fat. They have to be smart. The cops are always playing undercover games--trying to get them to agree to sex for a specified price or to accept a tip after the act itself. In the past year, Bonnie has avoided five traps.

Most of the escort agencies claim to have large selections but, in fact, few have more than six to eight women working at any one time. They have big picture albums, and when a guy picks one who has long since gone, they will say she is not available that night. Or they will try to send a similar type and hope the guy doesn't notice. Or they will send whoever is handy and hope that a smile and a sweet apology will be sufficiently distracting.

Frank and Bonnie's service has five women and never advertises for replacements, all their recruits being walk-ins. Recently, a housewife called from Chicago. She wanted to get away from the bad weather. And not long ago, two of their friends came down for a vacation. When told about their business, they got very excited. The wife had had a lifelong fantasy about being a hooker, so they sent her out on a $60 date. She was scared and turned on and trembling all at once. But she did it. Her husband was very proud of her. He hadn't thought she'd have the guts.

Bonnie won't go to the rougher neighborhoods, but the danger is greatly exaggerated. Only once did she have trouble. That was with a mean drunk who hurt her arm. She took a canister of Mace out of her purse, sprayed him in the face and left. But each trick is an adventure, with all the hopes and stimulations of the ultimate blind date. Two thirds of her customers are in their 20s and they really dig an older lady of experience. One of her regulars is only 18. She sees him once a month and gives him lessons. He feels like a superman when she leaves.

But it's all an act. Most guys are very straight and not very good in bed. They mean well; it's just that they're not very skillful. Bonnie has sex with 90 percent of her clients. About two percent want only a straight date, for the companionship. And eight percent are rejects.

•

There is a high mortality rate among escort services. The local papers describe it as a $250,000-a-year business; but it's not. When the new Yellow Pages comes out, there is always a different line-up. A new name will appear in the papers, last a couple of weeks and then disappear; not busted, just broke.

J and J Escort was located near the airport in a small office building that looks like an abandoned motel. A voice on the phone says it went out of business a couple of months ago. At the Elite Introduction Service, a child's voice says: "My mother will be back tomorrow." The (continued on page 192)Love for Rent(continued pom page 82) telephone of Where The Elite Meet is no longer in service. Neither is that of Special Escorts. Supergirls used to carry their own beepers. But there was a bust and they moved out. Rent-A-Gent never got off the ground. There are no good gigolos anymore. If there were, rich ladies would offer to keep them and they would disappear in a flash.

Rent-A-Bird has been around since 1968. It claims to have 150 girls. It also claims to have invented the business and says everyone else is an imitator. Alan Budd has a big belly and a bald head. He wears a bright-blue jacket, an expensive watch and ring. He carries a briefcase with a portfolio of clippings all sealed in plastic. As he puffs on his cigar, he discusses his appearances on TV, having been interviewed by Phil Donahue and been on To Tell the Truth and two of his girls having been on the David Susskind show. Neat and well organized, a teetotaler, straight, square and all business, Budd displays his clips, brochures, notices and items from national magazines, local newspapers, travel guides and even The New York Times.

Rent-A-Bird charges $55 for five hours and ten dollars per hour overtime. A free car is thrown in. For 24 hours, the rate drops to $185. There are birds who travel to Europe for as long as a month. The oldest bird is in her 40s. Rent-A-Bird has one mother-daughter team and can supply women who speak any of 14 languages, including Czech and Chinese.

Over the years, the company has weeded out about eight birds who have behaved improperly. Some of the birds get as many as six dates a week, sometimes several in one day, but they say their business is absolutely straight. They use a collector who interviews the client and collects the fee. They do not use a photo book. Budd refuses to discuss the fees paid to his birds or any other business details, but he does have plans to sell franchises nationwide as well as overseas.

Birds must be at least 20. The ideal age is between 27 and 32. They must be dependable, cooperative and intelligent. Beauty standards are not restrictive, but personality is a must. Only the young clients insist on beauty. Excess weight is a taboo. Rent-A-Bird's clients have included an Arab sheik, a former Nazi and a surviving ex--kamikaze pilot. Several priests and one rabbi have hired birds for entertaining and as shopping guides. Sometimes birds are engaged to accompany businessmen's wives or to give solace and advice.

•

Debbie's father was a high Government official. Debbie graduated from an Eastern college at the top of her class and worked with the Peace Corps for two years. She is now 32 and a widow. She had wanted to be an actress, but her father wouldn't permit it. Instead, she became a legal secretary.

Debbie is attractive and very bright. She uses pot, and cocaine if it's available, and she enjoys sex very much. But she tends to remain cool with her clients, especially if they are older. Occasionally, she really gets turned on. She turns down about five percent of her dates.

