A Consumer's Guide to Male Hustlers (19 page)

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. I do not accept collect calls from hustlers. Some of them will even make local collect calls, about fifteen times the price of a regular call, because they do not have the change or do not want to spend their coins. One hustler called me collect from Oregon to send him a copy of a resume I had written for him a few months earlier. When I refused to accept his call, he spoke to his mother in San Jose, California, collect no doubt, who called me (non-collect) on behalf of her son. To save hustlers useless calls to my answering machine, they can make collect calls, which I do not accept, to ascertain that I am home.

"And who might 'these people' be?"

"The Probation Department."

"Why are you on probation?"

"I don't want to talk about it." There were many subjects that Gabriel did not want to talk about. For instance, whenever he lost a job he did not want to talk about the reasons for it. "I am afraid, Gabriel, you'll have to tell me about it, before I agree."

"I drove under the influence." This statement took me by surprise. Last I heard, Gabriel did not even know how to drive. "The probation forms will come to your home once a month. I'll come by to pick them up. You won't have to do anything at all."

I had known Gabriel long enough. Of course I would have to do lots of things. But he sounded so dejected and, yes, the moment I heard his voice I got a hard on. I agreed.

A week later he was at my place to tell me the entire story and, naturally, do a deed. Gabriel was broke, without a job and with no gentlemen holding safety nets underneath him. I raised the fee per deed to $35.

A few months earlier, Wolfgang and Gabriel had been tested for HIV and both came up positive. Wolfgang accused Gabriel of infecting him. He told Gabriel to go back to the States. Having no money and no place to go, and in a very depressed frame of mind, Gabriel flew to Illinois. The story of his DUI is too long to narrate, and would not make sense in any case.

Gabriel was fatalistic about his HIV status, though very upset about Wolfgang banishing him from Germany. He had done well for himself there, working illegally at a gay bar on a part-time basis. He also saw a number of wealthy
Herren
on the side.

In no time Gabriel resumed his previous lifestyle. He found a job, roommates to fight with, and a gentleman to look after his rent and utilities. He had no telephone, since he did not need to call Germany. (In order to have one installed, he would have had to pay his last phone bill, which he had neglected to do before leaving for Germany, plus a security deposit.) But there was one difference. As the gentleman grew frustrated with Gabriel's provocative behavior he abused him physically. The gentlemen who succeeded him did the same thing. Surprisingly, Gabriel took it in stride.
I
was more upset about his occasional black eye than he.

His probation "supervision" required Gabriel to perform only one task: once a month he had to send in a short form plus a certain amount of money to his probation officer. Almost monthly, something went awry involving me (as his putative roommate) in this procedure. There were many mistakes: Gabriel's papers did not arrive or were filled out incorrectly, he was tardy, the money order was for the wrong amount.

In this respect Gabriel behaved like many other street hustlers. The simplest tasks become major operations, with an endless stream of screw ups. Since Gabriel was gainfully employed there was no reason for him not to have a bank account. But Gabriel, like other hustlers, had had so many traumatic experiences with banks (more correctly, the banks had the traumatic experiences) that he chose not to open an account.

In the meantime, the impatient probation officer made threatening calls (to me) about revoking Gabriel's probation. Because his roommates would not take calls for him, and he could not be contacted at work, I would have to make heroic efforts to deliver his probation officer's threats.

I did many favors for Gabriel. Periodically, he had to find new accommodations and would ask me to help him move. When he wanted to escape his roommates and his gentleman, and just watch TV, we would do a deed, and then he would stay at my place as long as he wanted. I know that I was really his only friend. As soon as my phone became operable after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Gabriel was on the line. I found out later that I was the only person he had called.

What took me by surprise was Gabriel's reluctance to reciprocate by doing an odd favor for me. This has been my experience with quite a few other hustlers. My interpretation of this phenomenon is that both hustlers and clients are ambiguous about their roles. In theory—at least my theory—the hustler is an independent contractor, who charges handsomely for his services. In practice, it suits the hustler to convey the impression that he is a poor sex worker, who has to sell his body to survive. Why else would he receive a generous tip? (Independent contractors are not given tips for performing excellent work. Have you ever tipped your dentist?)

The client, too, may be happier with a hustler who is in a somewhat servile position. Helping a struggling young man financially, and obtaining sexual favors in return, may be less jarring to the client than buying it from a self-sufficient professional.

This ambiguity expresses itself in many ways. Half the time hustlers get their pay in an envelope, as if it were a tip for the concierge for a discreet and somewhat shady service. Other clients leave the money on the table or on the hustler's clothes. Rarely is the money just handed to them the way one would pay a plumber or an electrician.

For Christmas, many private contractors send me tokens of their appreciation for doing business with them—calendars, bookmarks, cards. Hustlers, like servants, are given gifts for the holidays without expecting reciprocation on their part.
⁴

⁴
. Gay author John Preston, a former hustler himself, thinks that exchanging presents with a client will send the latter the wrong message, that is, that the hustler wants to become his boyfriend. He counsels: "Give presents only to the kindly older men who have made it clear to you that they are primarily buying your companionship and that they would appreciate a gesture of friendship at Christmastime."
Hustling: A Gentleman's Guide to the Fine Art of Homosexual Prostitution
, John Preston (New York: Masquerade Books, 1994), p. 133.

Which brings me back to Gabriel. I never asked him for free sex in return for favors I did for him. But I felt entitled to call upon him when I needed help, such as in rearranging furniture. He was dismayed when I asked him to do some work for me for free. One year he gave me, in writing, his Christmas wish list. I said, "Gabriel, I will be happy to exchange gifts with you this Christmas. Do you mind if I give you my list?" No gifts were exchanged!

