by Chris Kenry
All of these realizations came into my mind at once, and I tried to think how I could explain my reasoning to Hole in a way that would make any sense to him.
“Look,” I said finally, “I know it seems silly, but it’s important to me. I’m not going to be in this line of work forever, but I’m in it now, so I might as well learn from it. I’d like to learn to run a business the right way. The legal way. And you seem to know how to do that better than anyone I know.”
He shook his head, exhaled noisily, and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray in a disgusted way that seemed to say, Kids! Will they never learn? But my flattery had worked, and what he actually said was something quite different.
“Be here every Wednesday and Friday at ten-thirty. Bring whatever records you have and a calculator. Plan to be here for at least an hour, probably two.”
“You mean it?” I asked, excited, almost giving in to the urge to clasp my hands together as Marvin had done earlier.
“You heard what I said!” he snapped, and turned back to his desk.
“Yes, yes, I’ll be here. This really means—”
“But there’s one more thing,” he interrupted, looking up at me.
“What’s that?”
He raised his eyebrow again and the corners of his thin lips crept upward.
“I want you and Ray to take me out together on Sunday nights. Someplace nice. To that Pinocchio’s place.”
“Deal,” I said, and planted a kiss on his bald head.
“Now get out of here,” he barked, pushing me away. “I’ve got my own work to do. And shut that door when you leave and tell the Nelly Green Giant to turn down the fucking TV!”
On the way out, I exchanged numbers with the soon-to-be-unemployed Marvin, promised to call, and then hurried back to my apartment with just enough time to shower, change, and answer the door for my nooner.
20
CRAZY AL AND THE THAI STICK
Ray called a few days later and played me a message that had been left on his home phone—the one we used to take calls for our mutual ad. It was a young, foreign voice saying he’d seen the ad and was wondering if we were hiring. He left his name, Johnny, and a number to call back, asking us to be discreet because of his roommate.
We both laughed at that.
“Hiring!” I said. “Can you imagine?” I knew his likely response but toyed with him anyway.
“Yes,” he said, his voice grave. “I can completely imagine it; I’m fucking exhausted. Roommate or not, call him!”
And so it started. Our first employee. Or rather, our first subcontractor, an engineering student from Thailand studying at the Colorado School of Mines. He was small and slender and smooth, almost feminine, with skin the color of milky tea. He smiled easily and often, and had a cute, boyish face even though he was twenty-seven. Best of all, he had experience! He had grown up in a small town in northern Thailand and had gone to Bangkok to study. There he had turned to sex-for-hire because he needed extra money to cover his expenses, and because he liked to send a little extra back to his family. He still wanted the extra money to send home, and had a student work permit, but since he was an engineering student his free hours were limited, and he didn’t want to waste them making six dollars an hour working nights at a convenience store. He was hoping, he said, that we could set him up with some work in exchange for a portion of his take. Ray and I interviewed him together and, after a brief conference, decided we’d offer him the job—er, decided to offer to subcontract him. I told him, in a loud, clear voice, that we could give him as much or as little work as he wanted, that we would take forty percent of what we charged for his services and the cost of running his ad, and that he would be responsible for paying his own taxes, which I could show him how to do, if he wasn’t sure.
“DOES THAT SOUND FAIR?”
“Would you stop yelling?” Ray said. “He’s not deaf and he’s on a full-ride scholarship. I think he can understand English.”
“I guess you’re right.” I smiled at Johnny.
He nodded and smiled back, but I could tell something was bothering him.
“You look confused,” I said.
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “I guess I have one question.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He hesitated, trying to be as diplomatic as possible, but then asked, quite bluntly, “Why the tax?”
“The taxes, well, yes,” I stammered. “I just feel like it’s safer.”
He nodded his agreement, but I could still see the confused look in his eye. He leaned in closer and whispered. “But it’s ... illegal, yes?”
“Uh, yes, it is,” I said, and groaned as I thought about trying to explain myself again.
“Did you ever hear of Al Capone?” I asked, deciding to offer an explanation in a roundabout way.
“The gangster?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and mimed shooting a gun.
He nodded.
“Okay, well, then, you probably know he finally got caught and went to jail.”
Again he nodded.
“But what you probably don’t know,” I said in my best Mr. Rogers voice, “is what Al Capone finally went to jail for.” He shook his head, agreeing that no, he did not know.
“Well,” I said, leaning forward in my chair and lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “it wasn’t murder, and it wasn’t racketeering, and it wasn’t bootlegging. It wasn’t even prostitution. No, what finally sent Al Capone to the big house was ... tax evasion!”
I leaned back in my chair and paused dramatically to let the power of my words sink in. He and Ray both stared at me, unimpressed. I continued. “Even though all the money he made was illegal, they said he still should have paid taxes on it, and because he hadn’t they shipped him off to jail. And you know what, I don’t want to go to jail, because jail is what ruined Al Capone. He went crazy locked up in Alcatraz!”
