I never had one of those ads, which seem to be written by people with no sentences at their disposal whatsoever. English as a third or fourth language. All of that said, I am reluctant to set down the exact text of my ad because I’ve built it up into this mythic, messianic sacred text. Like it’s not on the goddamn Internet at all; rather it’s on a scroll that you unroll with the help of two clerics. At the risk of being overly simplistic, I’ll say that all I did was use complete sentences. We live in an age of fission. All around us, the language is being split into tiny, marketable pieces. Three-second chunks of information—visual media is edited in such a way that we’re all careening toward epilepsy. Meanwhile, the sentence is an old friend. The sentence is a familiar revolution. I trust the sentence.
Okay, I’ll give you a few of the sentences, but I’m changing the text, because I’m still out there working. I am not writing about some quaint indiscretion of youth. This is how I make my living. Here’s a short piece of my ad:I have a rolling suitcase of toys and erotic clothes I can bring to your hotel room or home; if you want, we can play with what’s there, or you can just look through it. I’ve seen or imagined damn near everything, so if you’ve got a fantasy that’s particularly out there, it’s only going to delight me. Why not? You might as well.
The new clients who came to me after I ran that ad were hungry men. They were a varied lot, but they had a few things in common. Many had been through unsatisfying experiences with other escorts who didn’t accommodate their peculiar fantasies and in some cases shamed them for asking in the first place. Another thing these clients had in common was a sense of devotion. They’d carried these secrets for many years, enacting their fetish lives in private. They’d kept bags of lingerie hidden in a shoebox in the basement. They’d hidden porn videos under floorboards. They’d gotten ashamed and thrown everything away, only to regather a new set of taboo items. To me, they were heroic, like the people in Fahrenheit 451 who memorize books to preserve literature. Erotic freedom by any means necessary.
I’m thinking of one client in particular—Ray. Most clients use their real names, I’ve found. You can tell when a client is using a made-up name because it’s more generic than their actual name. For instance, when a client named Ethan picks a fake name, he picks Joe. When an escort named Joe picks a hooker name, he selects Ethan. That says it all.
Ray was staying at the St. Francis in this really big suite. Visiting from Texas, although I wouldn’t find that out until several sessions later. You know that stereotype about how clients want to tell you all their problems, so much so that you don’t spend very much time having sex? The sex worker as talk therapist? It’s complete bullshit. It makes non–sex workers feel less threatened by the concept of sex for pay. Like when the government invades a country and launches a media disinformation campaign so people think the troops are just there keeping the peace, when really they’re carrying out midnight raids and razing apartment buildings and shooting civilians point-blank. I grew up in a military family. I know that’s what really happens because the men in my family are all emotionally unavailable. That’s what happens when you murder small children in the name of God and country. Veterans are a trip as clients. I don’t even want to go into that right now. I want to stay with Ray.
Ray and I communicated solely by email before meeting. He hired me for an overnight and often I like to confirm those sorts of appointments by phone, just to make sure the guy’s for real. However, I got such an honest, gentle vibe from Ray’s email that a phone call wasn’t necessary. In addition, I really love the surprise of seeing who’s behind the hotel room door. I know sex workers who require the clients to send them pictures and ask for stats and all of that. They don’t like suspense. They want to know what they’re getting into. For me it’s a deeper practice to arrive with very little to go on. The clients who don’t give you any hints at all—no phone voice, no age, nothing. Those are the guys I end up learning the most from. Especially if they’re not traditionally handsome. Maybe they’ve got some extra weight, maybe their skin has red patches, maybe they have a micropenis. If there’s some characteristic that renders them defective in the eyes of the culture, it makes me more excited to play with them. Like when a firefighter gets a call for a five-alarm blaze. It’s exciting. It’s a challenge. I feel like I’m being of service in a larger context, that I’m transmitting ancient sex wisdom to people who need it badly and are cut off from it. That’s a grand assessment, certainly. No grander, I would argue, than saying you’re a man of God. No grander than stepping forward to teach our nation’s children. No grander than signing up to bear arms so that you can preserve civility itself. I take my job seriously.
