I Had to Say Something (4 page)

We scheduled an appointment for the next day at noon. When he arrived, Paul handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number to call when our appointment was over. I had not been around anyone who was so disabled that they needed my help to make a phone call. I was honored to help him, but I was also a bit nervous.

Paul was a very gentle man with a very round face, a big smile, and a very happy disposition, given his circumstances. I took Paul to the massage table and helped him lay facedown. I was trying extra hard to make him feel comfortable. I remember how he wanted to talk the entire time I was touching him.

As I touched him, Paul told me how he had quit his job in aviation due to his illness. Unable to live independently, he'd sold his house and all of his belongings. He also told me that the younger you are when you develop Alzheimer's, the faster it progresses.

“You've got some great friends,” I told him. “Don't worry, they'll take care of you.” As I rubbed him down, he was smiling as best he could. I was trying not to cry.

The whole time, Paul never cried or displayed any sadness. In fact, he would occasionally make a joke, and we would both laugh. It was difficult for him, but we would laugh anyway.

Paul had been openly gay most of his adult life, so he wasn't trying to hide anything by coming to me. He was simply finding the intimacy that he had not been able to get since he became ill.

When our session was over, I called the number on the paper. I then walked him downstairs to a waiting car.

I saw him once a month for a total of six visits. With each visit, he was visibly worse. At our last few appointments, he could not remember where the massage room or the bathroom was. On his last visit, he forgot to take off his clothes. By nature, I am a very patient person, and I was determined to make his visits as enjoyable, memorable, and erotic as possible. After that, I never saw him again.

CHAPTER 2

“How did you get into this business?” Art asked.

He was all dressed and ready to go, but for some reason, he wasn't in a hurry to leave. I hadn't checked the clock to see if we had gone past an hour.

“I wish I could tell you how I got started,” I told him. “It just kinda happened.”

Art smiled and rubbed my chest, which he loved to do. “Tell me about some of your more interesting clients.”

Normally, I felt rushed and liked to get clients in and out the door. That spring afternoon in 2004, however, I felt relaxed. “Can I get you a bottle of water?” I offered.

Art's face lit up. “That would be nice,” he replied. I took him by the hand and sat him down at my dining room table.

“Would you like to hear the raunchy stories or the touching ones?”

“You have some touching stories?” he asked, apparently surprised that there might be some compassion involved in escorting.

“You'd be surprised at how many clients are just average Joes who need to be touched.”

 

I was just eighteen when I was offered money for sex for the first time. Fresh out of high school, I was ready to explore the world, especially the world of man-on-man sex. I knew about
certain parks where men hung out, but since there was also a handful of gay bars in Denver, I figured I'd start there. Like many young adults, I had a fake ID and used it to get into the bars where I might find older men, the kind I've always found most attractive.

In 1975, the gay world was still underground in Denver. Most nightclubs had back-alley entrances and no windows. A popular wall color back then was black. I didn't understand all the secrecy, but I accepted it as a normal part of gay culture. I really didn't know any better.

I was in a neighborhood gay bar for about an hour, just hanging out drinking a beer. I was by myself, hoping to get picked up. I'd never tried anal sex, and I had a passing curiosity about rougher kinds of sex. I was hoping an older man, a “daddy,” would take me to his place and show me the ropes.

A man in his forties came up to me and started talking to me. He offered to buy me a drink, and I accepted. We made some small talk as Led Zeppelin played on the jukebox.

“See my friend over there?” he asked. “He'd like to spend some time with you.” Taking another sip of his highball, he added, “He can pay you for your time.”

I wasn't sure what to make of the offer. I went to the bar just to have sex. Why was this man suddenly offering me money?

I thought about saying no, but then I asked, “How much?” I was more curious about the offer than put off by it. I wasn't offended because, honestly, I needed the money. It just seemed odd that without even knowing me, someone would open his wallet.

“I'm sure he'll make it worth your time,” the man replied.

Perhaps I should have been scared by that response, but I wasn't. I was young and horny and willing to have sex with
anyone who asked. His friend was a decent-looking man. I didn't have to be anywhere. I was just a boy from a small Denver suburb. “Why not?” I told him.

I went to the other side of the bar and met the man. He would not have been my first choice, but I hadn't been approached by anyone else. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and the next thing I knew, we were leaving the bar and walking to his apartment a few blocks away. As soon as we got in the door, clothes started falling to the ground.

Sex between two men can take a variety of forms. Sometimes there's anal intercourse, but often it's just rubbing and touching, and maybe a little oral sex and then ejaculation. It's often quick, sometimes lasting no more than five minutes.

I spent about two hours with this man, fondling, rubbing, and holding him. For an eighteen-year-old, it was quite exciting. I'd had sex with boys my own age in high school and had even had sex with a teacher, but I had never spent an afternoon making love like that.

When it was all over, I put on my clothes, and he put a wad of cash in my pocket. I thanked him and kissed him again as I left, leaving him naked on his couch. Walking back to the bar where my car was parked, I counted the various bills. There were ten bills, and each one was a twenty.

Holy shit! Two hundred dollars. I could buy a car with that kind of money.

I was flipping out, in a good way. I couldn't believe that someone would actually pay me to do what I wanted to do anyway. It was a mindblower. I decided not to go back to the bar. I drove home, stopping on the way to eat at a semi-nice restaurant, hoping my mother wouldn't ask me how my day had gone.