And here I paused and mimed crazy, rolling my eyes in their sockets and pointing a twirling index finger at my head. (I selectively deleted from my tale the fact that an untreated case of syphilis was what had really driven Al crazy.)
“He was such a mess,” I continued, “shitting his pants all the time and drooling everywhere, that they finally just let him out of jail early, figuring he was no longer a threat to society. But it was too late for Al,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “Prison had ruined him. Not paying his taxes had ruined him. And he spent the rest of his days on his Florida estate, fishing in his swimming pool and talking to the little voices in his head. So yes, it’s illegal,” I said in my own deadpan voice, “and yes, we could probably get away without paying taxes, but we won’t, okay?”
He nodded, but both he and Ray were regarding me wide-eyed, as if I were the one hearing little voices.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “Really. Just tell the IRS that you are a weight trainer.” And here I mimed the act of weight lifting, doing curls with both arms and straining the muscles in my face. He looked down at his slight body, all one hundred pounds of it; then he looked back up at me and then over at Ray, who rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I want the work,” Johnny said, “so okay, I guess. I’ll pay the taxes.”
We shook hands amiably, and then Ray and I took him into the other room to take a picture for his ad.
We discussed possibilities for a few minutes, dug around in our prop box, and then proceeded to dress him up. Although he was Thai, we ignored the relatively peaceful history of his native land and outfitted him in a ragtag guerrilla outfit consisting of a ripped white shirt, a large pistol tucked into his belt, and a red bandanna tied around his head. He posed in front of a large rubber plant, in which Ray positioned some stuffed birds and a stuffed monkey. The overall effect was supposed to be that of a sexy young member of the Viet Cong or the Khmer Rouge, but I have to admit it was more campy and frightening than erotic. Nevertheless it did the trick and garner
ed him lots of business with the veteran community. Above the photo we placed the naughty heading Thai Stick, and underneath it we listed his age as twenty-two (the age we put in almost every ad, regardless of what it actually was), and gave his dimensions and my phone number, since I would handle all of the scheduling.
As soon as we’d finished and Johnny had gone, Ray started right in on me.
“What is the deal with these taxes?” he said. “Why are you so set on it? And don’t give me any more of that Al Capone shit.”
I thought of what I’d told Hole and I tried to explain it to Ray. He looked at me much the same way Johnny had. Finally I stopped trying.
“Look,” I said, lighting a cigarette, “I’m taking care of the money and the scheduling now so you can have more time, right? Well, then, humor me. Or better yet, think of it as another expression of your artistic philosophy: I’m smashing senseless taboos. I’ve taken two opposite things or two things that aren’t usually associated with each other—taxes and dirty money—and put them together. How about that?”
That was weak, I knew, and saw it was not going to do. He was still looking at me skeptically. If I’d had a mirror, I’d have looked at me skeptically, too.
“Besides,” I went on, “I have Hole helping me with the books now and I really want to learn to do everything legally, completely on the level, so that wh—” Something caught in my throat. “So that when we have the gallery I’ll know how to run it.”
His head bobbed up from the camera he was rewinding, as I knew it would, at the mention of the G word.
“What did you say?”
“Something about a stupid gallery, I think.” And I avoided his eyes by examining the filter of my cigarette.
He said nothing, or at least nothing intelligible, but dropped the camera and charged at me from across the room, bowling me over like some cartoon dog greeting his master, hooting and howling. We rolled around laughing and yelling, and somehow my mouth came across his and sort of stayed there, which triggered a frenzied removal of clothes and a frantic rubbing of parts, and ... well, you know. It was still sex, the fundamentals of which are always essentially the same, but I remember thinking that with Ray, maybe because we’d waited so long, it seemed better than usual, somehow unusual.
When it was over I remember feeling disappointed that it was over so quickly, so I pulled him back down and we did it again, and when that was over, as we lay there kissing and running our hands over each other’s bodies, I still felt somewhat shortchanged. Like I was owed something for having held back for so long. As we started the third time I remember glancing at my watch and realizing that I was ridiculously late for my next appointment—and not really caring all that much.
21
EXPANSION AND DIVERSIFICATION
After Johnny had been with us a while and it was clear that we were making money on him and he was happy with the arrangement, I started to consider other people as subcontractors. Just as Tina had predicted, I knew I was successful when the competition started coming to me. They had seen our ads (how could they miss them?) and wanted to be a part of it. Most of them were law students looking for help with the bills, so we took three of them on and got them set up on their symbiotic relationship with Harden Up. I also began to look for others when I was on my nightly outings with clients. Most often these evenings consisted of entertaining businessmen in from out of town who had hired me more as a guide to the gay life of Denver than as a sex partner. They usually wanted to go to “the” spot for that particular night, so I’d select the newest flash-in-the-pan restaurant, sure to be crowded with fags, and then take them to whichever bar was likely to be most crowded.
