Devon Hunter

It’s funny how certain conversations seem to happen in batches. This weekend I am visiting friends and seeing clients in DC. Last weekend I was dancing in Greenville, SC and Asheville, NC. I was booked for the latter first, which was a fundraiser, and since it interrupted my weekend I decided to book the former to have something to do. My good friend Roxy C. Morecox is a widely celebrated female illusionist, and we talk pretty candidly about the escorting. She asked me which I preferred, escorting or exotic dancing. Oddly enough, I have had three clients ask me that question recently too.

I have to say it: Unequivocally, I prefer escorting. The bookings at the clubs this weekend drew everything into sharp focus. I don’t do the clubs hardly ever anymore, so when I do I keep having the same reaction: I used to put up with this abject bullshit? Really?? For TWELVE YEARS???

First, my clients are ALWAYS sober, clean, polite, and respectful. The place where I meet them is comfortable, and I am very relaxed and happy with the time I spend with my clients. I walked into the doors at the clubs and already felt out of place. My asshole even puckered tightly shut when I first walked into one of the clubs. Really? I mean really?? Why does this place have to be so gross?

Let me start by comparing the two. Whether I escort or perform I have to be conscious of my body, appearance, hygiene, and manners. Regardless of which I am doing I also have to be very sensitive to others. Also, whether I dance or date I have to be on top of my business.

However…

When I escort my clients are ALWAYS gentlemen. When I dance, gentlemen are almost nowhere to be found. When I escort my clients compliment my appearance. When I dance I get told any number of insulting comments about whatever feature is most offensive in that particular moment. When I escort the men are interested in talking to me and knowing something about me. When I dance they are far more likely to do or say anthing possible to embarrass or humiliate me. When I escort I can pay my bills. When I dance I am commanded to do any number of ridiculously inappropriate sexual circus tricks for a dollar. When I escort I stay in comfortable hotels. When I dance, the club owners stick me in places that I would be ashamed for clients to see. When I escort there are never requests for barebacking. When I dance I have this thrown at me in the dressing room: “Can I fuck you raw? I am into felching. I like to wipe it on my face – it’s good for the skin.”

Are you kidding me with this? I even had one loathsome individual try to tip me with my own money. He was so high that he thought the tips I’d handed to a friend to count was the cash he’d brought in to tip me with. Ummmmmmm… no. Not so much.

I had a very good time laughing and dancing with Roxy, and I would love to travel with her some more; however, I made in an entire weekend what I can make in two hours without the sleepless nights, smoke, drug addicts, alcohol, wanton groping, and strained muscles/sore back.

I definitely prefer escorting.

Back at Yule I wrote about a piece of jewelry that I was wanting to buy myself as a gift. I remember all the angst and inner turmoil (and guilt). It’s rather funny in retrospect, because as of yesterday I paid the balance in full. Those sapphires are mine, baby!

It feels so satisfying.

I’ve also paid a medical bill and a closed-out credit card to zero. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and (unlike Mariah Carey) I’m not worried that it might be a train. This means that the plan I put into place to pay off lower balanced accounts, piling up the minimum payments from them onto higher balanced accounts, and whittling those too down more quickly is working.

One setback: In keeping to my pay-off schedule, I’m defnintely feeling strapped for cash. However, it is worth it in the long run, despite feeling pinched in the short term. I’m a tad bedazzled by how quickly I may actually get out of this morass.

I need a good weekend though!! Wish me luck… I’ve got rent set aside, but the car, student loan, and a loan my last boyfriend screwed up are due by Monday!

(Oh, and now that Reginald is mine, I wear him with much more frequency.)

p.s.

Happy Beltane everyone! Spring is half over and the light has definitely returned to us!

Hey Devon,

I was wondering… What do you hate most about being a dancer?

- Inquisitive

Dear Inquisitive,

Every job has it’s challenges. There are parts of my work that I absolutely love: Performing, meeting new people, travelling to different places, setting my own schedule, having a real impetus to stay fit… Of course, all of those have their down sides as well, but generally those are my favorite parts of working in clubs.

