3. Diary of a Male Prostitute




• I can’t apologize about this. What I saw looked like cottage cheese microwaved over a shriveled slice of ham, and it smelled like it.
  
  It’s hard to apologize about saying something like this once you know what I had to go through earlier this morning. I slept with a woman old enough to be my grandmother. Her name was Evelyn.
  
  She reached over to the oak nightstand and turned over her husband’s ivory-framed photo. She told me she’d put him in a home a month ago. She smacked my head while I was crouched between her legs and told me I was nothing but a cheap whore.
  
  “You’re a dime a dozen,” she yelled. “You’re nothing!”
  
  She threw a glass of wine at my face. I could taste blood on my lips mixed with the Merlot as I flaked away a few tiny shards of broken glass from my cheek. It was probably a 1985 vintage judging by the heavy flavor and the way it flowed down the back of my neck like nasty syrup. Among other things, part of my job description involves researching wine etiquette. I have to research everything-etiquette to please these old women.
  
  For just once I’d like to get a woman below the age of 55 who isn’t drowned in perfume that smells like funeral potpourri. Most of them are saggy and wrinkled like a wet newspaper. Sometimes they even ask me to take out their garbage or feed their little poodles after a session. What’s worse is they force me to listen to stuff like the Everly Brothers or Fats Domino, while I swallow the few grains of pride I have left and make all of their dreams come true.
  
  I would rather be washing dishes for some Sou chef downtown, or cleaning urinals. But cleaning urinals doesn’t pay $350 a pop.
  
  My best friend Kevin spends most of his day serving liquor and manicotti with side dishes of sautéed shrimp down at Ocean Side. He’s really happy. But happiness doesn’t make payments on a 07’ Shellby GT 500 Mustang. And it certainly can’t provide a decent apartment in Manhattan on Broad Street, overlooking Radio City. More importantly, it doesn’t cover the cost of in-home hospice care for my terminally ill mother. Her brain is slowly withering away into jelly. She has Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease.
  
  The doctor dumbed it down for me like this: “This a rare disease. Prions are proteins that live in the tissue of the brain. Think of them as little bugs. They degrade the other proteins in the cells of the brain and cause these degraded proteins to grow rapidly. The brain cells get crowded with these proteins and eventually the normal cells stop functioning.”
  
  He looked down at the floor and rolled his thumb around the silver circle of his stethoscope. He said she didn’t have more than a year, a little over a year if she’s lucky. Her brain will be pudding before I turn twenty-five.
  
  I’m waiting on my next trick, watching each ash of my cigarette flutter away. They float through the dank, peeling, motel window like feathers. If I could only fly away with them on their dusty wings. I bury my head so low it touches my knees and think of how beautiful it would be to join them and leave this all behind.
  
  Evelyn's words nag me. “You’re a dime a dozen…you’re nothing!”
  
  It hurts because it’s true. I’m nothing but a vessel, a scrap to be plucked up and used and tossed away. I only hope this next trick will be safer. I received a call earlier today from a new client. I’m supposed to meet her in ten minutes, but I don’t even know what ten minutes equates to.
  
  There aren’t any clocks in my apartment because time doesn’t really exist for me in the normal sense. For me, time is measured in tricks. After my third or fourth trick my stomach starts growling. Normal people call this noon. Usually, I’ll head to Ocean Side restaurant and talk to Kevin and gorge myself with lobster or garlic shrimp.
  
  Kevin loves listening to my stories because it breaks up the monotony in his normal-Joe life. Kevin’s a good friend and he tries not to lecture me, but by the end of lunch he’ll be shaking his head. He’ll look at me with his round, five o’clock-shadow-face. His blue eyes seem to turn a shade of gray as he wipes the counter and looks up at me.
  
  He pauses, and that serious look floods his face. He repeats a sentiment along these lines: “I have no problem with what you do, Nate. But man, what about when you get older? You won’t be a tall, muscle-bound blonde forever, bud. When you get old you shrink. I’m not even going to get into diseases. And the drugs.”
  
