All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (13 page)

I reached for the money and as I touched the dry bills, part of me expected the walls to fall down, colored lights to flash, and sirens to wail, as a posse of the police, my mother and father, assorted family members, and maybe an elementary school teacher or two stared at me in shame.

But alas, nothing happened.

I followed Symphony Dude out of the booth, through the aisles, past the shining box covers, and back to the dark street.

"Are you coming back inside?" I asked him at the door to Secrets.

"No, I'm gonna head home. That was fun, though. Thanks."

I noticed that he had buttoned up his shirt, although it was still untucked. I felt like saying, "Dude, I can't believe you're going to drive all the way back to Baltimore with my spunk on your chest." I felt bad, like I should offer him a wet wipe or something. It was all too weird, and the weirdest part of it was that he was the one with cum all over him but I felt uncomfortable.

It made me realize that part of being an effective sex worker was having a nonjudgmental attitude about other people's desires. I once met this beefy straight Midwestern frat-boy-turned-gay-porn-star-turned-escort who told me about this one customer of his who owned a specially designed chair that was like a potty training seat. The trick would lie underneath the chair, which was raised off the ground on legs, and Frat Boy would sit on the seat and take a dump right on the trick's face. When Frat Boy told me about this, I felt my insides squeeze up. But he relayed this detail as if he was a bartender telling me about a customer who liked an extra slice of lemon in his cosmo. Frat Boy could shit on somebody's face without reservation, yet I felt strange about cumming on someone's shirt. I realized that I'd never make a good working boy, and I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. A boyhood dream deferred.

14

Prostitution wasn't my only sex-for-cash-related obsession, though. Ever since I've known that there were guys who get paid to fuck on camera, I've wanted to be one of those lucky Joes or Johns or Dillons or Mavericks. I think I was fascinated with porn stars for the same reason I was attracted to prostitutes. They seemed sexually powerful to me and I was hungry to know how that felt. One fringe benefit of stripping was that I got to meet a lot of porn stars who came to town to dance. I had the opportunity to examine them closely in the dressing room—and see if the camera adds inches as well as pounds. I also got to ask them all of my burning questions about the biz.

My understanding of what it meant to be a porn star had changed so much since I started dancing. I remembered when I saw Joey Stefano at La Cage all those years ago.

I imagined that he swept into town on a first-class flight, possibly chartered, and was whisked in a limo from the airport to his luxury penthouse suite at the Watergate. The limo waited for him as he prepared for his performance—a ritual that, in my mind, involved yoga, a personal masseuse, and a bath of lavender-scented Evian—and then took him to the club, with the limo driver talking to him all the while to distract Joey from noticing the crummy neighborhood. But I soon discovered that the touring life for most porn stars is a far more Greyhound bus/Southwest Airlines/Days Inn affair.

(Also, Joey's drug-overdose death in 1994 showed me that porn definitely had a dark side.)

One Sunday, I worked at the Follies with an up-and-coming porn star, Clay Maverick. I hadn't even heard of him before, but when I met him, I almost had the wind knocked out of me. He had the lean chiseled body of a hot Greek statue, and the face of someone you might cast as Superman. If I had known he was so amazing looking, I would've gone to the video store and done some research.

After the noon set, I was on my way out to grab some lunch when I noticed him sitting idly in the lobby. Some golf game was flickering on the TV.

"Hey, do you need a ride somewhere?"

"Yeah," he said. "It'd be great if you could give me a ride back to my hotel. I don't want to waste money on a cab."

"Sure," I said. "I'm also going to grab something to eat and you're welcome to join me."

"Cool," he said.

As I was talking to him, the whole scene felt surreal. Here I was, this geeky grad student, giving a genuine porn star a ride to his hotel and inviting him to lunch. How weird was this?

We got in my red Neon— Seth and I had bought it about a year before—and started on our way. I instantly became obsessed with his comfort, like I was his personal flight—or in this case, car—attendant.

"Are you cold, or hot?" I asked, fiddling with the controls. "Would you like the radio on, or off? What kind of music do you like?"

