The Male Hustler Read online

  I asked Eldon how he felt about his homosexual behavior at the time in terms of morality and normality.

  “But that’s so hard to say now. I knew it was something that had to be kept a secret. I knew there was something faintly dirty and forbidden about it, but I don’t know if I distinguished between it in this respect and any other form of sexual activity. Screwing a girl was faintly forbidden and faintly dirty. Jerking off was faintly ditto.

  “I probably put it in a category with masturbation. Fun while one was young, but something one would give up in due course. Except that I was not particularly future-oriented. I’m still not. I don’t think about tomorrow. Well, that’s an exaggeration. I think about tomorrow but not about a year from tomorrow, not about ten years from tomorrow. I think I probably live more in the present than a great many people. I’m not sure that’s good. Janis Joplin said something to the effect that some people waste all their now by worrying about tomorrow. Poor poor baby, she should have taken a little less of her own advice. I loved her, you know. I mean that literally. I loved that woman. I’ve never been affected by a death as I was by hers. I still don’t really believe she’s dead. I’ll hear a record of hers and I can’t make myself believe that voice isn’t singing any more . . .

  “Of course in certain ways I was obviously disturbed about being gay. That’s why I went into the Army. All that bullshit about the Army building men. I wanted to be built into a man. And I wanted a way to put distance between myself as a high school faggot and the man I would eventually become, so I went into the Army confident that I wouldn’t encounter any faggots there. Isn’t that hysterical? Isn’t that just too hysterical for words?

  “Right from the beginning I liked the Army. Almost no one believes this when I tell them. Or I get a raised eyebrow and a smirk and words to the effect that of course I loved it, all those hard young bodies around and no female competition. But the point is that I liked the Army for completely different reasons, and at the beginning I had no homosexual contacts and simply devoted myself to being a good soldier.

  “And I was one hell of a good soldier, hard as you may find that to believe. I was neat and clean and efficient. I was absolutely perfect at close order drill. I was excellent with weapons. Expert rifleman, sharpshooter, all of those heavy things. And I kept my weapon in perfect condition. I cleaned it far more often than one had to. Of course a rifle is a traditional penis symbol, and one can make the usual inferences. Maybe they apply, for all I know. I don’t much care. I was a good soldier.

  “I could have gone OCS. Officer Candidates School. I had the chance but all I wanted to be was a soldier. Part of a manhood thing I was going through, perhaps.

  “After Basic Training, I was stationed at an army base in Louisiana. There was going to be more training and eventually we would go to Vietnam. I was looking forward to combat, believe it or not. I wanted to do well, and doing well when there’s a war on means doing well in a combat situation. I don’t think I was afraid of dying. I’m not sure it occurred to me that death was a possible consequence. Or maybe it did and I just didn’t give a damn. But I wasn’t remotely concerned about the stupidity and immorality of that fucking war. I am damn well concerned now, I am absolutely appalled, and I still shudder occasionally at the thought of what I might have gotten into. Not so much what might have happened to me as the things I might have found myself doing. My Lai and all that. It’s easy to say that one would have acted in a certain way, but how is one to know? I could have been one of those thugs, machine-gunning children. In the right sort of situation I probably would have gone along with everyone else, and then how would I have lived with myself afterward? Or, if I was able to live with myself, what kind of a monster would I have thus turned into?

  “The Captain changed all that.

  “I guess he just knew instantly. He was about thirty-five or forty. A combat veteran. Very dark and wiry with a great deal of body hair. He came up to me one day with this knowing look in his eyes and told me he’d like to see me that evening, that I should come to his quarters. Just that, and my knees went weak.

  “I went, of course. And he looked me up and down and told me I was a sweet little thing, and then he grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth. Put his tongue in my mouth.

  “He didn’t act at all gay in terms of my concept of homosexuality at the time. He acted like a man making love to a woman, treated me absolutely like a girl. Took my clothes off and petted me and told me how pretty I was, and turned me over on my knees and fucked me.