I don’t know why you’re asking me this, so I don’t know how to frame my answer. Do you want to know, because you’re considering the career and you want to know what to expect? Or are you just curious? I suppose I can just speak to both at the same time.

Although I enjoy my work, I would have to say that these are my 10 biggest pet peeves about the work (rated from least annoying to most, for me personally):

10 Clothed patrons who make cynical comments to me about my appearance while I’m disrobed.

9 The same songs every night, no matter where I’m dancing.

8 Oily strippers.

7 Cigarette smoke.

6 Free advice from either patrons or dancers about the career that wasn’t requested in the first place.

5 Living on a completely inverted schedule from everyone else in the world.

4 Having to constantly explain why adult entertainment is a “real” career.

3 People who sit by the stage and text all night. Hello! You could do that at the back of the room!

2 Straight dancers talking shit about the gay patrons who support them.

1 Being treated like Hester Prynne by strangers outside of work while socializing with my friends in public.

One of the reasons I wanted to wait to respond to the question posed on March 17, 2009′s entry concerning race is because I wanted to view the situation in a club outside of the South. Before I continue, I would like to add that I welcome comments and constructive discussions here; however, if I do say something that is insensitive or irresponsible, I invite anyone to point it out.

To paraphrase a concept articulated by Obama during his campaign: We can’t talk about race until we talk about race.

In the the Carolinas and Georgia, where most of my experience in clubs has occurred, there is a residual tendency to treat Black men as un-/non-/anti-sexual Others who are tolerated for “diversity’s” sake. I do not notice this overtly generalized and dismissive treatment towards Latinos, nor towards Asians; however, it does seem that White dancers with red/orange hair and fair skin fill a niche as equally narrow as Blacks seem to do.

I am sensitive about race and other parameters for identity, but I am not afraid of discussing them in simple terms.

So, as an experiment, when the dancers at Secrets in Washington, D.C. asked me last night what it’s like at Swinging Richards in Atlanta, GA and PT1109 in Columbia, SC, I said candidly, “You can do well, depending on the night. I’ve noticed that Black dancers struggle there, even if they work three times harder. That’s not the case for Latinos and Asians. Although overt racism in the traditional Southern mode is mostly gone, Black men are still mostly invisible as sexual entities to gay white men where I live.”

I started this conversation specifically because there was a Black dancer in the room, and I wanted to see what his response would be, in terms of being in D.C. (which for some reason people presume isn’t connected culturally to the South just because there are some embassies there and a few people who can read and write in French).

This was his response: “He’s right. White dudes in the club normally look past me. I do well at private parties where I have been booked specifically.”

“Why is that?” one of the White dancers asked.

“Well,” the Black dancer said, “look at magazines. What do you see?”

“White faces,” I replied. “There still aren’t anywhere near enough non-White models representing beauty. We are taught what is beautiful by what is implied, not simply by what is said.”

“For a long time I made most of my money off women,” the Black dancer added.

“Women don’t tip,” another dancer immediately chimed in.

“Yeah, they do,” the Black dancer shot back. “That was my whole career for years. But it’s not just the South – Black dudes don’t usually do well in New York City either.”

“It seems to me,” I said, “that women are often more sexually adventurous in their tastes, and that men often define their preferences more rigidly. And,” I added, just so that the Black dancer wouldn’t think that Devon “White Boy” Hunter has it made in the shade, “it’s not enough to be White. I’m completely invisible next to Brad. He’s the default setting for gay white male desire.”

“Yeah,” one of the Latino dancers added thoughtfully. “He’s blond haired, blue eyed, fair skin, perfect complexion, and built like a Greek god.”

“Mhm,” I added. “I’ll never be tall. White isn’t good enough: I’m short. I’m not hating on Brad: He’s perfect. He really is exquisite. But next to him, I might as well be Black.” (To which the Black dancer nodded in agreement and understanding.)

