Whore Stories (7 page)

NELL GWYN

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Actress

CLAIM TO FAME:
Mistress of King Charles II of England

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Seventeenth-century London

Eleanor “Nell” Gwynn would be a frontrunner in any contest to choose who best personifies Restoration England. Born to an alcoholic prostitute in the steaming shitbox that was London in 1650, Nell evidently started her career in the prostitutional arts as a youngster, one of the many hazards of growing up in a brothel. Even the
Encyclopedia Britannica
’s entry for Gwyn asserts that she was the “living antithesis of Puritanism,” and yet, this once destitute oyster wench from the hood managed, through cunning, wit, humor, and stunning sexual brazenness to beguile the bejesus out of poets, writers, royalty—pretty much everyone who had the good fortune to cross her path.

In her teens, Nell went from hawking fruit, seafood, and sex in front of a theater to strutting her stuff as an actress in her own right. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, she was one of London’s main attractions, on stage—and off. The poet John Dryden wrote plays especially for her; Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist, referred to her as “pretty, witty Nell. . . . I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a mighty pretty soul she is.”

By 1668 Nell had accumulated a menagerie of lovers including the usual demented British noblemen, and then, in order, she caught the eye, the privates, and the heart of none other than King Charles II of England. Nell and the king made each other’s acquaintance during a performance of the oft-forgotten play,
She Wou’d If She Cou’d
at the Duke’s House Theater. A court “memorialist” wrote the following account of the meeting:

Upon this occasion he [the king] came to the play incog. and sat in the box next to Nell and her lover [a Mr. Villiers, cousin to the Duke of Buckingham]. As soon as the play was finished, his Majesty, with the Duke of York, the young nobleman [Mr. Villiers], and Nell, retired to a tavern together, where they regaled themselves over a bottle, and the King shewed such civilities to Nell that she began to understand the meaning of his gallantry. . . . When the reckoning came to be paid, his Majesty, upon searching his pockets, found that he had not money enough about him to discharge it . . . upon which Nell observed, that she had got into the poorest company that ever she was in at a tavern. The reckoning was paid by the young nobleman.

And from then on, Little Nell would remain the king’s favorite mistress for the next two decades, bearing him two children, and eventually taking up residence at the Burford House in Windsor, a perfect rags-to-riches scenario fit for a fairy tale. And yes, it sucks that Mr. Villiers had to pay for all the shots and the bar food, but sometimes one should just duck dive under the swelling wave of history and let the tide come on in. In fact, today the House of Windsor would give its inbred third gonad for a PR machine like Nell. She charmed a nation; she was a Cinderella figure who personified the people, their dreams, and the dreams of a country. Vilified in some circles as “the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in a Court,” Nell Gwyn was alternately revered as “The Whore Who Saved London,” presumably because she gave the Brits someone to root for and something to cheer about (Manchester United wasn’t invented yet) after 20 percent of the population was wiped out in the great plague of 1665.

LA BELLE OTERO

PRO
FILE

DAY JOBS:
Actress; man-eater

CLAIM TO FAME:
Courtesan extraordinaire

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Spain; France; most of Europe

Caroline Otero was born into poverty in 1868, in Galicia, Spain. Her prospects were bleak, although, in what some would consider a felicitous twist of fate, the young Caroline scored a job working as a maid in Santiago de Compostela. Now, instead of facing starvation and the plague, she was ensured a life of chaste mediocrity. But wait! Caroline had a secret; she could
dance
.

Taking advantage of her gifts, Otero ditched the maid gig and wiggled her poonanny to Portugal with a dance partner called “Paco.” There, she found “sponsors” in sundry sugar daddies and/or nobleman. She married one of them, but her groom of approximately 10 minutes lost her in a craps game. It’s true; Otero could, and did, do a lot more than just dance. This was especially true after she discovered her preternatural ability to drive her
soupirants
bat-shit crazy with lust.

