“Bye, Mom! I’ll see you tomorrow morning!”
It’s 8 a.m. on a Tuesday and my workday probably started out a lot like yours: packing lunchboxes, making sure the kids eat a healthy breakfast, finding socks and shoes and homework. But when my 9-year-old daughter Miranda kisses me goodbye to catch the school bus, she knows I won’t be home until long after bedtime.
That’s because I’m a pimp. More politely, I’m the madam of The Bach (rhymes with “catch”), a feminist escort agency I own in the North Island of New Zealand.
This is not the career I expected to have. Having grown up in San Francisco, gone to private French school, taken piano lessons, I should probably be something “respectable,” like a scientist or a teacher. But life can take unexpected turns.
I was always interested in sex work ― the notion that we women could use our sex appeal to make money ― and later when I was struggling to get by in New York as a college student, I even called one of those escort agencies that were listed in the Yellow Pages. (Remember the Yellow Pages? I know. I’m ancient.) But in the end, I lost my nerve. It wasn’t the sex work that scared me — it was breaking the law. What if somebody beat me up or raped me? I knew that if I ever called the cops, I would be the one getting arrested. So I went back to my part-time work-study job and ate a lot of rice.
Fast-forward 20 years and I found myself immigrating to New Zealand. I came here for the national health care and spectacular scenery, but New Zealand has something else I didn’t know about at the time: the most liberal laws around sex work of any country in the world. I took note of this, but only in theory. For 10 years, I was busy raising children and running a household. Then my marriage ended in divorce and I needed an income ― fast. So I started a feminist escort agency.
When my daughter asks me what we do at The Bach, I explain it to her in words she can understand: “Ladies do dress-up and give kisses and cuddles to men and make lots of money.”
And basically, that’s true. But I’d like to explain to you what it’s really like, especially since legalizing sex work has become something of a hot topic recently. California, Hawaii and the District of Columbia all have serious movements underway to begin rolling back criminal penalties for prostitution, and last month New York lawmakers introduced the most progressive measure yet: to completely decriminalize sex work throughout the state. The New York move is particularly radical: Unlike legalizing prostitution, which generally leaves in place some government control over sex workers, decriminalizing sex work makes it a job like any other.
And I think that’s great. Along with Amnesty International and the World Health Organization, as well as just about any sex worker you happen to ask, I believe full decriminalization is the safest model for sex workers.
Back in America, people are happy to shout out their nightmare predictions about loosening criminal penalties for sex work: Streetwalkers will take over our cities! Children will be kidnapped and exploited as sex slaves! Men will treat women like objects to be used and thrown away!
But we don’t need to make up horror stories. The experiment’s been done. In 2003, New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, which decriminalized prostitution between consenting adults — although sex trafficking, unprotected sex work and child prostitution are all still criminal. Five years later, the government commissioned a follow-up study, which found that “the sex industry has not increased in size, and … the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off under the PRA than they were previously.”
So what’s my job like as a pimp? Do I spend my days snorting lines of cocaine off the breasts of exploited teenagers? Not hardly.
First of all, The Bach is not the glamorous sex palace you might imagine. As it happens, I run the agency from a budget motel. That wasn’t my first choice. Even under decriminalization, there’s still a lot of stigma around sex work. When I tried to rent space for my agency, every landlord turned me down. They’d never heard of a “feminist escort agency” and they assumed I would drag in a mess of gang activity, drugs and crime. But in the end, the motel has worked well for us. It’s discreet for our clients and the rooms are all equipped with their own bathrooms.
This particular motel has eight units spread across a pair of unremarkable buildings painted in shades of grey and white. I run six of the units as motel rooms and most of our guests ― traveling businessmen and families — have no idea there’s an escort agency on site. The other two rooms have been completely redecorated: One has a summery, beachy feel (in New Zealand, a “bach” is a summer cabin by the water) and the other is painted in shades of crimson and burnt umber with Japanese erotic wood prints on the walls. There are other touches, too, that you won’t find in your usual cheap motel room: fresh flowers, a bottle of warm coconut oil for massages, and a variety of condoms and lube.
The first thing I do when I get into work is open up the two service rooms. I check that they’re fully stocked with linens, drinks and safe sex equipment, and I turn on the oil warmers and heaters.
Then I go down to my office, a basement room we affectionately call the Dungeon. There, I check the Batphone (our nickname for the agency’s cellphone) for any messages that came through overnight. Sometimes, these are kind gentlemen who didn’t realize that we close at 10 p.m. Other times, they’re drunk idiots (“U open? Anal?” is a typically charming example of our middle-of-the-night texts).
Before long, my phone starts to ping. A man I call “Ben the Shy Farmer” wants to see Grace, as she’s the only escort he feels comfortable with. Ben is a widower in his 60s who’s spent his whole life on his sheep farm. He is cripplingly shy and he has a bit of a speech impediment.
I text Grace. “Would you like to see Ben at 11 a.m. for a one hour GFE?”
“Sure!” she texts back. “Cyu soon!”
“GFE” stands for “Girlfriend Experience,” which is the primary service we offer at The Bach. We don’t sell women and we don’t sell sex. Like any skilled professional, such as a massage therapist or a caregiver, an escort sells her time. In a Girlfriend Experience, she is offering the opportunity for vaginal sex, mutual oral sex and kissing. She is also offering her companionship and kindness ― services our clients often value more than intercourse.
There’s a reason why I say “the opportunity” for sex. Under New Zealand law, a sex worker has the right to withdraw consent at any time, even after a paid booking has started. No one has the right to make her feel disgusted, disrespected or threatened. And that’s why I always ask our escorts if they would like a booking — I never order them to come in. They are independent freelancers and consenting adults, and it is always up to them to accept or decline a client.
Besides GFE, the other main service we offer is sensual massage, which is an erotic naked massage with a hand job finish. In my experience, three kinds of clients book a massage: cheap ones (at $120 for 30 minutes ― that’s New Zealand dollars ― and $160 for the hour, it’s our least expensive service), married men who think they’re not cheating if they don’t engage in penetrative sex, and the occasional tired farmer who actually just wants a rubdown.
But a massage at The Bach isn’t always inexpensive. Anything beyond a hand job costs extra in those bookings. If you want to kiss the escort, it’s $50 extra. If you want a blowjob, it’s $50 extra. And those “extras” go directly into the escort’s pocket — she shares none of those fees with the house. Our most talented saleswoman once racked up $500 in extras during a massage and the guy didn’t even get laid.
Twenty minutes later Grace breezes in looking incredible with her makeup impeccably applied. In her mid-20s, with shoulder-length black hair and stunning Maori-style tattoos up and down her arms, Grace is a single mother putting herself through a carpentry apprenticeship. She could try to get along on single parent benefits (New Zealand has a generous welfare state, at least by American standards), but she doesn’t want to struggle to make ends meet. She wants a warm home for her son, good clothes on his back and — yes! — the occasional nice pair of shoes and dinner out with her friends. She also happens to love the sex.
Grace goes up to the service room and I watch her on the security camera, continuing to field calls and texts as I observe Ben pull into his designated parking spot. When a client makes contact with The Bach, he is given a firm set of instructions: when to arrive, where to park, which door to knock on. The lady locks herself safely in the room, behind tinted glass. She can see out but he can’t see in, so she can take a good look at him and make sure she feels comfortable before she opens the door. On the monitor, I see the door open and Ben goes inside. I set my timer for one hour.
While the booking proceeds, I make a number of other appointments.
