THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW
SHE sits across the table, carving enthusiastically into a large steak. “Garlic, love it, but it’s bad for business.” Tonight Sandy van der Toorn is off duty. There will be no fondling in the jacuzzi, no whipping clients hanging like carcasses from pulleys in the ceiling, no naked massages and definitely no sex.
Eager customers who dial her cellphone in desperate need of such services are told to call back tomorrow, or are referred to another member of her East London escort business. Tonight this vivacious redhead is eating garlic.
Listening to her talk about her work, I decide that here is a supreme vindication of Oscar Wilde’s epigram: “Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.” The bloom has not gone from this mother of three, who faces criminal charges for breaching the Immorality Act.
Her job as an “escort” and masseuse may include sex and sadomasochism role-playing, but Van der Toorn vehemently denies being a prostitute. Rather, she has cast herself in the role of a modern-day courtesan, entertaining the lonely.
She is therefore suing Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi for R30 000, claiming police breach-ed her civil rights when they invaded her private property without a search warrant and caught her in flagrante delicto with an undercover officer.
It was a successful trap. A new client responding to a local newspaper advertisement called on her cellphone and arrang-ed an afternoon session. She picked him up, drove to the escort agency premises (a neat three-bedroomed house near the beachfront), where he was offered booze and a baby powder massage.
But her shy client was a policeman, and he was wired for sound; their every word was recorded as evidence for a magistrate to sit in judgment over. Perhaps she should have been suspicious when he “could not get it up” and went into the living room to retrieve a special “Indian ointment” from his jacket, which he claimed would aid his problem.
As she followed him buck naked to help in the search, South African Narcotics and Alcohol Bureau (Sanab) officers burst into the house. “They were in the living room, and I just turned tail and ran back into the bedroom, with my fat bottom jiggling in full view. I was so embarrassed.” One might have thought a seasoned pro would be unfazed by such occupational hazards, but no.
“The most humiliating part was that they kept me standing in the bedroom clutching a shirt in front of me, which covered very little, while they searched the room, laughing at the sex toys and stuff they found.”
She may have been in the world’s oldest profession for nearly three years – and by all accounts she is so proficient at her job that clients will fly her all over the country – but Van der Toorn oozes a certain childish charm.
“At least coming to me these men won’t go and have an affair which could break up their marriage,” she argues, adding without a hint of humour: “In any case, there is nothing for businessmen to do in this town when they visit.” If local councillors are not careful, she will be sending them a bill for providing an essential community service.
“A prostitute is someone who takes your money and does the job, but I sometimes only give my company. It’s up to the client if things go further. I provide a service and people pay for my time, like they would for a psychiatrist. In any case, how two consenting adults enjoy themselves should be no one else’s business.”
Her vitality is deafening, as she recounts some of the dramas in her life since divorcing her policeman husband and moving from Cape Town with her three young children. Bright, barefaced, scandalously bold, yet with a hint of naivety and vulnerability, she reminds me of a childhood friend in England who would allow spotty 12-year-old boys to “feel her up” at school discos.
As it is, Van der Toorn’s fleshy face is caked in make-up, like a child playing with her mother’s cosmetics – adding unfalteringly to her 26 years. But there is a playfulness about her which is incongruous with the image I had of this dominant S&M mistress flaying men while their head and wrists are locked into a stockade I spotted in her working bedroom (a moody cavernous space, all black sheets and black curtains).
But there are many faces to this feisty flame-haired “courtesan”: when not escorting or massaging, she is mothering her children. She is also a business woman, making good money the only way she knows how, in order to keep her family in a comfortable lifestyle.
It is an honest living. There is no pimp, no drugs, no exploitation – just women trying to survive, using God-given tools. Would it be better if she were on the street?
Van der Toorn has already been there, and her answer is a definitive no. Harsh life experiences have put her on the road she now travels.
Her parents divorced when she was three and the Holmes (as she was then) grew up modestly in the Tableview area of Cape Town with her mother, sister and brother, who is a policeman. She says her father is the wealthy owner of a fleet of fishing boats.
Musically, rather than academically inclined, she dropped out of secretarial college to marry her policeman boyfriend after falling pregnant at the age of 17. He was a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church. Van der Toorn describes him as manipulative and abusive.
“He used to lose his temper and knock me around. I left him about five times but always went back, thinking he would change. But when I caught him shaking my baby violently one day, it was the end.”
After the divorce, she spent time with her sister, mother and the children selling apples from a bakkie, but they had a series of misfortunes (their first vehicle was burnt out when they gave a lift to a couple who made a braai in the back, and the second ended in a river). She also tried her hand at waitressing, but found age was against her.
“We were desperate. I’m doing this because there was no other way to earn enough money to feed my family. I did not mind hard physical work, but there was none available for a white woman down on her luck. I think we were the only white hawkers in Grahamstown between 1992 and 1993. We thought that by working hard and following the rules, things would come up right. But we had to grow up.”
So she went to work for an escort agency in Cape Town, eventually moving to an agency in East London, where she soon married a 52-year-old local farmer who was a client, only to find out later that he already had a wife. “I thought he was a meal ticket and he spoilt me rotten, but I have principles and morals. I won’t stay with someone who’s already married.”
It was only after her sister pointed out that the local escort agencies were ripping off their employees with fines, alcohol tabs and low pay that Van der Toorn decided to set herself up as an independent in 1995. “Within a week I was able to buy a car.”
Her current problems stemmed from her attempt to set up a rival business with her sister, Linda. At one stage in 1995 they had about 10 employees – now they have seven. Some of the other escort agencies (there are five in this tiny town) complained to their police contacts.
Van der Toorn describes many police as “booker-outers who don’t pay for a good time at the other agencies. But I say business is business.” Though some police clients are prepared to fork out money, others see it as a perk of the job. Her no- free-sex policy has not gone down well: “That’s the main reason why I’m the only agency being targeted.”
Police say they were only reacting to her bold newspaper advert: “Red-hot red-head. Not for the faint-hearted. Call Sandy.”
A podgy woman, with slightly bucked teeth and dripping with gold chains, a diamond bracelet and several rings on her large fingers, Van der Toorn charges about R300 an hour or R1 500 for an “all-nighter”.
“My clients are mostly regulars. They are very needy people who want a secret friend with whom to share special moments.” They call about promotions, babies being born – even when they have a problem. She’s so successful it was a long time before she was able to find a local doctor or attorney who was not a client.
Most are aged between 25 and 60, though she did once have a 70-year-old. “He obviously wanted to try it before he died, and I was surprised he was able to get it up,” she giggles.
Her face is animated with satisfaction as she talks about her current lack of financial worries – she owns two premises and is saving for her children’s education. “My private house is in a nice suburb with five bedrooms, a big garden for the kids and a pool. I’m not proud of what I do, but of my achievements. But it’s difficult to see a way out now I’m used to the money. How can I now go and earn less?”