Now here`s where all that breeding really shows. Sydney Biddle Barrows, much better known as the Mayflower Madam, is riding up a freight elevator to film a segment of NBC`s news magazine, ”Fast Copy,” and the show`s producer tells her that her interview is actually part of a bigger story. One on
”Best-selling Books by Crooks.” And her answers will be edited in next to Jean Harris` and R. Foster Winans`.
And the tight little, correct little smile on her face never flinches.
”I`m in good company,” says the convicted promoter of prostitution of her place in TV history, right next to a convicted murderer and a convicted stock swindler.
Sydney Barrows, 34, is promoting her best-seller, ”Mayflower Madam”
(Arbor House, $17.95), dressed in a hooker`s version of classy: a blue silk dress, flesh-colored stockings, classic black pumps, pearls, subdued makeup, sedate pageboy. You could call the look Updated Pilgrim. This particular dress has white cuffs. Its detachable white collar is at the cleaners but will catch up with Barrows on the next stop on her tour. The only sexy thing about this woman, who ran a high-priced Manhattan call-girl service for five and a half years, is her low, throaty laugh.
And that`s no accident. Barrows has written a Golden Books version of prostitution and positioned herself somewhere between Lee Iacocca and Goldilocks, between a struggling entrepreneur and a wide-eyed innocent
— ”naive” is her word–who took a job answering the phones of an escort service barely knowing what the heck an escort service was. A hard-working gal trying to make it on her own in the big city who just happened to ”fall into” running a kind of a dating service that linked men willing to pay $200 an hour for companionship with girls who owned matching bras, panties, and garter belts.
Barrows paints a picture of prostitution that makes it sound better than dating. ”It was fun,” she says over and over. ”We were making a lot of people happy without hurting anyone.” In place of the myth of the hooker with a heart of gold, she substitutes the call girl who`s putting herself through med school. Or law school, or working as a broker on Wall Street or a lawyer or a business trainee, or spending her afternoons on auditions or taking advanced classes in ”music, dance, art, or acting.” They came from the finest of families: ”Margot`s father was a judge; Alexia`s father was a diplomat, Paige was an heiress.”
And the tricks and johns, whom she scrupulously refers to as clients, included CEOs and Arab princes, a judge, several law-enforcement officials, many doctors and lawyers, bankers, brokers, deal makers, consultants, a dope- smoking Catholic priest, an Orthodox rabbi, a ”famous hockey player,” a
”prominent television personality,” a ”well-known British rock musician,” a ”film producer from California,” and a ”professional opera singer.” All unnamed, of course.
They took the girls to premieres, to formal dinners hosted by Henry Kissinger, to weddings, to bar mitzvahs, to Broadway shows, to fabulous restaurants, and only incidentally, to bed. Almost to a man, they were ”so attractive and successful that most single women in Manhattan would have killed to go out with them.”
A bad guy in Barrows book is one who doesn`t keep a couple of cans of diet soda in his fridge for her thirsty girls. Or one who didn`t change his cat litter often enough. Or one who needed new towels. But far more common are the men who gave the girls Cabbage Patch dolls, dresses, ski parkas, $100 tips, and career advice. And then they handed over their Visa or Mastercard.
(The girls carried miniature imprinters in their briefcases–a good disguise to get them past hotel security in the middle of the night.)
The ”dates” were so pleasant the girls sometimes threw in an hour for free or refused to go back because they were having so much fun it didn`t seem right to take money. ”Many girls came back from their first call saying, `I can`t believe I`m getting paid for this!` ” Barrows writes.
In nearly 300 ghost-written pages (William Novak did the deed between
”Iacocca” and Tip O`Neill`s autobiography) not one girl gets slapped around. Not one girl has sex with a 300-pound ”client.” Not one girl has to work on an 80-year-old man.
”It didn`t happen,” says Barrows shrugging her shoulders. ”The American public has been fed so many lies. People think the girls are degraded. That`s not true. The girls who worked for me never were. I made sure of it.
