All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (15 page)

But despite these good things, I didn't know what it all meant, how it added up. Stripping had been a fun experience, but I wasn't any closer to resolving the issues that had led me to strip in the first place. The only thing I knew was that it had nothing to do with academic research anymore. It was totally personal, even if I couldn't articulate how.

My head was filled with questions as I pulled into the parking lot at my apartment complex and saw that the living room light was on, indicating that Seth was probably waiting up for me. All I was certain about was what Bananarama had been singing: "I'm movin' on."

16

A few weeks after leaving Wet, I was sitting in the Follies, where I continued to work while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I could've tried going back to Secrets or getting a job at La Cage. But all the clubs were now strictly "no touch" since in the weeks following the bust at Wet, ABC investigators also cited La Cage for allowing dancers to "perform or simulate acts of masturbation" and for letting "customers and entertainers . . . fondle in an erotic manner the genitals of another person." The local gay press reported these charges as "allegations," which was like saying the sky is allegedly blue and that the Declaration of Independence states that all men are, allegedly, created equal.

It appeared that the clubs were now part of a full-scale crackdown, and no one could figure out why this was happening after decades when they were left alone. Conspiracy theories abounded—somebody wasn't paid off; the head of the ABC was a homophobe. Even the mayor's office seemed perplexed by the charges. Members of Marion Barry's gay community advisory committee criticized the ABC for "over-penalizing" gay bars. The protection Barry had once offered the gay community had faded along with his credibility since his January 1990 arrest for using crack cocaine in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend. The whole thing was caught on tape, including Barry notoriously muttering, "Bitch set me up ... I shouldn't have come up here ... Goddamn bitch," as F.B.I, agents put him in handcuffs.

Barry ultimately spent six months in jail after being convicted of misdemeanor cocaine possession, a situation that also cost him his position as mayor. He rebounded a couple of years later, first by winning a D.C. council seat in 1992 and two years later, in a stunning turn of events, being elected mayor again. But by this time the role of a D.C. mayor had changed dramatically. A financial control board now oversaw city contracts, programs, and many other things that were formerly the purview of the mayor. The once powerful Barry was now essentially a figurehead, so he was in no position to take on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

Regular customers had a hard time accepting the changes and they stopped coming in droves. They would even chat about it on website message boards, referring to the new no-touch regulations collectively as "The Rule." One guy posted that he was "so frustrated" that he was turning to escorts to satisfy his "appetite for young dudes." Another wrote: "I am dismayed to hear that 'The Rule' is still in effect. What a shame! I live about three hours away and used to get up to D.C. monthly. It just doesn't seem worth the drive when touching is not permitted. Can't someone be bribed or something? Why after so many years has D.C. gone conservative? Please give me an update if the situation changes." It was the end of an era, but no one was ready to accept it.

For dancers, The Rule translated into a dramatic dip in tips. The only place that wasn't affected was the Follies. Because it didn't serve liquor, it wasn't under the ABC Board's control. Things were as touchy-feely as always, and it became increasingly popular since it was the only hands-on game in town. The only problem for me was that the Follies featured dancers only on the weekend and the management liked to keep the dancer lineup changing. The most I could work there was about two to three days a month—not exactly enough to keep the rent paid and the lights on.

This all happened at an especially bad time because I had also made the decision to take a leave from grad school and give up my teaching assistantship, which was my only other form of income. I'd enjoyed my summer outside the ivory tower, talking to regular folks about regular things—TV, music, sex—without having to dissect them, abstract them, or run them through some theoretical grinder. I needed to figure out who I wanted to be in the world, a question that all my years in school had allowed me to avoid.

Emotionally, Seth tried to understand what I was going through, but I could tell he just didn't get it. He lived for class preparation, pontificating on the latest literary theories, and putting on tweed jackets to deliver conference papers before rapt audiences of three to five people. I knew it was hard for him to grasp why I no longer wanted that life, if I ever had truly wanted it at all.

His patience was particularly tested now that I was bringing in less cash. We had to cut luxuries like our weekly Ethiopian dinner and seeing movies at night instead of during budget matinees. In order to pick up some of the financial slack, Seth took on additional classes so that he was now teaching English full time at the University of Maryland and at a local art college. Then, on his off day, Friday, he would sometimes do office temp work when things were really tight. Seth was a speed demon on the keyboard so he was always in demand at the temp agency. I also tried to do temp work, but after I took the typing test, the agency rep drolly asked me if I had any experience answering phones. Not surprisingly, I didn't get any work.

The guilt I felt about Seth working more than me, predictably, made me act like an asshole. As I sat at home obsessing over the most minute plot points of
The Young and the Restless,
I would call him on his cell phone constantly to break news about, say, what we got in the mail that day ("You wouldn't believe the amount of junk") or to ask what time he would be home (it was pretty much the same time each day), and what
he
planned to make for dinner. Then, if for some reason he didn't answer, I'd leave emergency messages asking him to stop and pick up some

Diet Coke on the way home or to tell him about a really cool song that I'd just heard on the radio. These calls had the effect of not only being annoying but also running up our cell phone bill, which put us further in the hole. But when Seth complained, I sniped that all we ever talked about was money. The bizarre thing was that I knew I was acting like an ass, but I couldn't stop myself. It was like someone else was scripting my lines and I wasn't a big enough star to demand a rewrite.

