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VLM ARTICLE
(Vancouver Lifestyle Magazine, August 2008)
 

Soon enough, while her friends were working for minimum wage, Lake
easily was pulling in $400 to $600 a day. “That kind of money gets
pretty addictive,” she admits.

Greeting me at her apartment door, this Lower Mainland madam of
three decades wears the look of a professional woman, dressed in her
soft, camel-coloured business suit, her long, blonde hair pulled
back in a severe ponytail. Lake sits by a window that overlooks busy
Davie Street, sipping on a cup of lemon-scented herbal tea in
delicate bone china.
Was there a clue in her childhood, or did her past just go to show
that it could happen to anyone? Lake shakes her head, no, saying
there was no abuse of any kind. Her parents were loving, although
she concedes they were perhaps a little more permissive than her
friends’ parents. She grew up the eldest of four children of an
engineer father and a mother who was an elementary school teacher
before she retired to become a full-time homemaker.

Initially, Lake didn’t tell any of her family about her choice of
work. “I knew my mother would try to talk me out of it,” she says.
It would have been a wasted effort. “I was doing it; I was loving
it.”

In the ’70s that meant nights of turning as many as five tricks, of
being seduced by the easy money, the flashy, expensive clothes, the
gifts from regulars, the drugs and alcohol. Lake did leave it all
behind, for a while. She married a man she had dated for four years.
It lasted a year. “When I stopped, I was mostly working in the
dress-making, dress-design business,” says Lake. “I was trying to
live a straight life and it didn’t work for me,” she says, adding
she is thankful the couple never had children. “My husband could
never make up the difference between what I was making [as a call
girl] and what he could bring home as a labourer.”

Lake set her sights on being a madam. “I seem to have, being the
oldest child, the ability to direct others,” she says. “The first
girl who worked for me was 19; I was somewhere around 29.” Today,
Lake runs three brothels, in Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler.
Last year, she decided to go public in the CBC Newsworld documentary
A Safer Sex Trade, a broadcast that coincided with the opening of
the Robert Pickton trial for serial sex-murders. In the documentary,
Lake speaks passionately about the trade, the dangers and her belief
that prostitution should be legalized, calling it, “a valid career
option today if managed properly.” She says politicians have failed
to eradicate or even curtail the robust local sex trade. “Vancouver
is a thriving city and the business is growing,” she says. “I think
society, especially the West Coast, has broader and more permissive
attitudes.
“I stopped leading a double life 10 years ago,” she says breezily.

“Men aren’t rushing into marriage as early, many are just too busy
in their careers to pursue a relationship, most men aren’t
hard-wired for monogamy, or they are just bored with their sex life
and want variety.” Frankly, Lake doesn’t care to speculate too much
– the fact is that men are coming to her in droves. On her virtual
portal, men can choose between role-play experiences, romantic
evenings, lingerie and fetish fun from her roster of Vancouver
escorts and independents. Her “girls” are between the ages of 19 and
44. They are university students, mothers and corporate business
women. “They are the girl next door, or the woman working in the
next office to you. ... On the whole they are wholesome and
attractive,” she says. “For many of them, it gives them a sex life
with a whole lot less hassles. ... Some girls tell me they do it
because they don’t want to be fully committed [to a man], but they
want sex.”

Lake will only hire women who are attractive, fit, reliable,
conscientious, business-like, have good attitudes – and are not into
drugs. When it comes to dates, the initial tête-à-tête follows a
patter: Lake introduces the two parties in her home, the two may
chat for five to 10 minutes, and then they may then choose to use a
room in her home or go to a hotel. However, Lake insists that money
be exchanged before anyone goes to the next step. “The encounter
itself can include a shower or bath together, massage or role play,”
she says. “I encourage a two-hour date, although some johns do take
the girls overnight.”

Some women will see up to seven men in a day, although many limit it
to three. “When I worked I saw three to four a day. That was
comfortable for me.”

The question begs to be asked: How does a call girl fake it when
she’s not attracted to a john? “I tell the girls to see something
attractive in any of the men and focus on what you like,” Lake
replies. “They are not there for their own personal satisfaction,
rather to service. ... I tell them to stimulate themselves in their
minds and it will go easier. ... I also remind them that they are
getting paid really well to perform.” High-class call girls can make
anywhere from a couple hundred dollars a month to $5,000 to upwards
of $10,000 a month. Although Lake doesn’t perform services anymore,
she admits she sometimes misses it. “When you charge, you have an
option of having a steady sex life,” she says.

For “Anna” – one of Lake’s escorts – it’s all about the money. “This
is my freedom 55,” says Anna, her code name in the industry. “In a
good month, I make probably more than $11,000.” The one-time
marketing consultant and operations manager serves wealthy clients
from across the Lower Mainland as well as out-of-town businessmen
for $300 an hour. “I’m the appointment between the lawyer and the
squash game,” she says.

The 40-something Anna, who was briefly married in her 30s, is tanned
and looks like a California surfing gal; she’s 5-foot-7 and fit,
with slim hips and small breasts. “I do weights three times a week,
I have a personal trainer and I don’t drink or smoke,” Anna says. “I
live a very healthy life; I walk, I eat healthy foods, I’m a
voracious reader and a teetotaller.” She frowns when asked if she
got into the trade because of a history of sexual abuse or a bad
childhood. “I grew up back east in a typical, upper middle class
family – two kids, two dogs, a pool, two cars, members of the yacht
club,” she says. “I had a very good childhood.”

Anna also couldn’t care less how society perceives her and she
doesn’t make any excuses for her line of work. “I greatly respect
myself and my conscience is clear,” she says firmly. “I also don’t
feel guilty having sex with married men; I have no emotional issues
about it.”