”In point of fact, our clients worked as hard as the girls. They had to give the girls a glamorous and fun and exciting experience or they couldn`t be clients. Believe it or not, that`s true. And it`s not true that the girls didn`t enjoy it. The majority enjoyed it the majority of the time. They`re just ordinary girls, articulate, fun, warm, very honest. Nice people with goals in life who just needed a little extra money.
”It`s very difficult for people to believe that girls could do this and have fun and not have anything terrible happen to them.
”I know this isn`t for everyone, but ethics are in the eye of the beholder. I couldn`t smoke–that`s a disgusting habit; I don`t gamble. Those are my personal moral choices.” (In the course of the day, Barrows repeatedly will compare prostitution to smoking, drinking, gambling, and once to writing a gossip column, but more about that later.)
”A girlfriend of mine who works in public relations got a big promotion. She called me up and said, `Sydney, I`m so excited! I`ve been offered this fabulous account: Stolichnaya (the Russian vodka)!` I said, `You`re not going to take it, are you? You`re not seriously considering it?` She said, `Of course, why wouldn`t I?`
”I said, `You`re talking about a Communist product. Trying to con people into buying a product where the money goes back to a country that`s trying to destroy us. How could you possibly do that?` She didn`t see it that way at all. But I would never have taken that job in a billion years. I don`t care if they had offered me four times as much money as I was making. People have different values.”
It was her values that led Barrows into prostitution in the first place. This daughter of not one, but two descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims, this child of boarding schools, this debutante, was working in New York as a buyer for a company that shipped merchandise to boutiques all over the country. As Barrows tells it, she was asked to unload some unfashionable handbags because her boss was ”on the take.”
”I was horrified and scared,” writes Barrows. ”It was a real dilemma:
if I didn`t distribute the handbags, I`d lose my job. But if I did, I`d lose my reputation. It took me about four seconds to decide.”
It was while she was out of work, her reputation intact, that Barrows learned that a friend was making $50 a night ”off the books” answering phones for an escort service. She told her friend to let her know if another job came up. ”I think anyone in my position would have done the same thing,” says Barrows.
When a job did come up, Barrows said, ”What the hell,” and grabbed it. She learned so much about the call girl business that she and her friend decided to open their own. ”The idea of running an escort service–and doing it right–became enormously appealing.”
And that`s how Barrows got into the sex-for-money biz. No big moral dilemma, no soul-searching, no sleepless nights, nothing.
”It really wasn`t a big decision,” says Barrows. ”We just got so into
`Let`s do this.` `Yeah.` `And let`s do that.` And then we went out and got some phones and that was it. I`m sorry if I`m disappointing you, I get the feeling you`re looking at me like I`m lying to you, but that`s really how it was.”
Barrow was in psychotherapy for five years, working on ”liking myself better.” The issue of what she did for a living rarely came up. ”My therapist didn`t have any problems with the business I was in because it didn`t upset me. It didn`t bother me. I didn`t feel I was doing anything wrong. I was rather proud of it. (”Rather” rhymes with ”father.”) I was getting a lot out of it both personally and professionally.”
There comes a point when most readers of Barrows` book must stop and ask a very rude question: ”Why should I believe this?” Not one name is mentioned. Barrows refers to her clients as the creme of New York and international society, but a spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau says they`ve been through her little black books and ”not one name leapt off the pages.” When asked about the discreprency, Barrows says, ”He`s lying.”
Why should he lie?
”I don`t know,” she says. ” . . . and I don`t care if people believe me. There`s nothing that I can do about it. If people believe I worked as a hooker, I can`t help it (she denies that she herself ever turned a trick). I`m not going to beat my head against the wall. Therapy helped me realize it`s unrealistic to expect everyone to like you. As long as you have high standards and values for yourself, that`s all anyone can expect from you. There will always be people who don`t like me and write snide, catty things about me, and laugh at me behind my back. There`s nothing I can do about it . . . . I know I conducted my business more honestly, and with more integrity, than anyone else.