  When he does this routine time itself seems to stand still, because he’s completely focused on me and I know it’s a heartfelt compassion. He’ll sigh just barely enough for me to notice. But afterward he’ll give me a warm smile and bring me a beer, to let me know he’s not judging me and that he cares about me. It’s good to know there are a few Kevins out there in a big city like this. Everything moves so fast it’s easy to get lost.
  
  By my eighth or ninth trick the sun is almost down; most people call this evening. But all this means to me is it’s time to take the subway back to my apartment and do my nightly shot of Anadrol.
  
  Paying the overhead cost of steroids is worth it for the time being, even though it will be cournterproductive in the long run. The nature of this business is that everything is worth it for the time being, whether it is or it isn’t. In this business you quickly learn to stop pretending there’s a future. You don’t even live from day to day, you live from trick to trick.
  
  My job depends on being fit. Steroids keep my tanned biceps and six-pack up to par. It also gives me that boost to be able to hit some nightclub downtown after a long day’s work. After months and months of having sex eight or nine times a day I can barely walk around in my apartment. But after the shot, I’m able spend a couple of hours at the club. After the club I return home and go to sleep. The process starts all over again the next morning.
  
  I’m selling little pieces of my soul for $350 a pop or $700 an hour. If chains, handcuffs, or any other weird fetish is involved the price goes up. Sometimes they’ll want me to roleplay a scene in which the husband catches us. He’ll be hiding in the walk-in closet with a baseball bat or a golf club, watching me have sex with his wife. When I finish, he’ll come barging out wide-eyed, weapon raised in hand. The last time we did that he hit me. I’m not sure if it was intentional but they’re on my blacklist regardless. Evelyn is about to be put on it as well.
  
  The sad truth is, I don’t care about the pain or abuse as much as I do about looking ugly. In this profession I can’t afford to have my face caved in or my teeth knocked out. I have to be a six-foot-three machine of stamina and beauty. I’ve got to be Adonis. I can’t sell my soul to someone with my face caved in or missing teeth. Sometimes I wonder if I even have a soul left.
  
  Sometimes on Sundays, when I’m cruising around in my Shellby, I often think about Kevin walking home or taking the subway to his tiny alcove he calls an apartment. I picture him untying his apron and reaching into his pockets to pull out a wad of money. I almost feel pity for him, seeing that plump grin on his face, and his bright blue eyes opening wider.
  
  I pity him because he’s holding the crumpled wad up to his face with both hands like he’s found a pot of gold. He’s got what ninety, or a hundred dollars? Maybe today was a good day and he made a bill and half, maybe even a little over? Even the Italian marble tile in my apartment is worth more than all of his assets combined. But then I see him taking off his red and orange-stained apron and throwing it into the hamper. At the end of the day my dirty apron is still on. It never comes off.
  
  For the last nine months I’ve constantly lied to myself. I try and convince myself that self-respect and dignity are overrated in a cruel city like this. I have to believe everyone has sold out in some way or another. These lies have served as my armor. After Evelyn, the coat finally seems to be rusting and I can see who I truly am through its tiny holes. I ask myself often if I’m doing this for my mother Lois, or if it’s just because I have not the character to turn away from the road I’ve paved.
  
  Not many people wake up one day and decide to become an alcoholic or a prostitute. The sad truth is, sometimes it’s easier to accept misery than to change.
  
  Sometimes what you think is a one-time event tumbles into a lifestyle, and before you know it, you’re in a dark, underground culture without a warden to release you from its clutches. I’m not saying anyone is necessarily trapped and that they don’t have a free will. I’m only saying that sometimes living in misery is easier than doing something about it. It’s safer. You know what to expect with misery, especially if you’ve lived with it all your life. Change is harder; it’s something that requires work.
  
  My hand is on the cell phone now. I’m going to tell Kevin it’s over.
  
  “Serving food can’t be too hard,” I tell myself out loud.
  
  I’d have to give up the apartment, the car, and move back home. Before I hit the speed-dial there’s a knock on the motel door...