Working the Intersection Of Sex and Power
By Lily Burana
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Oh, Deborah Jeane, what are we going to do with you?
Yes, you, Deborah Jeane Palfrey -- aka Miz Julia, former proprietress of the alleged escort service Pamela Martin and Associates, the 50-year-old California girl who's had Washington all a-dither.
You surrendered your phone records and took your plight to ABC -- all in your own defense, of course. Facing racketeering charges and possible prison time, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
When called out as a customer, the military strategist and "shock and awe" auteur Harlan K. Ullman didn't rise to the bait, but former AIDS czar and deputy secretary of state Randall L. Tobias stepped down from his post after being ID'd as a client -- albeit one, he claimed, who received only massages from Palfrey's "gals." We waited to see who might fall next with great (prurient) interest. But so far, nothing.
Voyeurism, like baseball, is one of our great national pastimes. Whether people are drawn in by the morality play or the water-cooler gossip, you can't top a sex scandal for spectator sport. An imbroglio like this one had the full menu -- erotic high jinks, power, money, lies, politics, the potential for disaster and humiliation. And the best thing about it: It was all happening to somebody else.
Americans may be inured to celebrity sex tapes and former teen queens flashing the paparazzi, but when it comes to sex and political figures, our tripwires are as touchy as they were 30 years ago, in the day of Rep. Wilbur Mills and his stripper paramour, Fanne "The Argentine Firecracker" Foxe. We not only expect lurid details, we demand professional ruin. Even perfectly legal erotic intrigues, a la Jack Ryan -- the Illinois Republican who abandoned his 2004 Senate campaign after divorce papers filed by his wife, actress Jeri Ryan, alleged that he had pressured her to accompany him to sex clubs -- can torpedo a political career.
We're so wedded to our Puritan notion of moral consistency that we're positively ignited by news of politicians knowingly flirting with the sexual dark side -- even though the history of such behavior extends all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. Sex scandals, in fact, are to Washington, D.C., as volcanic eruptions are to Washington state -- surprising and scalding, infrequent yet inevitable. Alexander Hamilton bedded another man's wife. Andrew Jackson's secretary of war did the same. Grover Cleveland paid child support to a woman with whom he had an affair. Warren Harding's mistress claimed she had sex with the president in a White House coat closet.
But in the good old days, the media generally kept its nose out of private business. In 1903, House Speaker David Henderson resigned over his sexual relationship with the daughter of a senator. Henderson never revealed why he was quitting; neither did the press. And remember John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe? But the generally cozy relationship between pencils and power ended during the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Suddenly, sex headlines were everywhere.
Besides Mills, there was Rep. Wayne Hays and Elizabeth Ray, the secretary who couldn't type; Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart and Donna Rice; the prostitution ring operated out of the Capitol Hill apartment of Rep. Barney Frank; "Mayflower Madam" Sydney Biddle Barrows and her tony call-girl service; and, of course, Monica Lewinksy, Bill Clinton and that blue dress. So much for the ennui born of raunch culture.
Certainly I'm as curious as the next person. As a former stripper, I'm interested in a sisterly way in the fate of the women who allegedly worked for Palfrey. Will their identities be exposed? I hope not. A dear friend of mine who worked in the quasi-legal reaches of the adult business became tabloid fodder, and it was among the most traumatic experiences of her life.
As an Army wife, I have a morbid fascination with the identities of the supposed "high-ranking military officials" who Palfrey says were among her service's clients. And I, like many, would enjoy seeing a little karmic justice for anyone who built his professional house on a holier-than-thou foundation.
Surely some will respond to the scandal with a call for decriminalizing prostitution -- as though that would extinguish this type of conflagration. Hardly. It's not the legal catch that sparks the embarrassment, titillation and professional fallout. (Trust me, if a politico were caught trolling Craigslist for no-money-exchanged fun, it'd still rock the Hill.) Apart from the apparent hypocrisy of upstanding civic leaders doing wrong (note, please, that as AIDS czar, Tobias drafted a policy that required any country receiving U.S. aid to adopt an anti-prostitution stance), it's the promise of indecent disclosure that turns the whole matter into a sleaze powderkeg.