That night as I looked over some college catalogs, I wondered
if perhaps I could do it again. Could I again get a man to pay me for sex? The concept was new to me, to be sure. I knew what prostitution was, but I thought that applied only to women. This was different, but I wasn't sure how. Maybe these men were paying me to have sex because it was so taboo to even say you had sexual feelings for another man. This was their way of keeping everything quiet.

I wasn't sure what to think. I wanted to go to college, but I would need money. Plus, I wanted more sex. Call me naïve, but I figured I'd go back to the bar sometime soon to see if I could get picked up again.

 

The next time was just as surprising to me as the first. I was sitting alone in a gay bar called David's when yet another man approached me.

“See my friend over there?” the man said, pointing to a large, Hispanic man who wasn't all that attractive. “He'd really like to meet you.” The large man cracked a smile and waved. Without saying a word, I smiled and stared at my drink. I couldn't believe this was happening again.

“How much do you charge?” the man asked me.

I gave him a curious look, not sure how to respond. I was acting cool, but I had no idea what I was doing. Before I could say anything, the man added, “He owns a couple of popular restaurants, so he has money.” The man kept looking me over. “Nice arms, by the way.”

I put down my glass. “It starts at two hundred dollars,” I told him. Honestly, I have no idea where those words came from. I probably said two hundred dollars because that's what I'd gotten last time. That price would probably scare him off, but if it didn't, I was that much richer.

“Let's go meet him,” the man said.

I was a bit panicked and was hoping he would just walk away. I got off my stool and walked over to meet my “client.” That night was the first time I remember taking the trouble to observe everything around me, a habit I still have to this day. Mind you, I had no idea what I was doing. I relied on the only thing I had, which was my gut.

I shook hands with the large Hispanic man and talked with him for a bit. How are you? Aren't we having nice weather? Yes, the price of gasoline is ridiculous. Then, to my surprise, my client said he just wanted a blow job in the men's room. I was more than a little nervous about that. Men got arrested all the time for having sex in public restrooms. Nonetheless, I followed him into the bathroom. Even though David's was a bit more private than the toilets at, say, a truck stop, I still worried about the police. It was a dark restroom with black walls, and I knew I was not the only man to give a blow job in there that night. We waited until a man washing his hands left, then we walked into the same stall. Within seconds, he had unzipped his pants and I was on my knees. I was lucky that the guy was clean and not aggressive.

After about ten minutes, my client was done and zipped up his pants. Right in the stall he handed me two hundred-dollar bills. When we opened the stall door, we saw another man was standing by the sink. Far from being offended, he had an inviting look, as if to say he was ready to do me next.

I went back to my corner of the bar and sat with another beer. Nothing happened the rest of the night, but it didn't matter to me. Something was going on, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. Maybe this was how sex between younger and older men happened.

It seemed that every time I went out after that, I would get offers of cash for sex, even on weeknights. Even on nights
when I was ready to burst with semen and was willing to give it away, I was offered money. I had no one to talk to about it, so I just accepted the fact that men wanted to pay me for my time.

I've always known how to talk to people and make them feel comfortable. I was never just a bunch of muscles with no personality. I always interacted well with my clients, no matter what their background or hang-ups were. But to be honest, my body was my biggest draw. The first thing people notice about me is my biceps and my chest. I can thank my brother Russ for that.

Russ was quite the boy, much more so than I was. He was big. Not fat, but stocky and muscular, and it served him well back in the 1950s and 1960s. As a teenager, he excelled in baseball and football and anything athletic.

There was a lot of pressure on me to be like him. Even though I didn't understand what was going on within me, I knew I was different, and my older brother knew I was different, too.

I don't know what it was that caused it, and I've tried not to speculate, but he had an incredibly bad temper. The slightest thing would set him off. I remember how, more than once, he would be so angry that he would punch holes through the walls in our house. He also tried to punch holes in me.

I was a scrawny kid. There was nothing that stood out about me. I had a caring heart, but I had no particular talent in athletics or anything else. I was content to spend time with my mother, or my grandmother, or my great-grandmother, whom I called Nanny. If I couldn't be with one of these women, then I wanted to be left alone. But with Russ in the house, that wasn't going to happen.

Besides being very good at sports, my brother also had
charisma. He always had several girlfriends, and as best I could tell, he was a favorite of the popular crowd at school.

It seemed that every chance he got, Russ took pleasure in calling me names and taking swings at me. He used his superior size and strength to get his way with me, which was ironic since I would have let him do whatever he wanted. All he had to do was ask.

When Mom and Dad would go out for the night, they would leave Russ and me at home alone, and I would be filled with terror. Russ knew how to throw punches when parents or teachers weren't looking, so when we were alone, we could never sit in front of the TV or listen to records together. Once Mom and Dad left the house, I would have to barricade myself in my room for the entire evening.

Some of my most severe beatings happened when Russ's friends came over. Maybe he saw it as some sort of show. Russ seemed to take joy in beating the crap out of me while his friends watched. I don't remember once hearing any of his friends telling him to stop.

My parents assumed it was just horseplay between brothers. They would yell, “Stop fighting, boys!” and somehow that was supposed to make things better. I was never good at standing up for myself. I always wanted to be the peacemaker who brought joy to the world, but at a very early age I discovered there was a downside to being nice.