Sex Secrets of Escorts: What Men Really Want

Doing the interview with Veronica Monet was the first time I’ve ever talked with a professional escort that didn’t end up costing me $300. Monet is a semi-retired escort that has just written the book, Sex Secrets of Escorts. It details all the things men want that she has gleaned from her 15 years of servicing men. While some may look down on the idea of women making money from having sex, Monet is a bit different. She’s written a number of books, is a certified graduate of San Francisco Sex Information’s Sex Educator training and has appeared on such television shows as Politically Incorrect and A & E's The Love Chronicles. So stop yapping about pocketbooks and listen up.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Your voice is much less sultry than I expected.
Veronica Monet: I’m so sorry. Do you want me to be sultry?
DRE: I don’t have the money for it. Do you consider being an escort a feminist act?
VM: It’s very definitely feminist for me. I called myself a feminist in 1975 when I was 15 years old. I got in my daddy’s face and I almost got hit for it. So regardless of what manifestation feminism goes through over the decades, I will always call myself a feminist. I work real hard.
DRE: Have you had many discussions with feminists about how what you do is a feminist act?
VM: Yeah, it’s actually been an irony for me because feminism has always been really important to me. When I was in college I helped to organize a Take Back the Night march. I volunteered for domestic violence and rape shelters. Then when I got into being an escort all of a sudden I am debating mainstream feminists and most of them really can’t stand me.
DRE: Is it because you make a choice to be an escort, is that what makes it a feminist act?
VM: It transcends that. A woman should be able to decide whether or not she wants to have a fetus taken out of her womb. But for some reason it’s okay to take things out of the womb but you can’t put anything inside the vagina. You can only have a penis up there “if.” I don’t care what the “if” is, if you’re married, if you’re monogamous, if you’re a serial monogamist, if you’re in love, if you have been on three dates. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business. We don’t apply these same standards to men. We may give them lip service, especially in church. But really, men are allowed to whatever they want sexually and they don’t lose their stature in the eyes of society.
DRE: There’s no meninism. Is that what you’re saying?
VM: [laughs] There’s a double standard. I thought that’s what feminism was all about. We were trying to get rid of the double standard not that we want to be or act like them. We want to have the same rights as them. The right to have sex any way you choose, whenever you choose, for whatever reason you choose. That’s a basic human right, that does not extend to women.
DRE: How about the idea that men may be cheating on their wives or girlfriends with an escort?
VM: Men are cheating on their wives with whoever. That’s like saying we shouldn’t have secretaries because you might have an affair with one. Let’s say you went to see a therapist and you talk about all of your personal problems with the therapist, but you never ever get honest with your mate and tell him or her what’s going on inside of your heart. I think they’d probably be pissed off. It’s like, how come you can’t tell me? A similar thing can go on with prostitution. Yes, if you’re going to see a professional and you choose to cheat your partner out of true intimacy, that’s your choice. But there are a few married couples who have sex outside of the marriage and still have very honest, open and loving relationships with each other. It’s not a mutually exclusive phenomena. I should know, my husband used to go to prostitutes while I was working as one. I knew all about it, sometimes I even paid for it.
DRE: That’s interesting.
VM: Yeah, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day was a lot of fun in my house.
DRE: Would you prefer not to be called a hooker?
VM: I use the word whore. Howie Mandel asked me a few years ago on Politically Incorrect “Do you prefer to be called a prostitute?” I said “You can call me a whore.” Ever since then, that’s Bill Maher’s favorite word. He says whore every chance he gets.
DRE: Have you ever been discriminated against for being an escort?
VM: Lots of times in lots of different ways. To be out there publicly means that you’re probably going to get arrested, you’re going to get audited and you’re going to lose custody of your children. You even may get evicted if you are renting an apartment. All of those things have happened to me.
You fight because you realize that anything that would cause that much trouble must be worth fighting for. There must be something really powerful about this if that many people are having a problem with it. We’re talking about adult consensual behavior here. You and I have freedom of speech and freedom of religion. I can worship any way I choose, anywhere I choose or I can choose not to worship at all. That’s in the Constitution but when it comes to your sex life and my sex life, you and I do not have any constitutional guarantees whatsoever.
DRE: You started as an escort in 1989.
