'I'm a pimp, I'm a mother'

Antonia Murphy wasn't a regular madam, she was a cool madam, running an ethical escort agency in a New Zealand town while navigating being a mother to six kids and untangling her open marriage

- Alexandra English

Antonia Murphy didn't have the guts to start a brothel until her mother died. The 41-year-old American, who grew up in big cities and spent her twenties working on yachts and backpacking her waythrough Central America, had found herself at the tippy-top of New Zealand's North Island, in the small town of Whangarei, completely and utterly bored.

At night, she cooked spaghetti and read bedtime stories to her two children, one of whom had a disability that left him mostly non-verbal and prone to violent seizures. The next morning, she'd pour cereal, pack lunch boxes and walk the kids to the school bus. Her husband, Peter, would go to his office job, and Antonia would head out to their farm. There, she'd deal with misshapen eggs from sick chickens, find maggots in the compost, and, on one particular day, fill her purse with goat poo to take to the vet for analysis. She grew her own food, raised livestock, and made fruit-wine and cheese. Her friends back home thought she was living the dream. She was so bored. She was tired and isolated. Her days were so repetitive she felt like a robot.

So, a week after her mother died, she started to blow up her life.

She started with her marriage.

Antonia and Peter had never placed much value on monogamy. "Why can't you sleep with who you want and stay married?" Peter had asked on one of their early dates, and Antonia agreed.