Do The Hustle

The author (right) and his old hustling partner Dannie in Cheeseman Park, a cruise spot in Denver, circa 1973.

Hey, fellas. How much would you charge a 52-year-old Tribeca math tutor with furry knuckles and a comb-over to flicker-lick your sack and moan softly into your butt-hole for, say, an hour? What’s that? $225? How about for a CitiCorp account exec to treat you to a t-bone at Angelo & Maxie’s, then roll your eyes back with some good flake and a super-buttery blowjob? $700? Man, are you in luck. Because right now the male-prostitution industry in New York City is in a cash frenzy for young blood. And if you’re used to taking it up the jaxy with your girlfriend’s strap-on, all the better. Anal will get you double. Even though money is tight everywhere, the oldest profession is going gangbusters. Maybe it’s war jitters, maybe it’s smokingban jitters, but in a city like this one that sector-markets to the discrete needs of closeted, professional, AmEx-carrying daddy types by the tens of thousands, most of them are still lining up to suck dick. Your dick. When I was a street hustler in Denver in the 70s, you had to pick up johns in “trade” bars, of which there were three notorious specimens along Colfax Avenue. The Back Door II was king. Seventy-five-cent drafts, a jukebox with the Velvets, Jobriath, and Johnny Paycheck, and a drag lounge on the second floor featuring Chicano queens who’d lock us in their dressing room whenever the pork rolled up. I spent most nights at the Door playing foosball and getting wasted in this hybrid glam-rock/shitkicker look I’d evolved that seemed to enchant lonely Laramie businessmen. The winnings were slim—blowjobs were $25 to get, $35 to give; anal $70 and $50, same deal—but coming from a working-class family, it was amazing. Like that dream where you turn on the kitchen tap and money pours out. And just so much fun. Yelling your head off all night on sopers and weed, or jumping the cowboys stumbling out of Sid King’s Topless next door, or getting chased down the street by a john with a hammer. What with the current high market-value of young cock, today’s hustlers are a bit more professional. Dillon is 24, straight, has been playing seriously for about a year, and is really just eating it up. He’s got six regular tricks on a complicated 14-day rotation scheme of his own devising. Two of them only blow him; two of them wine, dine, and blow him; and two of them wine, dine, blow, and periodically doggy-style him. These last two are also the wealthiest (a tennis pro and an MD), and Dillon plays them off each other with considerable finesse. The results include a customized bike, a cozy two-bedroom on Crosby Street, seven pairs of Jil Sander Pumas, and unlimited supplies of Viagra, Neurontin, and Percocet (courtesy of the MD). The Viagra he sells to his fellow “escorts,” or to the just-plain-homo hos at Stella’s, a bar on 47th Street. Giving back to the community is important to Dillon. It’s nice to see that amid economic flux, changing cultural standards, and the coming-and-going of trends, one thing is eternal: Some dudes will always want to pay younger guys to fuck. VICE: Does your girlfriend know what’s up?
Dillon: She knows, and she doesn’t like it. The thing is, I’m paying for her, her mom, and my daughter to have a nice place over by Irving Plaza. All they pay is the phone bill. How’d you get into it?
A gay dude I met thought he recognized me from an escort website. I checked it out for laughs and thought, “Damn, I like head. I can do this.” You work off of your own website?
I’m on this other guy’s site right now. He also plays in a ska band. We do tag-teaming—basically vanilla shows where the johns watch from across the room. Through that, I’ve gotten my own deal. So what’s the menu?
Depending, but always $225 for the first hour, $100 per hour after that to do whatever up to anal. Anal doubles it. Sometimes triples it. If motherfuckers are flashing dollar signs at you all night, you call their bluff. Hold on to it till they’re begging. I learned a lot of this from my girlfriend, actually! Do they tip?
It’s more like presents. One here, one there. My bike is a so-called tip from a regular. It’s tricked-out to around $3,700, and I didn’t pay a cent. But usually the first date they’ll give you some extra cash, especially if they want to hook up again down the road. Do only good-looking fellas make the serious money?
You have to be sporting a look. You don’t need to be that buff. It’s more an attitude about yourself that says a gay guy sucking on your dick isn’t going to make a dent in who you are. Also, big smiles. Everybody’s happy. But what about getting it up the ass?
I can only speak for me, but if I’m a little cranked I can get into it. Definitely. Plus the money is outrageous. I got $1,400 for a sleepover at the Plaza last October. I notice that whenever I tell my old hustler stories, you just glare at me.
That is exactly what I think of hustlers, always fucking it up. You’re lucky to still be alive. To me it’s a stopover. I got a million plans, and escorting is going to help me with those. That is my good time. Well, hey, OK. If you want to consider your fiduciary future above all else in a world gone mad (thanks, Ad Rock), then go head-on, I taste your fear. But I believe there are a lot more young bucks out there who simply want to get their shaved rocks off in the wettest, warmest, most adoring mouths they can locate. If they can take home a few hundred bucks doing it, all the better.
What? STEVE LAFRENIERE