VM: Yes but I officially gave notice to all of my regular clients on January 31, 2004. I chose two clients that I’ve loved and adored for ten years so I decided to continue with them.
DRE: How did you first get into it?
VM: I was working a computer company and I was really having a miserable time. I’d been working for seven years for corporate America and I just hated it. I started dating a woman who was working as a prostitute. She drove a Mercedes, she lived in a gorgeous house and had a husband and three kids. She never took drugs. I’d never seen her drunk in my life. I’ve never even seen her finish a glass of wine. I was sure a lucky girl, wasn’t I?
DRE: Uh-huh.
VM: [laughs] I’d never read about a prostitute like her before. I never even knew they existed. I wanted to find out what was wrong with this picture so I went out with her for six months and instead of saving her from prostitution, I decided to beg her to save me from my desk job.
DRE: When did you start this book?
VM: I started it in the beginning of 2005.
DRE: Had you kept notes over the years?
VM: Some of it was from notes, but most of it was in my head and in my heart. I have wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old and I entered my first writing contest. When I went to college, I was going to be a journalism major but instead I got a degree in psychology. Somehow or another I wound up trying to do the sensible thing and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I abandoned all my artistic dreams. So it’s very interesting to me that prostitution led me right back to my childhood dream of being an author.
DRE: How did you find the process of writing?
VM: It flowed well once I started. I’ve been freelancing for two decades. I used to have a little newspaper column that nobody read. Then I was a staff writer for a bisexual magazine called Anything That Moves. I‘ve had six books published including a college textbook.
DRE: Has Sex Secrets of Escorts become a handbook for the profession?
VM: I get emails once in a while from people who are interested in actually going into escorting and I always say, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, because it’s against the law to help anybody do that.” Most emails I get are emails from guys that are so damn grateful that somebody who’s had sex with a lot of men actually had something nice to say about men.
DRE: I hate the stereotype of men as dumb, horny creatures.
VM: I do too. Who wrote War and Peace? Who drafted the Declaration of Independence? Who wrote the Constitution? I don’t think they were dogs. It’s interesting now we have this whole mythology that men are dogs, men are animals, men are pigs, men all want the same thing. In 15 years of working as an escort, I never met two men who wanted the same thing.
DRE: Has the book been optioned for a movie?
VM: Not yet, but I’d love that. You know what I think would be great? If we actually had an escort who doesn’t get rescued by her Prince Charming and then goes off into the sunset to get married like Pretty Woman. It would be nice if we had an escort who’s already happily married and then takes her family on a really expensive vacation to Europe.
DRE: Do you see a time in America when prostitution will be treated like it is Holland?
VM: I hope it’s not like it’s treated in Holland. The model that I’m happy about is in New Zealand. Nobody talks about New Zealand and that’s because they have decriminalization. That means that there’s no money in it for the government. The women actually are entrepreneurs who run their own business. All they’re called upon to do is pay their taxes like anybody else who runs a small business. But other than that, they don’t have somebody forcing them to get health checked or telling them where they can work. As a feminist, I feel that’s it’s none of anybody’s business. Let women run their own businesses. If you’re baking Mrs. Field’s cookies, you have certain laws about how to run a business and it stops there. But if she’s selling sex, all of a sudden you think that she’s a child and you have to put her behind a barbed wire fence and force her to do this and force her to do that. Most of the brothels do not care about the women who work for them. They care about the clients who are paying them. I don’t like legalized brothels. I have nothing against the women that are working in this system but the women who work in legal strip clubs and legal brothels do not benefit from any kind of labor rights.
DRE: What’s nuttiest thing you ever had to do for a guy?
VM: The most shocking thing was when somebody put me on a $50,000 annual retainer to watch World War II movies with him, eat take out and let him fall asleep. We never had sex.
DRE: How often did you see him?
VM: I used to see him once a week for two years.
DRE: Aw, that guy must have been lonely.
VM: He was a real sweet guy. He refurbished my entire apartment and because of him I was able to amass the money I needed for the down payment on my house a lot sooner. If I hadn’t been meeting sweet guys, I guess I’d be bitter. I’ve had a very successful and happy career and I have a very good attitude about men.


Article written by: Daniel Robert Epstein on
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