Earlier this week, we dropped in on the book party for Anna David‘s second novel, Bought, at Frederick’s in the West Village, and even though we showed up fairly early the room was already insanely packed—so it was really too noisy to do much else other than congratulate David on her success while Nick McGlynn of Random Night Out snapped photographs all around the room. But we did get to ask her later, by email, about how the novel had started out from an article she wrote for Details five years ago on high-class prostitution in Los Angeles:
“I ended up spending about six months infiltrating a world of exploitative madams, girls who were making up to $50 to $100K a night for sex because they were ‘famous’ porn stars, and security guards for these girls who were secretly cooperating with the FBI,” David told us. “Unfortunately, the article ended up being, essentially, an ad for the most abusive madam of all. It wasn’t the magazine’s fault—I wasn’t assigned a gritty exposé on evil madams but a more basic story about how rich men got their rocks off. Still, it always frustrated me that I’d learned so much about this sub-culture and hadn’t been able to really write about any of it.
“So, after selling my first novel, I began thinking that a story that focused on the money-for-sex business would be able to address the sorts of themes that concern all women: the fact that we don’t make as much money as men and most of us struggle with whether or not to allow ourselves to be taken care of financially by them. It’s been grilled into our heads since birth—or at least it was grilled into mine—that we should be paving our own way but where does that leave us in terms of being able to raise our own kids? We may not talk about it all the time but it’s messy, confusing territory for most of us. We also may not talk about how we use our sexuality to get what we want but, in developing the main prostitute character in the book, I had to look at the ways I related to her—and I found them. I’ve definitely used my sexuality manipulatively—whether it was to get to the front of a line or to be the center of attention—and I know I can’t be the only one.”
David also showed us a quiz about those types of situations that both men and women are invited to take online (although men will have to mentally reframe some of the questions before answering).