IN DEFENSE OF THE GOVERNOR’S HO

I have met hundreds of prostitutes. Some of them, many times.

Judge Ted Kowalski, now retired, presided over a courtroom in Chicago which handled misdemeanor offenses. One of the common cases which came before him was “soliciting” by these young women. They are arrested over and over.

One day, very frustrated with the situation, Ted said to me, “Why don’t you take them and try to help them. I’ll mandate them to come to you.”

He wasn’t kidding. And in a wild impulsive moment, I agreed to do it. To facilitate a class. It was the first program of its kind in the country. I ran the class for over five years. We called it UNHOOKED AND FREE,” a rehabilitation program for prostitutes.

They attended reluctantly, to say the least. Some of them came to the evening meetings already dressed for work – wearing garish makeup – outfitted in hot pants, bright pink tights, low-cut T-shirts, dangling earrings, high heels. I heard remarks in the hall outside like, “What kind of sh**t is this?” and “Another do-good program. What’s the use?” and “Well, it’s only 2 hours, three times. It’s better than jail.”

Some of them were even more openly irate. They had been mandated by the judge into this rehabilitation program and had not taken the order seriously. When they didn’t appear a few months back, a warrant had been issued for their arrest and they had been sent to jail. They were not happy with being in the class which had been the reason for their latest incarceration.

These were not all sophisticated call girls who operated from plushy apartments and work on appointment. Most were the street girls who stop cars in certain areas of the city to offer their services. Regular customers know where they congregate but they are not organized. Because everyone who happens to be in their “territory” is fair game, they tie up traffic and outrage the new residents who have gentrified the area. Their standard sales pitch to a prospective customer is, “How wudja like to cool off with a bj?”

And they come through court, many of them weekly, as if it were a revolving door. They are fined, assigned to overworked social service people and spend many days in jail. They are young. They are pretty. They are mothers who are heartbroken because they have lost custody of their children. Most have been taken away because of neglect. And 99% of them are drug addicts. Their babies have also been born addicted.

Some of them had been “Kristens,” the playmate of Governor Spitzer, but they were on the way down. As reported in New York Magazine, Jason Itzler, the self declared King of All pimps put “Kristen” into “the business.” This occurred, Jason has been telling Larry King and anyone else with a camera, back in 2004, when he met the woman now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré at the Hotel Gansevoort, where she was a cocktail waitress. Impressed with the then-19-year-old’s, uh, “spirit,” Jason recruited her for his NY Confidential stable, renaming her “Victoria.” An immediate smash earner.

Like Kristen, the women I met were all in it for the money. They, like her, were struggling to support themselves and the temptation was just too great.

This is what they taught me about themselves.

The prostitution was only the top layer. The steam off the kettle. It was a symptom of the problem. They hated the work and they hated themselves for doing it. Any illusion that they are nymphomaniacs vanished after hearing them talk. They didn’t even enjoy sex with their boyfriends or husbands. They said they were turned off from the waist down.

They bragged about how good they were at faking orgasms. One young woman said that the famous diner scene from When Harry Met Sally was nothing compared to what she could conjure up. And this talent was important because it inspired faster response from the men they were servicing. If the customer climaxed faster, they could handle more “dates.” Get them done quickly so you can get back to the next client as fast as you can.

It is a dangerous job. Their lives were in jeopardy every minute they were with a “trick.” They usually did not know who the man was or what would happen.

They knew even the high priced call girls had been bound and gagged, beaten up, knifed, thrown out of moving cars, bones broken. Prostitutes are found dead in dumpsters all the time. These crimes are not always reported in the press.

But the job paid well for the hours spent. On the street, oral sex sells for $20 to $30. They do about 10 men a night. Regular sex is negotiated on a per job basis. Between $50 and $200 according to how weird a request happens to be. Their goal was to work themselves up to be a “Pretty Woman” where some man would take care of them and they could stop. They all wanted to be at least a “Kristen.”

They had “rules” that they prided themselves on. There were things they would not do. Each woman had a different standard – a feeble, private moral code. A group member offered that she would not allow a man to undress her. She didn’t want him touching her that much. Another added that in a threesome, she would not play the lesbian role with the other woman. Not for any money.

It fascinated me that almost every woman ruled out kissing. They would do almost everything but kiss. That was too personal.

The next layer was the drugs. Nothing has been said about Kristen using drugs. But, in five years, I met only one prostitute who was not on drugs. That gets very costly, especially if their drug of choice is cocaine. I hope she is not.

But most were addicted to at least one and sometimes several substances. Many of the women lived in an abusive and addictive relationship with a man whom they were also supplying with drugs. These alliances were explosive because the boyfriend would shift from extreme jealousy of the men who were the customers – to rage if they did not earn enough money to buy the drugs. They had combined habits of $300 to $500 a day. As one woman said, “I got expenses.”

One day I asked the group which came first – the prostitution or the drugs? A petite Hispanic woman answered, “The drugs come first. And then the prostitution. You need the money to buy the drugs. But you need the drugs to be a prostitute. Do you know how horrible it is to have a strange man touch your body? You got to be stoned.”

I don’t know Kristen. But I believe that most women have a genetic tendency to be monogamous. We are not predisposed to promiscuity. It is against our feminine nature.

We should not so quickly judge this young woman. If she had gotten a break in her music career, I suspect she never would have resorted to this profession to make a living. It would not have been a temptation.

Many people have asked me if we had any success with the program. I don’t know. I do know that no one ever encouraged these women to talk about themselves before. All we can do in life is plant seeds. But, it got to a point with the repeaters where they loved coming to share their experiences. And they started helping each other with information about where they could get further help.

In some way, all of us are prostitutes. We do things we do not want to do to get something. Our “something” may not be illegal but it falls in the same category.

Wherever you are, Kristen, you can and will survive this. I know many send you good wishes and love.

And they don’t blame you.