Like Anna, “Nina” says she grew up in “an idyllic middle class
family, the eldest of two, to religious blue-collar parents.” The
voluptuous, stunning 5-foot-8 redhead with a 40DD bust, shares with
Anna a non-judgemental view of her chosen work. “Naturally, in our
society it [prostitution] is different,” says the longtime
Vancouverite. “I like exciting the senses, I ooze sexuality and I
was always a little adventurous when it came to sex ... even at an
early age.”

“My parents taught me good values and wanted me to attend university
but I was focused on finding that great love, that man who was going
to be ‘the one,’” she recalls. “But at 16, I discovered my sexuality
and when I finished high school at 18 I moved in with my boyfriend.”
At 22 Nina was married; at 36 she was divorced with no children and
bored with her office job.

She got into the profession two years ago by default, she likes to
say. “I got into online dating. I was meeting really interesting
people and one day a guy invited me to a sex party,” she recalls.
“It was crazy. ... People were having sex right there in front of
everyone, seemingly oblivious to us and it was a huge eye-opener for
me.” Nina soon joined the subculture of swingers “and found myself
loving it.” Soon after, she graduated to Webcam pornography. “I
found out I was more attractive than I thought I was and I was
getting tons of hits to my site,” says the 200-pounds-plus Nina,
shaking her head in disbelief.

To this day, Nina’s parents think she’s a horticulturalist.
“Honestly, I think I would break my mother’s heart,” she says. “It’s
a constant tug of war. ... I love what I do but I feel guilty having
to lie about it to my family and many of my friends.”

Anna’s and Nina’s clients are mainly corporate types with disposable
income. Most are married (Anna puts it at 70 per cent; Nina at 50
per cent), many are boomers between the ages of 55 and 65, most see
relatively older women because they can’t be bothered with idle
chit-chat with 20-something girls and most say they rendezvous with
them because their wives either have no interest in sex or
reluctantly submit. “I keep in mind I’m only hearing one side of the
story, but I’m not here to judge,” Anna says. Recently, both have
been surprised by their new clientele’s demographic: single,
attractive men in their thirties. “They are intelligent, articulate
and wonderful lovers,” says Nina with a touch of amazement in her
voice. “Many tell me they are too busy [climbing the corporate
ladder] to build a relationship or they are just out of a
relationship and they don’t have the emotional fortitude to go back
into the dating scene.”

This summer, one client took Anna to England; another paid for a
whirlwind, first-class tryst in San Francisco. Nina, Anna and others
advertise their expensive wares as escort agencies in the Yellow
Pages and The Georgia Straight, on Craigslist and other Internet
sites and operate under tacit approval of the police.
According to Vancouver Police Department acting sergeant Brian
Sanders, the police aren’t interested in those who operate escort
services, who advertise on the Internet or who do business
discreetly.

“We try to target the madams, pimps and johns who are victimizing
the girls,” adds Sanders. “Last year we arrested johns in the
hundreds, at least 36 men a month.” Sanders, a 27-year veteran of
the force, makes a legal distinction that many may not be aware of.
“Prostitution, the act itself, isn’t an offence,” he explains.
“Obtaining money and living off the avails of prostitution is.”

The life of a high-class call girl isn’t that glamorous, Sanders
says. “[Prostitutes] can tell you anything they want about what a
good career option it is but I don’t buy it,” he says. “Movies like
Pretty Woman tend to glamourize the lifestyle, as do madams and
pimps who promote their business. ... The truth is, it’s a very
dangerous profession, the dangers are still there in a home, and in
fact I’d say those women are more vulnerable,” says Sanders.
“Pimping is glamorized in the media and these individuals use the
life to entice vulnerable people to work in the trade.” Sanders more
often than not sees the seedier side of the sex trade up front and
personal. Many he deals with are marginalized, Downtown Eastside,
drug-addicted sex-trade workers who have fallen into the trade to
support their drug and/or alcohol addictions.

Sanders has a personal stake in getting young girls off the streets
– his niece was in the sex trade for nearly a decade, off and on.
Although “Claire” has been off the streets for about 15 years, her
past still haunts the now-35-year-old woman, Sanders says. Her road
to the streets is a sad one – one that Sanders hears often on the
Downtown Eastside. When she was five years old, a male babysitter
sexually assaulted Claire. Soon, she was involved in street fights.
“Her innocence was lost,” says Sanders. “She then started drifting
with troubled kids. ... At 13, she was again raped and by then her
self-esteem was blown. ... She believed that to be popular all she
had to do was have sex.” At 17, Claire was hooking. She would write:
“Life on the street is hard, you trust no one, you have been
brainwashed by the pimps and the money you get isn’t yours to keep.
You are always in danger every minute of the day.”

The trade hasn’t changed much, concedes Sanders. “We are finding a
lot of women coming in from Asian and Eastern European countries and
working in Whistler, Vancouver and Victoria,” he says. “They come
with the promise of tax-free money and some high-class call girls
are easily making $10,000 to $13,000 a month.”

With money like that in the picture, prostitution is not going to go
away. “As much as someone wants to be moralistic or judgmental,”
says Scarlett Lake, “in the end it’s a profession that’s here to
stay. ... They don’t call it the oldest profession for nothing.

“Furthermore, sex trade workers need to have the same rights and
protection of anyone else in society,” she says. “Our laws are
outdated and prejudicial.
That view may be the most realistic for those women who wish to
remain in the trade. But here is a final endnote. Just days before
press time Anna called to say she’s getting out of the business
within the next few months: “This profession,” she said, “sucks the
spirit and soul out of you after a while.”

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