Feeling desperate, I started thinking about testing the sex-for-money waters again. Yes, my previous attempts— with Symphony Dude and Porn Dude—had been awful and awkward. But now I was a little bit older and possibly even wiser, not to mention a lot more desperate. Without telling Seth, I made an appointment for an interview with an escort agency that advertised in the back of the local gay newspaper.

The place was located in the basement of a brownstone near Dupont Circle. When I got there, I pushed the doorbell and a balding heavyset white guy, the owner, came to the door. He told me that he was starving and asked if I wouldn't mind joining him for dinner at a nearby restaurant. "No problem," I told him. I even wondered if this was some kind of test to see if I could actually pull off the escorting part of being an escort.

As we walked to the restaurant, I tried to pin him down about what was actually expected of his working boys, but he kept being vague, saying things like "It depends on the customer" or "Whatever the guy on the call is comfortable with." He made it sound like it wasn't all that different from what I'd already been doing. But I figured that it couldn't really be
that
easy, so over a fried calamari appetizer, I decided to be direct.

"So, you don't have to get fucked or anything, do you?" I asked.

Although I was a lot more comfortable with taking it up the ass than I had been when I first came out, I still thought of it more as an interruption of regularly scheduled programming, or like something to barter with, say, when I wanted to get out of doing the dishes or taking out the trash. I definitely didn't want it written into my regular job description.

"No," he assured me. "If that's your thing, then you can make a lot of money doing it. But you don't have to."

"Yeah, I see myself pretty exclusively as a top," I said, "professionally speaking."

He nodded.

"Do a lot of the customers want to be fucked?" I asked.

I figured I could pretty much stick my dick in anything, especially if my dong was sheathed in plastic, although the thought of dealing with any flesh—hairy, flabby, bumpy, or sweaty—in the way of the targeted orifice might gross me out.

"No," he said, "most of the clients don't even want that."

"So what are they looking for?" I asked, figuring it couldn't all be candlelit dinners and conversation like in those hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold movies.

"Blow jobs, mainly," he said. "They're mostly looking for oral."

"Oh, do you have to, like, give
and
receive?"

"Well," he said, chewing on a piece of bread, "I don't think anybody is going to pay to give a blow job and not expect something in return."

"Oh," I repeated. I wasn't sure what else to say. I knew instantly that this wasn't the right job for me. There were a lot of sexual things that I could imagine doing for money, but diving face-first into some stranger's funky rain forest of pubes was not one of them.

I guessed things had changed since the sixties, back when John Rechy wrote his hustler opus
City of Night
and a working boy could make a decent living just by letting some troll toke on his johnson. But alas, the gay liberation movement had raised expectations all around and reciprocating was now the way of the day. This was just more proof that the stud-for-hire thing would never be for me. I thanked the escorting don for his time—
and the grilled salmon dinner
—but I told him that I didn't think I could get with sucking a lot of strange dicks. I mean, I don't even drink after my parents. Fortunately, he seemed to understand. Cold feet were probably common in his business.

We parted ways and as I walked back to my car, I couldn't help but be disappointed that I was no closer to solving my money problems. I immediately called home and asked Seth what he had cooked for dinner, even though I'd just eaten.

17

The only thing giving me hope during this time was a vague idea that I might someday want to be a writer—not a person who places dense articles in obscure academic journals, but somebody who really has a voice in the world. I used to think about being a writer when I was in elementary school and junior high, but I thought the dream had faded. Really, it had just gone underground like a sleeper agent waiting to suicide-bomb my priorities.

The idea of becoming a writer slowly came to dominate my thinking. I started sitting with a pile of newspapers and magazines during my breaks at the Follies. I studied them, getting to know different writers and learning each publication's tone and style. At first, I thought I was too old to try to break into this kind of writing. But then I read somewhere that one of my favorite writers, former
New Yorker
film critic Pauline Kael, didn't pen her first review until she was around thirty-five. Hell, I wasn't even thirty.

But even while I nurtured this dream of becoming a writer, I had the more pressing problem of trying to make a living in the here and now. Fortunately, one day while flipping through the employment section of the local gay newspaper, I found—amid numerous listings for bartenders and nude house cleaners—an ad for educator/coordinator of the Male Sex Industry Project at D.C.'s Whitman-Walker Clinic, one of the most respected AIDS organizations in the country. This seemed right up my alley—I was already an educator and I certainly had my share of experiences working in the male sex industry.

I wrote a letter to the human resources director detailing my teaching background as well as my experience studying the male sex industry, focusing on what I called "the social function of stripping." "I have also worked as a stripper in order to get an inside view of the issues male strippers face," I wrote. This approach apparently was effective. About a week after sending the letter, I was downtown at the clinic for an interview.

Things went well as I met with the woman who would be my boss. She explained that the job entailed distributing condoms at local night spots and sex clubs and trying to establish and run educational programs for male sex workers and gay men in general. As we talked, I pretty much felt I was a shoo-in for the job, until my last appointment of the day, a meeting with one of the clinic's top administrators.

This guy had been with the clinic since the early eighties when AIDS was still a relatively uncharted mystery, and he had become a local gay hero.

I felt a little intimidated as he welcomed me into his office with the hurried demeanor of someone with a lot on his plate. The room, which was dark and wooden, made me feel like a naughty English schoolboy who'd been sent to the headmaster's office for hitting a classmate in the balls with a cricket stick.

"I read in your letter that you used to work as a stripper," the administrator said, as I lowered myself with a
thunk
on his stiff leather sofa.

"Yes," I answered in my most polished interview voice. "I studied the clubs as a part of my graduate work. I thought it was important to understand the phenomenon from a firsthand perspective."