How it Feels to Hustle Sex
Telling my story for the first time
Ever since I started writing online, I’ve witnessed heated debates about how sex workers are exploited by definition. I’ve held my tongue. I’ve witnessed people passionately defend the rights of women and men who do sex work. I’ve held my tongue. I’ve read all sorts of stories about how sex workers can’t give true consent, and still I’ve held my tongue.
I’ve stayed silent because to honestly participate in the debate, I’d have to admit that when I first moved to New York City, I hustled. I haven’t wanted to write about that because the stigma is intense. The judgment. The shame. The complete lack of understanding.
But I’m tired of holding my tongue, so I’m going to tell a story. Maybe when I’m done, discussion might result, but even if not, I won’t have to hold my tongue any longer. I’ve been there and done that, and I have things to say.
I slid into a bar stool, unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt and started making eye contact. I didn’t know much about New York City gay bars, but I figured hustling worked pretty much the same as cruising.
I badly wanted a drink to calm down. I’d never sold my body before; the idea scared me and creeped me out. “How much for a beer?” I asked the pretty redhead tending bar.
“You don’t wanna know, hun,” he said. “How bout a ginger ale on the house?” He jerked his chin toward the piano where a cluster of middle-aged and older men were singing show tunes. “Make one of them buy your booze. That’s why they’re here.”
I nodded as he slid a tumbler toward me. Our eyes met and mutual recognition sparked. I smiled and whispered “thank you” as I took a sip. I tried not to cough too obviously. The vodka level was off the chain.
He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Welcome to Rounds, baby. Good luck.”
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: MIDTOWN; Gay Bar Shut in ‘Loop’
Sept. 4, 1994
It’s long been known as the Loop, the area around East 53d Street and Second Avenue where young male hustlers hang out and older men cruise to buy sexual favors.
In recent years, the police say, a parallel indoor scene developed at Rounds, a piano bar and restaurant at 303 East 53d St.
Now, a recent police crackdown has dampened the scene, stirring support from some neighbors and criticism from some gay groups.
On Aug. 10 the police barred the tinted-glass front door of Rounds. City officials asked the courts to make the closing permanent, citing a string of 12 arrests in the last year on charges of alcohol sales to minors and prostitution solicitations. The police also cracked down on street activity with arrests there, too.
Roger threw his Brooks Brothers blazer over his chair, and ran around the small table to pull my chair out before I could sit down. I wondered if his perfect white teeth were dentures or implants. “Order anything you want!” he said. “Anything.”
I studied him over the top of the menu I was pretending to read. I had to figure out if I could do this. I had some savings left, but it was running out way faster than I’d counted on.
“Um, maybe the fettuccine?” I said. “I love alfredo sauce.” I glanced up at the bar where my “ginger ale” bartender gave me a wink and a thumbs up.
Roger growled. “Pasta? No. Order anything you want. Have the steak. Wouldn’t you rather have the steak?”
I studied his grizzled face and graying hair. He looked good for 60, but when he’d thrown his arm over my shoulder at the piano, I’d smelled old-man sweat hiding under expensive cologne. Would he expect me to get hard?
I swallowed and tried to sound sincere. “OK, I’ll have the porterhouse.”
Martin Duberman on the Rounds hustler bar
The conversational gambits at Rounds were in general more mannerly and indirect. Assured young college students (for which substitute incipient filmmakers, struggling actors, aspiring rock stars) mingled with unembarrassed ease among snottily elegant, conspicuously successful older men. Hustlers and Johns were often indistinguishably fashionable in dress and indistinguishably glib at banter. To be sure, some traditional gauges still prevailed to separate youth from age: skin texture, hairline, muscle tone (tightness of buns being the critical differentiation).
Roger hailed a cab on 5th Avenue like a pro. Just by lifting a finger. No waving wildly for him. His clothes and haircut spoke for him. A yellow Ford taxi squealed to a stop and zoomed into an illegal U-turn. Catcalls sounded in the distance. A police cruiser eased by slowly, headlights picking us out and making me blink in pain. Roger waved. I wondered if I should run. What Roger would do if I ran. What the cops would do.