When I arrived, Ray greeted me warmly, extending his hand to shake. Very few clients shake your hand. Some grab you and kiss you right away, but nobody shakes your hand. Every now and then a client will want to meet you in the lobby. Usually they want to make sure it’s a match, or they feel safer meeting you in a public place. It makes it easier for them to back out at the last minute. Ray had none of these hang-ups. I’m just giving you a frame of reference. Ray was a hand shaker in world full of quick-to-kiss men.
I sat down on a loveseat in the living room area of his suite. He appeared to be around fifty years old, just a few years shy of the client median age.
“Can I offer you anything?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. This is my automatic Southern response. Then he’s supposed to tell me what he actually has to offer. Then I refuse again. Then he tells me what he’s having and would I care to join him. As a Southerner, that’s when it’s okay to accept a drink from a stranger.
“I’ve got wine and beer, soda and bottled water.”
“I think I’m okay.”
“I’ve got a bottle of white wine already open.”
“That sounds lovely.”
He poured me a glass of chardonnay. I’m sure it was expensive. The nuance of fine spirits is entirely lost on me. As an alcohol drinker, I cut my teeth on Sun Country wine cooler from two-liter bottles. We’d be lying on hillsides overlooking dirt roads out in the county, passing the bottle around. Just about everything tastes expensive to me.
Ray had these massive blue irises that were too big for his body. Babies have those sorts of eyes and then their faces catch up. He had a sweet Texas lilt—in the South, many men and women have the same gentle vocal mannerisms. The desire to please crosses gender lines. Ray was no exception. As we talked during that first visit, whenever I said something remotely agreeable, he’d say “Aren’t you kind to say that” or “Bless your heart.” I felt like I was ten years old, serving triangular finger sandwiches at my mother’s luncheon. It’s delicate when you first meet someone for sex. You want to ease into familiarity with them, but you don’t want to be so chatty that you kill the mysterious sexual energy that exists between you.
After about half an hour of conversation, Ray abruptly pulled out a bag of nylon hose and Lycra shorts and dress socks. Via email, he’d said he wanted a witness, that he wanted to show me what he’d been doing over the years. It’s tricky, when someone offers you the raw components of their desire. You ought to be supportive, but you don’t want to be a cheerleading mom about it either. They’re going to the underworld, for Christ’s sake. Your job is not to gush over their watercolor and tape it to the refrigerator door. Your job is to go to the underworld with them.
Ray showed me the bag. “This is my passion, right here.”
I could see both men’s and women’s stockings, tight athletic clothing and the like. He had a penchant for the enclosure offered by elastic fabric. It didn’t seem like he wanted to kiss yet or interact physically, so I asked him to do a fashion show for me. I put it in more masculine terms. I asked him to show off for me. I told him I wanted to see him slowly take every single piece of clothing off, fold them neatly on a chair, then put on every single piece of clothing in that bag. I was just hazarding a guess, but as it turns out, this was precisely
his fetish—the pileup of stretchable layers, one upon another. As he stripped down, I could see his hairy back and his short stocky legs. He had an enormous cock, the kind that doesn’t grow too much in an erect state. I had a boyfriend with a cock like that once and he ruined me for getting fucked by anyone else for several years. It took willpower for me not to jump Ray right then, grease him up and slide his cock into my ass. Ray needed me to suspend my interest in his penis and bring all my focus to his wardrobe. A cardinal rule of gay male escorting is Don’t Give Them Bottom Energy Unless They Specifically Ask For It. So I sat back and admired him in all his overgrown splendor.
He narrated his assemblage of clothing, which amused me and turned me on. I love a dirty talker more than anything. It’s a skill I’ve never really developed. I’ve tried and I just feel silly. So when someone goes for it, assigning in-the-moment language to their behavior, I’m all for it. It seems like a huge blind spot in a sex healer’s skill set, the gift of dirty gab, but I make up for it with other forms of fearlessness.