I had gradually abandoned my fear of being seen by old friends and acquaintances, but when I was seen and approached I lied nonetheless, introducing them to my cousin/uncle from out of town. This worked remarkably well with everyone except Andre, who saw me out on many of these evenings. He would wave and smile from across the restaurant but never approached my table and never mentioned it in our subsequent phone conversations or coffee outings. Consequently our relationship moved into even shallower waters than it had been in previously and was in danger of evaporating completely. A fact that saddened me.
In the dance clubs I frequented on these nights there were usually professional dancers: well-built guys paid to dance on the bar in clubs and teasingly remove their clothing until they were down to a G-string and a pair of boots. The patrons would then slip cash in the waistband, or the crotch string, or wherever they could stuff it. These dancers either worked for the bar or for a company that supplied strippers, and many of them purported to be straight. (Although how I’d enjoy taking my clothes off in a roomful of gay men if I were not gay, I can only surmise. To me it seems sort of like picking a scab in shark-infested waters.)
It was in such a club that I first came across James. My client for that evening was off at the bar getting another round of drinks, which would probably be sloshed empty by the time he made it back through the crowd, and I was standing against the wall watching, with considerable amusement, the worst dancer I have ever seen. Oh, he was certainly cute enough—short, well built, with shoulder-length brown hair, his body glistening with sweat from his vain struggle to find the beat of the music. He grew more and more flustered and confused as he went on, and consequently was oblivious to the men waving tips at him. Eventually they gave up trying to catch his eye and either left the money on the bar (where, more often than not, it was inadvertently kicked to the floor) or walked away, shrugging their shoulders.
It is common practice among “dick dancers” (as they are affectionately called) to wear a condom half-full of birdseed on the end of the penis. This prosthetic fills out the pouch of the G-string nicely, giving it a larger, more pendulous appearance. As James thrashed and gyrated and convulsed like an epileptic, it became grossly apparent that he had employed this birdseed technique, and that it was failing miserably, as small seeds began spilling from the corner of his crotch every time he did a high kick—which was much more often than necessary. Worst of all, these tiny orbs made his dance surface even more treacherous, and he surely would have slipped and fallen to the floor had not fate intervened, in the form of a new song, and thus a new dancer who took James’s place on the bar. James descended, to amused applause, and wandered around dazedly collecting the tips, given mostly out of pity. He then wove his way through the crowd over to where an older gentleman, whom I had entertained on previous occasions, was waiting. The two spoke briefly. James gave him a kiss, and then ran off to change.
Maybe I was stupid—I’ve often thought so in retrospect. If not stupid, then at least stupidly sentimental, but after he’d gone that night, I kept thinking of him up there, so clumsy and awkward, and remembered myself at Palladio’s and how I’d been just as clumsy. I went back to the bar the next night, alone, and when he finished his set I caught up with him and bought him a drink. We talked briefly, and I mentioned that I’d seen him leave with the older gentleman the night before. He went pale. I assured him that I knew his friend well and that I ran a company called Harden Up. He said he’d heard of it and liked the ads.
“Would you like me to get some work for you?” I asked, not having time to beat around the bush since I was due at the Oxford in fifteen minutes.
“You mean, like, doing that?” he asked, clearly shocked. I thought maybe I’d made a mistake, but went on.
“Yes, as an escort. A hustler. If you’re not interested, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No, no, no,” he protested. “I thought maybe you wanted me to answer phones or something.”
We laughed and then made arrangements to work out together the next day, during which we could talk and hammer out the details. It went well and he started that very night, his first client being none other than Burl, who had been designated the official test driver for all new employees.
And the stable was, how shall I say, filling up nicely. A
t our peak, we had eight subcontractors working, and that variety helped retain clients and encouraged repeat business. We also tried to establish some fairly concrete price guidelines, although this was hard to do since sex is so malleable. You could go in with something specific in mind and it could so quickly escalate into more. We even printed up a “frequent friend” card—after six sessions your seventh was free. In addition, I set up an incentive program for the subcontractors, giving them fifty dollars for every new client they brought in, which not only brought in new clients but also helped discourage the subs from moonlighting.
My apartment at this point was anything but an apartment. It was an office with a bed. I had adopted the rectangular kitchen table as my desk, and had one side of it reserved for scheduling while the other was devoted to bookkeeping and finances. Everything was well organized except the phone, the incessant sound of which was unbelievably irritating.
Instead of having a separate phone for each person, I gave each one a different pager number, which appeared in their respective ad, but which rang on my pager. When it did, I would then call the client back, get the information, and then page the emp—er, subcontractor on his real pager number—the one that actually rang on his pager instead of mine. When he called me back on my cell phone I would give him the who, what, where, when, and how much, and with any luck they’d be on their merry way. Confused? Me too. Imagine having to go through that no less than forty times a day—and having to weed out all the cranks, of which there were many, and having to entertain my own clients, keep books, and make sure everyone got paid. I felt like some weird Pavlovian experiment, constantly responding to beeps and vibrations.