When she was 29, Debbie answered an ad in the paper and began to hire out for $20. For eight months she was offered money for sex but always refused. Then she met a guy she liked enough. The next morning, he gave her $50. That did it. She quit her job and began living the life of a high-class callgirl.

A complete date with Debbie will cost from $250 to $300. And she is getting into the administration end of it and expects to manage a service someday. She predicts that the escort business will eventually be totally accepted, though right now it is found only in cities that are on the social frontier: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Miami.

Debbie has had her share of experiences. Once she went to a party at the Sheraton Four Ambassadors with four other girls. It was a very discreet orgy with some Caracas millionaires. One by one, the girls were taken into the kitchen for a private conference. A man offered them $350 to make it with a 40-year-old woman, the daughter of the premier of a South American country who had always had fantasies of a lesbian scene. Debbie stayed. So did another girl.

She was not turned on by it, but the money enticed her and an abundance of coke helped her over the bumps. The male friend became the director, calling all the shots and the angles as the woman went into a passive ecstasy, smothered by the two awkward but willing, nude, perspiring and very high escort girls.

•

Sunshine Girls is run by Steve Accardi, who is the Mr. Miami of the escort services. A former lifeguard, clown diver and high diver, he is six feet tall and 198 pounds of tanned muscle. He wears expensive casual clothes. He has a thick waxed mustache, his curly brown hair erect in a full natural. He is half Jewish and half Sicilian. He tools around town in his silver Corvette and plays tennis every day at the Jockey Club, where he also wheels and deals. At night he is at The Executive Club, a reported hangout for the heavies of the crime families, or at Marcella's, Cye's Rivergate or the Old Forge. Steve is 24. He works four hours a day. He expects to retire at 30.

Accardi lives in a small house on a quiet, modest street. His buddy, a lifeguard, lives there off and on. Lois and Tammy were staying there for a while. People--high, low, lightweight, heavy--come and go.

The phone rings. Steve signals to Lois, who immediately turns to get dressed. He yells out the name of the hotel and the room number and turns his attention back to the speeding dude with the gold chains around his neck, shirt open, eyes flashing, the guy with the tight friends in Hollywood, with the house in Jamaica, the Rolls-Royce with the English tags parked outside, the guy who knows everybody in Miami, who ran the only topless joint in town for five years, who wholesales grass, who owns a chain of swinging boutiques.

Tammy entwines herself around his neck. She pours wine. She poses and smiles. She stands in front of a lamp that illuminates her nude flesh under the see-through dress, outlining the subtle curves and planes of her lithe 19-year-old body and clearly revealing that sweetly petite, kinky little bush between her gentle thighs. Tammy would like very much to be kept by Mr. Speedy, who is eternally grateful to Steve for having found him this far-out, dynamite chick. For an hour and a half, he makes phone calls to hotel owners and restaurateurs, forcing them to take ads in Accardi's tourist magazine, bragging about those fantastic "40" Sunshine Girls, bragging about Tammy, giving and taking the latest in gossip. "Man. What can I do for you? What do you want? You did me a solid. I gotta do you one."

Accardi has a girl who covers the office during the day. He goes in about six o'clock. As he talks, he throws darts at a target on the wall, answers the phone, throws his bare, muscled legs up onto the desk. He fell into this business by accident, taking it over from a friend. He's very sensitive about the fact that people might think he is some kind of pimp. But he's bored with it all. It's too slow and too small. He feels he is doing all right, considering his age, but he wants to turn the business over to Debbie and let her run it while he goes on to other things: an interest in a construction outfit that has organized connections, partnership in a tennis/night club, a piece of a modeling school. He wants to move things, to build, to angle and tangle.

The phone rings. Accardi listens to the complaints and then explains that he has nothing to do with the date itself. That's a private matter. Harry is up in his room. Patty is down at the bar. "Tell her to call me." She does. Firmly but with patient exasperation, he tries to explain to Patty how to be Oriental and nice to the clients. He reminds her that she has this trouble on every date.

All the other escort services are starving, says Accardi. He himself grosses about $1500 per week. He gets no kickback from the girls. That would be illegal. When he interviews a new escort, he is very careful of what he says, making her open up to him without prompting. And he never balls any of his girls.

The phone rings. It is Mr. Gomez at the Miami Airport Inn. Accardi quotes a price of $60 for ten hours and describes the date as a short-haired blonde of 21 with blue eyes, about five feet, three. He hangs up and calls his collector, who will earn a $12 fee. The girl will get $25 if there is no tip, but this rarely happens--just as no one ever drags out a date to the ten-hour limit.

He hangs up and calls Lisa.

He throws some darts. The phone rings. He picks it up, holds it to his ear for a second and slams it down. It rings again. He picks it up and slams it down. He throws some darts. On a coffee table is the business card of an IRS agent with a note requesting Accardi to call on Monday between nine and eleven.