“These black stockings,” Ray said, “I bought on sale at Bloomingdale’s. The woman who helped me asked if I wanted to try them on. Didn’t even assume they were for my wife. This was in New York. You know how they are in New York.”
I nodded. I knew exactly how they are in New York.
“In the dressing room, they pushed my cock down so much that I leaked precum right away. I was supposed to try them on over my underwear but I didn’t. So I had to buy them. They’re so thick that I’ve never had a run.”
He turned his ass toward me, which the hose pushed up and out as if it was a shelf you could put drinks on. This was confusing the bottom part of me that was still fixated on his big floppy dick. Because now, more than anything, I wanted to fuck Ray.
“Hey Ray—I’d love to cut a hole in your stockings and fuck you right through them.”
“No,” he said, “I love these stockings too much. Maybe we can go shopping and find some that I wouldn’t mind cutting. These are sacred to me.”
Ray pulled on a pair of lacy pink panties over his panty hose, then immediately followed that with a pair of white Lycra biker shorts. You could see the lace bunching under the shorts. His bulge looked artificial, like a lead singer from a hair metal band. Like a superhero. Ray was my little superhero.
He pulled on a bra and came over to me so I could help him fasten the back.
“I can do all of this myself but I thought you might like to help.”
“Do you want to be my little girlfriend?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “we’re a couple of guys and I’m trying things on for you.”
Leave it to this Texan to have a way more complicated gender identity than a professional San Franciscan could articulate.
“Good for you, Ray,” I said. “You’re fuckin’ beautiful.”
Ray pulled a spandex T-shirt, the classic circuit-party gay-boy kind, over his torso.
“I want you to lick me through the elastic,” he said. “Lick me so hard I feel your spit sinking through the fabric.”
“Sure thing,” I said, standing up with my tongue at the ready.
“But not right now,” Ray said. “I just got started.”
Ray continued putting on every article of clothing in the bag. He pulled on a pair of gold gloves that reached up past his biceps. He tucked the ends under his T-shirt and then put on a black spandex hood with two eyeholes and an opening for his mouth. That did it. He was completely covered. He stood there, panting out the mouth hole in his mask. He turned and faced me, holding his hands up into the air like a victorious Mexican wrestler. Humble. Brave.
I lifted my wineglass in a toast, then took a gulp. Ray kept his arms up over his head. I wasn’t sure if he was offering himself up to God or the Devil, but I think either way, it was a hell of a gesture. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. I wanted to clap or tie him up or something to make myself useful. I decided I would take my cock out and show him how hard I was looking at him in this purest of states. I unzipped and pulled my cock through my pants. I gripped my erection and grunted a little bit, not wanting to puncture this moment with useless words. Ray started making gurgling noises, like he was just about to wake up from a nightmare, the sort of sounds you can hear yourself making to jolt yourself out of sleep. I looked at his cock and saw his cum soaking through three layers of fabric. There must have been a lot of it. It created a wet spot that grew until finally he put his hands down by his side.
“Bless your heart,” Ray said. “You can go home now.” He gestured to the bedside table, where there was a stack of hundred dollar bills. He was paying me for an overnight, since that’s what we’d booked. I’d been there a little over two hours.
He stood, motionless. I pushed my cock back into my pants, wishing I could have at least jerked off for him. My work ethic was kicking in and I really wanted to do something for all that money.
“Thank you,” he said. The way he said it made me think he wanted me to leave faster, so I went into the other room, got my overnight bag and rolled it toward the door.
“I’ll call you again,” Ray said. I closed the door and stepped into the hall, trying to remember whether the elevator was to the left or right. I heard the door echo through the hallway as it closed, like a buzzer signaling the shift change on a factory floor. I was thinking that the only part of Ray he’d let me touch was his hand.
