Obtain Callgirl: Confessions Of An Ivy League Lady Of Pleasure Rendered By Jeannette Angell Shown In Edition

couple of little spoilers,


The story was written in such a choppy way, One page is talking about one thing and then on the next page the story has gotten lost and it is a different story, Or one part of the story starts somewhere in the first few chapters and is then completedorchapters later,

I also felt like the writer focused so much on her ability to have sex, which as we all know the writer is super humble about, LOL! 'I'm very good at sex, opps, . NO WAIT I'M THE BEST AT SEX'

I feel as though I learned nothing about the sex trade industry except that it is dangerous I already figured and that even a female 'pimp' is willing to send you into a situation they know is going to go badly.
I read a lot about how Peach I can't be bothered remembering cared so much about the women and sticks up for them

and blah blah blah, . . Yeah, ok, she sent the writer to a guys house that she knew would hurt her, has also hurt the other women she has sent there, Peach wasn't forthcoming with that information.
Come on, that isn't being caring or looking out for the women she employs, that is about the cash, all about getting paid,

The author brings a fascinating perspective through both her own experience and her background as a social anthropologist, It's a surprising thoughtprovoking book The book was not sleazy, but I could not warm to the author of this first person account of supplementing her college lecturer job with being a call girl.
She was pretty full of her insights and definitive about being right about various issues, It crystallized that she was not my kind of person when she says being paid for sex was not that different than some of her dates: one time she gave into having sex as she was so tired, it was easier than arguing with the guy.
This was an excellent book, I learned a lot about a subject I knew nothing about, Book
Title: Callgirl: Confessions of a Double Life
Author: Jeannette Angell
Genre: Memoir
Rating:
: Now, I had a lot of reservations before cracking open Callgirl because a lot of similar fiction books and memoirs I have read on this subject are vague and so selfcentred that I cant stand to finish them but the introduction and opening chapter of this book really hooked me.
We learn that Jeannette is a teacher and was cheated on by her boyfriend who also took all of her money when he left leaving her broke with debts pilling up that she has no way of paying.
Like most of us in that situation she is completely panicking thinking of anything and everything that could get her through until her payday at the end of the semester in two months time.
She initially consider work in sex chat but finds the whole things dull and boring, plus for onlyshe is sure there is something out there that will give her the money she needs when she stumbles upon ads for escorts.

At first Jeannette is really hesitant about even considering escort work because there is seemingly a huge social stigma around it but when she applies her analytical mind to her situation she realises actually her boyfriend did the same thing, she had sex with him, enjoyed it and he took her money, so she technically paid him for his services.
She ends up speaking to “Peach” the madam who runs the service and she throws her in at the deep end, Peachs method is to give new girls a good client to see if they enjoy the work, if they do they join the agency and make money, if they dont they madeand can go home.
Jeannette under the name of Tia sees Bruce who works closely with Peach as she sends him all the new girls and during their meeting “Tia” realises that this is the best sex she has had in ages and that she isnt opposed to doing it again especially with Bruce, and so begins her journey.

It is only after a month of working for Peach that Jen begins to understand the world she is working in, Peach keeps her distance from the girl almost never meeting them in person, Jen is the exception here, because is she gets too close to them she knows she wont be able to send them to the more difficult clients, which is exactly what she does to Jen.
Peach sends Jen to Barry who immediately is quite violent towards her but she tries to put up with it, but when he tries to force her into having anal sex she asserts her dominance and leaves.
Later she learns from another of Peachs girl, Margot, that she actively takes Barry on as a client, Jen cant understand this but when Margot explains she sees him as a textbook rapist and allowing him to blow off steam with her protects other women as Barry only uses Peachs service then she can live with it.
It is also a bonus for her that no one challenges her for Barry as a client so in the long term she makes more money, The smart Jen begins to see and understand the different types of women that become escorts and why they do it,
As she continues to live two lives Jen finds certain elements of either life wearing her down, whether its her clients or her students she knows that she cant live two lives forever and seeks ways to bring both lives together without telling the whole world that she is a callgirl.
In the end she decides that teaching a class on the history and sociology of prostitution and telling a friend about her other life is the right way to go about it.
I really liked reading about Jens client both good and bad and seeing the subtle and glaring differences between them all, Most of the clients she sees are relatively normal, whatever that is, and then there are the men that really stand out, the crossdresser, the masturbator, the gambler that were just so interesting to read about.
She tells her friend Seth who has a lot of misconceptions about what she does and she educates him on the way she thinks about her job and it seems that she converted a man to her way of thinking.
However, when Seth visits on a work trip everything seems normal, they have dinner, drink and catch up but everything goes south when he offers to pay her in return for her services because she is a hooker now, this is a huge betrayal in Jens eyes as she thought he understood and that she could trust him with this information but he just confirms that he is just like every other stereotypical male on the planet.
I have to admit I didnt agree with this but when you consider the horror stories Jen has lived through and heard about coupled with her previous relationship with Peter, you can really sympathise with Jen even if you have never walked in her shoes.