I have noticed that most hustlers are reluctant to reverse the cash flow from them to their clients even when etiquette requires it. Model Alfonso, about whom I have written earlier, who took pride in his social sophistication, is a good example. I was dating someone at the time and had not seen him for a few months. One day he called me, asking me to write a resume and cover letter for a summer job he wanted to apply for. When I finished the draft, he suggested that we meet for lunch to discuss it. I wondered how he would handle the bill. Obviously, I was not going to treat him. It would have been nice had he offered to pick up the tab, especially since he was very successful at his hustling business, and held a part-time job. But he suggested that we split it. I am sure that with a friend he would have picked up the tab. With a client he simply could not bring himself to do it.

The hustlers' endless need to receive money from clients is magnified because they often do not know whether, at a given moment, they are rich or poor. In spite of all the money Gabriel took in from his job, from me, an occasional other client, and his gentlemen, at times he was so broke that he went hungry. Yet the clothes he wore when he came over put my own wardrobe to shame. His watch and jewelry, which disappeared from time to time when he was drunk and had to be replaced, were worth a small fortune. In this respect, Gabriel was not unique.

It may well be that Gabriel's troubles with co-workers and roommates were a result of his extreme neediness in every area of his life. He was simply too busy with his own travails to notice that others had needs too, and that he might be called upon to help them. In spite of this, he was superbly attuned to the needs of his sex partners and, at least with me, never tried to cut corners in our sessions.

When all is said and done, maybe Gabriel, Alfonso, and other hustlers see all their clients as johns. If a client is a nice john, the hustlers will provide the best sex in their repertoire for him. That is their way of reciprocating.
⁵

⁵
. A number of hustlers and models have helped me enthusiastically and voluntarily with my computer problems. (One of them, a self-taught techie, was hired by me to organize my computer files. I paid him the going rate for computer counseling which, at the time, was $25 per hour. He made $10 more for a sexual session!) I suspect that, unlike me, they considered computer work great fun. It may also be that it made them feel good to show a client how knowledgeable they were compared to him.

Gabriel showed no symptoms of his HIV infection. He never consulted a doctor and took no medicines. He entertained negative thoughts, drank heavily, did drugs, practiced unsafe sex at times, and starved his body. Gabriel, like a number of other hustlers I had known, also was a borderline anorexic. Sometimes, when he weighed himself on my bathroom scale, he would wonder out loud whether his weight loss signaled the beginning of his decline, as he put it. But, confounding the experts who recommend healthy living for HIV-positive people, he never so much as caught a cold.

Some three years after the Wolfgang affair came to an end, Gabriel found a new boyfriend named York. Like Gabriel, York was an alcoholic. He held a sales job at a department store and was even more prone than Gabriel to buy expensive and needless stuff. They constantly exchanged very expensive gifts, owed each other huge amounts of money, and impoverished each other. When they got drunk, a regular occurrence, York would sometimes batter Gabriel.

Surprisingly, York refused to live with Gabriel, which would have saved both of them some money. They had different work schedules. In order for them to see each other, Gabriel had to give up his gentleman because their schedules conflicted with the time he could spend with York. Pretty soon, without a safety net, Gabriel's financial situation collapsed altogether.

My schedule was much more flexible than Gabriel's gentleman's. He spent more time at my place than he had before meeting York because he really had no place to relax. York's roommates hated Gabriel and would not allow him to be there when York was at work.

York knew about me. Gabriel explained to York that he spent so much time with me because he was helping me with writing one of my travel guidebooks. When Gabriel showed York the published work he asked, logically, why I had made no mention of my hardworking assistant.

Gabriel's relationship with York was fraught with lies and withheld information.
⁶
The most important issue, their respective HIV status, was never discussed. When I asked Gabriel whether he practiced safe sex, he was annoyed by my question. "We try to do our best, Joseph. It is not always easy." (Gabriel and I had been practicing strict safe sex from our first meeting. He was as conscious of it as I. The first time he shaved at my place, after his HIV diagnosis, he discarded the blade. I would never have thought about it. Eventually, he bought a pack of disposable razors and kept them at my place.)

⁶
. This is true of practically all hustlers who have boyfriends/lovers who do not know about their sideline. I often knew more about a hustler's life than did his lover.

That things worked out between Gabriel and myself at all was due, in no small part, to the fact that he did not need, or even want, to impress me with anything more than his sexual performance. With me he could be himself. I knew, for example, how terribly broke he was in spite of his magnificent wardrobe! Before he went to Germany he asked me, somewhat sheepishly, to teach him how to knot a necktie. "I would be very embarrassed to ask anybody else to show me how to do this," he confessed. I knew, and did not care, that he was not as sophisticated and well-bred as he pretended.

Needless to say, I was not about to impress him as being very wealthy, as his sponsoring gentlemen did unfailingly. When my sex budget was exhausted, I would ask him for an "end of the month special." He always obliged, because he needed the money and, after doing the deed, he could stay at my place and watch TV.

All of this came to an abrupt end in 1991. One day York beat up Gabriel seriously enough for him to wind up at the emergency room of San Francisco General. After that incident, they split, and Gabriel went into a state of deep depression. He finally took advantage of his HIV-positive status and sought counseling. He may have seen the same therapist that Jed had consulted. As a first therapeutic step, she recommended to him that he stop being a "sex object."

For me it was a
déjà vu
experience. Unlike Jed, I knew Gabriel would change his mind because he would be unable to make ends meet without hustling. The therapist had deprived him of his means of livelihood without teaching him new skills (like money management). When he called me a few months later and suggested we resume doing deeds, he was utterly broke, had only a part-time job, and lacked a sponsoring gentleman. For a change, I was in my dating mode and was getting it for free much of the time.