"Still, there's something so 1970s about it all," says Joshua Gamson, a sociologist at the University of San Francisco. "Tobias's remarks about 'gals coming back to his condo.' It feels so familiar." Gamson has written that we often view sex scandals in Washington differently from those that erupt elsewhere. Actor Hugh Grant's BMW dalliance with streetwalker Divine Brown? That was just a Hollywood case of a nice boy gone naughty. But when it comes to politics, nothing piques our interest like an uptight powermonger with his pants down. Add a conservative political agenda as a garnish, and our eyes are glued to the guy. It's hard to know which intrigues us more -- his Achilles' heel or his clay feet.
Though "high-class prostitution" may seem a rarefied field, Palfrey allegedly ran an operation that was entirely common. The mid- to-upscale prostitution market in a large city such as Washington is served by a number of providers, tucked discreetly away from the public eye: independent escorts who advertise online, in periodicals and through networking; spas, massage parlors and brothels (never explicitly referred to as such) that entertain clients in-house; and businesses that connect and dispatch escorts from a remote location, such as the one Palfrey allegedly ran. It bears pointing out that "high-class" is a relative term; a truly upscale working girl would scoff at the $275-$300 hourly rate. The elite pros pencil in dates for at least twice that much -- often more.
Of course, Palfrey and her attorney say that the business was perfectly legit: She merely set up women to provide erotic fantasy fulfillment, but she neither allowed nor received any money in exchange for letter-of-the-law sex acts. (In fact, certain services may have fallen outside the legal definition of prostitution, but elaboration is not possible in a family newspaper.)
Such claims have "loophole" written all over them, and why not, ask some. "Other industries and business people find loopholes in the law so they can function. The adult entertainment industry has a right to interpret the law in this way, too," says former prostitute Tracy Quan, who wrote the novel "Diary of a Married Call Girl." "If she didn't guarantee the tips the escorts were receiving, if she didn't get a commission from those tips, she has a strong argument. The fee she was charging was for introduction."
Last week, Palfrey expressed dismay that no man with whom she had done business had volunteered to defend her. That she'd even think of appealing to former clients for assistance is a total gobsmacker. It betrays either an ignorance or irreverence regarding the ways in which the upper-echelon sex business works -- it's a precarious balance of discretion, ingratiation and the threat of mutually assured destruction. A powerful client could always engineer a bust, while on the supply side, nothing says "Don't mess with me" like the threat of a black book, or phone records, made public. Ease of transaction and a zipped lip is the agreement on both sides of any sex-industry exchange, for however long it lasts.
On this and other levels, Palfrey shows a surprising lack of sophistication. Is this really how a high-powered pleasure executrix comports herself -- as an innocent little fantasy arbiter getting picked on by The Man because no one will attest to her honor? How can a woman who has gotten herself into such hot water be so tepid?
Too bland to be notorious, too victim-based wimpy to be a folk hero, Palfrey comes off as the Milquetoast Madam. Her business model appears to be your run-of-the-mill outcall service, her $1.5 million in assets (now seized) were not exactly Trump-ian in scale, and she ran her concern out of Vallejo, for God's sake. (To those who are not California conversant, Vallejo is tied with Sheboygan and Duluth for all-out glamour.) And as for her appearance, well, she's not exactly plying the Sydney Biddle Barrows route of hats, gloves and Chanel.
I'm willing to believe that there's a subtle genius behind Palfrey's unremarkable physical presentation, however, one that may serve her well should she be brought to trial. Heidi Fleiss showed up for her first day in court with perfect hair, perfect posture and a fabulous beige wrap dress. She was convicted. Palfrey, by contrast, meets the media wearing '80s bangs and what look like separates from Dress Barn. It makes good sense from a social and legal perspective -- a schlub in off-the-rack duds and out-of-date makeup has a better shot at public sympathy than a proud-shouldered vixen in couture.
Curious, though, how limited the reach of this story has been. Perhaps we're so scandal-whipped after Bill Clinton and Mark Foley and Jack Ryan that ennui does set in. Perhaps in the face of four years of war in Iraq and the specter of global warming, we have other things on our minds. Perhaps Palfrey's anti-style is the ultimate buzz-kill. It may be a sexy story that's not quite sexy enough.
So what can we say, Deborah Jeane? It's hard out here for a wimp.
Lily Burana is the author of the memoir "Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America"
and the novel "Try."
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