Xaviera Hollander - The woman behind the Myth
Xaviera as a child, with her motherspacerIn every era, there are just a tiny handful of individuals who change the way we think or act. Xaviera Hollander did not invent sex: she was one of the leading spirits who brought it out of the closet. Her first book, The Happy Hooker, published as long ago as 1971, has sold more than 16 million copies and is still intriguing new readers by its humor, its zest for life and above all for its downright honesty: it remains a landmark in the struggle for sexual freedom and for freedom of expression. What sort of woman could become the most influential "madam" in New York, such an apparent threat to the establishment that after being persecuted by the Knapp Commission, set up to investigate malpractice and corruption, she was "invited" to quit the United States?Ironically, her earliest years were spent in captivity, a Japanese prison camp in Indonesia where her father, a psychiatrist, was head of a hospital.


The family returned to Holland after the war and the young Xaviera showed literary acumen, by not only writing but also editing the school magazine.


Xaviera in a rottan hatAfter taking a secretarial course, she won a contest organized by Manpower Agency and was hailed as "Miss Tick", Holland's Best Secretary. After living for four years in South Africa where she worked as secretary and copy writer for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, a romantic attachment led her to the United States where she became Secretary to the Dutch consul and later, the Belgian Ambassador. When her engagement broke up she got involved in a New York call girl agency to augment her meagre official salary. But living a double life is alien to Xaviera's character so she went full time.


However, exercising her Dutch financial astuteness, she invested $10,000 in purchasing the list of clients from a retiring New York madam. The rest, as they say, is history and the subject matter of "The Happy Hooker." In 1972, Xaviera agreed to write a monthly sexual advice column for Penthouse, "Call me Madam", and for a while moved in with Bob Guccione, the founder of the magazine. In the 20th Anniversary issue, she was proclaimed their most popular columnist: she also has contributed special columns for the Dutch, German, Spanish, Australian and even South African issues. The Happy Hooker has grown up. In her own words, "I suppose I get along better these days with a lot of friends because I have also changed. I have always been fascinated in getting inside people's brains, maybe now I am more reluctant to play games with their hearts or kick their souls about. I have learned how easy it is to hurt. Can it be that I have become more mature in that quarter of a century? As well as with my soul-mate, John, I find a deeper enjoyment in the company of old friends, the tried and trusty sort. However, I have an insatiable appetite for adventure (often with much younger people) and am constantly making new friends, partly due to having developed into an email junkie." Where would this woman be without her Internet connection!


While she has never lost her sense of fun or her ability to shock, Xaviera has realized a more serious aspect of her sexual frankness. In her Penthouse columns and in work as a Telephone Sex Chatter, she has found that men and women have frequently consulted her as a woman with experience and understanding who has faced and overcome her own problems. They often would have been too shy to approach conventional advisers or were simply depressed and lonely and came to her as someone sympathetic with whom they could relate.


Warm picture of Xaviera More and more, she has been invited to appear on TV talk shows in London and Paris as well as in Belgium and Holland or to give lectures to university and other groups. She has lectured for the World Congress of Sexology in Mexico City and Jerusalem and has actually been allowed back into the United States where she appeared in New York, Washington D.C. San Francisco and New Orleans and is constant demand as a lecturer and TV personality, always a welcome guest to such hosts as Larry King, Sally Jesse Raphael and Selina Scott. She even did a much talked about half hour interview for the popular BBC show, "Hard Talk". Being able to hold her own in half a dozen languages results in her TV circuit being extensive and consequently phenomenally busy. Yet she has somehow found time to write more than another dozen books subsequent to "The Happy Hooker", both fiction and non-fiction, which have been translated into 15 different languages.


Xaviera lives in Marbella, Spain but spends much of the year in Holland where her house is a centre for artists, writers, musicians and friends from all walks of life drawn to her by her encouragement and friendliness--and the fun of living. House concerts alternate with brainstorming sessions, interspersed with dinners with a few choice friends and full scale parties to which all the world is welcome which has led to another brand new enterprise, set up together with her live-in cook, James, her butler , cook and dog walker who came to Holland to look after some of Xaviera's needs. Friends have flocked to enjoy his culinary skill, such as 50 guests at "Xaviera's Christmas Party", so Xaviera then presided every Saturday over a Table d'Hote-dinner at the home of the hostess, a gourmet meal, home cooked, together with diversions provided by musicians, poets and raconteurs, even the occasional magician in the friendly ambience provided by The Happy Cooker.


Since then, Xaviera has stopped her Happy Cooker events and started a flourishing theatre production company, where she brings the best of one man or one woman acts from the Edinburgh Theatre Festival Fringe to Holland. Her living room gets converted to a veritable theatre and tables on trestles seat up to 35 people for a cosy meal. She has had great success in her choice and acquired a large group of followers who flock to her cult theatre every two months to see the fascinating drama and to dine at her theatre restaurant. Life in Amsterdam goes on at a frantic pace whereas in Spain, she enjoys the rest and repose which is every bit as necessary for her creative work. She has come a long way from being The Happy Hooker to becoming The Happy Hostess !

Then in the year 2000 her beloved Mother passed away.. Xaviera who had not written any new books for the past 14 years, suddenly was aware of the fact that she was a CHILD NO MORE and based on her memories and her adventures with her parents she started to write the book with that title. In fact it was her mother who lifted her writer's block and asked her on her deathbed.to write about some subject other than sex And so her book CHILD NO MORE , a memorial to her parents, was written and is being published by Harper Collins worldwide, mid 2002., and a Dutch language has appeared in October 2001.

Recently she became a member of the Speakers Academy in Rotterdam and is available for lectures in various languages.
Her subjects include
"Networking" "Censorship in literature" "A better understanding of human sexual relationships" "Power" "Eroticism" "Sado-Masochism"
"How to cope with the approaching death of a beloved"
"Memories of a child in a wartime Japanese prison camp"

Xaviera is willing to read from any of her 18 previous books of course, all more or less of an erotic subject matter but prefers reading from her latest book CHILD NO MORE.