As we approach the halfway mark in the book, Jen begins talking about how her job and drug culture often overlap, she isnt a stranger to drugs herself but she only takes them as a pick me up during and before work but her friend Sophie is an addict.
At first Jen doesnt see a problem with Sophies habit but when her furniture starts going missing, she starts stealing money from Jen and clients, she turns to a friend Henry who is also Chinese for some cultural background.
Jen is appalled by what she hears and understand why Sophie is an addict but she comes to realises that Sophie isnt her friend, she is only using her to get her next fix and Jen has to back off from her.
She does mention that the last time she heard of Sophie before leaving the business she was trading sexual favours for drugs and this still haunts her to this day but she has the love and support of her husband to get through it.
Throughout it all Jen is able to keep her day job and her other job separate even when she begins teaching a class on prostitution but very quickly the parents of students have an issue with the subject matter which she has to battle.

As time goes on working with Peach is just another job to Jen but she has never dated since she started working as a callgirl until she gets involved with Luis Mendoza, a friend of Peachs and she swears she is in love with him but between the drinks and cocaine I wasnt to sure whether it was actually love or whether it was just easy as Luis didnt question her job with Peach or get jealous about it like other men would.
Jen only continues to work because of the financial pressures she is under and after a while she wants to do more with her life so she stops working, meets her now husband, Tony and continues to lead a normal life.
One thing I really loved about this book is that it shatters a lot of myths surrounding the profession Yes, profession, It explains a variety of reasons that women end up doing this kind of work, the pressures and trials they face but some like Jen thrive in this environment, it gives them the empowerment and strength to get over the bad things in their lives and makes them stronger for it.
On the reason side, some of this book was hard to read, especially concerning Sophie and the bad clients Jen had but it is glamorising the profession, it is realistic, hard hitting and an exceptional read.
I learned two things from this book, and neither of them were about the sex industry,

The first one is this:
Jeannette Angell or the character she plays in this book thinks no, scratch that, she KNOWS that she is smarter than you.
Than me. Than everyone who's going to pick up this book, She constantly mentions how educated she is two masters and a difficult PhD!, name drops lecturing at places like MIT and Harvard, and never misses a chance to mention what an AMAZING teacher she is.
It's all summed up in this one sentence, To give context, she's describing her madam, and how her madam, Peach, isn't exactly what most people would picture, She says:

"She knew more about the classics of literature than I and, I'll venture to guess, you ever will, "

In other words, if Peach is smarter than Ms, Angell, then clearly Peach is smarter than you as well, Because there's no way you're as smart as Jeannette,

The second thing I learned is that the author or, again, the character she plays absolutely needs to feel, to be, special, Whether it's because Mario the client will tell her things he doesn't tell anyone else, or because she's impacting her students' lives so profoundly, or because SHE's the only employee of Peach that Peach wanted to hang out with, the overwhelming need to feel special and important is clearly the author's driving force.


