The Real Girlfriend Experience

"I keep thinking I'm going to break one of these things," she says as she examines the nails on her right hand. She gets them done every two weeks, for $60. It's only been a week since her last visit, so she has to be extracautious.

I ask her to tell me about herself. "Well, I'm a Sagittarius, and I like long walks on the beach," she says, imitating the tone of a dating-game contestant. She says she doesn't really get out much.

Neither of us has 30 pins by the fifth frame. So we have at least one thing in common: We both suck at bowling.

Her favorite thing in the world to do, she says, is to make homemade, hand-rolled sushi. For the first time, she's talking directly to me.

"Sushi? Really?"

"My grandmother came here from Hiroshima," she says. They never spent a lot of time together, but every so often, her grandmother would teach young Sophia the craft of the tuna roll. She tilts her head slightly as she imagines herself cutting and arranging raw fish.

At the end of the first game, she has 40 and I have 67.

Things can only get better from here.

This wasn't entirely my brilliant idea. I'd seen a photo-essay book titled I Date a Hooker in which a New Jersey man named Jeff Fischer took a bunch of prostitutes on sort-of regular dates. Then he snapped photos, including copious depictions of himself making out with them, which, frankly, is just as gross as it sounds. I wanted to talk to Fischer about his raunchy project, so I asked his publisher, Blue Q Books, if I could set up an interview with the author.

"The guy who actually dated the prostitutes?" asks a Blue Q rep. "I wouldn't even know where to begin tracking him down."

So I was on my own.

I had uneasy feelings about offering any kind of remuneration for our encounters, so after seeing Sophia, I resolved not to pay any more hookers just to date me. I was going to call and ask the women politely if they would join me for ice cream or to go to the aquarium.

The first place I turned, naturally, was to the back pages of this very publication. I started dialing numbers from ads with photos of women who, for whatever reason at the time, I felt might be more likely to indulge their intellectual inquisitiveness — or at least humor me. I called girls with ads that said: "New to town! Show me around!" "Because I'm worth it!" "Just broke up with my boyfriend!"

I got turned down. Cold. Every time. "Hi. I'm a reporter working on a story about dating local escorts. There wouldn't be anything sexual, just a game or two of miniature golf. And I'll pay for this date, of course, but I really don't have any money to give you for — hello? Hello?"

After two days of ego-smashing rejections from prostitutes up and down the tricounty area, I decided to ditch the idea of enticing hookers to date me for free. My new pitch: "I've got $100, and I want to play miniature golf with an escort."

Most women still weren't interested. "I prefer something a little more intimate," one told me.

Finally, I found Britney. Her ad said: "MIDWESTERN BRITNEY/Need to pay off student loans. $275/hr." The photo was of a surfer-blond woman with smooth, golden skin.

Over the phone, we agreed to meet at Boomer's in Dania Beach for an afternoon date and a winsome round of minigolf. When I arrive, Britney is removing wads of fast-food wrappers from the back seat of her Camry. She's tall and blond but rougher than her photo. She's wearing a blue Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt, a white linen skirt, and Ed Hardy flip-flops on her exceptionally large feet. She never takes the Louis Vuitton bag off her shoulder or the Chanel sunglasses off her head.

I find myself wondering what kind of guy would pay almost $300 for an hour with this woman. Then I feel guilty.

We get our putters and balls — she picks a purple ball; I pick orange — and make our way out to the course. I stop for a scorecard and a pencil. "Nah, we don't need to keep score," she says. "Let's just play. Didn't you want to ask me some questions or something? And I'm going to need my donation up front."

I hand over the $80 I have left after paying for two rounds of golf.

My first question: Why didn't any of the girls I called want to take an afternoon off and go play miniature golf?

"Escorts don't do anything for free," she explains as we line up our balls at the beginning of the first hole. "Who's to say you aren't some guy just like all the other weirdos out there but your role-play fantasy is to play a reporter doing an interview?"

Hmmm. That's someone's fantasy?

Nobody wants to get ripped off and give anyone anything for free when she could be getting something, she says. "Time is money in this business."