Callgirl ~ Book Review

At this point, I've written reviews of a fair amount of sex worker memoirs. I picked this one in particular because Jeanette Angell, was highly educated and oncemore a professor. Having lofty academic and publishing goals myself, I like to console myself, "See? Someone else is doing this, you can too." (Except, there seems to have been a discrepancy about the validity of this story along with her so-called degrees.) Although, now that I think about it, I have yet to read a memoir from someone who wasn't college educated.

Jen's "rat bastard" boyfriend clears out her banking account and with her teaching position as a lecturer, barely scrapes by so she decides to work for an agency in the Boston area during the mid-1990s. She moved to the US from France at 21 and begins escorting later than most, her mid-thirties, but she apparently looks younger. She never lets us forget that she is intelligent and educated. But I'm not really sure I see it.

And it's not because as others suggested, that going into sex work is a stupid, ill thought out decision, but because for someone who prides herself on being so intelligent and educated, she never demonstrates it in her line of work; either at her day job or night job. It's not that she became addicted to drugs that were always around her; she was a high functioning addict who still managed to teach her classes and even develop new ones, one on the history of prostitution--which is relatively unheard of for an adjunct. It's not that she continually makes bad choices in men that leave her devastated. But it's that she has a certain naivete that never lessens in her journey which does contribute to her addictions and bad choices.

What struck me as indicators for evidence contrary to her professed intelligence and education was lack of safety protocol, lack of knowledge of laws and her lack of interest to make money.

As with any story, there is plenty left out, but what concerned me is the lack of safety protocol, trusting a woman she never met to send her out to hotels and homes. She never mentions the internet in this memoir, so I am unsure if message boards existed then or if she just did not know about them. When Jen starts meeting other women from other agencies, she is horrified at the stories she is, not acknowledging her own terrible stories through her current agency. I was flabbergasted that she believed the same woman, Peach, that if you ask a client if he's a cop, he has to tell you.

It's hard to calculate what the going rate in Boston in the mid-1990s was for doing outcall, especially with inflation, but even still, it seemed low for a rate of $200/hour total. And Peach always told her, "the 80's are over, no one tips anymore." But there seemed to be an endless supply of coke. Usually, a serious working girl knows, her time in this industry is short so you have to figure out the way to make the most money as possible. She never mentions thinking about ways to make more money, other than to sometimes get the client to extend the session.

But what saddened me is that she by and large seemed drifting and lonely for most of this period in her life. She told no one about her line of work, except her friend Seth. They were never lovers and he seemed okay with her new line of work; they enjoyed many conversations and fine dinners together, until one night he lays out cash and asks her for a blow job. Reading this, my heart wrenched for her, that the one person she decided to confide in, betrayed her, and it wasn't just in that moment that he betrayed her, he had been betraying her all along.

Later, she falls for a client. The old adage is true, Never date a client. Is it her fault she fell for him? Absolutely not. He was attractive, charming, educated and intelligent. It was her fault for dating him, which might not have happened if she didn't think that she needed to starve herself of non-professional sex and relationships, because no man would accept her job or she would always have to lie. She knew she was beautiful, smart and sexy, so of course she believed him when he told her these things, but unfortunately, it was only a cruel game for him to get a "hooker for free." Also odd is that while she considers sexuality fluid and could be given the mainstream label of bisexual--she never mentions pursuing a relationship with a woman; she ends up marrying a man.

Tragically, she tells about an encounter with a client, so violent and not consensual, it could only be classified as rape, but she considers it a bad night out. Jen talks to another girl about the client who raped her and this girl, a regular of his, says that she believes she's doing the world a service because the client will pay her to do vile sexual acts with her and not rape a woman on the street. I was dumbstruck. They never mentioned that this was a person who hated women, they he was in fact raping them; they never suggested he should be black-balled and forewarn the community. Interestingly, when another working girl reveals she was gang raped through a different agency, Jen considers what happened to the other girl a rape; Jen actually says she is thankful to be at the agency she is with.

She ends with an afterward regarding sex slavery and trafficking. I agree with her that prostitution should be legal, but I do not think it would have the effect she thinks of regulating and thus ending the human trade. Unfortunately, sex trafficking happens because the most vulnerable, woman and children, can be easily coerced or taken away from families and their homes and forced into this work. It happens because parts of the world are poverty stricken, uneducated, and women and children are treated like property or possessions to be sold or traded. It happens because sex work yields a high profit for a low cost of operations. But mostly, it happens because we let it happen.