Money’s on the Dresser: Escorting, Porn and Promiscuity in Las Vegas (7 page)

Was I sacrificing my morals? Am I a bad person for doing what I was doing? Was I inevitably going to get an STD and die strung out on something, like men in every single bad movie made about male hustlers? Was I going to be working a corner in some seedy neighborhood like Hunter, that kid with HIV on the television show
Queer As Folk
? I didn’t know, and I honestly didn’t care. I wanted money and I had found an easy way to get it.

So obviously I chose the path of escorting—and later porn—because of money. I wanted money and I wanted a lot of it. But in doing what I am doing I have gone further than just making money. I have been able to use sex as a way to connect with others and make them feel special. When I started out, I never expected to have any influence or impact on other people’s lives, and I feel blessed to have done so. Of course, the money is the reason I started and the reason I continue, but it means a lot to me when I make a difference in someone’s life and give them a memorable experience they hopefully never forget.

A few months ago, I met a man who had had a partner for over twenty years. He told me they had been faithful to each other and monogamous the entire time they were together. His partner had died seventeen years earlier, and since then he had not been involved sexually with anyone. He called me because he was finally in a place where he needed a physical connection, and he was ready to start letting himself be intimate with others. He saw both my ad and porn online and decided to ask me to help him through this process of sexual intimacy. As soon as he told me this story, I felt flattered and then an immense amount of pressure.
WOW! Me? Really? Okay... sure.
It’s almost spiritual and too much to handle. I gave him a sensual and passionate experience and he was near tears because of the intensity of it all. We talked in bed for another hour and a half. I asked him questions about his life, his partner, his home in Santa Fe, and the type of work he does. I was also intrigued as to how someone goes without sex for over seventeen years. He also asked a lot of questions about me. He was genuinely interested in who I was, why I escort, where I came from, my family, relationships, and my plans for the future. I began to feel like I was in therapy as I talked about my childhood, ex-boyfriends, and family members. Instead of me paying him eighty dollars an hour to listen, like I did with my therapist, he was paying me three hundred an hour to play the role of the therapist and give me advice and his perspective on things. Times like this are invaluable and have left a mark on me.

While I do believe that the money is what makes escorts start in this industry, having meaningful connections with others gives us longevity and keeps us from going insane. I have met and worked with dozens of other men in this business and, for the most part, I have met some great guys. They are hardworking, genuine, caring people with intense sex drives. Of course there are also some strung-out tweakers, ready and willing to do anything for cash. In my opinion, if you come into this industry with a level head, recognize it for what it is, and have a back-up plan for when you can’t escort anymore, you will be fine. If you let all the compliments, attention, cash, and recognition go to your head, get ready for a downward spiral that will not end well.

Chapter Five

Testing My Limits

I left the Blue Moon Resort after a two-hour appointment. I had just spent the afternoon with a regular client I saw named Gary, from San Francisco, a great guy I had seen almost every other month for the past year. The times with him were always low-maintenance and easy-going but sometimes being with anyone for more than an hour can be exhausting. I genuinely enjoyed Gary and he had become a big part of my life as an escort and porn star the year before when I had first met him. He was definitely my number one fan and treated me like gold. I first met him when he came to Las Vegas the previous year three days after the funeral of his partner of eighteen years passed away. Our first meeting was a little odd, seeing as we were meeting a few days after his partner’s funeral and I could tell he was obviously going through a lot. I sensed that he was doing whatever he could to not break down under the pressure of the death of a loved one, and what perfect way to do that than to schedule a few hours with a male escort. Sex really is a great stress reliever. Our meetings were low-maintenance, and I didn’t feel like it was anything out of the ordinary or life-changing, but for some reason, he had taken a liking to me. As time went on, he became special to me and I was special to him. During one of our meetings after seeing each other for almost a year, he became very emotional and told me how much I meant to him. He knew we had a client/escort relationship, and it wasn’t as if he had fallen in love with me, but for some reason, our times together had helped him through one of the darkest periods of his life after his partner died. I had no idea what I had ever done or said to make him feel that way, because I felt like all we ever did was make small talk and then engage in very innocent sexual activity. For some reason, though, that was enough for him and it helped him gain confidence in himself as a newly single man in his sixties.

