A Consumer's Guide to Male Hustlers (24 page)

I myself have run into a few guys whom I judged to be hustlers but who insisted that they were not. They were right—they turned out to be thieves and forgers, not sex workers. Not only my intuition but my observations and those of my friends classified these guys as bad news. Still, because I was getting it for free (I never paid them; I lent them money or gave it to them as a gift), I did not break with them at the first sign of dishonesty or chicanery.

These quasi-hustler relationships tend to bring about bad surprises. Invariably, the non-hustlers prepared their crimes well in advance. (Like stealing blank checks long before trying to pass them.) I am sure that in their own minds their acts had a justification: they had given me a lot of great sex for free and they just claimed their reward.
¹⁰

¹⁰
. In some cultures, and for some men, crime is more honorable than prostitution. These non-hustlers indulge in sex with great gusto, rationalizing it as a necessary step for carrying out their crimes.

Avoid hustlers masquerading as free sex partners. Their money "borrowing" will give them away.

Looking back at the many hundreds of hustlers and models I have been intimate with, some of whom were drug addicts, alcoholics, and mentally disturbed people, how is it that I had so few bad incidents with them?

I have always treated hustlers the way I treat anyone else. I don't put them on a pedestal, talk down to them, or interact differently with them than with other people. I do not aspire to be their boss, and I certainly do not lavish huge amounts of money on them. I do not try to get them to do more than we have agreed upon by getting them drunk or stoned. I talk with them a lot about their lives and about subjects that interest them.

Most important, I take it for granted that the session will work out the way it is supposed to. That is, I expect a competent sex worker to take care of my sexual needs in return for fair remuneration. An anecdote will illustrate this statement.

Some fifteen years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I ran into Joe on Polk Street. Traditionally, hustlers stand on the east side of the street. He sat on the stairs of the building on the west side. He had the darkest eyes I had ever seen. Joe told me that he was half Native American and half Filipino. He attributed his dark eyes to having looked directly at the sun during an eclipse. "When I am fifty, I'll be blind."

"How old are you now, Joe?"

"Nineteen, man."

"Well, you have thirty-one good years left," I said.

Joe looked very exotic and, by my standards, quite cute. He was from Hayward and had come to San Francisco to make some money on the weekend. He was a short, affable, butch number. We agreed on Joe's fee and what we were going do sexually. While I drove home with him, making small talk, I suddenly had an intuitive flash: Joe was straight. I mean, Joe was straight in his own eyes.

"Are you straight or gay, Joe?" I asked conversationally.

"I'm straight, man."

This worried me. In those days I did not know about young men who, sexually, like young women and older men. I had not contracted with Joe to do what macho men do to queers: fuck them. What Joe and I had agreed to do in bed, from kissing to sucking, was what fags did to each other.

Joe said, "I want to ask your opinion about something."

"Go right ahead."

"I got my girlfriend pregnant. She is real pissed at me. She told me she would never let me see the baby. I want to punch her real hard in the stomach, make her lose the baby. What do you think, man?"

I reflected on this for a while. "Do you know about karma, Joe?"

"Yes, man."

"Well, what you want to do to your girlfriend and your baby is very bad karma."

We talked some more about his girlfriend. I think I managed to talk him out of aborting his baby. I thought someone else should take up with him the payment of child support.

When we came home I made him a cup of coffee. We talked for a while. Then I said, "Shall we go into the bedroom?"

Joe was a decent sex partner. He did exactly what we had agreed upon. Toward the end, he asked, "Do you want me to shoot my load, man?"

"If you want to, man." (We had not agreed on that beforehand.)

Joe shot. We dressed, I gave him his money, and took him back to Polk Street.

I suspect that if I had shown Joe that I was worried, or if I had played a hetero porno video to turn him on and then did my homo stuff, or if I had tried to convince him that he was bi, not straight, it could have become an ugly scene. I treated Joe as if 1 had contracted with him to paint a room. It was no big deal. He was not a low-life hustler, I was not a big-shot Polk Street john, we were not engaged in a mind-blowing ritual, and he did not need elaborate mental preparations to perform his job.

I have read many interviews with mountain climbers. They all say something like this: If a mountaineer knows what he is doing, makes sure to take the necessary precautions, and has reliable equipment, the sport itself is not particularly perilous. But it can become extremely dangerous when precautions are not in place.

Picking up hustlers involves some risks, many of which can be controlled by taking proper precautions. These precautions need to be taken the same way you fasten your seat belt when you start driving. You do not dwell on the dangers of driving and you do not anticipate an accident. You just follow standard operating procedures.

Chapter 13

Hustlers and Financial Well-Being

In the 1980s, I conducted self-hypnosis seminars at the College of Marin, less than an hour's drive from San Francisco. One of those seminars was called "Financial Weil-Being Through Self- Hypnosis." In this seminar, I taught students the skill of self- hypnosis, so that they could apply it to finding meaningful jobs, purchasing the things they really needed and wanted, and earning an adequate amount of money to live comfortably in the style they chose.

A publisher's scout must have taken notice of my seminar. I received a letter from Prentice-Hall asking me whether I would write a book with the same title as the seminar.

I agreed. By and large, I wrote exactly what I had been saying in my classroom. A year later, my book was published.
¹
The artful cover of the book had sixteen gold-colored dollar signs on it! I was interviewed on a number of radio talk shows. The hosts, having seen the book and its cover but not having read it, always started the interview by asking: "So, will hypnosis help our listeners become rich?"

¹
.
Financial Well-Being Through Self-Hypnosis
, Joseph Itiel (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983).

