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This Issue 03/31/2005

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The street is dark. On the list of buzzer numbers, next to the glass double doors and under the blue awning of the tall office complex there is no mention of the agency. The hallway inside is empty and dirty. A very loud, very slow elevator goes up to the seventh floor, where through an open doorway there comes a low voice, its intonation practiced, though scarred by cigarettes. I am here for an unusual kind of job interview -- this is an escort service, and I am pretending to be an aspiring escort.

-In her office, the owner Karen* is making dates, dispersing her employees throughout Philadelphia. I hear her sending a girl to a "regular" near Broad and Locust, instructing another to count out the cash she's just received. I hear her describing a girl named Lee* to an interested caller -- 36C, 24, 36. They're at the Double Tree, the Hilton and private residences.

Karen's waiting room is a simple office space masquerading as a country club powder room -- large gold-painted mirrors, framed prints of Romance paintings and tall topiaries covered in plastic ivy contrast the false panel ceilings an neon lighting. Wooden figurines of cows and pigs cover brown metal desks. There are boxes of tissue everywhere, fanned copies of Elle, Ladies' Home Journal and Better Home. This is where the girls sit and read and wait.

Karen knows my height and weight and that I consider myself "attractive." She does not know that I'm a fake. She's asked me to do my hair and make-up, but to dress normally, a sweater and a pair of jeans.

I am here under these false pretenses to ask the question that no one on the inside of the escorting business will answer for anyone on the outside. Only the clients and the girls will get a straight answer -- is this sex in exchange for money?

Is this prostitution?

In Karen's office she lights a Merit cigarette and fusses over her new telephone. She is 45 and still beautiful -- an escort since her early 20s. And she levels with me very quickly.

Am I expected to have sex? I ask.

Yes. Tip is included in the hourly rate, $250, so my clients will be expecting me to. I would go and make pleasant conversation, and wait for a cue -- an invitation to get more comfortable perhaps, or a seat on the bed. But it's so fast, she says. She assures me premature ejaculation is common, that most of the hour is spent talking. They're so nervous, she tells me. Her voice is very kind.

She claims her clientele to be the shy and the nervous, the insecure but financially secure. The cr?me de la cr?me as far as the escort business goes.