The cab slid up to the curb and I slid into the back seat as Roger opened the door and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Watch your head,” he said in a tender voice. Before we’d gone half a block, his tongue was down my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to forget where I was.
His hotel was one of those understated east-side palazzos nobody’s ever heard of but that cost more money than tourists can afford. The liveried doorman sneered at me. He looked us both up and down, smiled warmly at Roger and gave me a look of disgust — like he was sniffing a cut of beef that might have gone bad.
“Take off your shirt,” Roger ordered.
I looked around the room that despite the luxury of the neighborhood was just a hotel room. Nothing more, nothing less. I loosened a few buttons. “Aren’t you supposed to pay me first?”
He barked like a seal. “Aren’t you the little business man, then?” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a wallet. “Fine.” He pulled out a single bill and thrust it under my nose. “Here.”
I shook my head. “We said 200. That’s not enough.”
He took a step toward me. An aggressive step that meant I had to look up to see his face. “Take your shirt off,” he growled.
“Give me 200 dollars,” I whispered, angry at how small my voice sounded. It matched me. Roger’s six-foot bulk dwarfed my own five-foot-five body. He had to weigh more than 200 pounds. I was was lucky to tip the scales at 125.
He raised a hand, and I flinched, ready to bolt, but he just reached into his wallet and pulled out another bill. “Here. Hurry up and take your shirt off.”
When I did, he sucked his breath in like a connoisseur, pulled me down onto the bed, and removed most of the rest of my clothes by himself. I tried hard to squeeze my eyes shut and pretend to be somewhere else. After a few minutes, I got used to him. As long as he wasn’t arguing about money or telling me what I wanted to eat, he was OK. Not desirable, but not exactly disgusting.
An hour later, I climbed out of bed, threw my clothes on, and made sure the money was still in my pants. Roger was snoring as I ran out of the room. My heart didn’t start to beat normally until I’d hoofed it 20 blocks south, on my way back to the McBurney YMCA on West 23rd St, the exact YMCA the Village People once sang about, the YMCA where 200 dollars was enough to pay for a room for a whole week.
My first night at Rounds taught me a lot
My experiences feel distinct from Martin Duberman’s, the gay academic and activist who wrote about the place from the perspective of a reluctant john. Through his rose-colored glasses, Rounds was guilty of, at worst, a certain glibness, a vacuous lack of genuine gay culture.
My experiences felt altogether different from those of the neighbors who complained to the New York Times that the bar encouraged disruptive street trade and public sex. (It did not.)
What I felt that night with Roger was apprehension, shame, and fear. I needed the money. If I didn’t do something fast, I’d have to leave New York and beg charity from family. I was very young, very naive, and after a 6-year military career, I had no skills that anyone seemed willing to pay for.
When I saw Rounds advertised in a gay rag — A bar where entrepreneurial young men mingle with the older, sophisticated men who appreciate them — I knew I had to give it a try.
I had a decent wardrobe, lucky for me. The door staff enforced a certain look. I didn’t need a fake ID, being well over 21, but I soon learned that the bouncers didn’t care. As long as a boy dressed well enough to look like some john’s respectable nephew, nobody cared how old he really was.
I went back to Rounds the next weekend to score another fast 200, feeling pretty cocky. But I didn’t insist on the money up front, and I barely got paid. A raised fist convinced me not to make an issue of it. I had to go back the next night to make sure I could cover my rent. I almost didn’t. I hung around the bar for hours before I finally scored.
Hustling was harder than I thought it would be
I ended up spending three or four nights a week at Rounds making sure I had enough money to live. When I managed to get it, the work was OK, even if I didn’t love it. The johns — Wall Street bankers, real estate “tycoons,” journalists, Madison Avenue ad men or whatever — gossiped. Which boys were good in bed. Which were cold fish. Who would get fucked and who wouldn’t.
