“I passed a place today on Penywern Road. It’s a studio basement flat, brand new conversion.” Melaine was right. Now was the perfect time to move. Suddenly I had no belongings. A new start would be good for me.
I went to see the apartment the next day. It really was perfect, a big studio with a sleeping platform. It was brand new, had a separate kitchen and bathroom, and a large hall that would serve as a dining area. It was just around the corner from the gym; in fact, I could see into the gym from my kitchen window. I moved right in. I went out and bought all new furniture, fixing up the place like a single guy living the high life. I even bought a bench press and weights and put them in the window of the apartment. I filled the place with big trees and put framed posters by Skrebneski on the walls. Lots of semi-naked people in black-and-white looking bisexual: Cindy Crawford, Iman, Dolph Lundgren . . . a friend of mine knew Dolph when he was dating Grace Jones. Grace said he had the biggest dick she had ever seen.
After furnishing my new home, I was broke and needed to make some big money quickly. I had a great idea. I knew a lot of competitive bodybuilders who all needed money, so I opened up my own escort agency, Musclemen Masseurs. If Andy could do it and Alice thought she could do it why couldn’t I? My agency specialized in jocks, sportsmen and pro bodybuilders. It was a smash hit immediately. I received phone calls non-stop. A normal call went like this:
“Hello, Musclemen Masseurs.”
“I need a massage. I’m in the Dorchester Hotel.”
“Certainly sir. What sort of guy were you looking for?”
“Do you have any pro rugby players?”
“We certainly do,” I would lie.
“Well, I’d like a blonde pro rugby player. Hairy, please.”
“I’ll have him right over. His name’s Gareth.”
“Please be discreet, I’m married.”
“Oh, we’re very discreet, sir. That will be a hundred pounds and ten for the cabs. That includes the agency fees.”
“How long will he take to get here?”
“He’ll be there in half an hour, sir.”
(Click).
I would look at the bodybuilders I had on my books and see who fit the description most closely. I had learned from Andrew at Number One Agency that you didn’t have to get the description a hundred percent right. Fuck, you didn’t have to get it twenty percent right. Sex is all in the mind. As long as you look vaguely like what they want, you’re in the door.
By this time I was in my mid-twenties, had light brown hair, no tattoos, and 200 pounds of tanned muscle (thank you, steroids). I would have been totally generic looking if I had lived in Southern California, but in grey old London I was rocking. So a call from a client like this would come in and half an hour later I was Gareth the Welsh ex-rugby pro who had given up the game due to the fact my father had died in a mining disaster in Llandudno. Lies just spilled out of my mouth when there was a whiff of a straight client dick to be had.
Musclemen Masseurs became so successful that visiting bodybuilders from all over the world would call me wanting to escort. In a very short time the agency became one of the hottest agencies in Europe. Plus I was having sex with all the guys . . . but only when they came for an interview . . . and only more than once if they were exceptionally huge and stupid. I only employed the hugest. By now my steroid intake had increased to two shots a week: 1 ml of Sustanon 250 and 1 ml of Deca-Durabolin. I would get the stuff off of various bodybuilders I was shagging. Friends, who saw the astonishing difference in my physique, started buying steroids from me as well. Before I knew it, I was the main steroid dealer in Earl’s Court Gym. How the hell did that happen?
So there I was; owner of a bodybuilding escort agency, selling steroids to the whole of South West London. Then I met Bill Christian, who turned my life upside down.
The hottest gay bar in Earl’s Court was the Coleherne. It was the oldest gay leather bar in London and a fucking dump. It was as if “Troll Kingdom” had thrown open its doors and all the trolls had danced down to the Coleherne where they were handed a pair of chaps and a body harness. Remember the hideous headmaster whose leather g-string I nicked to strip in at Boys-a-Go-Go? This was his favorite haunt. Everybody in the Coleherne knew I was a hooker. But what made them treat me with respect was that I was a good-looking, successful hooker with a 50-inch chest.