  “He reminded me of the man who picked me up, the one who forced me to blow him. It was the confidence, the unflappable male confidence.

  “That man owned me. The Captain. He absolutely owned me. He kept me with him for a few hours that first night, and when I left I was in love for the first time in my life. I also hated him because of what he was able to do to me. But I loved him.

  “And you know, he gradually turned me into a girl. Or into a queen, if you prefer. Because he treated me that way and I became what I was in his eyes. He had female clothes that I sometimes wore when I was with him. And he bought make up and perfume for me. Once he took me off base and we checked into a hotel. He brought a prostitute to our room. He fucked her and made me fuck her. My first woman, and to this day my last. Then he had me do things with him while the girl stayed in the room with us . . .

  “I never learned how many times he had had relationships like this before. He had been married and divorced and used to get letters from girls, and occasionally he would go on a date with one. When I saw him after that he would tell me at great length what they had done and what the girl had been like. According to him, he never failed to score. I don’t know whether he was trying to make me jealous or what. Maybe it was to demonstrate his masculinity to me. I don’t know.

  “He used to call me Ellie. I hated that and he must have known how I felt about it but it didn’t stop him. And I never asked him not to call me that. Not once. I always hated it and never had the guts to say a word about it.

  “Maybe, much as I hated it, I wanted him to go on calling me Ellie. That’s sick, isn’t it? But it was a very sick relationship, all filled with love and hate.

  “Can I tell you something? I thought, I thought we would always be together. I didn’t think it all the time. That is, I knew better. But I still pictured us, oh, living together. Him taking care of me. Me keeping house. I don’t know how clearly I defined all of this in my mind. My perception of my own role must have been vague. But I wanted it to go on forever. I don’t know if I can explain how he made me feel. I can’t entirely explain it because I can’t understand it that well myself. I can say that I loved him, but what does that say? Not very much, I’m afraid.

  “I wonder if he ever wanted to keep our relationship going for a long period of time. I wonder how much I meant to him. I like to think that I was very important to him, if only for a little while. I know he was consciously exploiting me and in certain ways quite contemptuous of me. I think I realized that at the time, and I certainly realize it now. But I also know that he did relate to me as a person. He might have preferred to think that he was using me as an object, and in many respects he was, but I was also very much a person to him. If that hadn’t been so, he never would have gotten to me so completely. He wouldn’t have been able to.

  “He must have half known this, Jack. I’m sure that’s what made him end it in an abrupt and truly cruel way. He dropped me. What happened—no, I’m sorry, I don’t want to go into it. What’s the point of picking at scabs? It still hurts, and it’s best left alone.

  “Suffice it to say that he dumped me in cruel fashion, and that I went a bit bananas. And began queening it up a bit, though I must say I was cool enough so that I never implicated the Captain. Oh Captain! My Captain! Oh, sweet Christ . . .

  “I got a general discharge, which is neither honorable nor dishonorable. I could have contested this but I didn’t have the heart for it. All I had wanted was to be a go
od soldier, and I had been a good soldier, and they wouldn’t let me stay there any more. I was in a bad way.

  “I wound up in New York, of course. And drifted at once to the gay scene, and began to find myself becoming more and more effeminate. And one thing led to another.

  “That says it, doesn’t it? One thing led to another. That’s what they can carve on my tombstone. I think I’ll write that into my will. I collect divine epitaphs. W. C. Fields—All things considered, I would rather be in Philadelphia. Don’t you love that? Or Dorothy Parker, I don’t think she actually used it, but she said she wanted to. Pardon my dust. For me they can put One thing led to another. Or At last he sleeps alone.

  “About one thing leading to another. I wish I knew what I really believed. Was it all inevitable? I used to blame a great many things on that man in the car. I hate him and I hope he’s dead, but I wonder what real effect he had on me. I don’t honestly believe he was responsible for my going gay in high school. If anything he should have had the opposite effect. Because it wasn’t even remotely enjoyable with him. It was horrible, I hated everything about it. If anything he should have made me avoid homosexuality like the plague.

