We met at the 24-hour strip club around the corner from my office at the University of West Bohemia. I was a regular at the bar because of Svatká, a bartender and weekend dancer at the club. Svatká was a sweet girl, generous and outgoing. She had the most amazing tattoo I had ever seen: a single, intricate, long-stemmed rose growing out from what she innocently referred to as her "field of dreams." (Czech women go gaga over Kevin Costner.) We had begun dating after Svatká allowed me to closely inspect her tattoo during a private lap dance to celebrate my 32nd birthday. Steffi was one of her best friends.

From the beginning, Steffi was all business. She told me she had four young ladies on her staff (Lenká, Magdá, Renatá and Terezá), and though they could all speak enough English to get by with a client, Steffi thought they needed to know some cute phrases, colloquialisms and dirty slang to inspire return business and word-of-mouth advertising. She asked if I would be interested in becoming their teacher, providing them with five one-hour lessons a week, with payment to be taken in cash or trade. Since I was already dating Svatká, and university lecturers made a meager $250 a month, I took the cash. Now I had to create lesson plans.

Although I had never used the services of such ladies before, I did know a bit about the business. Before I arrived in Plzen, I lived for six months in Margate, England, along the Kent coast. I rented a basement flat from a friend and lived next to two Scottish girls who turned tricks part-time to supplement their incomes as waitresses at a popular fish-and-chips shop. On slow nights the girls would wander over to my flat with flagons of ale and talk shop. It was from them that I learned that British clients like to be called "daddy" (due to some bygone parental feelings of the vanquished empire) and that Americans liked to be called "soldier." They didn't quite know why young American men liked to be called "soldier," and I offered that it was probably due to the fact that they came from a generation that never experienced war, and it made them feel more masculine and worldly. They agreed with my deduction.

I also learned a bit about the prostitution business from reading Xaviera Hollander's two infamous 1970s books, "The Happy Hooker" and "Xaviera," detailing her experience as one of New York's premiere madams. I didn't actually choose to read the books. It was during my first cold winter in the Czech Republic, and when you are in a foreign country with limited reading material, you'll take what you can get. And those were the only two English books available in the used bookstore, other than evangelical Christian and Mormon texts. Hollander, though, is a good writer and her insights about call girls and their clients were certainly informative. She strips away taboos and myths (such as the one that holds all hookers have been abused and every john is a pervert).

Private Life Romance, relationships, and the personal side of Table Talk