THE MONEY

I've noticed something about fictional representations of the money to be made in the business. They proceed on the basis that any big, round impressive-sounding figure will do. So, once they decided some years back that their former favorite line - "The stiff was a thousand buck a night hooker, Lieutenant" - didn't sound impressive enough any more, they switched to two thousand. Or five thousand. Or ten. Just so long as it sounded snappy, the accuracy of the figure really didn't seem to matter to them.

Given which, it's hardly surprising there are some pretty weird theories out there as to what a top escort earns.

The reality is that prices are set the same way they are in any other market: by the interaction of supply and demand. And, though demand for the top-end product is considerable, the availability of suitably talented girls is (unfortunately, from the agency's point of view) sufficient to prevent prices from skyrocketing to the areas imagined by some.

So to specifics.

A girl starting out at my former agency would be charging $1400-1600 a night. Usually it was $1500, but the priority for a new girl is to get customers even if she has to go down to $1400 a night for a while.

There are two reasons for this.

(i) The agency wants her working, both to prove she can do it - initially she's on a kind of probation - and to acquire the experience that will make her a lot better at her work. About ninety per cent of what you learn on the job, I think, you learn in the first three/six months.

(ii) The whole drive of the agency is to establish clients as regulars. Naturally, this suits the agency: regulars don't have to be checked out each time the way newcomers do. It is even more important to the girl though. Aside from the fact that familiarity always makes things easier - with any new client you never know quite what you're going to get -, turning a guy into a regular customer who will pay to see you again and again is the basis for pushing on towards the really big bucks.

Why?

Well initially, in order to pass your "probation" with the agency. If you're not good enough to get a guy coming back for more when you're charging him $1,400 a night, you're not going to be able to do it at $2,000 or $2,500 a night.

Once you've proved you can get your hooks into the guys though, the drive is on to start filling your diary; and being able to pencil in five or six regulars at the start of each month gets you there a lot quicker than waiting for passing custom to come your way.

Bookings for a hundred nights a year is your target at the start. Once you're on track for hitting the three digits, the agency will start hiking your price to newcomers. Make a few of these into regulars and the agency will okay you to hike the prices of your older regulars; because if one or two won't pay up, you can get along without them now. (This is rare though. If you play it right, you can sell them the extra $$s.)

In this way, as your diary fills - as demand for your services increase, in economic terms - so your price starts to inflate. And, once started, that inflation can be gratifyingly fast and steep.

Take me. I was lucky in that I was particularly good at the public escorting side of the business, and that niche got me extra custom. (A single guy who needed an impressive "girlfriend" for social occasions. A company director who wanted someone smart and pretty around for the social side of major contract negotiations.) As a consequence, I was hitting my hundred nights after only about a year, by which time most of my diary was made up of regulars. From that base, I was able to push my price up so fast that, by the end of my second year, I was costing newcomers $2,500 a night.

Two and a half thousand a night is the semi-official target the girls are shooting for. (It's usually about the limit the market will bear. Though, once you're established at $2,500 a night and have a full diary, you can pitch prospective newcomers the "only for $3,000" ball and see if they swing at it. A few do, but at that level you really are at the edge of the market's tolerance; no matter how talented you are.) Not all the girls ever get there though, and I think most of them hit their personal ceiling somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500 a night.

I've used the phrase "full diary". Let me stress I don't mean this literally. No girl works every night or anything close to it. I think one of my contemporaries was pushing towards working every other night - taken over the course of a year - and the rest of us thought she was pushing it way too hard. As a general rule, we regarded a full diary as being around a hundred and twenty nights a year - i.e. working one night in three - and, after my first year of building up my personal client base, that was pretty much what I worked.

Obviously though, this isn't a simple "one night on, two nights off" business.

For one thing, there's the matter of travelling to the city where you're meeting the guy. He, of course, picks up the tab for your expenses, but you've still got to make the actual trip. Which takes time.

Most importantly though, not every date is a simple "one night" affair. A lot of guys like weekends. Others might want you for the duration of some conference or convention. Others still like you to vacation with them. (One guy took me for a week on Maui three years in a row.)

So a lot of those hundred and twenty or so nights will come in blocks...which is good, because it gives you bigger breaks the rest of the year.

Two important points I haven't covered so far.

(i) I've spoken of "nights".
By this I mean: meet up with the guy in the evening, go to a restaurant/whatever with him, then it's back to his hotel through to breakfast. In other words, we're giving the client a proper date; his money's worth, expensive though we are.
We do not, repeat not, charge by the hour. Not ever. That's the preserve of the street-corner girls and their near neighbors, the agencies in the yellow pages.

(ii) The Agency's Cut.
It's 20-30%, or some four hundred to six hundred dollars per night. As your per night charge rises, its cut rises in cash terms but drops as a percentage.

In conclusion, and by way of a public service, I'll save you the trouble of doing the maths for a top girl's per annum earnings. I'll do it myself.

120 nights X ($2,500 a night - $550 agency cut at this rate) = $234,000

Just fallen off your chair?

Obviously, this is a rough number, but it's not far off. If anything, it might be a slight underestimate, because "block bookings" - weekends, vacations, etc. - earned us more as we were around for days as well as nights.