  “But the Captain. I wonder about that man. What if he hadn’t come along? Now it’s easy to say that I wasn’t being myself in the Army. That all this obsession with being the good soldier Schweik was artificial and inconsistent. That it wasn’t really me. But isn’t it possible that I would have grown into that role? Or at least grown into part of it? Or was I waiting all along for someone like the Captain, someone who would come on with that arrogance, that confidence? The way I responded to him right away, I must have been subconsciously waiting for him all along. And in that sense if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else, sooner or later. Because I hadn’t been resisting temptation all along. There hadn’t been any temptation. He was the first temptation to come along, and I never even tried to resist.

  “I have met men since him who have been a great deal like him. Twice I’ve lived with men like that. Once for almost six months, another time for a couple of weeks. They didn’t take me over quite so completely as the Captain did. But he was the first, you know. That can make a difference, don’t you think?

  “I’ve had a few Johns like him. Not many. Few of them have that assurance, that confidence. It’s not a common combination, absolute cocky male self-confidence coupled with an unequivocal lust for my fair white body. Not many men measure up to that particular ideal.

  “Now and then I’ll get one. I think I go out looking for that more than for the money. In fact I know I do, although the money is frankly what makes the trip worthwhile, because satisfactory doppelgangers for the Captain are few and far between, while twenty-dollar tricks are—I was going to say they’re a dime a dozen, isn’t that rich? Let’s say that twenty-dollar tricks pay the rent and put food in the tum-tum and rags on the back.

  “Sometimes I get one, though. Oh, indeed I do. And I’ll get a big hello and an arm tossed confidently around my shoulder, and I’m gone. I slip right into character. He treats me like a girl, exactly like a girl, and I become the girl he wants me to be. Any of those men could have me for free any time at all. In fact I don’t ask for money. They leave money more often than not, the same way any John would leave money for any whore as a matter of course, whether she asked for it or not.

  “It’s so dangerous, all of it. Those heavy male types are just the ones who will beat you up and rob you. I have been lucky. I was robbed at knifepoint once, but that was by a pick-up, not actually a John. And there was a sailor who was set to punch me around, more out of belligerent drunkenness than anything else. I’m afraid he got a bit of a surprise. I was sober and he was not, and the Army had trained me well in hand-to-hand combat and some things one doesn’t forget. I softened him up with a kidney punch and bounced him off a few walls. And I buggered that bastard. A matter of letting the punishment fit the crime. He was always the stud, you know. Always the fucker and never the fuckee. I fucked him in the ass and made the son of a bitch like it. God, he must hate me!”

  • • •

  For Eldon, hustling is important in two ways. First of all, it provides him with a means of seeking out men who will fit his ideal as exemplified by the captain who was his lover. Secondly, it provides him with money, which is valuable not only for purely financial reasons but because it serves as proof of his ability to attract men.

  This is not to say that hustling is Eldon’s sole sexual outlet, or even the most important. His sex life on the street—usually a two-block stretch of Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, but occasionally Times Square—constitutes but a part of his total sex life. He has a great many friends, including both effeminate types like himself and more masculine homosexuals. Sometimes he shares an apartment with another queen, usually but not invariably on a platonic basis. (“One gets the urge to try on a different role now and then, you know. Making love to another man who’s also in drag can be thrilling. It lets one feel like a lesbian.”) Occasionally he moves in with a more masculine homosexual for a week or a month or longer. At times, when the mutual emotional attraction of such a relationship is stronger than usual, he and his partner may be monogamous for a certain amount of time. (“But monogamy is hard to stay with. It’s fun as a change. A great place to visit, love, but you couldn’t possibly live there.”)

  His hustling activities will vary in frequency. He may go out every night for several weeks, then go for a month without once soliciting a trick.

