THE CLIENTS

Well, my agency was about as high-class as they come, and this wasn't the market it catered to. And, though other agencies probably did focus more on such people, my personal experience is evidence that you can make a very good living in the business without subjecting yourself to such types. And I do mean subject; because I, for one, was mightily relieved to be able to avoid them.

Why?

Because, when it gets down to it, these are rather trashy people. They've got their money very young and for vapid reasons: the star's pretty face, the jock's forearms and eye for a ball, the playboy's rich daddy. Like prospectors, they've struck lucky gold; and, like prospectors they like to spray it around. But the human qualities that come from working your way up are often missing, and they tend to treat the people who cross their path like disposable commodities. (I think the medical term is "Charlie Sheen Syndrome".)

If you're thinking "Isn't that how a call-girl must expect to be treated?" I've news for you. It isn't. Not a high-class girl who's as much in a position to pick and choose her clients as he is his girls.

Simply put, wealth was a necessary but not sufficient condition for hiring my former agency's girls. There were plenty of monied people out there the agency and its girls preferred not to touch, and the trashy nouveau-riche were high on the list. (We left them to Heidi Fleiss; truly the madam they deserved.)

My agency's niche was to offer a classy service to classy people: educated, intelligent men, with some depth to them and who knew how to treat us right, i.e. with respect. And just as Heidi Fleiss provided her trashy Hollywood crowd with trashy model-actress-whatevers, so my agency was careful to provide its far more sophisticated clientele with intelligent, upmarket girls.

So exactly who were our clients?

They fell into three main categories.

* Senior corporate executives.
Either entrepreneurial types who had "made it" in a business of their own or MBA types who had climbed to the top of the corporate ladder. Having worked long and hard to get where they had, they obviously reckoned it was time to enjoy some reward.

* Wealthy professionals.
Bankers. Doctors. Lawyers. Invariably these were men who had just made partner of the firm and for whom the dollars were beginning to flow. They were also - like the executives - finally in a position where they received serious expense accounts, where a call-girl could be conveniently hidden among the hotel bills and airline tickets.

* "Old money".
Many trust-fund princes fell into the playboy category we avoided. Most, though, were okay. Born into wealthy families, they had usually been through good schools and colleges, picking up some of the sophistication and manners that you don't normally find among the too-much too-soon crowd.

Obviously, the individuals we saw varied greatly, but some broad generalisations about them can be made.

* Most were middle-aged. Forty-something on average, though the spread was a lot wider: twenties to sixties.

* They treated you well. As a person not as a thing. Most were genuinely pleasant, but almost all were at least neat, clean and well-mannered.

* Far more were married than not; though few were "escaping". It's a cliche that the client justifies going to a call-girl by whining on that his wife "doesn't understand him"; and, like a lot of the cliches I'm exploding here, it's largely a myth. The last thing most of them want to do is discuss their home-lives or families. Part of the reason they're with us is to be able to unwind and forget all that; to feel young again.

* They were uniformly well-educated. Occasionally you'd meet a "self-made" type, but usually even these had been to college. Many had passed through "name" colleges: Harvard, Yale, Oxford England. And a very high percentage had been at private schools.

* Most viewed their time with us in the same practical way we did. They didn't obsess about it. They didn't have guilt trips about it. Theirs is a world where the cost-benefit analysis is standard, after all. And, having opted to pay for us, they set about enjoying their time with us.

One final thing. Though our clients were mainly American and we saw them mainly in America, we were not restricted to clients from the States or to seeing them only in the States. I spent a lot of time in London, for example, where the agency did a lot of work. Toronto was very much on our circuit, as was Tokyo (though after one trip there, I avoided it; not my scene at all). Other countries cropped up - France, Germany, Mexico, etc. - but usually we stuck to English-speaking nations and, always, English-speaking clients.