90-Day Geisha: My Time as a Tokyo Hostess

Haywood, a Canadian model who was 20 when the events of this book occurred, reassured herself and her husband, Matt, that working as a Tokyo hostess in an upscale Roppongi bar was more akin to being a geisha than a prostitute. Once she got the temporary but full-time job as hostess at Greengrass, all she had to do was look hot in a dress and heels, keep the rich customers drinking, make conversation and occasionally sing karaoke, all for a couple hundred dollars a night. Or so she thought. As she quickly learned, she had to be popular with the clients by building relationships, going on dohans , or dates, outside the club, and generally being at her favorites' beck and call. Some of the clients got pretty weird, such as the importunate, chatty surgeon Nori, who took the author on extravagant shopping sprees in the hope that she would love him, and the dangerously morose, cocaine-fueled Yoshi, the scion of a Japanese entertainment empire whose jaded diffidence Haywood began to fall for. Gradually, the mollifying of lonely older men's egos began to grate on the author, and she succumbed to a punishing routine of drink, drugs and late nights, rarely spending time with her husband (he also worked at a club), while declaring that Matt was “completely supportive.” Haywood's sulky pose at decadence is not quite convincing. (Dec.)