Thursday night. Private club. Washington.
Callie walks into the bar on the arm of a reciprocal member. That’s someone from out-of-town who belongs to a club that has reciprocal membership privileges with the club. Lots of clubs work like that.
Nobody notices the guy from out of town. But everyone notices Callie. She’s a tall, long-legged, auburn-haired stunner who turns the head of every man in the bar. The black dress she wears is cut low to show ample cleavage and is short enough to display a lot of leg.
Callie and her date sit in a corner table. Every male eye in the room may be on her, but Callie only has eyes for her companion. She laughs at his jokes, keeps constant eye contact, and frequently rubs the inside of his leg. They sit closely as she nuzzles his ear.
When they leave more than an hour later, one man at the bar groans and turns to a companion.
“Lucky stiff.”
Luck has nothing to do with it. Just a fat wallet.
Callie looks like the woman of their dreams because she makes her living being the woman of a man’s dreams, if that man can afford $1,500 a night.
Callie is a call girl. Not a prostitute, mind you. Certainly not a hooker. Never a whore. From time to time the DC cops crack down and round up the whores on the streets, but you seldom see anything in the papers about call girls getting busted.
Callie considers her profession a higher calling, so to speak. You won’t catch her picking up God-knows-who on a street corner. No pimp controls her life. Her body is for hire only to an exclusive list of clients who want, and can afford, the best.
For fifteen-hundred worth of green, Callie will go to dinner with you, and dancing if you like, while making every man in the room envy you. Then she will convince you that you are the greatest thing in bed since Don Juan himself – even if you’re the lousiest lay of the land.
When she leaves you the next morning, the fifteen-hundred that you just paid by cash, check or even Platinum Card will, in your mind, be worth every last cent.
Yes, Callie is good. Just ask her clients.
“Most incredible woman I know,” says the reciprocal member. “Bright, intelligent and imaginative as hell in bed.” He isn’t ashamed of paying for it. He comes to Washington twice a month on business and has a standard reservation.
Callie entertains, on average, three men a week. That comes to four-thousand, five-hundred large a week. Which adds up to about $180,000 a year, with time off for monthly-periods and four or five weeks of vacation each year.
Not bad for a 26-year-old accountant who works for Uncle Sam during the day.
On a Saturday afternoon at a coffee shop in Adams-Morgan, Callie talks about the duality of life.
“Been doing it for three years now,” she says.
Even with no makeup, her hair pulled back in a pony tail and attired this time in jeans and a sweatshirt, Callie is an incredibly beautiful woman who gets notices from both the straights and the gays in the coffee shop.
She never worked the streets. Wouldn’t have considered prostitution. Another woman in the office moonlighted as a call girl and told Callie about it while under the effects of too many rum-and-Cokes one night after work. She invited Callie along when a client brought a friend to town. She decided to try it for fun.
“I made a grand that night for basically doing what I’ve been doing with boyfriends for years.”
The guy thought she was good at it too. The one-night just-for-the-hell-of-it turned into a monthly gig. He referred her to other well-heeled friends who visited Washington. Within a year, Callie had a regular roster of clients.
“I made over a hundred grand the first year. That’s a hundred grand tax free.”
She built a rep among the call girl elite of Washington and was invited to join one of the more exclusive services, one that screens clients carefully. There are more than a dozen high-quality call girl services operating in and around Washington. The services offer safety and security, but get 50 percent or more of the take. Callie decided to stay independent.
“My clients come from referrals from people I know and trust and I don’t have to share what I make.”
And her clients know the rules: straight and oral sex only. No anal. No bondage. No S&M. No groups. Just one-on-one.
“I don’t take it in the butt, I don’t do leather, I don’t do threesomes and I don’t do drugs. And everybody wears a rubber. No exceptions.”
You see, her husband just wouldn’t understand if she brought something communicable home.
“He’s pretty understanding,” she says. “But there are limits.”
–Doug Thompson
Washington, DC