The Courtesan Never Left

I love the word courtesan. I wish it were popular again.

I don't use it, because it's old-fashioned. I think escort took its place completely.

So, do courtesans still exist? They do. The word went out of fashion. The work didn't.

What is a courtesan?

Historically, a courtesan was a woman who cultivated intimate, romantic, and sometimes sexual relationships with wealthy or powerful men, often in exchange for financial support, patronage, social protection, or an elevated standard of living.

She was not simply a prostitute. At the highest levels of society, a courtesan could be an educated, socially sophisticated, financially independent woman whose beauty, intelligence, conversation, and companionship gave her access to circles of power ordinarily closed to women. In its most elevated sense, a courtesan turned companionship, cultivated intelligence, beauty, and social sophistication into a form of economic and sometimes political power.

The word itself comes from the Italian cortigiana, the feminine of cortigiano: a courtier. English borrowed it in the sixteenth century, by way of the French courtisane.

A short history of the courtesan

The ancient Greeks had the hetaira, a word that translates as "female companion." Hetairai were often highly educated, and they took part in the conversation at symposia—dinners that the wives and daughters of Athenian citizens could not attend.

Renaissance Venice drew a line between the cortigiana onesta, the "honest courtesan," who was educated and treated almost as an equal of noblewomen, and the lower-class cortigiana di lume. The best-known honest courtesan, Veronica Franco (c. 1546–1591), was a published poet. Her letters, printed in 1580, include two sonnets addressed to Henry III of France.

France kept the tradition going for three centuries, from Ninon de l'Enclos in the 1600s to Madame du Barry in the 1700s. In nineteenth-century Paris, courtesans moved through the demi-monde, the half-world at the edge of polite society. The most celebrated were nicknamed les grandes horizontales: Cora Pearl and La Païva under the Second Empire, and later La Belle Otero, whose rival was Liane de Pougy.

Every era had its own word for her. Ours is escort.

Courtesan vs. escort, mistress, and sugar baby

At the top of the profession, a courtesan and an escort are the same woman under different names. The real lines run elsewhere.

• A prostitute provides sexual services for payment, across a wide range of social and economic circumstances.
• An escort—an elite escort, or historically a courtesan—is an elite companion whose relationships can combine intimacy, financial patronage, culture, and social influence.
• A mistress is a woman in a continuing intimate relationship with a married man, receiving gifts or financial support.
• A sugar baby is no different from a mistress.

In my opinion, a sugar baby should be marketing herself as a courtesan or an escort, and at least get a better severance package out of being the other woman.

Two more that get confused with courtesans. A concubine lived in an ongoing relationship with a man who did not or could not marry her, usually with a lower status than a wife's; in imperial China, concubinage was a formal institution. A geisha isn't a courtesan at all. Geisha are performing artists, trained in dance, music, and conversation. Japan's courtesans were the oiran, a separate profession.

La Belle Otero and me

If I had to name the courtesan I have the most in common with, it's La Belle Otero—thanks to one too many very real celebrity appearances of my own.

Otero (1868–1965) was a Belle Époque entertainer and courtesan whose relationships with wealthy and royal admirers made her internationally famous. Born in Galicia, Spain, she became a star of the Folies Bergère in Paris, and her admirers are said to have included Edward VII and Kaiser Wilhelm II. She embodied the intersection of celebrity, luxury, sexuality, and elite patronage.

We have a lot in common, including the caliber of client. In 2026, that looks like tech giants. I am from Silicon Valley.

What does a courtesan do today?

Most of my relationships span a really long time. One of my favorite clients likes me to travel with him to his industry's big convention in Las Vegas. Over the years we've gotten so close that he's met my whole family. When I'm not responding, he texts my mom.

We probably see each other a little too much. It's at least a few trips to Las Vegas and places like it, mostly for conventions, less for fun. He's smart. I could easily stay in with him for an entire weekend in a suite, and the conversations we've had have pushed me into some of my favorite business decisions—and him into some of his.

Clients keep me around for the long haul because I tend to remember everything, I'm good under pressure, and I invest in many of the same ways they do—only on a much smaller scale.

With me, the conversation never resets. I carry forward everything—your M&A timeline, your board anxieties, your daughter's name because she's important to you, and the details we discussed about her college decision. There's an example on my About page of what that memory looks like in practice.

Clients usually have a girlfriend, and sometimes a wife too. Those aren't mutually exclusive. The one thing a client might get from me over a girlfriend is this: I will always respect his relationship with his wife, and I know the sacred traditions that keep that relationship first, and intact.

Much like the courtesans of the Belle Époque, my work sits at the intersection of strategic counsel and personal continuity.

I keep a small roster so every relationship stays alive in my head. Each engagement builds on the last; by the third, we're operating at full depth.

I work with C-suite executives, IPO founders, and family-office principals who already have brilliant advisors but no one who remembers the whole picture—the professional, the personal, and the quiet space in between. That's the gap I fill.