BDSM and Playing with Race
Mollena Williams
I might have admired the efficiency of his movement (lean down buck knife click sick clack) drawing it into place, firm blade against my belly sluicing aside the sweat of fear and exhaustion that trickled there. I might have admired it but that I was mortally terrified. My feet, barely touching the cold, cold cement and my hands, numb and clasping in a mute upcast prayer, tied as they were to a hook above my head which pulled my shoulders painfully tight. My eyes were swollen shut from crying, throat swollen and raw from screaming, heart thudding with trip hammer speed and force and I hitched in a sobbing breath… and another and another…as the knife scraped its way up my belly, the tip intermittently alerting me to the fact that this knife meant business, yes it did, and the business was not good.
In a flash the knife was against my throat, and my head was brutally yanked to one side, and I was face-to-face with my tormentor, his otherwise jovial face twisted into a flat smile, blue eyes impossibly empty, amused, hair matted to his sweaty forehead.
“Now gal, you gonna tell me what I want to know or am I gonna cut open that lyin’ throat of yours?” he drawled, and though I wanted to scream again that I had no fucking idea what he wanted me to tell him, I was past words. I just hung there limply, crying. Grabbing the nape of my neck and yanking on the hair, he twisted my head so that I looked back over my shoulder, forced me to look at the crowd gathered a few yards away.
“You see that? None of those people, not one, is gonna help you. You been kicking and screaming and no one has helped you yet, have they? Couple of ’em even helped drag your black ass back when you thought you were getting away.” As I peered through eyelids heavy with tears and vision dimmed by panic, I saw that what he said was true. I could make out a crowd of people, lingering, their interest levels seeming to swing between mildly interested, to fascinated, to focused, but no one moved to help. And it was true that, hours back, when I’d been knocked down and dragged to the feet of this motherfucker, not only had no one helped me, several had helped him to restrain me, letting him beat the hell out of me, all the while insisting I had information he was gonna get, by god, or he’d call the rest of the Night Riders in and they could take turns with me.
A cold truth coiled around the base of my spine, sibilant certainty that was, strangely, a relief. He’s going to kill me, I thought, and I just hope he makes it fast because I can’t take any more. Please god, if you are listening, make it fast. Merciful. And I wasn’t even afraid anymore. The knife had dragged its cruel intention back down my rib cage
and flank, and now pressed between my legs, the tip pricking into me and I wondered how much longer it would take to bleed out if he started there. He slapped my face again, my head wedged into my shoulder didn’t even move.
“Yeah. Another dead nigger. No one will give a shit. No one.”
And I believed it. Even as I pleaded for mercy in my heart to a god that seems to have quietly turned away from me, I knew he was right. And hope left me.
There are as many ways to play within the BDSM community as there are people who are practitioners. From the guy who just likes to feel overpowered by his lover with hands held about his head to the hardcore pervert spending every weekend in a local dungeon in full leathers with a rolling suitcase full of gear, there are millions of people getting their freak on. And one of the pillars of BDSM play is consent, safety, and acceptance. Tolerance of other folk’s proclivities is paramount to fostering a sense of community. With so much working against the person who wants to lead a lifestyle outside of the mainstream, it becomes even more critical that those who find fellowship in the alternative lifestyle have a safe space in which to explore their dark fantasies. “We must all hang together, gentlemen,” quoth Benjamin Franklin, “…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”
This truth is not so self-evident if your fantasies embrace some of the darkest and most sinister truths of human nature, and are rooted in real-life oppression.
Slavery. Genocide. Holocaust. Warfare. Racism. Hate.
These are ugly realities of life. Why would you want to plunge yourself headlong into the darkest part of the human psyche for sexual gratification? How can you know anyone well enough to know that they do not really believe what they are saying to you? Aren’t you playing into the hands of self-hatred or real bigotry when you do BDSM around racial identity? Aren’t you afraid of being really damaged?
Best Sex Writing 2010 Page 6