As for us, the trade? Some of us fit Duberman’s ideal. We really were just glib young men trying for a financial boost so we could make it in the Big City. But we were much more than that. For every college student or smarmy Broadway wannabe, I knew a desperate young man fighting addiction, abuse, or family rejection.
That bartender handed me a free ginger ale and vodka on my first night because he knew exactly how desperate some of us were. He introduced me to Sam, a Texan whom I’ve featured in my fiction as Bobby, a teenager who gets eaten alive by the New York hustler scene.
Sam was always on the brink of not looking “good enough” to get past the Rounds bouncer. That meant he’d have to hang outside and risk arrest or make his way downtown somehow. Hustle cars for 20 dollar blowjobs. Deal with the violence. I saw him nursing black eyes and limping in pain more than once.
Like a lot of the trade I knew, Sam struggled with alcohol and drugs. Nobody loved him, and he had nothing in life to look forward to except getting high. He wasn’t even 18 the last time I saw him.
I met Roger again years later
Wearing my own Brooks Brothers jacket, I stepped into a midtown conference room and shook hands with the man my business partner had been working a contract with for the past month. I sucked in my breath in sharp recognition. My body shrank back, reliving a physical fear that no longer had reason to exist.
He stared into my eyes without the least recognition. “So glad to finally meet you,” he said. “David swears you’re a genius. I can’t wait to see what you can do for the firm. Shall we get to work?”
I placed my briefcase on the table, opened it up, and suppressed an urge to demand 200 dollars before showing him the plans I’d been working on. David and I took him out to dinner that night, and I insisted he order the steak.
I did fine as a sex worker
I went to Rounds a few times a week for a while, and I pretended to enjoy sex with men who were too old to turn me on. I chatted glibly, I learned how to suppress the fear that never quite retreated, and I met a lot of people whose stories still make me wonder.
Sam wasn’t the only boy I knew who got eaten alive.
I learned that stereotypes are for fools. I wasn’t the only one fighting fear. Lots of johns were afraid too. Trade has a reputation, sometimes justified. Small and slight, I was always afraid I’d get beat up like Sam. But I knew johns who got badly beaten too.
I learned firsthand what happens when you live in a world defined and outlined by shame. When police cruisers zoomed up and down 5th Avenue, everyone ducked for cover. When somebody got beat or stiffed, we sucked it up and moved on, because nobody cared what happened to us. That went as much for the johns as the trade.
The police were the enemy. Nobody dared talk to them. Or to a social worker. What the hell was I supposed to do for Sam? If I opened my mouth to anyone, I was going to jail and so was he. At least for a while.
The value of shame and fear
Jail never happened, and I eventually found a “real” job and started a new life, the one I write about all the time. I found love, meaning, purpose, and family. All of it — every little bit — was made possible by the hustling I did at Rounds.
So, you tell me. Was it worth it? The shame, the fear, the risk? I don’t know. But when I look back and analyse the negatives like I did when writing this story, I realize something.
I haven’t written one word about any dangers inherent in sex work itself. My fear was grounded in shame, stigma, and the need to hide. I never felt the same fear in my Manhattan life that followed, no matter how dangerous the neighborhoods I moved around in at night.
The toll of shame and fear
In the years that followed, I wasn’t trade. I was a citizen. Shame didn’t stop me from seeking help or even demanding it if I needed it. What a difference!
I don’t have a lot of a answers about sex work and hustling. I don’t pretend to know how to stop human trafficking or prevent teenagers like Sam from being exploited and abused.
All I know for sure is that shame and criminalization are NOT the answers. When sex workers are forced into the shadows, they suffer. And so do their customers. I don’t have anything against Roger. I needed that 200 dollars and he badly wanted sexual intimacy.
I just wish neither of us had to suffer for what we did.
James Finn is a long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Act Up NYC, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].
