The online diary of a gay courtesan.

Before I begin, I want to first acknowledge (though not necessarily apologize) for the way in which my writing goes through some definite mood swings. There are times when I have a great many situations to discuss, and I can pick more variety of tone; however, I am having one of those weeks where everything blog-worthy is heavy… I’m writing this at 5:30 a.m., which seems to be more the norm than the exception lately. I do this, because some experiences are best described after some times passes, and others need immediate comment.

I know a patron who has always spoken to me in spiritual terms. The first time I ever met him he wanted to give me a massage and align my chakras. Such is the club: You meet people of all backgrounds and beliefs. This particular person is a mystical type, though I am not quite convinced his powers are attuned to the level he himself believes. At any rate, when he asks me to pray for something on his behalf I generally agree to the wish and send out a private moment of hope. I have done this, because his requests have always been constructive and/or productive (if not odd and eccentric).

This time, however, I am having difficulty…

He wants me to pray for his father to die. Dude, I just wanted to dance naked for you for like eight minutes. This is getting to be rather more than I bargained for. On the one hand I understand that he wants his father’s suffering to end (and by extension, his mother’s), but on the other hand how am I supposed to send out an earnest wish for this person to fall down dead?

“Well, when I had a prayer circle to ask for his recovery after his first surgery, that went well. So I figured if I could get enough people to pray for him to die during his second surgery, he’d finally just get on with it.”

Normally I would just smile and nod at a strange request without really doing anything about it, but something about the way this patron sincerely hopes his father dies struck me as something worth talking about, even if I’m not entirely sure how I feel about being asked to contribute in any way to someone’s demise. I have known friends and family members who have sickened, or been injured, and who have passed away. I have had many friends who have had this experience and talked about it with me. Of course I don’t want their deaths to be painful or protracted, yet do I dare to admit that I hoped for their passings? Maybe, but only as a reprieve from suffering. But I suppose the real question behind this post is this: How lonely (or insert other adjective here) does someone have to be to ask in the middle of a nude dance an exotic dancer he sees once or twice in a month to synergize with the others who are sending out a prayer for death?

What am I even supposed to pray, even if I agree to this (which I’m not sure I do)? “I ask for a peaceful resolution and transition for this person’s spirit.” That’s an eloquent way of saying “God, please kill this person.” What if this patron’s father goes into his operation praying for life? (This is a good example of how ridiculous it is when opposing armies of the same faith both intone God’s favor as justificiation for victory on the field of battle.)

Honestly, this may very well be the first post I’ve written on here for which I feel absolutely zero closure after describing what I’ve experienced. Jeez… I was just shaking my pecker at him… and he unloads this on me… I need to be charging more for VIP’s.

Dear Harlow,

I just watched the videos that were produced for the here! network, and I wanted to take a moment to tell you that your story has not gone unheard and unfelt. I want you to know that there are people who see that “even a gay porn actor” is innocent until proven guilty. I want you to know that there are people who are not entertained by your misery. I want you to know that you are right every time you say your name out loud, and that your mother is right to touch the glass as if she were caressing your face. I want you to know that when you are exonerated there will be people who will celebrate whole heartedly for you. I want you to know that there are people who hope you will survive, heal, and thrive. I want you to know that there is compassion for you, and that there is still beauty outside – it is waiting for you to embrace it when you return to the world. Do not come back to us broken. Please.

If you are found guilty, I hope it will be because there is a mountain of incontrovertible truth sustaining that decision, and not because you have lived your life in your own way. If you are found innocent, I hope it will be because you are innocent without any further doubt attached to your name. If you are found lost in the dark, I hope you will remember the points of light: They are the stars that will guide you home. If you are found alone, I hope you will remember that you are not.

Con mucha esperanza,

Devon

I was chatting online last night, and some dude hit me up. We talked some formal chit chat for a little bit before he told me that he’d just had a fight with his boyfriend, had shown his boyfriend my profile, and had told his boyfriend that I was the guy waiting in the wings for him to leave his boyfriend. To which the man said his boyfriend replied, “Well, he’s a pole dancer, so I guess that’s just fucking typical!”

Mhm…

Ring, Ring:

“Hello?”

“Hi, Kettle?”

“Yeah?”

“This is the pot: You’re black.” (Click.)

It occurred to me, after reflecting some about my experience, at that party from last week, that there is a Jekyll & Hyde phenomenon lurking in many club patrons, gay men in particular. It also occurred to me that there is a day & night phenomenon that I want to explore for a few moments. What follows isn’t researched or cited – it’s simply my dialogue with myself about the observations I have about the patrons who disturb me most (keeping in mind throughout that what I will be saying doesn’t apply to ALL people, but is presented as over-simplified generalizations).

People associate metaphoric values to light/dark and day/night, conflating them with good/bad. I have a hypothesis: People almost seem to have it coded into their socializing DNA traits to act rowdy, or to allow their “darker” sides to come out at night. It’s too easy to say that Night is Dark, and thus people let their destructive natures blossom under the moonlight (like lillies of death, I suppose), as if night/dark is the very source of this “bad.”