I felt embarrassed. I was such a poor role model for teaching others how to become rich! Financial well-being is not the same as being rich. Many wealthy people live in a state of constant financial panic. They realize that the paltry millions they have amassed really amount to very little in these troubled times, and that even this amount can be wiped out when the stock market throws one of its tantrums.

What I do know a lot about is how to use money to obtain good and steady gay sex. Sex that, in my experience, would not be available to many gay men without the money. I will end this book by describing how, with relatively little money, I have been able to enjoy a very fulfilling, steady, and predictable sexual life with Étienne's substitute.

* * *

For a long while, Étienne was irreplaceable. Again I saw Gabriel's understudies—two average models with pleasant personalities. And, once again, I ran a furious ad campaign for free sex partners. This particular campaign brought into my life a crop of young guys who could barely find enough time to get away from their girlfriends to fulfill their kinky fantasies with an older man. This was free but highly unsatisfactory sex. It was rushed, secretive, and impersonal.

How could free sex with these young guys be more impersonal than with hustlers? Hustlers are hired to please the client. The ones who stay in business manage to do so. The kinky young guys are primarily interested in pleasing themselves. If they manage to please their partners in the process, it is a mere by-product. Jimmy, a bright nineteen-year-old student, is a good example. He wanted an older man—any older man—to stick a huge dildo up his ass. The foreplay I insisted upon was agreeable (maybe even pleasurable) to him, but was completely impersonal. It was rushed, because he wanted enough time for the dildo ritual. Once fulfilled, he would hurry back, unshowered, to his girlfriend and his studies. He never made a date for a future meeting. This would happen when, under pressure of exams, he needed the dildo in place. My needs were of no concern to him.

I came to the conclusion that I had to interview a crop of new models. The fourth one, Michael, became my permanent model. He is Dominican on his mother's side, and Puerto Rican on his father's. He is a quiet, somewhat shy, short, and slim young man. I think he is very cute and lovable, but probably not very comely by ordinary standards.

Michael ran away from his home in New York City and has been on his own since the age of thirteen. He has seen and done it all, and now, at the age of twenty-two, is a conservative guy, concerned with running his own life efficiently in order to live peacefully. He has given up on drugs and wild parties. He has a full-time job and hustles on the side.

Unlike most of my previous models, he is not an imperious queen and is very easy to get along with. He is concerned with controlling his own life, rather than, like Étienne and Gabriel, running other men's lives. Fiercely independent, he never asks for favors or money loans.

At our first meeting, we spent close to two hours just talking. Once he felt comfortable, Michael was a talkative guy with an incredibly colorful past. He has had an extremely hard and sad life, but has learned to take control of his affairs.

In bed, Michael's specialty is affection. We are sexually quite compatible. I was sure of this compatibility the first time around. At the end of our first session, I said to him, "Michael, I would really like to see you on a regular basis. We are looking at ten times a month. I cannot pay you $80 every time I see you."

"Well, what would you be willing to pay?"

"I give all my regulars $50 per session."

"That's OK."

Within a month I was seeing, on a paid basis, only Michael. By the end of the second month, I all but stopped my ad campaign.
²
He also reduced his own advertising drastically. These days he only sees, occasionally, his former regulars. Besides the good sex, what I appreciate most in Michael is his punctuality and his consideration. He takes public transportation to my place, and I drive him to the Castro district at the end of the session. If he is going to be late, he'll call me and let me know well ahead of time.

²
. Old habits are difficult to kick. I always run an ad somewhere. I am unwilling to admit fully to myself that, for me, hustlers are the optimal solution. Somewhere, there must be a perfect lover waiting for me! I told Michael at the very beginning of our acquaintanceship that, as soon as I find a lover, I won't see him anymore. I also told him that he needn't worry too much about this eventuality.

Michael has had less formal education than all my other long-term hustlers, yet he is the most responsible one. Unlike other models, who have the most modern communication capabilities (a cellular phone communicating with beeper and answering machine), all Michael has is an unsophisticated beeper. With only this gadget, he always manages to respond almost instantly to calls, and never, ever, screws up an appointment! The better-educated models, with their state-of-the-art communication capabilities, somehow manage to miss appointments quite frequently.

I have not repeated with Michael the mistake I made with Étienne. Even though I see him every third day, sometimes more often, we have no formal contract with each other. Both he and I can decline to see each other without explanations. So far, this has never happened.

It took a long time for Michael to open up fully. One day, I showed him some photos of me as a child. The next week, he brought photos of his friends, to whom he is close since they serve as his surrogate family. I found this a touching gesture on his part. He had spoken of them often but, of course, I would never get to meet any of them. As far as they know, Michael cleans my home every third day.

Recently, Michael and I celebrated our one hundredth session. (Yes, I keep track of such things!) Michael told me that I had been the steadiest client in his career. Most of his other regulars see him occasionally rather than exclusively. "They usually want someone new if they pay for it," he told me.

If at all possible, I have always preferred seeing only two or three hustlers on a regular basis. Lately, I have discovered that if I am completely compatible with a hustler I prefer seeing him exclusively. I derive comfort from our predictably harmonious interaction. Maybe this is a limited-liability boyfriend relationship. We are both on our best behavior when we are together, without having to put up with the inevitable upheavals and turmoil of permanent live-in boyfriends.

I have stated throughout this book that clients ought not mistake their hustlers for lovers. But when a client sees a hustler almost exclusively, and the hustler has only a few other clients, both parties must also like each other in a non-physical way to make such an arrangement viable. Not all hustlers are good candidates for this sort of arrangement. Models with luxury apartments, costly accessories (such as S/M equipment), and fancy ads with photos do not want or need a limited-liability boyfriend relationship.