"D.C. Madam" prefers to be called the "Washington Madam"

By Darragh Johnson

The alleged "D.C. Madam" prefers to be called the "Washington Madam."

"It's classier," Deborah Jeane Palfrey told a lunchtime crowd today at Nathans in Georgetown.

"You accept that people call you a madam?" Nathans owner Carol Joynt asked Palfrey, who has been charged with running an illegal prostitution ring in Washington for 13 years.

"Oh, sure," Palfrey answered, sitting on a stool in the midst of about 50 people, looking dapper in a grey, pin-striped suit and black, slingbacks. Her glossy, fuchsia lips matched the color of her fingernails, and she glanced at the crowd through a wispy fringe of bangs, from under a set of arched eyebrows that looked both surprised and innocent. Palfrey has said she ran a high-end escort service that provided fantasies and massages, but not sex.

"I agree with 95 percent of the government's case," she said told reporters, who surrounded her, shouting questions after the luncheon. "What they claim to be damning evidence, I would use in my defense. I'm guilty of nothing. I'm actually a victim of this situation." She declined to elaborate.

Patron's of today's Q&A Cafe at Nathans paid $35 to hear Palfrey and travel writer Peter Greenberg.

"Why Washington, D.C.?" Joynt asked Palfrey, who lives in California's Bay Area. "What is it about the men here?"

"It's very sophisticated," Palfrey answered. "Very liberal. And a higher brow."

"Is this a particularly needy market?" Joynt pursued.

"I think that's probably true all over," Palfrey demurred. "Neediness is spread out all over."

source: washingtonpost.com