Starf*cker: a Meme-oir (41 page)

And I did talk him into letting me get into his pants for a minute, so it’s not like the five grand he made off of my mid-life crisis was for nothing.

The other boy of my in-your-dreams was Russian—I’m just now noticing every one of them was of a different ethnic background—and we had an unlikely history. When he walked in around midnight one night, I did a Mary Wickes double-take—not only because he was accompanied by his fraternal twin, but because I’d seen him, and shot him, before. My height with a competitive bodybuilder’s physique, he was blond with pale eyes and an innocent look, which contrasted with his brother’s markedly more angular, more knowing vibe. I recognized him right away as one of thousands of lookers I’ve snuck iPhone portraits of on the streets of NYC and posted on my Instagram account. I’d shot him a year earlier outside a dodgy massage joint. I remembered it because he was one of the few men who seemed to notice my camera for a moment before talking themselves out of the idea that some stranger is photographing them, so the photo I posted showed a temporary flare of indignation. He looked pissed and regal. But in The Adonis Lounge, he looked like a Greek statue had snapped off of its base and was walking around.

I followed him into the bathroom—look, there is no Miss Manners guide for these things—because it was the only place he wasn’t being dogged by clients. As he began to exit, he gave me the coolest look ever given, but stopped when I gestured for him to.

“I really want to dance with you,” I stammered.

He blinked, then smiled. “Then let’s do it.”

By now you will have surmised my type. Even if the guys all looked slightly different and I can count on one hand the number of blonds I’ve been gaga for, my Russian was straight. Very straight. Possibly even straighter than my Brazilian, who was so straight he was hardly even heterosexual.

But I had the most romantic bond with him, because for some reason, as straight as he was, he had a skill he enjoyed employing—he would make out with my ear like a champ. The owner of the club used to razz me for spending a king’s ransom to get my ear Frenched instead of hiring a prostitute like a real man, but I was hooked. For a guy with body issues, I could park on a couch all night and have a genuine “10” talk to me about his body, let me run my hands pretty much all over it, and then lick my ear while I almost passed out from the combined effects of said tricks.

I found out right away that far from icy, he was simply shy, in part because he spoke little English. Over time, I taught him half the language in between near-orgasms. He turned out to have a good sense of humor and a sociable interest in my life outside the club, as I had in his and his brother’s. (They would also dance with their clients one seat apart, so I could enjoy catching the sly grins they’d shoot each other—they must’ve thought we were such suckers, but I think of us as satisfied customers.)

He began to get possessive of me, getting jealous of the Brazilian, often teasing me that I never went with him first, always the Brazilian, whose inferior body he would pick apart. If I happened to dance with the ex-Marine, he would sniff, “That guy is gay.” His theory was bolstered when the ex-Marine went into gay porn, first as a hugely endowed top, and then later as an unenthusiastic bottom.

But the real reason I clicked with this particular straight boy is that I discovered something that he genuinely liked for me to do—turns out his nipples were hard-wired and girls hadn’t figured it out yet. Like kids at their senior prom, we would sink into the sofa in a moaning ball of mutual need as I sucked on his chest and he emitted a low, involuntary growl only I could hear. I don’t think even his brother realized. In the same way the Dominican guy’s lies had broken the illusion that we were on equal footing, the Russian’s desire did the opposite, breaking the illusion that he got absolutely nothing out of our meetings.

Things came to a head when he told me he and his brother were competing in a bodybuilding competition and I said I’d be happy to go shoot it. I spent twelve hours in a fetid banquet hall watching muscular, very muscular, and way too muscular men and women, their skin painted mahogany, parade in their scanties. I was clicking away, also dutifully videotaping the few moments during which my friend and his brother took the stage. It was a nightmare, and it ended with anger as they didn’t do so well (I still can’t believe there are guys considered to have better bodies than the ones they have). I congratulated them, glancing around at the many other men in the crowd who were the kind of fan I was—regulars who had found receptive supernaturals with melon pecs and glutes and biceps.

Then they met up with their girlfriends, and I thought, “This is insane. I’m not that old and I’m not bad-looking…and I’m spending money to entice straight guys to touch me?”

Like so many things I’ve become enchanted with over the years, I definitely had stars in my eyes when it came to availing myself of the services of the hard-working dancers of The Adonis Lounge, whose bodies had made me as attentive as a border collie is to sheep, and whose personal stories had me so voyeuristically hooked this chapter could almost be called a
them-moir.

My friend who accompanied me on that first night was furious I would let the strippers use me to such an extent. People reading this might agree or could decide it was I who was using them, taking advantage of their need for money and exploiting them sexually. In truth, I think we were using each other, and I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. As with stars whose movies we admire or whose songs inspire us, or as with any boss who knows you need to feed your kids and so offers you just enough money to get the work out of you that he needs, becoming ironically, and quite literally, addicted to male strippers for a summer had just been another give-and-take relationship for me, one I needed to help me get in touch with where I was as a newly single, middle-aged man. And where I was was in a place I’d call vulnerable, predatory, foolish, and also romantic.

It’s never one place and the dance goes on.

I’m not sure if Madonna’s most recent face gave me permission, if meeting the continually regenerated Phyllis Diller had been a visual cue, or if blogging pictures of perfect boys half my age and paying some of them for lap dances had done the trick, but when I was 45 and sick of aggressively passive-aggressively hating how my body looked, I had fat sucked out of my torso and reinserted into my buttocks to make for me a new ass. Correction: To make for me an ass, period.

