THE GIRLS' RECRUITMENT

* Is the recruiter a specialist searching for a likely candidate, or was recruitment a chance occurrence, befriending a working girl or something?

* None of the above.

Recruitment isn't a matter of chance, but of considerable planning and effort.

The agency handles its own recruitment. Its existing girls sometimes help out, but mostly it's a management affair. No outsiders are involved; everything is kept "in house".

It doesn't target "working girls". Some of the co-eds the agency hires may have done local escort work to pay their way through college, but the agency hires them despite rather than because of this.

* You didn't mention how the girls were recruited - can you address that on your website?

* Sorry, no.

As I say elsewhere, there are matters the agency has asked me not to divulge. This is one of them. So the only things I can really say are negative.

The agency didn't take out advertising space in campus newspapers.

It didn't trawl randomly. It identifies likely candidates before approaching them.

Though it has a general modus operandi, it adapts it to circumstances.

If it has a personal "in" with someone, it exploits it. (Though this "ideal" scenario rarely occurs; there were only three cases I can think of. One, ironically, being my own.)

It is very careful not to attract attention to itself; which is no easy thing to do when you're mainly recruiting on gossipy campuses packed with sad student journalist types who would kill for the sniff of a "Co-ed Call-Girl" story. It would be their every Woodward and Bernstein wet-dream come true. Understandably, the agency was careful to deny them the opportunity.

In short, like most else the agency does, not many ripples of its recruiting ever break the surface, and it wants to keep things that way. It is very aware that, as a consequence, there must have been many girls who would have been great at the work that it never got to reach; rather as there were many prospective clients out there who never moved in the right circles to access its services. But what was it to do? Being less secretive meant putting what it already had going in jeopardy, and that wasn't a risk it felt like taking.

* How and under what circumstances were you first approached?

How did you get recruited for this line of work? Answer an ad? Know someone already in the biz?

* This I do feel free to talk about. Partly because I was there and know all the details. Mainly though, it is because the circumstances were atypical. Telling my story reveals little of the agency's usual methods.

For me, everything sprung from a sorority friendship.

One of the upsides of being in a sorority is the social contacts you make with girls outside your own year and faculty, and one of the girls I got close to in my sorority was two years above me. I'll call her Lauren. Anyway, we were doubles partners at tennis, and we would sometimes do other stuff together. We weren't an inseparable pair or anything like that; we both had wide social circles. But we were quite similar in our backgrounds and tastes and we were comfortable in each other's company.

Anyway, after Lauren graduated, she visited a couple of times my junior year; not just me, other people too, just sort of touching base. Then, early in my senior year, Lauren visited again. This time, instead of hanging round campus, she said "come on, let's go somewhere more private" and we drove out of town to quite a swanky restaurant (a lot more swanky than students could afford to hang around anyway).

So we talked about stuff, including what I was planning on doing when I graduated - I was drifting unenthusiastically towards law school, largely by default -, and then she laid it on me. Made me pledge secrecy first, then told me what she'd been doing since graduation, i.e. work for the agency. Essentially, she said most of the stuff I lay out at this site. Well, I caught my breath a while, then I asked a load of questions. She waited until I was done - which was a while - then she laid the second act on me. Did I want a piece of it?

Well, I asked even more questions, most of which I think were supposed to conjure an excuse for me to say "no, I don't think this is for me". (Not because I'd thought about it - I hadn't yet, that's the point - but because it's sort of what you're programed or conditioned to think and say.) Anyway, her answers were so direct and rational, I was never really able to make the speech. Instead, we adjourned with me saying I'd think about it.

And the more I did think about it - really think about it -, the more the idea appealed. It wasn't as if I'd be passing up some career I was set on, after all. (On the contrary.) And I wasn't exactly shocked at the idea of sleeping with a lot of different guys. (I'd spent the past three years doing that. As Lauren knew.) And, of course, the idea of that much money appealed big time.

So, when I did get back to Lauren, what I said went along the lines of "...suppose I was interested, what happens next..?"

Well, what happened next was that, the first free weekend I had, the agency flew me down to visit with them in the Caribbean. I met with the owners and we had some long talks and I found them very impressive. They were very direct about what was involved, very straight and far from trying to sweet-talk me, they kept saying stuff like "if you're not sure, don't go in for this", etc.. Anyway, at the end of that, I'd pretty much decided to give it a shot, and I went down there again for sort of an induction/training week just before Christmas. That went well and they put me into "the book" for the part of the country I was at college in. (I didn't want to travel too much being still at school.) It was kind of a trial: me seeing how I liked the work, the agency seeing how I did. (This is standard.)

Well, come january, some guy saw me in the book, liked me and the agency fixed me up to meet him. It all went fine - no hassles, no bad feelings after, nothing I couldn't handle - and the agency rang to say he wanted to see me again. So I saw him again. Then I saw another guy, who also turned out to want me back. After which the agency said I was definitely hired as far as they were concerned - making regulars out of your first two guys is regarded as impressive - and I said great, count me in.

I kept it at just those two guys while I was finishing up at college. Then, after graduation, I went full time.

* Back at college, I remember the NCAA scholarship guys kind of lording it over everyone else. Okay, this is women, but I'm still surprised they should be drawn into your profession.

* Your implication being "my profession" is something people do if they can't get anything better? If that's what you're thinking you haven't been paying attention.

The main reason NCAA scholarship girls would sign up with the agency is the same one as the rest of us: to make big money young. But there's actually an extra reason why they should be jumping at the chance and it's the opposite of their being "lords of campus". Because, though they may be that for three and a half years, come Senior Night they can kiss goodbye to it.

Think about it. Ever since junior high they've been trading off their athletic ability; it's what defined them, what's marked them out, what's got them their scholarship to college. And Senior Night's the pinnacle. Applause. A medallion. Lots of guys in suits making speeches about all you've done for the college. It must feel great; but even as you're listening to it, the bottom's falling out of your life.

There's no big-bucks pro career waiting for women athletes. No NFL or NBA (okay, there's that women's pro basketball thing now; but it's still young). If you were stock being traded, then between Senior Night and the next morning, your value would have gone down about 90%. The girls' athleticism has got them all it's ever going to and, with that gone, many of them haven't got a whole lot of other cards to play.

Senior year at college is kind of revenge of the nerds. All the geeky guys who disappeared into the labs after their first week as freshmen, and whom you'd forgotten were even on campus, are suddenly popping up telling the world they've just signed with Bill Gates for $100,000 first year. The captain of the women's track team, by contrast, isn't even getting first interviews from The Gap. And it may just have something to do with the fact that the recruiters can't look at her major - which is likely something like sports administration, or exercise science, or nutrition - without sniggering. (Employers aren't stupid. They know an athlete's flag of convenience when they see one.)

One of my closest friends at the agency had been a springboard diver at a Florida college, and her description of the career-options facing her coming up to graduation ran something like, (i) Assistant Manage a downmarket health club, (ii) Lifeguard, (iii) be a mermaid - sorry, "cast member" - at Walt Disney World and (iv) flip burgers. I mean, can you spell dead-end?

Or there was one of several ex-NCAA gymnasts at the agency who'd simply roll her eyes and ask "You know what you make coaching little kids gymnastics?" The implication - not much - was obvious; but it was equally clear that that was all she'd been looking at until the agency came along.