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Interested?
She's a present. From your suspicious wife
Wherever there's a hotel lobby, gentlemen, chances are your wife can arrange
for a decoy to 'test' you
Memo to all married men travelling alone:
Should you find yourself the object of an attractive young woman's gaze as
you check in to your hotel or have a late-night cocktail at the bar, repeat
these words to yourself three times -- "My wife, my wife, my
wife."
True, your wife may be a long way away
and it may have been years since you sat down and really talked to her. You
may even feel nothing but distance and estrangement in your marriage. But as
you watch that attractive young woman look at you as if you were the only
man to walk the face of the Earth, a word of caution. Your wife may be
closer to you than you think. She may, in fact, be personally footing the
bill for the flattering attention this young woman is now lavishing upon
you, in order to find out, once and for all, the answer to that nagging
marital question: Would you, given the opportunity, try to spend the night
with somebody else?
Yes, gentlemen, that attractive young
woman you've just decided to have another drink with might be a decoy
(employed by a private investigator in the business of testing the fidelity
of husbands), and you might be in the middle of what decoys call "a
situation."
Business in the fidelity testing industry
is booming. Companies offering fidelity testing services abound, and the
decoys who work for them see themselves as professionals employed in an
occupation that is finally getting the social recognition it deserves.
Just last month a New York Times article
called the business of decoying a "remarkable profession," one
that made for "fascinating" dialogue on the popular reality
television series The Real Sex and the City. The series, which was shown
recently on Bravo and is still airing on New York's Metro Channel, profiled
the working life of a professional female decoy in Manhattan as one of a
series of profiles that included a female lawyer, PR executive and
journalist.
"As a business, it's borderline
institutional and completely international," says decoy Susan Skyy (her
working name). Which means, gentlemen, that wherever there's a hotel lobby,
chances are your wife can arrange for a decoy to "test" you.
Skyy, who lives in Studio City, Calif.,
has been working as a decoy since 1998. She is 25 and is classified as
"Playmate material" by Backstreet Investigations, the firm she
works for. Her services cost a suspicious wife or girlfriend anywhere from
US$500 to US$1,000 per "situation."
"To be a decoy, you have to have
looks ranging from college cheerleader to Playmate," says Skyy curtly.
"And you definitely have to be thought of as universally cute. You have
to have your hair done, your nails done, you know, have a regular
maintenance program." More importantly, though, it seems you need some
kind of edge, a special reason for wanting to test the fidelity of married
men.
"My ex-fiancé of four years wound
up sleeping with about 18 women in my hometown [in Michigan]," says
Skyy. "So I'm all for it. The women he slept with were mostly my
friends, and I always had my suspicions but no matter how much I asked,
nobody would confirm anything."
When she did find out, besides feeling
hurt and betrayed, a part of her was just amazed that her ex-fiancé had
pulled it off. "There was this realization," says Skyy, that,
"wow, he lied this whole time."
"And I guess that's why I do the
undercover decoy work now," Skyy continues. "I'm curious and I'm
proving to myself that some men cheat for these reasons and some men cheat
for those reasons. It's that Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus thing.
I'm constantly trying to find out why Mars is so different. Why a man can do
something so wrong [like cheating] to a woman, something she sees as hurtful
but he sees as part of another day."
Decoying, says Skyy, is a meticulously
thought-out affair. "First I get the scenario from Dan and Fred [the
investigators Skyy works for], which includes an extensive history of the
gentleman I'm going to meet," she says. Included in this history are
details the gentleman's wife has provided during her conversations with Dan
and Fred. In addition to these conversations, though, Skyy and the
gentleman's wife usually also set up a time to talk.
"Then," she continues,
"Dan and Fred begin watching the gentleman to make sure he's
safe."
According to Skyy, because
"unsuccessful men don't have enough energy to deal with other women in
their lives," the majority of men she enters into situations with as a
decoy are financially well heeled.
"They're directors, producers,
agents, dot-com people, that sort of thing," rattles off Skyy.
"But it's not like there's ever a specific type of man. I mean, I've
gone from testing the fidelity of a factory worker in Florida to a gentleman
out here who was very Ivy League and very interested in political power.