Most of the girls are out to make only $200 to $300 a week. Then they quit so they can swing and get high. Debbie wants $300 to $400 every week. They could make up to $1000 if they pushed hard, but nobody does. Accardi says most of the clients really want companionship, not sex. Some of his girls are dogs. They float among the various agencies and some have to work very hard to earn $200 a week.

The phone rings. Mr. Gomez. He is from South America. He was just sent a blonde, blue-eyed Cuban. But he didn't want a Spanish-speaking woman. Steve promises a replacement. He hangs up and calls Debbie.

Darts. Talk. Gomez again. About Debbie. Twenty-eight is really too old. They discuss the question of tips, but Steve answers in a vague, distant manner. Finally, he agrees to send someone else tomorrow night.

Mr. Siegel calls. He is at the Fontaine-bleau. He is 55 and wants a girl who is 30, attractive and sharp. Steve calls Debbie. He calls Mr. Siegel back and explains the setup.

•

Carol is 24. Brenda is 28. They are sisters and they both work for the same agency. Although they got into the business, completely by coincidence, at different times and without the other's knowledge. When she was 15, Carol began traveling all over the U. S. and much of the world. She went back to New York for two years. In Miami, she had two car accidents, went broke and became disgusted with working 40 hours a week and coming home with only $120. At the same time, she met a guy who gave her the idea of sitting in a make-out joint and waiting for a proposition. Carol will try anything if it represents growth. It worked. A guy offered her $100 and she took it.

From there she went to the escort service, where she has been working for two months, finding it an interesting challenge calling for a combination of actress and espionage agent. She has very long reddish-blonde hair, large lips, blue eyes, carefully plucked eyebrows. She gets mad if a client passes her over for someone else. A few of them make a big hassle out of it. Some are vulgar and refuse to light a girl's cigarette or open the door.

Mr. Gonzalez calls from the Sheraton Four Ambassadors. He wants a Spanish-speaking girl. Carol gets his number and calls back, explaining about the collector and the fee. She calls several girls, laughing and joking with them, until Barbara agrees to take the date. She calls Mr. Gonzalez. She is sending Barbara, who is 22 and blonde. But there is a confusion. She thought he said non-Spanish-speaking. Call Barbara back and cancel. OK. Call Mr. Gonzalez. Carol is sending him a girl with a lovely figure, not fat, not thin. She is 21 and has short blonde hair.

Her sister Brenda comes into the office, completely pissed off after another bummer. Brenda hates this business. She hates Florida and she hates men. When she started out, she always took a downer before going in to the office and another downer before going out on a date. Brenda has had 11 traffic tickets in the past two months for speeding, careless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. She has used all of the drugs but now is straight, using only an occasional Valium.

Carol dropped out of high school and has a big inferiority thing about it. But she did two years of psychotherapy, knows all the jargon of analysis, the concepts and terminology. She is still actively and consciously struggling with her demons. But Brenda is chronically depressed and has a suicidal personality. Her mind is very disorganized and she articulates very poorly. As she tells the endless saga of her drug days, of climbing walls and running away and going hysterical, of losing custody of her six-year-old son to her ex-husband, her face is a blank, her eyes staring straight ahead, her hands nervously and continuously brushing the hair away from her face with slow, ritualistic gestures. She uses all the hippie phrases, mumbling about dynamite this and dynamite that, like, wow, far out, you know what I mean, you know, like, man it was really groovy dynamite stuff.

Brenda has been convicted of two felonies and did ten months in the Dade County jail for credit-card fraud. At her first agency, she had to sit in the office with five or six girls from seven until two in the morning. All of them were stoned. After a few months, she quit and got a room at the Millionaire's Club, where she locked herself up for two months. But she had to get back to work. She needs money for a lawyer to attempt to regain custody of her son.

And yet it is Brenda who says she really digs people. If she likes a date at all, she gets emotionally involved. It's all or nothing. Once she rapped for hours with a dirty-looking guy. He was drunk and couldn't get it up. She didn't ask him for any money, but he gave her $400.

Carol couldn't care less. She has an act. She can bullshit and play games, but she really just wants the money so she can go home. Accardi once conned her into a date with a Negro, telling her that he was a personal friend, that his skin was light and he had Caucasian features. Carol went anyway, just to conquer her own hang-ups. The client was a pleasant person. He paid her very well and he was a true sexual athlete. But Carol doesn't like sex. All she wanted to do was get her money and get out.

The phone rings. It is Mr. Gonzalez. He is mad. Lisa is 26 years old. She is married and has kids. He wanted something about 18.

Carol says she will straighten it all out tomorrow and send him another date. What time does his plane leave?