This is such a complicated, convoluted conversation in American culture. On the one hand I felt as if my thoughts had mostly been confirmed by this dialogue; however, there was the nagging part about Black guys not doing well in New York City. If what he says is true, then racism isn’t a Southern tradition (as so many presumptuous Yankees like to assume), but an American tradition (which definitely doesn’t make it any less awful just because racism ain’t a Suthren thang).

So, to more pointedly address the question of what my experience has been, in terms of interpreting how race affects gay male entertainers: White is the default preference for the manufacturer’s setting; Latino, Asian, Indian, and Native American are all exotic enough to be sexually alluring, despite their ethnic features; and Black is invisible. What I have seen is that White and Latino entertainers make the most money, that Asian dancers are often watched with some degree of skepticism at first, and that Black dancers (when they aren’t discouraged) are forced to work far too hard. And yet all of this can change, depending on issues surrounding personal style, attitude, stature, body type, and exotic features (e.g. an Asian dancer with blue eyes). And yet those individual nuances are lost if a patron completely marks the Black body in his mind only enough to avoid walking into ”it” like any chair.

I personally feel that there is a specific gap in the training of gay desire. There are simply not enough Afro-centric (or other minorities’) faces in the “All-American” homoerotic publications. People want what they see: So long as Black men aren’t held up as objects of beauty unto themselves on par with men of other races, Black entertainers will be relegated to Blacksploitative sexual imagery. I have met very few Black male adult entertainers who did not actively seek to align themselves with the clichés perpetrated by MTV and BET. What’s worse, the few Black dancers I’ve known who weren’t “ghetto” made even less money than their “hard” counterparts.

Is there not a space or two in one of Abercrombie’s group-shots of 13 nubile honkies for a little more realistic portrayal of our cultural landscape? What’s even more problematic is that I often sense that Black men who aren’t thugs are even more displaced outside of gay desire than their bruiser counterparts. Where do Black men in general (and non-Gangsta Black men specifically) fit within the framework of gay masturbation material?

Hear, hear for equal opportunity exploitation!

The question has come up (not worded exactly this way, but pretty close), “How did you maintain a balance between staying small and getting bigger?” In other words, how do anorexia and Dysmorphia co-exist? Well, to be frank, they don’t balance, and they don’t co-exist. It’s like being pulled apart – I would actually feel that kind of shearing force in my brain. It was horrible, and looking back I don’t know why I held onto that turmoil so long.

Ups and Downs

Constant fretting was a part of my life because of these two situations both vying for my attention. I desparately wanted to put on lean muscle, but every time I inched up even two-tenths of a pound on my digital scale, I would figure out which meals I could skip “to make up for it.” It doesn’t make any sense. I knew it didn’t, even when I was in the middle of that terrible dichotomy. I wanted the look of muscle without the numerical “score” of my weight going up (I suppose it’s a game, like Hearts, where the fewer points you have, the better?). At any rate, it was a dizzying, confusing, and frustrating teetering act.

And it had other repercussions, other than my body composition. I am already prone to mood swings; however, when you do not eat properly your body systems get out of kilter. All of them. Including your hormones. One hormone in particular, serotonin, is in your gut. This hormone affects mood. If you do not eat properly this hormone gets out of balance, and then your moods get out of balance too. So, my eating disorder also escalated my emotional stress. I’ve been blessed to never have had any major injuries – I can presume only that taking vitamins protected me from difficiency disorders, because my teeth, bones, hair, skin, connective tissues, and all other systems seem fine to this day. If I’d not been at least taking vitamins, I could very well be falling apart already. That happened to my friend Cheryl. She was anorexic for 18 years, never took supplements, and now her teeth, bones, and joints are a wreck.