After saying good-bye to Gary I walked into the parking lot and I got into my car. I had thirty minutes to get to the Imperial Palace Theater to go over the choreography for the show that night; I was cast in the show
Divas,
where I worked as a fill-in dancer when the regular full-time dancers were sick or took a vacation day. I was usually scheduled in the show once or twice a week, so this worked great with escorting, film shoots, and traveling, but it was awful for my brain. If I don’t do a show full-time or consistently drill choreography from a show into my memory, I forget everything. This had caused some problems for me in the show, but I was still hanging in there based on my looks, height, body, and the fact that they desperately needed a male dancer that would work for the ridiculously low salary they were offering. I was definitely not doing the show for the money; it was a way for me to continue dancing in a show and not just work as a Rentboy or porn star. I still equated a lot of my self-worth with what I did for a living, and at that point in my life I was not ready to stop being a dancer. It was all I knew and it was such a big part of my identity, I couldn’t give it up yet.

As I got into my car, the phone rang from a 646 area code. I didn’t recognize the number and I had no idea who it was. He told me his name was Tim and he wanted to set up an appointment. He was coming to Las Vegas in a few weeks and wanted to set something up for the afternoon of May 2, at the Aria Casino and Resort.

On the day of our meeting, I showed up to the Aria at four in the afternoon, as scheduled. I knocked on the door and a man talking on the phone answers. Right away, my focus went directly to the nose area. I noticed one problem: He didn’t have a nose! The area was covered by a patch of what looked like snakeskin. Immediately I thought,
What the fuck is going on? Run, Christopher, run! Don’t look back, just run! Why is this man missing his nose? How does this even happen? Where did it go? What’s under the patch? Oh, my God, I think I’m going to be physically ill if that patch falls off.

Tim sounded like he was dealing with some kind of emergency and something bad had happened. He motioned for me to sit down while he is dealing with an obviously serious phone call, so I hesitantly sat down, but refused to make myself comfortable. I thought to myself, “
This is it, Christopher. For the first time, I am going to scream and BOLT out of a meeting with a client. I will throw up, cry, and then call my friend Bobby as I sob to him about how I met a man with a missing nose.
At the same time, something inside me said,
Sit your ass down. You have no clue what may happen. You can leave if you want, but at least give it a chance.

He finished the call and immediately launched into the story of how his mother had fallen and hurt herself that morning. He was consoling her, but she was upset and bedridden in the hospital. He then complained about a slight tear on one of the living room chairs and his overall disappointment with the hotel. He was acting like he was being forced to stay in a Motel 6, even though it was the newest and one of the nicest hotel on the Las Vegas strip. The tear was obviously irritating him because he mentioned that he planned to discuss it with the management. All the while I was thinking,
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH YOUR NOSE? Quit acting like this is normal. It’s not!

He sat down, smiled, looked at me affectionately, paused, and then said, “So I guess you’re wondering about my nose.”

I nodded and said as calmly as possible, “Yes, I am.”

He explained that he had developed skin cancer on his nose so severe that the entire nose had to be removed.

PLEASE do not let this patch fall off. I will literally be sick everywhere if I see a hole in his face,
I kept thinking.

“My friend decided to make me a patch made out of snakeskin after I had my nose removed. Would you like to touch it?”

He grabbed my hand and guided it to his nose, but I pulled my hand away and said, “Please don’t. I really hate snakes.” I do hate snakes more than anything, but the idea of touching a scaly snakeskin patch that was covering a hole on his face was too much for one day.