Needless to say, I found the author's tone and style of writing to be unbelievably grating,

On top of that, I'm not exactly sure what the theme or point of the book was, To help us shed our myths about sex workers Well, such as what That sex workers are nymphos just trying to get as much sex as they can Sorry, I do sex and rape research for a living, I pretty much knew that already.
That it's not necessarily degrading, that it can in fact be empowering Frankly, that was definitely one of those "show, not tell" circumstances, because she mentions more than once how angry she gets when people use the word "degrading" to refer to prostitution, and while I agree that SHAMING prostitutes is horrible and evil and wrong wrong wrong, the fact is several of the incidents she describes in her book I WOULD have founddegrading.
Ultimately, I think her goal was to show how the stereotype of sex workers is inaccurate, but she was so busy also explaining why she was so very different than most other sex workers that it ultimately has the opposite effect.


Also of note is that apparently this socalled memoir is very much fictionalized to be more juicy or perhaps to sell more copies For example, she actually taught high school, not college.
What's hilarious is she claims she kept some of the fictionalized stuff in her memoir to make herself "look better, " But the fact is, she didn't, She just didn't look better AT ALL, She should have gone either fullon autobiography or full on fiction, But this strange mishmash of insanity just served to make her look bad, the sex industry as a whole look bad which she claims was the opposite of her intention and me really frusrated and annoyed with this book.


EDIT: And you'll be interested to know that on Angell's own website, this book is listed under "novels, " Despite the fact that the book itself clearly tries to pass itself off as a memoir, Not a Gaston Leroux "The Opera Ghost really existed," let's play with the line between fiction and journalism as a literary gimmick type thing, but a serious, no tongue in cheek, memoir.
As in, the inside of the book has itself categorized as "th century Biography, " So basically it's A Million Little Pieces for the sex industry, I feel like the title was a slight marketing ploy,
Why are we drawn to titles like this Because for most of us it is so far from our lives we find it interesting what makes someone choose such a profession.

I feel this was more of an autobiography of someone with a relatively ordinary and regular life who for a couple of years decided to work as a call girl.

I found the constant university talk and philosophical thoughts/chat not that interesting,
When writing a book about being a prostitute, perhaps don't act so superior to OTHER working girls, She came off as a total selfobsessed jerk, Plus, the writing was poor so I'm not so sure why she was teaching anywhere, Halfway toforthis was theth book I've read this year, and a good one at that, So far, it's the most illuminating firstperson account of prostitution I've read, In the 's, Angell turned to working for what she calls a "midlevel escort service" something halfway between streewalkers and pimps on the lower rung and the most exclusive escort services for the most wealthy clients at the top level.
As adjunct sociology lecturer at a Bostonarea college, trying to get her foot in the door of Ivy League academia, she was heavily in debt and needed a source of lucrative income quickly.
She answered a recruitment ad in a community newspaper and was accepted by the agency's proprietress, a smooth but comparatively decent example of her type named "Peach, " Angell, by day was Jen the professor, and by night was "Tia" the lady of the evening, The book chronicles her adventures among her many Boston clientele, from mentally retarded young men who scraped their pennies together to be with a woman to mysterious mafioso types with ready cash.
Along the way there are relatively decent clients contrasted with some jerks and at least one who was downright dangerous,

Throughout the book, Angell continually reflects on what she is doing, why she is doing it and what she thinks about society's double standards and misconceptions about the oldest profession.
The Callgirl's tone is conversational, not especially literary, and so is an easy read, Angell's voice often seems elitist and condescending whether she intends it to be or not especially when referring to common street whores as compared to herself and also when speaking about most of her clients.
A lot of reviewers of the book have had problems with that, but Angell is who she is, an educated woman seeing things from that POV and I can't fault the book for the occasional snarky sarcasm there's too much to learn from it.
I don't like to shoot the messenger if there's a lot to be gleaned from the message,

In many ways, Angell had it better than most escorts the agency she worked for was well run and relatively safe by the standards of most operations, And she made a lot of money, Ironically, it was not until she developed and offered a sociology course on prostitution while she was still living her secret double life that her reputation and cache as a college professor began to rise.
The course was so popular that the university administration took positive notice, and it boosted her career,

The book does a good job of describing the nature and mechanics of the business without being exceedingly sexually graphic, There's a good, extensive bibliography of other books on the subject in the appendix,

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