Janet Jackson + Chris Evans = hot mess

One day I was looking in the mirror for the 497th time that day, and a flash of insight caught me off guard: I was trying to blend two people, whom I looked nothing like, together into one body. Although it hurts my feelings a little when people remind me of this, I am not, in fact, a beautiful Black woman. Also, although I am a White man, I do not look anything like Chris Evans. I don’t understand exactly what amalgamation I was trying for, but recreating myself as a collage of these two was definitely not working well. I look back on this moment, and I realize that it was the instance where I almost pulled myself out of this vortex by myself. But something happened immediately afterwards that distracted me from this little thunder bolt of logic…

Stupid boy

I was with the only guy I had a long term relationship with during college. He was a pudgy little dude with crazy brown hair, and I thought he was absolutely marvelous. When he poked my belly and said, “Getting a little soft around the center, huh?” I took him seriously. It didn’t occur to me that he was being facetious. Over the next few weeks I dropped from 120 pounds to 110. I started passing out in dance class. It was scary. The pic of me that I just posted where I weighed 125 pounds is bad enough – at my worst I weighed 15 pounds less than in that picture. You could see my spine and hip bones. And I thought I was staggeringly beautiful (for a few moments each day between long bouts of self-loathing).

Whether it’s his “fault” for upsetting me, or my “fault” for being so sensitive, or no one’s “fault” at all, that “soft around the center” comment was the driving force behind my eating habits for the next eight years. The effect of the comment lasted years longer than the relationship with Shane.

Emotional instability and therapy

One of the long-term side effects of this “balance” between being small and getting big is that my moods shift very easily and quickly. I feed off the moods of others without realizing it, until after the change has already happened. Also, if I get hungry, I get mean. If I’m ever randomly rude to you just say, “Bitch, do you need a doughnut?” I probably do need to eat something, but a doughnut won’t be my first choice (although the humor will make me smile). My rages would get out of control particularly when I felt people were being mean to me without provocation.

I finally went to a therapist while I was at UCLA. I went because of an incident during my African drumming class. One of the other students (who never attended class, and didn’t know the rhythms) told me I was defiling the drums with my “White hands,” and proceded to push me away from the instrument while grabbing for the mallet in my hand. Well, I was already feeling angry about something else. She tipped me over the edge, and I vented all over her in front of about 100 drummers and dancers. It didn’t help that she was Black, and that everyone knew I was from South Carolina. It immediately became a race issue to them without me ever intending it. They didn’t know what I was already contending with, so on the outside, without any insight into me, I understand why they would assume that. It hurt my feelings they would jump to that conclusion, but it does make sense. I was forced to enter “anger management” classes.

I’m glad. It gave me the opportunity to finally address some of my demons. From that point forward I started improving. But it still took a few years after I completed that therapy to finally let go of my desire to have Janet’s waist and Chris’s chest.

“Better” days

Everything started improving consistently and quickly after I left my last boyfriend in October, 2006. You want to know what finally forced me to let go of alot of my obsessive compulsions? Exhaustion. Pure and simple. I’d been working seven part time jobs to support myself and Scott. When I found out he’d cheated on me with about 30 people while I was out working day and night, and that he was opening credit cards in my name (as well as hiding the bills, maxing them out, and then not making payments), I finally had to work so much that there simply wasn’t time to worry about what I looked like. It didn’t matter if I made the bed or washed the dishes. It didn’t matter if my books were alphabetized by subject/author/title. Suddenly avoiding bankruptcy mattered a whole lot more.

During the months after I left Scott I simply got out of the habit of worrying about my appearance so much. I had a whole new catastrophe to work on (and on a dark level the martyr in me loved the torture). Nearing two-and-a-half years later, I’ve become completely financially independent again, with my credit score being even better than before Scott’s interference. And ironically my eating disorder gave way to fiscal survival. It seems that all I needed was a crisis severe enough to completely distract me from calories.

So, the eating disorder is gone. Done. Good riddance. There are still some traces of the Dysmorphia, in that I can’t see how I’m shaped when I look at myself in a mirror. I see only a flat shape with muddled undulations on the surface. Only in pictures, which are removed from the same space-time as my viewing of myself, can I see me. I need the removal of “now.” By looking back a few moments into the past at how I looked then, I see my curves and proporations. But even then I still don’t trust that 10 seconds later the same holds true. This is getting better as I (slowly) mature.

I look forward to the day, not when my see-saw is balanced, but when I decide I’m no longer interested in the ride.