The faithful fans all gathered as expected in Santa Monica for that big book launch last week. What, they were all anxious to know, would be the next twist in the tale of that innocent young soul with magical powers who battles against the forces of evil?
We refer, of course, to the launch of the book, Pandering, by Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam, who spent three years behind bars after she was busted for running the most successful call-girl network in Hollywood’s history.
Pandering is a hybrid; part scrapbook of Fleiss’s time running her operation, part testimonial from former call-girls about what a good time they had working for her, part photo album.
It seems a bit expensive at $50 but perhaps less so if you consider that some of her former clients were prepared to pay six-figure sums just to submit to the magical powers of young Californian women for a weekend.
Ms Fleiss, who was just 27 when she was arrested 10 years ago, told the gathering that the book was ”the proudest accomplishment in my whole life”.
She was, she explained, now moving from pandering — the legal term for providing the services of prostitutes, which she referred to as ”this unfortunate chapter in my life” — to publishing.
She announced that she would be producing books on a regular basis, the first two, after Pandering, being handy guides to what men should know about women and — yes, what women should know about men.
Santa Monica is a liberal-hearted place so the reception was mainly friendly but there were some sceptics in the audience. ”What about the taxes you didn’t pay?” asked the man next to me.
”I tried to pay taxes,” said Fleiss, who was accompanied by her loyal younger brother, Jesse, and kitted out in black leather and silk. ”I brought a lot of foreign dollars into the country!”
”So crime pays?” asked one of the crowd of 50 or so. She explained that she had just been to Australia helping to launch a bordello. ”In Australia, I can invest in a legal brothel,” she said. Did she get stock options there? ”I had a good deal,” she said. ”I can work in one of their rooms.” (In case her parole officer is reading this, she was jesting.)
But there were more supportive comments from locals, who had come to Borders to see her, and who expressed dismay that she was the only person in the whole saga who had ended up going to prison. Why her, she was asked.
”I was brash and arrogant,” she said. ”I cornered the market so I was taken down hard.” Why only her, indeed?
The back pages of LA Weekly, our fine local alternative newspaper and what’s on guide, carries a regular supply of ads in which photos of young women appear alongside offers to ”keep me all night long” and self-descriptions of ”18-year-old willing to exchange satisfying time for $$$”.
Somehow one feels that they not offering babysitting services, yet there appears to be little effort to bust them while an enormous and expensive sting operation was mounted to catch Fleiss.
As it happens, the launch of Pandering coincides with an attempt to legislate on lap-dancing in LA, which is following moves in Las Vegas, effectively making lap-dancing, as it is currently configured, illegal. The LA moves would make it illegal for dancer and client to be within six feet of each other.
It seems a strange move. Either you ban such clubs altogether or you accept that that is what they are about. In postwar Britain, exotic dancers were allowed to take their clothes off as long as they did not move.
When that law changed, the barkers outside the strip clubs proudly pronounced to would-be customers: ”Naked – and they move!” The original laws, like the ones being planned in LA now, seem like classic examples of old-fashioned hypocrisy, which Britain has managed to export, along with the language, across the Atlantic.
Fleiss, meanwhile, is opening a store on Hollywood Boulevard called Hollywood Madam, which will, she said, be ”very relaxed” and sell the sort of items you might expect to find there. It will be two doors down from Fredericks, which contains the country’s only lingerie museum.
So Heidi, the most wicked woman in LA a decade ago, is going into publishing and setting up business next to a museum. Hollywood does believe in happy endings. – Guardian Unlimited Â