It was at the Coleherne on a Friday night that I met Bill. He had the thickest head of black hair I had ever seen, a dimple in his chin and dreamy brown eyes. I spotted Bill from across the bar while I was knocking back my fifth pint of lager and lime. He grinned at me and I smiled back and then he pushed his way through the crowd towards me.
“Hello, mate.”
“Hello.” God, he was gorgeous.
“Do you live around here?”
“About five minutes away,” I said.
“Well, fancy a shag?”
Thank God he said that because I had the strangest feeling he was straight and had wandered into the Coleherne by mistake. He was the best looking guy I had ever seen in the place and I couldn’t help noticing he had huge muscled thighs that were crammed into his jeans. I think I fell in love with him the moment I saw him and speaking to him just sealed the deal. As we walked back to my flat he told me he was from New Zealand and he hadn’t been living in London long and that he didn’t have a boyfriend. I was amazed that a guy this sexy didn’t have a boyfriend. He came back to 3 Penywern Road that night and we had amazing sex. He was a total top and fucked the living daylights out of me for hours. When we woke up in the morning he told me that he was leaving on a one-week vacation to New York City but he said he would call me. As we kissed goodbye and I looked into his big brown eyes I knew I was in love, and I think he knew he was in love with me too.
When he returned a week later we took up where we had left off.
Bill was living in a rented room in St. Johns Wood. It was small but he was very tidy and neat so it never looked messy. He worked as a carpenter on a construction site and every night he would come to my place covered in sawdust and we would make mad passionate love. He had a solid body from working out for years. As I got to know him better he told me he had only ever had one other boyfriend but lots of girlfriends . . . he was bi . . . YUM.
It didn’t seem to bother him that I was escorting or that I owned my own escort agency. He would never let me spend any money on him and even insisted he pay whenever we went out. I knew he didn’t earn a lot of money so one day I got an idea.
“Listen, I get a lot of calls asking for guys who look like you.” Bill had a ten-inch cock and the biggest arse I had ever seen . . . and he was a genuine carpenter. “Why don’t you do a booking or two every week . . . just to supplement your income.”
“Nah . . . that’s not for me.”
“But it’s really easy. I’ll only give you the jobs where you have to sit back and get your dick sucked. You’ll make a fortune.”
“Honestly mate . . . I don’t want to do it.”
Of course I couldn’t leave it alone. I whined and begged and pleaded and cajoled him until finally he agreed to try it. He made an enormous amount of money straight away. I don’t think Bill ever actually enjoyed doing the work but perhaps he did it to please me. A few weeks later we moved in together in my small flat on Penywern Road. Bill joined Earl’s Court Gym and I filled him up with steroids. We constantly fucked like rabbits and were blissfully happy in our tiny little warren.
It was during this time that I met Harry Giesler. Harry had been born in Germany and had been one of the world’s top male models. He was one of those guys that you saw advertising cigarettes and Pierre Cardin suits on billboards all over the world. He was incredibly, ruggedly handsome, but at forty years old he had fallen on hard times. As he was a bodybuilder with a nine-inch cock, Skinhead Michael had suggested he work for my escort agency. He and Skinhead Michael had met in “Heaven.” They had become lovers until a week later when they had realized they were both bottoms. Harry came for an interview and the week I put him to work he made two thousand pounds. He was ecstatic.
Bill and Harry weren’t crazy about each other. Bill was jealous of anybody who took up a lot of my time, and Harry and I started running around London together much to Bill’s chagrin. Bill didn’t like clubbing so every Saturday night Harry and I would go dancing at Heaven and drop acid. We fell into a pattern. Harry would come to my flat and we would head off to the Coleherne for a few pints of beer before going dancing. Bill would stay at home and build cupboards and wardrobes, and then I would come home and let him fuck the hell out of me till dawn.