I think there is a practical connection that goes way back. Without electricity and artificial lighting, your work day effectively ends when the sun goes down. Ergo, your most productive (i.e. work related) activities happen in the light. Once it’s night and you can no longer really do much, it makes sense that people would socialize at night around fires and dance, mingle, or drink. Same with the winter in general: If it’s too dark and cold to farm your land or do any work, then it is an obvious time of year to pack full of festivals and holidays in order to pass the time: Hours not devoted to work or sleep end up becoming hours devoted to play or relaxation.

What if, over the course of thousands of years, we have simply been bred to associate day with respectability and night with scandal? If you follow that line of thought, then in a religious culture that values toil above pleasure (rather than in balance with it), everything done at night becomes frivilous (and therefore non-, un-, or anti-”good”) by comparison. Everything you wouldn’t want people to see you doing, you do at night, under the cloak of darkness where you can hope for some modicum of anonymity. Night becomes a place to hide your shame or guilt.

In this way, all around the world, good, productive people rise and shine to do their respectable work. For a good portion of them there is an attitude that anything of Night must be myseterious, evil, salacious, dangerous, or immoral, since it is the time when productive people are worn out and go to bed. Night is the time of the unseen/unseeable. It is the time when those with something to hide emerge, like monsters out of nightmares.

If you look at my description of that party, it was attended by “upstanding professionals” who mostly happened to be older white, gay gentlemen. This is where the Jekyll & Hyde amongst patrons comes in. Given the way they were acting like rutting pigs at a trough, and given the wild (in some instances dangerous) looks their eyes, and given their total abandonment of all social decorum, exactly what about them should have spoken to their being doctors, lawyers, architects, etc.? How would I, or anyone else who doesn’t know them, ever guess that these grasping, slobbering troglodytes were “upstanding professionals?” If someone is an “upstanding professional,” shouldn’t that define who they are away from work as well? (I can hear it now: “I’m not an upstanding professional, but I play one from 9-5.”)

I don’t understand this dichotomy. I am the same person at night that I am all day long. I am more polite at work than I would be at my house, but I don’t resemble Janus, looking in two directions with every passing moment. I don’t divorce my noctural self from my diurnal self. I am always me. I don’t understand the outright hypocrisy of wearing two diametrically opposed masks. Which is the real you? Do you even know? Are both of them you, or does one compensate for the other? Are neither of them you, and you simply have no idea who you even are? If you, like most people I know, attach part of your identity to your profession, then what does it say about you that this identity slides away so readily when the illumination dims?

Let me be frank: There are many wonderful patrons who act just as civil at the club as they do at the grocery strore. But there is also a sizeable lot who frighten me: When I bump into them during the day, they scurry from my presence, as if I am something toxic or tainted (when usually it is I who should be trying to get away from them). At night they come slinking back with flattering apologies and small tips, bribing me to forget they were espied pretending to be respectable in some other place and time. I might play along more completely, if the dollar earned so respectably wasn’t so disrespectably tucked under my perineum with a lingering grope and a lecherous wink. When Hyde grins at me with my privates in his palm, I simply laugh inside and wonder where the doctor/lawyer/ teacher/politician/engineer is hiding.

The sun is going to rise soon… did you forget that? Or are you ignoring it on purpose? Who is the “upstanding professional” in this scenario? Is there one? The patrons I like and respect the most are not necessarily the ones who give me the most money, but the ones who give me the most hope that I am right in thinking that people, by and large, really are the ”upstanding professionals” they seem to be.

Okay, I have to admit something: I’ve been a horrible bitch lately. I have a “good” excuse… well, as good as I can come up with: Swinging Richards. It’s one of the only all-nude gay strip clubs in the country, and the guys there are intimidating to say the least. Match that with my personality conflict with the self-loathing gay manager and you get a pretty stressful situation in my head.

The last time I was there the manager called me fat (which is one of my demons), and said all sorts of disparaging comments to me about being gay (even though he has a boyfriend). Yeah. Um. Okay.

Anyway, the pressure there is high, and in order to get ready I’ve started taking these metabolizers to help me shred off the visceral fat the girdles me on my bellybutton and around to my lower back. These pills are making me crazy. I hate them. I feel anxious, watery, jittery, and angry. I get nauseated. It says they don’t have stimulants in them, but I don’t see how that’s possible. Still, I feel obliged to take them, since they cost $150 and I have the incentive of not being called fat again (if they work).

I have a lot of conflicts about Swinging Richards. For a long time most of the dancers have been straight or paysexual, trying to pass for bisexual (but most coming up short, with buysexual). I’ve talked enough about my political objections to gay men giving money to straight guys. If I’m choosing to go back, then I have to swallow all the bitter pills that come with it…