After my stint at a teen magazine ended, I had worked for a year at Telepictures, first on wonderful Anderson Cooper’s failed daytime talk show (at the series wrap party, he danced on a tabletop and thanked his staff for sticking it out through the “fucking shit-show” that was its first season) and then on Bethenny Frankel’s failed daytime talk show (she thought it hadn’t succeeded because she’d been forced to censor her personality), when I came up with the idea that I might want to have plastic surgery. My soon-to-be-ex-boss Bethenny had stated flatly on the show that she’d never had anything done, except for a boob lift. I figured I should try to get the same doctor who’d given her the ability to say
that
with a straight face, but instead I entered into an unorthodox arrangement with a top NYC plastic surgeon who specialized in making gay men look closer to their ideals.

The doctor came to me via a publicist who wanted coverage on my blog. I agreed to interview him for a feature, but soon a deal was struck that I could get about 50% off any procedures I wanted. I’m not sure why it sounded smart to get plastic surgery done with what amounted to a coupon, but it did.

Nothing with the face. My face has always looked young—I can still pass for being in my thirties, for which I’m grateful since many gay men hear “46” and envision “64,” neither of which are numbers that should cause alarm, but both of which sound like “99” when so many others in the dating pool are “22.”

I look a short, soft look at my body and knew immediately that there were only two things I’d seriously consider having done—lipo on my mid-section and the installation of an ass.

I am an ass man. I don’t know that I realized this fully until running my own blog—with its 24/7 thirst for provocative content—pulled it out of me, but it’s definitely a fetish. It’s one of the first things I notice about a guy, even when I’m being introduced to him face to face…I can tell if there’s something to see in the back.

As an unabashed conn
ass
eur, I’ve often felt self-conscious due to the fact that I’ve never really had a butt of my own. Was this why I craved them in others? Maybe. Who cares? I’m way too old to worry about why I want what I want in myself or in others, I’m at the point where I need to simply feed the beast until it’s no longer hungry, which could be around the corner for all I know.

I never really thought about my lack of a booty until college. I’d slowly but surely lost a ton of weight, leaving me with a pleasingly slim form, but I think that was the beginning of the lack of ass—I never worked out in a gym until my late thirties—and losing all that fat left me a little deflated. I remember answering my door in my dorm to a noxious female acquaintance who always knew the wrong thing to say, and who immediately looked me up and down and out of nowhere said, “Poor Matt…maybe you’ll have a waist someday.” I was straight up and down, front and back.

I wound up getting hugely fat again in my twenties and stayed that way through most of my thirties as I was nesting with my partner. My butt played no role at all in our sex life, and I did nothing more than sit flat on it most of the time I was awake. To call any of my jobs sedentary makes them sound too active because of all the syllables. I sat on my butt all day and made things happen.

By the time I was back in the dating pool, and after years of presenting my blog readers with the kinds of asses you could take home to your homophobic relations and they’d suddenly understand the gay thing, I was ready for an ass of my own.

I’ve always been driven to distraction by the concept of plastic surgery. Joan Crawford’s doctors obviously made some pioneering attempts at the stuff that backfired, Marlene Dietrich tried sheep injections (and semen facials, which really work, just not for anti-aging), and an episode of
Quincy
in which ‘40s star Jane Greer played an actress who became the victim of an unlicensed surgeon definitely left an impression. Men with surgery always looked wrong to me, at least when they messed with their faces. I totally noticed when Bruce Jenner went from being a smokin’-hot dude to a pretty lady beginning about twenty-five years ago.

I am so sensitive to plastic surgery in others I liken my ability to see it to that of the kid’s skill at seeing dead people in
The Sixth Sense
. It’s mind-boggling and occasionally infuriating to me when others fail to see it. I remember my ex-partner once saying how cool he thought it was that Sally Field had never gone under the knife. He thought she’d never had anything done, when I couldn’t help seeing that she’d had quite a bit done—she looks beautiful and it looks good, but she and almost every other actor in Hollywood who is held up as evidence that one can “age gracefully” has nonetheless had surgical intervention. You can guess which season of
The Golden Girls
you’re watching based on which face “Dorothy” has.

When I brought up the topic of plastic surgery on Facebook, I received a slew of PMs from people who did and did not look like they’d had work done, letting me know they
had
.

“I’ve had lots done,” one volunteered. “Nose job, three gynecomastia operations, lipo in chest and abdomen, regular Botox and Radiesse injections in the face. Whew! It’s a lot of work and money to try to look decent as one ages.”

Another guy had a nose job to balance out his hair loss (I guess a statement brooch was out of the question), but then had to have another surgery when the first left his schnozz looking like a shark’s fin. He wound up happy, but a girl he knew wasn’t so lucky—she got a nose job that he claimed left her looking like “a dog who should be eating Alpo out of a bowl.” Ruff stuff.

With dream and nightmare scenarios floating in my brain, I arrived for my meeting with my doctor anticipating nothing. I was going to interview him and his staff, and have a “consultation.” That’s all I knew. What wound up happening was I sat with his office manager for a spell and asked broad questions about plastic surgery in men.

The topic quickly narrowed to me.

“What would you have done,
if
you were going to have anything done?” he asked me.