He said okay and smiled. I was trying my best to not reveal the panic brewing within my stomach. We were five minutes into the meeting, and I knew this would be my greatest acting challenge yet. I have an incredibly weak stomach and even seeing a kid wiggle a loose tooth will make me nauseous, so I had a very hard time making sense of this situation or figuring out what I should do. I have been with a few clients who had physical impairments, and I have been with countless men who were severely overweight and had various skin conditions. I was used to unexpected surprises with my clients where I had to quickly adapt. One time I had to spend three hours with a man weighing over three hundred pounds who was also missing half his chest due to Poland’s Syndrome, with the worst case of psoriasis on his legs I have ever seen. Parts of his legs had literally turned brown and purple due to his skin condition, but I somehow made it through the three hours of him touching me and rubbing the scaly skin against mine. I’m not sure how I made it through some of these meetings, but I felt like I had no choice and tried not to focus on whatever it was that was bothering me. My job is to affirm these men, make them comfortable, and accept them for who they are, physically and emotionally. I always do my best, but I’m not going to lie and say sometimes it wasn’t difficult.

This missing nose thing was not sitting well with me, but I didn’t want to appear uneasy or freaked out. Inside, I was falling apart. Obviously, this man called me for a reason, and I knew it was time to start what I came here to do.

I had taken a Viagra before I came over just in case, and the side effect of congestion in my sinuses was starting to kick in. Viagra affects everyone differently, but I knew it was working for me when I started to feel the congestion and sinus pressure. Even though my head was beginning to feel stuffy, I didn’t have a rock-hard erection. Viagra usually always works on me unless I am emotionally or physically upset about something. I couldn’t get all the possible pictures of what was underneath the snakeskin patch out of my head.

He leaned in to kiss me, and so it began. I tried to focus on anything. I thought of the hottest porn I have ever seen, some of the hottest men I have slept with, and that time I blew six guys and they all shot their loads in my mouth and on my face at a local bookstore. I was trying to think of the hottest scenarios and sexual experiences I’ve ever had but all I kept thinking was,
I pray to God that patch doesn’t fall off, forcing me to look at the hole in his face.
We decided to move into the bedroom, and I was trying not to think of what he might want to do. Maybe he would be one of those clients I could just suck off, kiss, and finish off with a hand-job within ten minutes, but something in my gut told me this guy wanted more. He undressed and I undressed, and we got on the bed and began to kiss. Other than missing a nose, he was a decent-looking man in his fifties, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he once looked like. Missing something that is usually there (like a nose) really changes the entire structure of one’s face. He flipped me over and began eating my ass, and all I could think was,
This man is rubbing his scaly snakeskin patch in between my ass cheeks as he licks my hole with his tongue, deeper and deeper inside me. How is this even happening, and how is this my fucking life?
I couldn’t make sense of anything going on, and I knew this was a time when I was seriously contemplating leaving escorting. I was freaking out and didn’t want to be there. He continued to eat me out and shove his face in deeper and deeper like he was trying to suck something out of my asshole with his mouth.

He flipped me over and began sucking my dick. The Viagra kicked in and I had a semi hard-on, enough to pass off as an erection. Every few minutes or so, I would look down at him just to be sure the patch was still on his face and there was no gaping hole visible. This man loved sucking cock and he eagerly went to town on my dick for at least ten minutes. He was ready to start fucking so he reached for the condoms and lube and offered me some. Did he sense my uneasiness? Could he tell that I was on the verge of screaming or crying, and I desperately did not want to be there? Did he go through this with all his escorts, or was I the only one who felt this squeamish? I felt like my head was literally going to combust, with the combination of all the thoughts going through my mind and the Viagra congestion.

I climbed on top of him and he put his dick in my ass. It slid in easily and I hoped for no more than two minutes of thrusts before he shot his load on my back. Then I would be on my way. Unfortunately, this guy was definitely getting his money’s worth, and he fucked me for at least five minutes before asking to fuck me from behind. I readily agreed so I wouldn’t have to look at the snakeskin. He fucked me for a little bit more before he stopped and said, “Okay, that’s enough. Now we’re going to have a talk.”