If I'd had pillows and a blanket in the backseat, I would have surely offered them to him.

"I'm cool," he kept saying, which after the fifth or sixth time I took as code for "Dude, leave me alone."

We decided to eat at the Boston Chicken in Dupont Circle, because he was attempting to get in as many calories as he could.

"I'm trying for three to four thousand each day," he said. "I'm still too lean. I want to get bigger."

With that revelation I knew Clay was straight. I couldn't imagine any gay guys describing themselves as "too lean," whereas, on the other hand, all the straight dancers I knew were obsessed with getting bigger and bulkier. The gay body ideal was Spider-Man; the straight aesthetic leaned to Thor.

We ordered our food—him, two servings of the meat loaf platter; me, a couple of vegetable sides—and then sat down in the upstairs dining area that overlooked Connecticut Avenue.

"So, what do you make of the Follies?" I asked.

"I don't know. It left a bad taste in my mouth," he said, forking a sauce-covered hunk of meat loaf. "The way the customers treat you is kind of degrading. They treat you like a whore, pretty much. I mean, they think they can do anything to you and touch you everywhere. It's like a free-for-all, and you've got to really throw down to get them off you. So I doubt I'll ever do it again after this time. I think I'm just going to stick to doing movies."

"How'd you start doing those?"

"Well, I started out dancing back in Seattle a couple of years ago when I was in high school..."

"Wait a minute. How old are you?"

"I'm almost twenty-one."

"Wow, you're a baby." His age surprised me. I was twenty-seven and had a hard time believing that anybody interesting could be younger than me.

"So anyway, when I was in high school I was dating this stripper for a long while and she kept trying to get me to dance at this straight club. She told me I could make a lot of money and she was like, "If you don't like it, you don't have to do it.' So one night—it was this total spur-of-the-moment thing—I just went there and said, 'Hey, I want to dance,' and they let me audition.

"I sucked at first," he continued, "because all the dancers there were like Chippendales'. But they let me dance because of my body, and I just kept on doing it and doing it until I got better and better. I would peep the really good dancers and watch them. It's all about your moves, the body, the way you dance, your attitude, how you handle yourself, everything."

"So how'd this lead to porn?"

"Well, I started working at this gay place because I had a blowout with the boss at the other club. He called my girlfriend a bitch and I told him to, you know, pretty much fuck off."

"Was it harder to dance for men, or women?"

"I don't know. Women are good looking, but they make you put on a show and work harder. With guys, you just stand there and move around a little bit.

"I became very popular at the gay place," he said, adding that one of his best customers was an actor who played the portly father on a black family sitcom, "and one day this porn guy came into the club and gave me his card. I threw it away the first time. But he came in another time, gave me his card again, and I decided to give him a call. We talked and the next day he flew me and my girlfriend to L.A. for me to do this gay scene. I asked about straight porn but he said guys get paid more for gay stuff."

"What movie was this for?"

"I don't know. They don't tell you that. Or if they did, I don't remember. I never pay attention. You just do a scene and they put it in a movie somewhere."

"So I'm guessing this was the first time you'd ever done it with a guy."

"Oh yeah."

"So how'd it go?"

"How'd it go?"

"Yeah, I mean, was it cool, gross, what?"

"I was more trying to concentrate on how to do it 'cause I didn't know how, you know, it worked. They had to explain it to me pretty much, like the kind of positions and, you know, how to stick it in without hurting the guy and stuff."

"And your girlfriend was with you the whole time?"

"Yeah, laughing her ass off. She thought the whole thing was hilarious, like they had to teach me how to fuck. I told her that with guys it's different."

"Did you have dialogue and stuff?"

"Yeah, a little. But I try to avoid dialogue. Dialogue's not a good thing. I can't act. I just try to play it off."

"Do you watch your films?"

"No, I can't do it."

"But you like making them?"