One day I gave Harry a booking that ended up changing his life. The guy was a regular of my agency though I didn’t know much about him. I never pried into my client’s personal lives, so all I knew was that his name was Matthew and that he had a lot of money because he never quibbled over price. He liked blond bodybuilders so when he called one day I figured Harry would be perfect. Harry was more than perfect. It turned out Matthew had been in love with Harry ever since he had seen him in a commercial for tobacco years ago. He couldn’t believe it when Harry showed up at his door and Harry couldn’t believe it when he saw Matthew’s luxury penthouse behind Harrods department store. Matthew fell fast and hard for Harry and eventually bought him a Bentley and an amazing two bedroom flat in South Kensington. Harry and I were the only bodybuilding fags in London who rode to Heaven in a Bentley. Matthew unfortunately died a few years later but not before I expect Harry had made him the happiest he had ever been. In turn Matthew left Harry enough money to live on for the rest of his life.
Harry eventually sold the apartment in South Kensington along with all the furniture and art Michael had bought and purchased a beautiful two-bedroom cottage south of the river Thames. I think the South Kensington apartment held too many sad memories for Harry who was approaching fifty and had given up the “glamorous” life of hooking years before. Harry had experienced what a lot of successful escorts experience. He had met a rich client who fell in love with him and gave him everything. As much as Matthew loved Harry, Harry in his own way had grown to love Matthew. I’m sure Harry will remember him fondly forever.
I was definitely burning the candle at both ends. It was the days of ecstasy and dance music in London. I had first tried ecstasy in New Orleans and now it had become the in drug in London. The biggest club of the month was called “Kinky Gerlinky” run by hostess supreme Gerlinda. She was the “sister” of NYC party goddess Suzannne Barsch and Kinky Gerlinky was the place to see and be seen.
Gerlinda asked Sean and I if we would get some bodybuilders together and put on a dance act at Kinky. We soon became the kinky boys and our infamy only grew. It was a wild time to be young and wealthy and handsome in London. We ruled the school.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I HAD DEVELOPED AN UNNATURAL TASTE for beauty pageants. The summer of 1989 I went to Key West for four weeks on my own. Bill had flown home to visit his family in New Zealand, so I let a friend of mine, Richard, run the agency while I was away.
Key West was amazing. In those days it was still a sleepy little hamlet overrun by gay people and five-toed cats, a supposed legacy of Ernest Hemmingway. Now it’s all t-shirt shops and cruise ships pulling in all the time, but in 1989 it was sublime. There were an enormous number of gay bed and breakfasts serving fresh muffins and fruit juice every morning. Later people would head to the local pier where there was a bar and everybody tanned like seals while sipping banana daquiris. At night the entire gay population of the Island would go dancing at the big gay club Copacabana.
One night they held the annual “Mr. Key West” contest. Drunk on tequila, I slipped into a Speedo and paraded myself around the stage at the “The Copa.” Amazingly, I won and tottered down the runway, misty-eyed and clutching a bouquet of roses to my ample pecs. For the next month I was a star and I liberally imbibed all the libations sent my way in various gay bars as well as all the free tabs of ecstasy I could gobble down. Upon returning to freezing cold London, I found my friend Richard asleep on my carpet, all my plants dead and a bin full of empty Guinness bottles . . . reality was harsh.
A few months later I was working out at the gym when I spied a flyer somebody had posted on the notice board:
MR. DRUMMER 1990
BRITISH FINAL
WINNER MUST COMPETE IN FULL LEATHER DAY WEAR, EVENING WEAR AND ACT OUT A 3 MINUTE SEXUAL FANTASY OF ONE’S CHOOSING. ALSO GIVE A SPEECH ON THE VALUE OF THE LEATHER COMMUNITY TO SOCIETY AND HOW LIVING AS A LEATHERMAN HAS BENE-FITTED YOUR OWN LIFE.
FIRST PRIZE:
AN ALL EXPENSES PAID TRIP TO SAN FRANCISCO TO COMPETE IN THE MR DRUMMER WORLD FINAL REPRESENTING THE UNITED KINGDOM.
“Oh my God,” I thought. “It will be just like Miss World . . . only with leather men.”
I filled out the entry form that afternoon.