we booked it as a Red Light Party , with a Happy Hour for hookers all night, and we had a slave auction where three guys and a girl offered themselves to the highest bidders and, sure enough, two of the male slaves got sold to the same woman. So, she got two hours of sexual room-service from the two guys! A wild night!
So explains Shai Shahar, the male professional lover , whose book launch in Amsterdam for Bed Secrets Of A Gigolo A Search For Validation And Gratification excelled to such an extent that the venue invited them back again under the banner of an Anything Goes! party. And go it certainly did.
We have this amazing friend of ours, Kim Holland, who works in the sex industry here in The Netherlands and she got up on stage and unzipped her leather gear, spread her legs, and began to masturbate herself in front of this rock n rolly swingy crowd of ex-hookers and strippers.
Before she went on, though, these twenty rugby players from Wales had been invited in from the hotel part of the building and they were so stunned upon seeing her do her bit that it looked like they d all been hit in the face with a cold cod! They couldn t even drink their beer! Some other guy in the audience went closer to Kim to get a better view and she handed him a dildo, so he then helps her to this massive orgasm, where she almost collapsed and had to be helped off the stage, and everyone was going What was that?! .
After another twenty minutes the band stopped and we went off to the club, but then we heard the police had been called because the rugby crowd had gone nuts! Testosterone overload! Not pretty! And now we know that when we throw an Anything Goes! party, people will know what to expect!
BUZZ OF PUBLICITY
It s been a fascinating year for Shai, who has previously featured in these pages. Not only have his memoirs been published in Dutch, but having finally decided to retire from his unusual profession, he promptly landed himself the first English language chat show on national radio in The Netherlands, broadcasting each Sunday night on Talk Radio , 1395am.
It s the first time talk radio of this kind has been tried in Holland, he explains. Initially, my show was on between 2am and 5am each Saturday morning and, indeed, I was the first American to link Dublin with Amsterdam with Tel Aviv. I used to live in Israel and so used my connection for that link, and got Tel Aviv talking to Dublin about the realities and difficulties of news journalists reporting bombings.
Shai s retirement from being a gigolo came with the natural flow of his eventful life. I d been working on the book during my time off, and even when writing it I d mentioned that I thought I only had a year left, he reveals. Life overtook me. I met Cora (the love of his life P O M) and I was on television here in Holland for interviews and, naturally, that put discretion out the window as regards my occupation. Also, after six and a half years, I honestly have to say the thrill was gone. I wanted to take all the things I d learned and bring it back into my private life where I could enjoy it, instead of it being part of my professional life. Part of me misses it in certain ways, maybe some of the adventure, but not much.
No temptations, no pleading calls for one more engagement ?
I ve had a couple of the (escort) agencies call me and say that, but last year I became aware that, as my public profile increased, my clientele dropped off to a great degree because I couldn t offer discretion. Funnily enough, a year later, with me being even more public than I was then, the attention is coming back with exactly that sort of request, Maybe one more time? or Isn t there some way to convince you? .
As well as his own Web site (www.gigolo.com), Shai is expecting a veritable blitz of publicity over the coming months with the Dutch editions of Penthouse and Cosmopolitan set to feature articles on the man himself, while a 50-minute documentary (in English) of his life will be screened at film festivals in Jerusalem, Toronto and Berlin, amongst other locations. In addition, both he and Cora are in the process of establishing a sex education course on the Internet, to be launched this coming autumn.
Hell! Not only do I not have enough time to come out of retirement, but the Internet course will have to be launched in style. Did someone say Anything Goes! , he laughs. n