I Had to Say Something (6 page)

Yet something in the back of my mind told me to be careful. What I was doing wasn't wrong, but maybe it wasn't exactly right either. I couldn't explain what the gray area was, but it was there, and I thought about it constantly. At the same time, I tried not to let it interfere with my business. I remember thinking,
this can't last forever, because who will want to pay me for sex when I'm forty?

Even as a legal adult, I had no idea how far to go with escorting. I saw myself looking more like a man and less like a young man, and I was certain that this would affect my ability to attract clients. In fact, it did affect things: it made me even more popular. I told everyone who asked, “It starts at two hundred dollars.” I started putting ads in the yellow section, which was the adult section, of the local gay paper, advertising for “companionship.” A few years later, I started taking out ads in gay papers in a variety of cities. “If you are looking to be pleasured, I know how to pleasure a man,” one of my ads read.

I was still trying to go to college and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I studied accounting at a community college in downtown Denver, but I found it increasingly difficult and stopped after awhile. When I was kid, a metal door fell on me, knocking me out cold. A few years after that, I was a batboy for a Little League team that my father was coaching. I wasn't paying attention, and I walked into the batter's box, only to have a kid warming up crack me right in the head with two baseball bats. It was an accident, but it, too, knocked me out cold. Ever since then, I have suffered from incredible migraines. Studying something such as accounting proved next to impossible for me.

I also had a variety of jobs that were nothing more than jobs. One I truly enjoyed was with the Rocky Mountain Adoption Exchange. Bringing adoptive parents and children together made me feel that I was doing something important, even if I was just handling the paperwork. By the time I turned forty, I had owned a bar and a greeting card shop. All of it was interesting and sometimes fun, but I still found myself escorting.

“Escorting,” not “prostituting myself,” pretty well sums up what I did, because while it involved my getting naked and sensual with someone, it wasn't at all what you might think. Sometimes I would just shampoo and bathe a client. Others wanted me to smoke a cigar while we got down and dirty. One guy, a pilot, wanted intimacy right there in his two-seater. Many people have the mistaken notion that when two guys get together for sex, it is raw, hard-core, butt-fucking activity. In reality, what stands out about the sex act is often anything but sex.

One time when I was new and on an outcall, I met a guy at his motel, the kind where the rooms are accessible from the parking lot. He was in his midforties, a truck driver, I believe, who was a bit heavyset. He greeted me at the door wearing just an open shirt and his underwear. I came into the room, and he offered me something from the many bottles of booze he had on display on the dresser. I asked for a bourbon and water. He prepared it in one of those small plastic motel cups that is individually shrink-wrapped. Fortunately, I was still fully clothed when my head started to buzz wildly. He had slipped me a Mickey, possibly GHB, a date-rape drug. I felt like I was going to collapse, but I was able to get up and leave, making my way safely to my car. I don't remember getting home and he certainly didn't pay me, but he didn't chase me
and I got out of there unharmed, so I felt fortunate. I knew, though, that I was lucky; his buddies could have been waiting for me right outside his door.

 

I told Art about one client named Corky, who had to have been in his nineties.

“You've had sex with a ninety-year-old guy?” Art asked.

“It wasn't really sex,” I replied. “He just wanted to be touched. He wore Coke-bottle glasses and was just a frail little thing.”

Art twisted the cap on his bottle of water. “Could he . . . You know?”

“You mean, could he get it up?” Art nodded. “No, but that didn't matter. He came for the touch.”

“. . . Of another man?” Art asked.

“A lot of men need that,” I replied. “Then there was this blind guy . . .”

Art smiled and leaned forward to listen more intently.

I told him how this blind man showed up for his appointment with his guide dog, which stayed with us in the massage room during the session. “You could tell this guy was really into touch. When he touched me it was like he was reading a book.

“I was amazed at how clearly he saw me through his fingertips and how well he got to know my personality by talking to me.”

Art was entranced by my stories. “So it's not all sex,” he stated.

“I recently had a client with lots of problems from diabetes,” I said. I told him how over the course of our visits, he lost one leg and then the other. Art seemed amazed that I would see clients like that.

“I wasn't able to massage the stumps of his legs, though,”
I admitted. “So you see, I'm not Mother Teresa.” We both laughed. At that moment Art and I were just like friends in an intimate coffee klatch.

“Have you ever had any weirdo clients?”

One time in 1995, I had a very good-looking client come see me. During our session, all he wanted to do was talk. “This guy talked nonstop, and it was getting annoying,” I said in a storytelling voice.

He asked me if escorting was the only kind of work I did. Foolishly, I told him not only that I had another job, but also the name of the company where I worked. He kept asking personal questions, and I tried my best to blow them off. He then seemed to calm down and didn't pursue anything further. When the session ended, he paid me and was on his way.

The next day, I arrived at my job at eight o'clock as usual. I entered through the building's back door, which was the entrance employees used, and went to my desk. Within moments, I received a call from the receptionist, who told me that there was someone up front to see me. I asked who it was, and she said he would not give his name.

I told her I would come up front in a few minutes. Given that the company I worked for serviced loans, it could have been anyone. Still, I was not expecting anyone that day, so I went to a door near the waiting area and peeked out.

I could not believe it. It was the client from the night before. I was stunned. I went back to my desk, called the receptionist, and told her to tell the visitor that I had to go to a meeting and would be tied up for hours.