"I just want it to lead to as much money as I can get out of it," he said, using a roll to sop up the remaining sauce on his otherwise empty plate. "Then in about two years I want to open up my own business, like a strip club but more of a show club. You know, like a high-class place with shows and stuff."

Later, after I'd dropped him off at his hotel, I kept thinking about his observations on the porn business. He made it seem a lot more laid-back and performer-friendly than I'd imagined. I could see myself on a set, exchanging laughs with cast and crew while an adorable straight guy got firsthand—or first
dick
—instruction in butt sex. It made me want to try it out, and one night I got my shot.

It happened one Saturday, when I was having a particularly sucky night: it was slow; I wasn't making any money; and on top of it, I felt fat because I ate a pizza before work.

It was always a horrible feeling to be bloated and naked in front of strangers. For some reason, it made me feel
more
naked. Like I was a Thanksgiving float that someone forgot to clothe.

By this point I'd been dancing for several months and I'd recently made a move from Secrets to Wet, a newer club that drew a younger, trendier crowd. As a dancer, it was important to move around from club to club because you always made more money when you were a new face.

In addition to featuring a shower at the back of the bar, Wet also had the reputation for being a local porn star launching pad. Scouts from L.A. often visited the club looking for new talent. And they even used the club to film the porn video
Striptease.

I was on my second-to-last set, dying to go home, when this short blond guy walked over to where I was dancing on the bar (I'd since gotten over my dancing-on-the-bar phobia) and tipped me a five-dollar bill. It was kind of a shock, because I hadn't been tipped that whole set. I knelt down.

"Thanks a lot," I said. "How are you?"

"Great now," he answered, grabbing hold of my jewels.

"I don't think I've seen you here before."

"No, I've been here before. But I'm in town this time with Chi Chi LaRue. Have you ever heard of her?"

"Sure," I said. Chi Chi LaRue was a notorious drag queen/porn director who unapologetically called her films "fuck flicks."

"Well, I'm a talent scout for her and some other directors."

"Cool."

"Have you ever thought about doing porn?"

Had I thought about it? Most guys I knew—in and out of the biz—had
thought
about it.

"I guess so," I said.

"I'd love if you'd audition for me," he said, tipping me another $5 and softly rubbing my calf. "You could be a star."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. You've got a cute face, nice body, nice dick. I can totally see it."

"What would I need to do to audition?"

"I'd just need to get a Polaroid of you to take back to L.A."

Hmm, I thought. That seemed reasonable. But I really wasn't in a making-major-life-decisions kind of mood. I was tired, cranky, and feeling blubbery.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"OK," he answered, slipping me another $5 before I got up and moved down the bar.

After my set was over, I went back to the dressing room and mulled the porn idea over. What was I so afraid of? He just wanted to take my picture. I still had plenty of time to think it over before I actually
made
a video, if I wanted to make one. Did I want to make one? I thought so. Maybe? But was this something that I really wanted to do, like as the real me? Or was it as fantasy, something an alternative version of me would do? A muscled, oiled-up porn me. I couldn't quite figure it out.

When it was time for my next set, I walked back on the bar and saw that Porn Guy was one of the only customers left at the club.

"So, you're not going to let me take your picture," he said when I walked over to him.

"I don't know," I said, bending down to talk with him. "I'm not really up to it tonight."

"It's no big deal," he said, tipping me another $5. "I'll only use the picture to see if any directors are interested in you."

"Maybe another night. Are you going to be around tomorrow?"

"No, this is my last day in town."

"Sorry," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

I moved away and spent the rest of the set gossiping with two of the other dancers at the back of the bar. When the set was over, I dashed back into the dressing room, threw on my jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed my duffel bag, and started out the door. Porn Guy nodded and waved at me as I left.

I got in the Neon and started driving away. But as I made it to the first stoplight, I started thinking, "What do I have to lose?" It wasn't like he was asking me to make a porno right then and there. What if this was my only chance to try something like this? Was I being smart by walking away, or did this signal the return of Wimpy Craig, the guy who doesn't do the things he dreams about, the guy who studies things as opposed to lives them?