K.d.y. Kesha Yond-I Sell Confidence

Book Reviews, Entertainment — By Buddy Sampson on August 23, 2011 at 4:45 am

The Ex-Pimpstress, Actress and Model Has A Story of a Former Life and Redemption

Kesha Yond, aka K.d.y. has a compelling story to tell. She has a book in current release, “I Sell Confidence,” that no, despite the title, is not a self -help book.Hers is a story of being in the depths of the world’s oldest profession, only to have an amazing return to the norms of society.

K.d.y. which is actually her initials for Kesha D.Yond, wanted to have herself named as tribute to her father.”When I was growing up, I was the only girl in the house and I was so enamored with my father that I wanted to have his initials, so his name is Clarence Willis Walters and so I changed my name Kesha, to start with a “C” so that my initials would be “CW,” like my father,” said Kesha. “I always put an arrow behind it, going away from it, because that means progression. So through the years, I’ve come back to Kesha, which is my actual first name, so it’s K.d.y. actually with an arrow at the end of it, meaning, I stand for progression.”

K.d.y., who was born in West Hollywood, CA., currently lives in Lawton, Oklahoma. She has been well-travelled as a child, living in Dallas, Texas; College of Columbia, Missouri; San Francisco, CA, Iowa and Germany. Is there an adjustment to be made living in Oklahoma versus West Hollywood? “For me, I’m a city girl, I live in the country, it’s very challenging,” she said, as she made a decision to join her husband, an engineer in Oklahoma. “I do come back to California as often as I possibly can, just so I can have that energy around me, I’m that girl.” Living there, however, has made her aware of her diet. “When I moved to Oklahoma, down the street, literally, like a mile away, is a barn and there are cows here and I never realized how beautiful they were,” she explained. “So now I don’t even eat beef at all.”

After relocating to Texas at the age of eight, due to her father’s relocation there as a successful salesman for Johnson Products, she attended a performing arts school in Dallas, Texas, Booker T. Washington School of Performing Arts. There, she cut her teeth as a writer. In her first class, one of her assignments was to write a one act play. “I didn’t really know what that meant, and so about seven days later, I produced an actual full screenplay and I took it to my instructor and he said, ‘oh my God,okay yes,'” she reflected. “And that’s where it started.” Later, she attended Stephens College in Missouri on scholarship. “They produced a lot of plays for me, they were very supportive,” she said, earning a BFA in Theater Arts, minoring in Women’s Studies. But her story is a familiar one, unfortunately. After college she found herself quickly in the position of having to make a living. She worked in Sales, after all, her father was a successful salesman. She took a sales position in San Francisco, but found quickly that it wasn’t going to work out. “The money was not quite right,” she explained. “The last straw for me was when I went to work one day and there was a note on the door saying that the company went bankrupt, without even telling their employees.” Struggling and having problems with her roommate at the time, she had a friend that suggested she try the escort business. “I said, you know what, I can do that,” she said. “Was I proud of it, no. Was I going to tell my parents, no.”

Kesha realized, like many, that she had no idea what the escort business entailed. When she came into the interview room, for the job, she was asked to leave her purse outside. Later after she got fully into the business, she discovered that she has to leave her purse outside for fears that someone can tape the interviews, like police vice squads and the authorities. After all, what escorts did in the rooms were quite outside the law. On her first interview, she found out that perhaps, she herself, was unable to be an escort. “The guy said, ‘would you please take off your clothes?” laughed Kesha. “I freaked out, I stood up, I shook his hand and said, ‘thank you for your time.'”

However, K.d.y. was quite aware that sex sells and that the sex industry was a way that she could make enough money to do her craft, writing and acting. So she decided to answer an ad in the paper for a company looking for ladies for phone sex. She quickly discovered that it was nothing she thought it was. “It was nothing at all like the movie ‘Girl Six,'” she said. “It was basically someone booking calls. Gentlemen would call in on the ad, looking for company and you would use your sexiest voice and describe these women(that they booked) and make everyone sound delicious and wonderful. And then you would ask, ‘which one am I sending over to your house?'”

The first night she worked there, she booked many calls- she was an immediate success. “The next night when I went in, I got a standing ovation,” she laughed. Kesha began making lots of money. The company paid her well and she received tips from the escorts as well, who she kept working.

But a job like that has hazards. She decided one day to call in sick. To her surprise, the next day she discovered her money making place of employment had got raided. “They (the vice squad) came complete with guns, Everything got shut down.” However, the manager that hired her for that establishment remembered how efficient she was and hired her to run his new operation. “I was in charge of training the staff, hiring the staff, the drivers, it was completely my show,” said the author. But although she was booking the ladies, the ladies, actively involved in prostitution, would not disclose their activities. But she had very little concern about what the ladies were doing. She was making money. Of course, eventually the establishment got busted and she moved on to an incall agency. There, they had different packages. But they also had code languages and tools to screen vice officers. They would make sure that clients got naked before they displayed their wares. “I came up with levels for shows,” she explained. “It was all about negotiation. Level 1 was a hand on, behind the partition, we had baby oil and lotion and things like that, it was a simple quick show, that could be anywhere from 100 to 200. A lot of them started at 20-40 dollars, but I taught the girls how to turn a 40 dollar show into a 200 dollar show for the exactly the same thing. It was all how you presented it.You had to be quite clever.” Level 3 was Full Service, so you can imagine what Level 2 was. Kesha, unfortunately had to monitor each show and she saw things she’d never thought she’d see. “There was no judgement,” she maintains.

Kesha turned being a pimpstress into a real business, training the ladies and taking them under her wing. Many of the ladies truly had emotional problems, but Kesha always impressed on the ladies to have a goal, to make money for nursing school or college and then get out. The business had a way of turning ladies out. Eventually, after 4-5 years of doing the business, Kesha decided to leave the country. She had been managing 4-5 clubs and the vice squad was sniffing her out. “Truthfully, I think it was God,” said K.d.y.who also has worked as an actress and has done a one-woman play, “But I, Progress.” “I never thought in a million years that I would be in a business like that. So I was a mentor to a lot of them, like a mother figure.” But God intervened. Her husband got a job in another country and she decided to leave with him. “Had we not left the country, I probably would have stayed in the business,” she admitted. “And eventually, it’s kind of like a drug dealer. At some point in time, it’s not are you going to stop or are you going to get caught, it’s when are you going to stop or when you are going to get caught.” She currently is an actress, playwright and author and does several book signings.

Her book, “I Sell Confidence,” is available by e-mailing Kesha D. Yond at y6da@aol.com for around $18. You may also get the book through Publish America.