Ashley Dupre

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n the day Tiger Woods issues his lengthy apology, the most notorious other woman since Monica Lewinsky sits in a conference room, ready to examine her past and sketch her optimistic vision of the future.

"Some peo­ple call me the girl who brought down the gov­ernor of New York, but in real­ity he brought me down," she says ruefully.

if anyone can make the tran-

sition rrom object or derision to savvy sex symbol, it's Ashley Dupre. Whether she is successful won't be determined by a paucity of inner strength or outer beauty (in person her skin shines like a toffee treat

waiting to be unwrapped and savored) but by the willingness of average Ameri­cans to challenge their own preju­dices toward the fallen and the damned.

"It's a fight for who I am. A fight for my dreams, my identity and my voice. Yeah, I was an escort," she admits. "As much as I wish I could make that go away, I can't. I'm trying to take it as a lesson learned. I am not proud of what I've done.

"I always

thought I could do it and stop when­ever I wanted. No one ever had to know —I would lock it up in a lit­tle box and store it away forever. It was my deepest, darkest secret. All that changed two years ago

because I got caught, and my secrets were exposed for the world to see."

On March 1 2, 2008 Eliot Spitzer stood in front of TV cameras, his silent wife, Silda, beside him, and gave up the governorship of New York. You know the rest: He had paid for sex and kept his socks on. Late-night jokes and tab­loid fever ensued; Ashley was caught in the vortex of a media frenzy. Under­currents at the watercooler swirled around deeper issues: Would you pay? Would she be worth it?

The Spitzer scandal and the Tiger Woods 1 8-hole carnival fascinate because they, however briefly, snap

the velvet rope between the sex lives of the rich and mighty and the rest of us. The VIP rooms of big-city nightclubs link the world of quick celebrity blow jobs and high-end escort services. It's there that stars and men with money to burn rub up against fresh fashion gazelles, ambitious actresses and look­ers who charge for their time as often as they give it away.

Ashley knew trouble before but nothing like this. The FBI visited her apartment, and she confessed all to her mother. The next day her mom told her to turn on the TV. There was Spitzer. "I watched my dreams of a singing career flash before my eyes," she recalls. "I saw the hurt in his wife's eyes. I felt as

if I had jumpecl off a building. I couldn't breathe. I was dead."

There was an attempt at damage con­trol. She did a brief interview with Diane Sawyer and spoke for a cover story in People. Even now, Ashley cannot be understood at one sitting, so it's hard to imagine she knew then what she was going through. Self-awareness is not a strong suit among escorts. "You have to be emotionally disconnected," she says. "No one says, 'Hey, when I grow up I want to be an escort.' People suc­ceed in life because they have dreams and goals. That line of work looks to be the easy way out, but it's not, because

MY FUTURE

MOW

THAT. THAT'S FOR

you're sacrificing your brain ana your identity. It's emotionally damaging."

Two years of intense reflection have served her well. She did her best to withdraw from the spot­light, to claim some privacy and to triage some wounds in her

family. Central to her perspective: As a child, a painful divorce separated her from her father ("I was always a dad­dy's girl, so it was difficult"), and in her teen years an affluent but strict house­hold only got stricter after her big brother ran away from home. "I stopped being happy when my brother left. We were best friends. He tortured me to death, but he was my safety net." There was even an attempt at suicide by Advil and Tyle­nol—50 apiece.

Ashley was a popular kid and began to bridle —as most teens do —at what she saw as a stifling amount of paren­tal control. An early escape came in the form of an ex-boyfriend who loved to fool around. "We were at a party and drink­ing a bit," she says. "He was a Howard Stern fan, always looking for his girlfriend and me to hook up. She wanted to, so we ended up going upstairs. I think I defi­nitely turned her into a bisexual woman. We finished in a pool, making out like in that movie Wild Things." But when she got serious about a boyfriend 1 0 years her senior, her parents threatened to press charges and forced a breakup. Ashley fled to her father's new family on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where more familial unrest followed, with drugs (ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana and mush­rooms) playing a larger role. She took up residence in a dealer's house and partied constantly, "candy rolling" her­self into a bad trip made worse by a guy who forced her into a bedroom and raped her.

She sought refuge in a three-way rela­tionship with a married couple who took the underage Ashley to Miami, where she was filmed for Girls Gone Wild. Resentful of the attention she received, the couple abandoned her. She traveled on the GGW bus until a nasty encoun­ter with Joe Francis led her benefactor on the film crew to shove a few hundred dollars in her pocket and point her in the direction of a Greyhound bus.

Back in North Carolina, a besotted musician weaned her off drugs and encouraged her love of music. Though on tenuous terms with her family, she found her way to New York City, scrap­ing by with (concluded on page I I 9}

ASHLEY DUPPE

(continued from page 94) three nightclub jobs. Barely out of her teens, the promiscuous wild child ran amok in a world of black AmEx cards, shifty Europe­ans and an every-man-out-for-himself group of wannabes.

"I was at a club one night, and a rich older guy said to me, 'I'll give you a thousand dol­lars if you come home with me.' I was like, Wow, a thousand dollars sounds good. But I was scared. Really scared. Is he going to pay me? Is he going to beat me up?"

Could she have been talked into it without money? If he just charmed her and bought her drinks all night?

"No. I was intrigued by the lifestyle. I made $1,000, and it was no diDFerent from sleeping with someone while I was high. Looking back on it, I realize I didn't have any self-respect."

While serving cocktails, she was approached by the owner of an escort agency, who asked if she wanted to model. Ashley instinctively knew what was on the table and saved his card "for a rainy day." When her roommate moved out, Ashley made the call and said, "Yeah, I'll work." She was about to enter a world she would dip in and out of for months at a time.

"I went to a big loft and posed for pic­tures the same day," she recalls. "I was naked. There were a bunch of people there—girls, guys, people working the phones at desks. It was a beautiful apart­ment, a whole underground world. I was just like, Wow, this is crazy. They put up a white screen and shot some pictures, and I ended up working that night."

Was her first encounter like something out of a sappy Hollywood movie?

"No, definitely not like something in the movies."

It's hard not to admire how she's comported herself since the scandal. She never sold her story to the tabloids, unlike some of Tiger's girls. "I feel bad for his family. These girls are coming out, and they're asking to be brought into it. There's no way to describe being hunted, humiliated, stalked and all that. I wish it upon no other human being."

I never liked that word whore. It's foul and unforgiving. Then again, who likes prosti­tutes? You can see in their eyes they won't flick you if you don't pay. How fun could that be?

I like Ashley Dupre.

She's unique in many ways, though her story has universal elements to which any­one who was once a teenager or horny or unwanted or desperate can relate.

Now, in an effort to rehabilitate her image and start down a path where noto­riety sometimes pays off, she turned down million-dollar offers to pose nude in other magazines—preferring instead the pages of playboy, where she can establish herself as sexual without shame, a girl who made mistakes but who nonetheless has the smarts and depth to win you over.

"I had a lot of fun doing these pictures. You're naked and you're in front of a bunch of guys—good-looking guys, too, manly men. But they're so focused they make you feel really comfortable.

"Everything I've been through, I'm still me—a naive, optimistic, wishful-thinking girl. I love sex and I'm very good at it, but I'm saving that. That's for my future boyfriend from now on. And it will be fabulous."

See more of Ashley at playboy.com/dupre.