That time of the year again... dear friends, fans and family.
Jaap van Riemsdijk, who was the charming host of my book launching party at Amsterdam's famous Orange Church, assisted me with an interesting speech and handed the microphone around to the various friends and sometimes even ex lovers of me. I have decided to use part of this interesting story for my newsletter.
Now that my Wall Talk trilogy has been launched mid April 2024 I might as well make it in an all round newsletter, having finished my trilogy WALL TALK 1, 2 and 3. I will send this text to you via my mailchimp list and will do it in Dutch as well as English and it can also be found on my website www.xavierahollander.com.
To begin with here is what a dear new friend wrote and at the same time he is the man, who has been in charge to organize this book launching in the Orange Church in Amsterdam April 25, 2024.
He too is interested and involved with another group of people , who are interested in euthanasia the legal way. And since I am a war child from Indonesia somehow the subject of self inflicted death has often passed my mind.
Ah well here we go with Jaap van Riemsdijks story at the Orange Church - full of dear old friends of Xaviera from way way back to very recently.
The memoirs of Happy Hooker Xaviera Hollander:
Almost 81 years young, she looks back on her tumultuous life. She also doesn't mince words about her many relationships with women. Escort legend Xaviera Hollander became world famous for her autobiography The Happy Hooker, which has sold more than 16 million copies. On Thursday afternoon, April 25, she presented her memoirs: the trilogy Wall Talk, at a festive gathering.
I have shared the bed with thousands of men and women.
Over a hundred guests have come to the Orange Church to inaugurate Xaviera Hollander's long-awaited memoir. At the center is a high-profile interview Frank de Kleer has with her. Some audience members contribute by sharing an account of their exciting encounters with Xaviera. She has shown many the way to the college of erotica. It will be an afternoon without taboos, just like the contents of Xaviera's books. For example, she reveals the pleasure she derives from the back of an - operational - electric toothbrush. She also describes her pleasant rendezvous with Harry Belafonte, who confided his hotel suite number to her as she signed a book for him in the elevator of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan the day of her Happy Hooker launch there. and guess what she wrote in his book, as they were pressed together against each other in the elevator, THE BIGGER THE BLACKER THE BETTER ??To which he wrote for me to know for you to find out. meet me in suite 82.
Pink City resident Dia Huizinga lovingly recounts her seven-year relationship with Xaviera. They still maintain a warm contact. The interview is interspersed with performances by singers Tom de Jong and Shai Shahar, both friends of Xaviera. Shai was also a colleague in two ways. His book Bed Secrets of a Gigolo was published about his experiences as a paid lover of hundreds of women. X
Soft skin
Xaviera was born in 1943 in a Japanese camp near Surabaya in the former Dutch East Indies. The violent images from her earliest childhood never disappeared. After the war, her parents settled in Amsterdam.
'At THE Barlaeus Gymnasium, I was a busy wild child. At first I looked boyish, with short hair and I barely had breasts. I caught the eye of boys, who fell for that very thing. After three years I went to the Christian HBS in Gerrit van der Veenstraat. There I lost my virginity, but also had my first lesbian experience. A girlfriend asked me for advice when she was going to go out with a boy for the first time. I taught her how to kiss and she was quite shocked ,when I put my tongue in her mouth. Then I touched her body, as that boy was probably going to do. I realized that I liked it. Later I fell in love with my art teacher and she taught me a lot. She had such soft skin. That's what I look for in women and also found in Dia. She is still very important to me. It is remarkable that escort girls often also have relationships with women.
I have known and spoiled them.
After high school, Xaviera attended the secretary training program at Schoevers. To her surprise, she became Netherlands' Best Secretary and even appeared on Dutch TV, her first step to fame, as it led her to appear on Willem Duys' television program Voor de vuist weg. Abroad beckoned. Xaviera went to work as a secretary at the Dutch consulate in New York. Life there was expensive and extra income was welcome. An elegant young woman , sitting next to her at the bar of a typical bachelor cafe pointed promisingly at Xaviera's crotch with the words "Hey Honey, you know you're sitting on a gold mine, but what you give away for a glass of orange juice I rent for $100 an hour. So often I see you leave quickly with one of the men you just met during what is apparently your luncheon break in a simple dress and after an hour you come back in a much more expensive gown. XAVIERA obviously loved sex and in the shortest time became a very busy escort girl , who still continued as a secretary , but a few months later went on to operate a fancy brothel. For the price of $10,000 she bought the client list of a wealthy Madame, who was retiring. The best part of that list was the telephone number Murray hill 8 2468 the number to call when you want to get laid so the customers never had to have a card discovered by wifey again.After all, that number is easily in everyone's mouth; the number to call when you want to get laid.
In the April issue of the monthly Dutch magazine the Linda, Xaviera talks about her contacts with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Trini Lopez and Rod Steiger: "I knew them and spoiled them."
'I loved not only sex, but also writing and decided to record my erotic adventures in the book The Happy Hooker.' As a free-spirited young woman, who enjoyed her sexuality to the fullest, I became a symbol of the new zeitgeist. The book was a worldwide bestseller. I received invitations to television shows and became a celebrity. Four movies were made about and two with me. I also got to give readers 35 years of sexual advice in the Call Me Madam section of Penthouse magazine. My openness and behavior did not go down well with the puritanical American judiciary. My activities came under fire. I managed to get by for a time thanks in part to corrupt police officers, but one bad day I was expelled from the country.
Happy House Bed & Breakfast
In the decades that followed, Xaviera led a lavish life in Amsterdam and Marbella amid the international jet set. She became friends with numerous colorful actors, artists and famous porn stars from the sex industry, such as Annie Sprinkle, During this period Xaviera continued to write. A total of 30 books by her were published in five languages. Among them: Xaviera's 69 tips on "how to become a better lover," based on letters from Penthouse readers. Later, Xaviera also became a theater producer of English-language plays. For another 18 years she has been married to Philip, ten years younger, with whom she runs the Happy House Bed & Breakfast in Amsterdam-Zuid.
Directing her death
Fifty years after The Happy Hooker, Xaviera has chronicled her memoirs in three books: the trilogy Wall Talk. She writes candidly about her traumas as a result of the Japanese concentration camp, the relationship with her parents, her tumultuous life as the happy hooker, her encounters in the international jet set, her countless bisexual relationships with mostly younger partners, her miscarriage, the marriage with her great love Philip and the struggle with the physical discomforts of aging. Xaviera always made her own choices in life and wants to try to be in charge of her own death as well. That is why she is a member of the Dutch Voluntary End of Life Association (NVVE). Realistically, Xaviera recognizes that her final stage of life has begun. At the conclusion of her memoir, she writes, "Still happy, but basically I´ve been there, and done it!"
Fifty years after The Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander's memoirs have been published in three volumes, the Wall Talk Trilogy:
- The Purified Bird of Paradise
- Happy House
- Getting Old Is Not For Sisies
The books are available, also separately, at bookstores and on the Internet, including at Bol.com. In September the English version will be published. Don't forget to visit her interesting webshop at www.xavierahollander.com