In case you haven't heard, the hottest new trend in prostitution is the GFE. You know, the Girlfriend Experience, meaning a sexy young thing that will hold your hand and kiss you and laugh at your jokes, get crazy in the sack and then take off, all for some blingy gifts and/or rent money. You know, for the person who's sensitive enough that they don't want to feel like they're paying to get laid, but douchey enough not to want a real connection. Which would be a lot of people.

Yes, it's a trend, according to one escort agency founder, who's quoted in this tantalizing, thoroughly depressing New York mag piece, "The Half-Hooker Economy." Inspired by (who else?) Tiger Woods and his #1 mistress, Las Vegas party host Rachel Uchitel, New York's Lisa Taddeo delves into the world of bottle-service clubs and 21st-century star-fucking. She unearths good dirt but ultimately comes to the same conclusion we all had years ago: the whole concept of bottle-service caters to socially-challenged male losers with too much money, and pretty girls who should really put more effort into their brains (which will hopefully last longer than their looks).

I'd never insult an honest sex worker, but all this pretend-y shiz is annoying. Perhaps I'm just a misanthrope or a naive hippie, but I just don't covet money enough to flirt with people I don't like, let alone giggle when they "sneak" their hands up my skirt. And it's no good lamenting that none of this would happen if women had more power and money in this world, since women with relative power and money are suckers for "romance tourism" themselves. 

The piece is plenty juicy. Taddeo gets good dirt out of Uchitel and really gets gritty when talking to ex-"bottle hooker" Kim, who recounts nights when she forced herself to make out with annoying clients, or saved herself by sourcing naive young things to feed to the sharks. It solidifies that half-hookers are middle-class girls who aren't incapable of getting a "real" job, but are perhaps too insecure, or too lazy, to work anything more than their lip-gloss. Here, Kim compares bottle-hooking to real hooking:

“Bottle Hookering … I’ve made upwards of $1,500 in a night, and I don’t have to sleep with any of my ‘clients,'" Kim writes on her blog, SexDrugsandBottleService.tumblr.com. "Though I do have to flirt with them, booty dance with them, call them, hang out with them, occasionally procure girls and ‘party favors’ for them, all while wearing teeny tiny outfits. So I suppose it’s a form of social prostitution.” Her counterpart, a college call girl whose blog Kim reads in her downtime, makes significantly less. “Her prices are $100 for a handy, $150 for a BJ, $200 for doin’ it,” she writes. “Mine are $400 for a bottle of Grey Goose, $300 for Veuve, $700 for Cristal.” 

So, the latest trend in prostitution is pretending it's not prostitution: that the hooker likes you for something other than your money and the hookee likes you for something other than your rack. Seems to me that game is as old as time. No doubt there will be a TV show on the exploits of half-hookers any day now: see it first on Showcase, hopefully, and in the meantime watch Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Wednesdays at 10pm ET/PT.