In 1888, another one of Otero’s many sponsors paid her way from Barcelona to Marseilles, France, and one step closer to that elusive dream: Gay Paree. Otero’s wild success on stage and in between the sheets in Marseilles convinced her she could go it alone, in the big city, so she ditched her sponsor and strolled onto the scene like a new, luscious, and morally flexible sexual sheriff in town. Upon her arrival, Otero adopted the identity of the sultry Andalusian “gypsy,” La Belle Otero, and from there on out all bets were off. Otero became the main attraction, dancing at Paris’s legendary
Folies Bergère
, and it was on.

According to a 1965 article published in
Time
magazine shortly after her death, things could get deadly:

Admirers gave her gilded carriages and chateaux, buckets of jewels, and a mansion on the Champs-Elysées. A U.S. millionaire invited Otero to a simple supper of caviar and oysters—in each oyster lay a pearl. By 1894 she was so rich that she spurned an offer of 10,000 francs for one night, and the luckless man killed himself in humiliation.

La Belle Otero was a class act. She had a stripper brassiere encrusted with diamonds, and they claim her voluptuous breasts inspired the perky domed cupolas that stand today atop the Carleton Hotel in Cannes. But 10,000
francs
? One story holds that during a single evening at the Café de Paris, five of Europe’s kings descended on her table, looking for love: Nicholas II of Russia, Britain’s Edward VII, Wilhelm II of Prussia, Belgium’s Leopold II, and Alfonso XIII of Spain. The evidence is paltry as to which royal(s) gained her favor that night, but I’m guessing, no matter what, La Belle Otero was compensated generously for her efforts on that occasion.

Once proclaiming, “I have been a slave to my passions, but never to a man,” La Belle Otero retired to a sprawling French mansion in 1922. “Women have one mission in life: to be beautiful,” said Otero after squandering her vast fortune on a lavish lifestyle that included way too much time in casinos. Toward the end of her life, she said, “When one gets old, one must learn how to break mirrors. I am very gently expecting to die.” While we may raise an eyebrow at her decidedly antifeminist view on the “mission” of women, the part about breaking mirrors is pretty damn clever.

CASANOVA

PRO
FILE

DAY JOBS:
Author; adventurer; slut

CLAIM TO FAME:
The “World’s Greatest Lover”

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
Italy/Western Europe

What exactly does it mean when people conjure up the epithet “Casanova” to describe you, perched there on a bar stool in your fancy brocaded vest over a shirt with puffy sleeves and a row of lace on the cuffs? And why can’t you tell us when you’re going to perpetrate that preposterous ensemble? But more to the point, who
was
this eponymous gigolo whose sexual antics in Europe during the eighteenth century still resonate with us today? Well, let’s first be charitable and say he was active. At one time or another, this
homme du monde
was a friend to everyone in Europe who mattered at the time, from popes and royalty to Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, and other pillars of the Enlightenment.

Born in Venice, the young Casanova was abandoned by his travelling carnie parents to a grandmother who, convinced witches were giving the youngster nosebleeds, shipped him off to a boarding school in Padua. Casanova turned out to be a brilliant student and eventually enjoyed a number of careers: priest, poet, philosopher, translator, lawyer, military brass, gourmand, occultist, mathematician, government informer, theater manager, pimp, violinist, and notary public, among other even more dubious endeavors. But where, you ask, does it say he was a prostitute?

Casanova the prostitute is a tricky question. He certainly frequented ladies of the evening, picking up a wide and colorful array of venereal diseases along the way, but did this legendary seducer really do it for the money? Kind of. Cash transactions of the kind negotiated on dark street-corners weren’t really Casanova’s style—he recounts in his autobiography
The Story of My Life
countless instances in which he employs love as leverage, seducing women who beg him to stay. They would offer him “linen and sheets” and then eventually “diamonds and all the money [they] had,” but they also provided entree into wealthy and influential families and significant political power.