  “I used to think it related to phases of the moon. I’m sure an astrologer could come up with something. I certainly do run in cycles, though. Sometimes I find myself becoming absolutely compulsive, keeping written score of the number of Johns I handle and the money they bring in. And other times I’ll be broke, really broke with a drawer full of bills, and I just can’t manage to get myself up for the scene. It’s strange the way it works out. When I just can’t make it and absolutely have to, I usually take a couple of ups. Bennies. I got the idea from a call girl. A female call girl. She also uses Librium for the same purpose when she’s too depressed to handle Johns. For me it isn’t depression, it’s more a sort of inertia, so ups work better for me than tranks. I don’t know exactly what it is they do for me. Just give me a lot of excess nervous energy, I guess, that I can burn up on the street. They ease the whole hassle of conversation with a John. And that, as you may have guessed, is often the hardest part. I can almost always get up enough enthusiasm to suck a cock, but it’s occasionally very bloody hard to talk to the man who’s attached to it.”

  Eldon’s attitude toward hustling, vis-à-vis his social life, has much in common with that of many female prostitutes. Many of his friends also hustle intermittently, and others who do not are aware of this aspect of his life. His attitude—and presumably theirs as well—is that this is something mechanical one does in order to live.

  “I’m not temperamentally fit to hold a job,” he explains. “I have worked. I have worked frequently, and perhaps someday I’ll find some sort of work that particularly appeals. So far this hasn’t happened. I’m young. Sometimes I’m broke and sometimes I’m swimming in money, and of the two states I prefer to be swimming in money. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and believe me, rich is better. Sophie Tucker. Well, God knows she’s right. But if I have money I spend it all like an idiot, and if I don’t have money I always get by, so it’s not something for me to be hung up about.

  “I suppose I’m too self-indulgent to keep a job for any length of time. When I’m enjoying myself I don’t want to go home and go to sleep. It seems ridiculous to sleep not because you want to but so that you’ll be able to get up again at a particular hour. And when I get to sleep late I can’t drag myself out of bed at an impossible hour. I just can’t. And when there’s something to do and I’m cooped up in a store or an office, oh, I’m irresponsible, I know I am. But why not? I only have to please myself. I haven’t got a family to support. If th
ings change eventually and I get interested in something, fine. Meanwhile I’m having fun.”

  Nor does the morality of hustling bother him.

  “I’m not cheating anyone. Any John who goes with me gets his money’s worth. Oh, let’s face it. Sometimes it’s demeaning. Selling sex. Selling one’s self. But. But I have friends who write advertising copy to urge young ladies to spend good money on an aerosol spray so that their cunts won’t smell like cunts. And urging any number of other people to buy any number of other products which they neither want nor need nor are able to afford. Now that I call immoral. And, interestingly, so do the people who do it. They think of their work as far more whorish than mine.”

  The majority of Eldon’s clients are functioning bisexuals, and the majority of contact he has with them involves his performing fellatio upon them or their penetrating him anally.

  “A lot of ordinary men go out looking for a girl and wind up settling for a man. This is something very few people realize. And a lot of hustlers don’t realize it themselves, because they simply assume that the Johns try to give this impression so no one will think they’re really gay. That may be true sometimes but not all of the time.

  “Sailors, for example. Now sailors are sometimes more likely to be somebody else’s rough trade than my John, but I get them now and then. What happens typically is this. A sailor comes into town after God knows how long on a ship. And he wants to get drunk and have a woman, because the one thing he hasn’t had on that ship is a woman. He may have had a gay thing going and he may not have. Most sailors get into the gay thing now and then, but for a lot of them it’s something that never happens aboard ship. It happens only in port, on liberty. This is another thing that I don’t believe many people realize.

  “Well, the sailor is ashore, and he goes around drinking and looking for a girl. He finds the drinks easily enough but the girl is something else again. You know and I know that it’s about as hard to find a girl in New York as it is to find sand in the desert, but that’s if you know where to look. And those poor sailors never know where to look. They go to taxi dance halls and are surprised that the girls won’t go out with them. They spend incredible sums trying to pick up B-girls, who are all but impossible to pick up.