"I go [to the scene] dressed as an
average woman hanging out," says Skyy. "I don't dress seductively.
I either wear a black skirt and tank top, one of those silk business tank
tops." We pause. It is important to Skyy that I understand exactly what
kind of tank top she is referring to. "Like not really a Victoria's
Secret kind of tank top, more like a Macy's kind of tank top, with
embroidery, all full coverage and then I wear an overcoat. Or I'm in a
turtleneck and a business suit."
Dressed for the part, Skyy then goes to
the hotel lobby or bar where the situation is scheduled to unfold.
"I sit there," she says
nonchalantly, "and I make direct eye contact."
There is another pause ... It is clear to
Skyy that I'm not, as she puts it, "getting it."
"You know, when you want
something?" she asks, a little impatiently.
Ummm.
"Like, let's say you want to buy a
new car."
Right.
"And you suddenly see the car you
know you want to buy. Let's say, a convertible with heated seats, and you
really really want it. Well, that's kind of what I do. I start getting
myself into the mindset that the man I'm looking at is something that I
really want, and then I just start dwelling on him. And it's the dwelling
from the eyes and from the heart that enables me to become the woman he
wants. These gentlemen are all craving the attention of somebody different,
and it's the eye contact that gives them that attention."
Direct eye contact having been
established, and conversation usually getting underway over drinks, Skyy
begins playing the role of the woman who is in awe of everything the
gentleman does.
"Most men just want to be
heard," she says. "So whenever he says anything I nod and say,
'Yeah, uh huh.' I make the gentleman feel like he's 20 again. That he has
everything to gain ... I give him that kind of confidence just by listening.
Not by persuading, not by manipulating. Just by listening. And when they are
listened to, they are just so delighted."
Bringing us to the length of time an
average situation takes to complete.
"Six hours," says Skyy.
"Well, no, let me think, the last situation I was involved in played
out from seven [p.m.] until three [a.m.]. He was just so lonely and so
disconnected from females because of his wife ignoring him for 12 years. I
felt bad for him."
So you listened to him for eight hours?
"Out of compassion, of course,"
snaps Skyy.
At the end of the eight hours, Skyy
announced that she had to go. "By which point, he begged me to stay and
have one last cocktail with him."
"OK, sure," she said.
"And he said, 'Well I have such and
such alcohol in my room, how about we just order room service?' And he was
very attractive," says Skyy (who admits she is often more than a little
soft on the gentleman she is enticing).
"His wife had told me it had been
five years or more since their last intimate conversation, and she was
dwelling on the fact ... well, is he with somebody else? It didn't matter
who. The question she wanted answered was would her husband be willing to be
with somebody else other than her that night. And she found out: Yes, he
would."
It seems when a situation between a
husband and a decoy is arranged, the investigators employing the decoy
always make sure that either an ordinary camera or a video camera records
the moment when the couple enter "a private circumference
together" (i.e., a hotel room).
"And as soon as the gentleman opens
the hotel room door and I enter," says Skyy, "I'm paged [by Dan
and Fred]. I go to the phone in the hotel room and make a call saying
something like, 'Oh my goodness,' and then make up something about needing
to leave."
What Skyy says to extricate herself from
the hotel room depends on the gentleman in question and what would be
believable to him. The setup for the excuse will have already been planted
in their previous conversation.
"I always have to leave a way
out," says Skyy. "Like I have a girlfriend or a friend that's in
some trouble who might be paging me later."
More often than not, the extricating
excuses she uses have been pre-rehearsed with her medical student roommate,
Brian. The two perform skits to help Skyy play the different women she needs
to be as a decoy. Bringing us to yet another aspect of Skyy's interesting
life. She is not only a professional decoy but also a nursing student at
California State University.
"Because of my nursing background, I
know about people chemically and scientifically, but there's always that
huge part of human nature [i.e., why men cheat] that I can never explain.
"After I've busted a married man, I
always feel torn. I mean, maybe I'm destroying something that possibly could
have been good, but then again maybe those two lives are better without each
other.
"But you know," she adds,
"it's the not knowing that sucks. It's like when you're watching a
movie and there's a twist at the end. When you find out, it's always just
that much more satisfying."
- by Kate Jennison Financial
Post 16 April 2002
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