The legend of Giacomo Casanova, refined and knowledgeable as he may have been, is largely horseshit. Widely held to be one of, if not
the
world’s greatest lover, this well-dressed ogre in a fussy vest made elaborate plans to seduce his own daughter. It was the old son-and-a-
grandson-in-one-go trick, a crime against nature that wipes the sheen off this multitalented member of the sexual aristocracy, and makes you want to kick him in his withered, diseased testes. Casanova, however, seems to be pretty proud of himself, pointing out that he performed that particular act of mortal depravity “only two or three more times” before putting a stop to the affair.

On the flip side of the groin, Casanova once explained that he used his condom as a “prophylactic against melancholy,” and with Casanova being such a happy fellow, one can assume his condom was put to substantial use. It was. Although, that he apparently toted around just one condom, reusing it with multiple partners, is of particular hygienic concern.

In the end, like so many iconic pedestal-loafers, Casanova was little more than a brilliant man with a trash dick. His final bed tally, while impressive (122 women and an untold number of men, whom he failed to factor into the arithmetic), Casanova just sort of looks like a more articulate though less-discriminating version of Bill Clinton.

Chapter II
PROMINENT PIMPS AND MANDARIN MADAMS

With the advent of the Internet and other leading-edge prostitution software, life for the sex worker has become decreasingly dependent on pimps and madams. Unless your pimp is a seventy-wpm typist or you work at a brothel/wi-fi café where the madam is more of a barista than a switchblade-wielding tyrant, most working boys and girls can make all their amorous arrangements in the comforts of home. That’s probably a net positive. Some of the following characters will fit with your preconceived ideas of what a whoremonger is and does (beats up people and is manipulative and sometimes wears a fancy hat); but then there are the gentle, the clumsy, the brilliant, and the benign flesh-peddlers who smash stereotypes and give us hope that if there’s ever like a global Internet crash and we’re back to rotary phones, somebody will know what the hell to do about offline sex. From the new-jack pimp to the old-school procuress, here are the head honchos behind the whores.

JESSIE WILLIAMS AND EDNA MILTON

PRO
FILE

DAY JOB:
Owners/proprietors of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”

CLAIM TO FAME:
See above

THEATER OF OPERATIONS:
And see above again, y’all

Born Faye Stewart in 1881, “Miss Jessie” was owner and proprietor of the storied “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” made famous by the Broadway musical of the same name (an inferior movie version was also made in 1982, starring a moustache and two enormous breasts). When she took over the brothel in 1905, it was a fledgling operation, but Jessie, who had escaped a wretched life of poverty in nearby Waco, set out to turn her little establishment in La Grange into the West Texas capital of fornication.

The bordello did exceedingly well during World War I, but like every business, it took a hit during the Great Depression. Jessie, entrepreneurial spirit that she was, changed the name of her floundering enterprise to “The Chicken Ranch,” and she was back in business with a vengeance. “What in the F is a whorehouse doing calling itself ‘The Chicken Ranch,’” you ask? Yes, the name does carry with it the suggestion of barnyard bestiality, but it made perfect sense at the time. In 1932, the fee for services was about $1.50 per “poke,” a lot of money when Wall Street bankers have taken all of your savings and your farm. You have nothing left except these stupid chickens—maybe a heft of manure, but that’s pushing things. But, wait. Have you heard? Miss Jessie is trading pokes for poultry! That’s right, Miss Jessie tweaked her business model a bit, and the brothel was back.

For years, Miss Jessie and the gang at the Chicken Ranch also had a tacit arrangement with the local police, which was essentially this: The girls and I will be on the outskirts of town doing business if you will look the other way. That worked out for everybody, including the entire Texas A&M football team (allegedly), for a very long time. When Miss Jessie died in 1961, she bequeathed the brothel to her favorite prostitute, Edna Milton. Edna ran the place as a tribute to Miss Jessie, helping out with civic projects like Little League baseball teams and the community hospital. Local legend and long-time sheriff of La Grange, Jim Flournoy, used to state with pride, “That Chicken Ranch has been here all my life and all my daddy’s life and never caused anybody any trouble.”