What did this guy want? Why would he come to where I worked? My mind raced. As luck would have it, this guy wound up waiting for me in the lobby the entire day. As
employees wearing badges passed him, he told them that he was not going to leave until he could give me an envelope.

I was really nervous. Should I call the police? He was dressed in a three-piece suit, so everyone probably thought he was there to serve me papers. Fortunately, my boss never asked me anything about it.

Come five o'clock, the building was closing, and I decided to walk out with the flow of employees, hoping to mingle in. But as I tried to escape, he saw me, handed me an envelope, and left the building.

I was shaken. I went home and read the contents of the envelope. It was a torrid three-page letter about how much he loved me and wanted to be with me for the rest of his life. He added that he would do anything for me.

“I threw the letter away,” I told Art. “For the next several weeks, I lived in fear that he would show up at work to bother me again.”

“That's creepy!” Art replied. “Have you had any clients who died of AIDS?”

“One of my very first clients died recently. I'm not sure what the cause of death was. It might have been suicide, I don't know.” My eyes began to water.

Art put his hand on mine. “What was his name?”

It was Alan, the professor I met at the country-western bar. I told Art how he couldn't seem to find happiness once he turned sixty-five, how he had given up on the gay community and seemed to have given up on life itself. I told Art how, one night, Alan and I were drinking wine and listening to classical music when Alan suddenly started talking about killing himself.

“I talked him out of it and encouraged him to get some help,” I told Art. “Things got better for awhile. But a few months later, I learned from a mutual friend that Alan had
been diagnosed with throat cancer. I tried to see him, but he kept me away. Then I heard he had died. I want to believe that the cause was cancer, but I have my doubts.” I didn't know what to say next, so I just said, “I meet a lot of very wonderful people doing what I do.”

“I hope to be one of your memorable clients,” Art replied. With that, he stood up, gave me a hug, and headed out the door.

It was rare for me to take that much time to talk to a client. He had wanted to talk, and I had wanted to talk. The subject matter was life, and for two men who barely knew each other, it was pretty deep.

I looked at the clock and noticed that even with our conversation, Art had been in my place for only a little more than an hour. That's my kind of client!

CHAPTER 3

“Hey, Mike, I'm running late, but I should be there in fifteen minutes or so. Okay? Bye.” I erased the voice-mail message and went to the kitchen to tidy up. There were only a few glasses in the sink so it didn't take long.

I had recently moved from the condo on Sherman Street to an apartment on Downing Street and had also given up the studio next door to the condo. Since then, I had been entertaining clients in my new place. It was important to me that the apartment look neat—although I'm not sure that anyone who ever came to my place cared about how the kitchen looked.

My next stop was the bathroom. I usually took a minute to wipe down the toilet rim, sink, and counters. Again, I don't ever recall anyone commenting on how clean my bathroom was, but I knew that if it looked like a guy's bathroom, stench and all, someone would have said something. On the counter, I made sure I had plenty of mouthwash, paper cups, fresh combs, toothpaste, shaving cream, and a roll of paper towels. I've found that men do better with paper towels than with a nice set of hand towels. It works for me, too, since it means less laundry to do.

I then went to the bedroom to straighten up, but that was just for my own satisfaction. I very rarely brought anyone into the bedroom. For starters, that was my space, and it was important
to keep at least one room in the apartment as mine. More importantly, however, a bed just presented too many issues. Once my career really got going, I let almost no one stay more than one hour and often had to say no to clients who wanted to stay the night, even if they were ready to pay me for eight hours.

“Mike, I'm here,” Art said. I buzzed him in and told him to come to the eighth floor. He hadn't been to my new place yet. It was in a tall apartment building right in the heart of Capitol Hill in central Denver, a neighborhood where a lot of gay men and other creative types live.

Two minutes later, with a quick, almost gentle knock on the front door, Art was ready for action.

“Hi, Mike,” he said with a wide grin. “God, I've missed you.”

He stood at the door until I gestured for him to come in. “Hello, Art,” I said. He was now trying to kiss me on the lips whenever he could, but I always turned my cheek toward him. Art rubbed my shoulders and my chest.

“Why the new place?” he asked.

“I got tired of the home owner's association.” That was true, really.

Before going into the massage room to undress, I gave Art a glass of water. Everything was quiet, just the way he liked it, though there was a bit more noise coming from the street.

Art loved rubbing my chest, moving his hands up and down firmly. After his fingers did the walking on my clean-shaven chest, he put his hand on the small of my back and pulled me in toward him. You could almost feel the passion in his face as he closed his eyes, clenched his teeth ever so slightly, and then held on to me for dear life.

He clenched my hand again, gave me a squeeze, and then let go. He went into the massage room to get undressed.

After a few minutes, I walked in and took off my gym shorts. Rather than wait for me on his stomach, Art was standing with a full erection. When I approached, he kissed my neck, cheeks, and forehead, all the while rubbing my chest, biceps, and abdomen. His hands worked their way down my body until he got to my pubic area. His touch suggested both delight and trepidation.

In one smooth gliding motion, his hands cupped my groin, and he effortlessly dropped to his knees in front of me, lightly breathing on me all the while. Sometimes we'd do it standing, and sometimes he'd place me in a chair and let me sit back and relax while he did all the work. His joy at doing this was obvious.