”Show me another business run as well. Cigarettes kill people. Other businesses don`t care about their employees. I`m not ashamed of what I did. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I`m proud of it.”
(While Barrows is waiting to be interviewed by Drew Hayes of WMAQ-AM, she asks for the sound to be turned up on her favorite soap opera. ”There`s probably one thing I do that I am a little ashamed of,” she confides. ”I love `All My Chidren.` I`m not real proud of that.”)
”She seems to feel no guilt,” co-author William Novak said by telephone. ”I would feel guilt. You and I wouldn`t run this kind of business.”
Before Arbor House sent Sydney Biddle Barrows on the road, marketing director Michael Carter advised her not to wear red. ”We thought it was a little hotter than we wanted her to be,” says Carter. ”She was already a madam that middle America could accept. We didn`t want to ruin that. She`s the girl next door. That`s why this is so fascinating.”
Then he sent her to media coach Dorothy Sarnoff, who has also worked with Novak and Alexandra Penney, author of ”Great Sex.” ”I told her to just be who she already is,” Sarnoff says. ”She has a kind of an unsophisticated look that works for her. It`s casting against type, isn`t it? She`s a brilliant woman. I just wish she had been in another industry.”
Soon she will be. She`s co-producer of the CBS-TV movie based on her book and she`ll play a cameo role in the production. (Cybill Shepherd might portray her, she says.) But Barrows knows she can`t be the Mayflower Madam all her life, so she hired manager Terry Whatley to move her into some other areas.
Says Whatley: ”I`m setting her up with licensing groups, endorsement groups. We`re working on a TV talk show for her, another book–a work of fiction–several different lecture circuits, a syndicated column. She`s certainly well-qualified to give advice to both men and women. Some people want her to represent a restaurant in New York. . . . The hook is, first of all, that she comes from the equivalent of American royalty–the Mayflower descendants–and then that she ran something so slimy and dirty in a proper and dignified way.”
Barrows sees herself as the next Diane von Furstenberg or Gloria Vanderbilt with her name–Sydney Barrows–on everything from lingerie to perfume to sheets to sportswear. But there is one major difference between her and those women: They never ran a call-girl operation. Does it matter? Is America ready to buy a procurer`s jeans or cologne?
”Who knows?” says Whatley. ”This country is nuts.”
As her manager, Whatley intends to hang onto the Mayflower Madam label until Barrows` own name catches on, but Barrows feels differently. She doesn`t want to be associated with it any more.
”You can`t write INC. your whole life, right?” she said to her interviewer, who until a year ago was one of the writers of The Tribune`s INC. column. ”You don`t want to be known as this sort of snide, catty person. You`ve got to move forward, too. You`re trying to write more seriously, to be accepted as a serious interviewer. You want people to say, `She`s a fine journalist,` not `Oh, my God, don`t let her near you, she only writes dirt about people.`
”Well, I`m trying to get away from my bad reputation and into something I can be more proud of, too. It`s the same thing. We`re both trying to better ourselves. At least our reputations.”
Don`t think for a moment that because Barrows is trying to put her past behind her that she in any way regrets even the bust that led to her arrest in 1984 and her $5,000 fine.
Would she do it all over again?
”Sure. Who wouldn`t? Why would I turn down the opportunities? What happened that was so bad? I got busted? So what? Am I dead? Blind? Don`t I still have both my arms? Have I lost any friends? Doesn`t my family still love me? Don`t I have a wonderful future ahead of me? I can`t find one negative thing about it.”
What about the front-page pictures of yourself in handcuffs? What about going to jail, sharing a cell with street-corner whores?
”That was a very interesting experience. How many people get to have an experience like that? It was fascinating. And you know so much of it was luck. I just got caught in the middle of a circulation war between the New York Daily News and the New York Post. On the Friday before Labor Day weekend the Daily News–the biggest paper in the biggest city in the country–puts ”Madam Talks Between the Covers” across the whole front page. Talk about a public-relations dream. I`ve just been so lucky. You can`t buy this kind of luck.”
It`s about the only thing you can`t buy.
