About Me 0014: Making Money Quickly

The last time she hooked up, she said, it was because “his personality put me at ease. He was straight to the point. He asked me the same questions I was asking him.” Plus, she liked that his real name matched his email address. From there, she was able to find his Facebook page, with numerous photographs. When Ashley (not her real name) finally had her rendezvous, she took down his license plate number and texted it to herself on a second cellphone, which she’d left on her kitchen table along with a note for friends and family, just in case she didn’t return. And then she collected her $500 an hour.

Welcome to prostitution in the Internet era.

Fifteen years ago, it was hard to find hookers on the Web. Now they are all over the place. The Internet has given rise to a new generation of sex workers who have more autonomy than ever before, and by and large enjoy a level of safety not shared by their street-walking sisters. Nonetheless, Internet prostitution is a risky business, and those hazards were underscored this month when the bodies of four women were found decomposing on the side of the road near Jones Beach on Long Island. Attention quickly turned to two missing call girls who’d been using Craigslist as their primary means of making connections. It turned out that neither woman was among the victims, but the grisly discovery put an unwanted spotlight back on Craigslist, which in September took down its U.S. erotic-services directory under pressure from law enforcement and human-rights groups. Last week, it pulled its worldwide adult-services ads. (Though Craigslist has managed to get most sex solicitation off its site, it hasn’t completely succeeded, as Ashley can tell you.)

David Henry Sterry has numerous stories about how the lives of prostitutes have changed in the past decade. Last year, he edited Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitutes Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money, an anthology that received a stamp of approval from The New York Times. He’s also a former sex worker himself, a rare example of a man who earned his living pleasing older women. (The only common thread connecting his clients, he said, was that they all had money and “most felt powerless because they were housewives, bored, and rich.”)

One of the women who appeared in his book called herself Kat, worked on Craigslist, and had an elaborate screening process in which she would force potential johns to drive up to the location of the assignations, get out of their cars, and stand there while she examined them from a nearby window with a pair of binoculars. Kat refused to talk to anyone with a blocked number. She also chose not to text. If you sent her a photo of your genitalia, a common mistake among potential johns, you were out of contention. “She had developed what she called a ‘hooker’s radar,’” Sterry said. “The tone of the guy’s voice, his walk, she had learned how to instantly size someone up. And if the guy looked sketchy or too much like a toad, she would stop returning his phone calls.”

“People who think they’re going to eliminate prostitution or violence in prostitution by shutting down Craigslist are wildly deluded,” said David Henry Sterry.

Another Internet-era phenomenon that’s friendly to business and helps boost security for prostitutes and johns alike is “the mixer.” This is a cocktail party-like event at which “hobbyists”—the current euphemism of choice for high-spending porn aficionados obsessed with bonking their favorite screen stars—get to meet potential dates. No sex typically takes place on site, explained Daily Beast contributor Richard Abowitz, a chronicler of life in Las Vegas, where the parties frequently occur. “It’s more like a job fair,” he said.

“Tea Partiers and small-government conservatives expect to see major legislative action right away next year,” Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, said in an email. “Make no mistake, the new Congressional Freshman Class was elected to control and reduce the size and scope of government.”

The coming vote on the debt limit promises to be even more contentious. The federal government will run out of money early next year unless more borrowing is authorized, and even the most extreme budget slashing proposals out there will still means deficits for at least the medium term. A failure to pass the bill could spark a financial crisis, shut down the government, and turn big business against the GOP, making it a must-pass measure. But it’s also a bill that’s easy to demagogue, as the many Republicans who attacked incumbent Democrats for their votes on increasing the debt limit on the campaign trail discovered this year. The Republican caucus voted unanimously against the last increase in the debt ceiling, and a number have already signaled they won’t authorize another once they’re in the majority. After two years of heated rhetoric on the issue, Boehner is already warning conservatives to cool it.

“This is going to be probably the first really big adult moment for the new Republican majority,” Boehner told The New Yorker in a recent interview. “You can underline ‘adult.’ And for people who’ve never been in politics it’s going to be one of those growing moments. It’s going to be difficult, I’m certainly well aware of that. But we’ll have to find a way to help educate members and help people understand the serious problem that would exist if we didn’t do it.”

Kibbe said the House in January has to prove immediately that it is serious about spending—for example, by joining Sarah Palin in embracing Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Social Security- and Medicare-slashing budget plan—if it wants to keep the Tea Party’s support through the vote.

“The majority party has some responsibilities, and I think they should have to confront the unreality of what they have committed themselves to,” said Rep. Barney Frank of the debt-limit fight.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio atttends a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 2, 2010. (Photo: Harry Hamburg / AP Photo)

“If nothing is done on the part of the newly elected members of Congress and the first major vote is raising the debt limit, that would be unacceptable,” he told The Daily Beast. “If conservatives make any kind of concessions, there will have to be proof by legislation passed that this situation is not going to happen again. A budget would have to be drafted that is substantially smaller than previous years.”

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About Me 0014

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Making Money Quickly

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<b>News</b> Conference by The President | The White House

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

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<b>News</b> Conference by The President | The White House

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WarioWare D.I.Y. games cover 2010 <b>news</b> | Joystiq

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