The online diary of a gay courtesan.

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.

I went to a very large party today for the first time in I don’t know how long. There must have been almost 100 gay men there, nearly all of whom were upstanding professionals in their 40′s – 60′s. Essentially it looked like I was walking into a gay bar frequented by older gentlemen, and that the club just happened to be at someone’s house.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. As soon as I saw how busy it was I started to feel panicky. I’ve gotten so used to relating to people in a flirtatious or sexualized and nearly anonymous manner at the clubs where I work that I was nervous about seeing people in the daylight with all my clothes on. I don’t think I realized how much I’d disconnected from daytime living. The first place I went was to the kitchen for a glass of wine (which is odd, since I rarely drink).

I went there with a delightful friend, Dave Haywards of Touching Up Our Roots, Inc.: Georgia’s LGBT History Project, who is interested in helping me with finding performance opportunities for my artistic projects. We both agreed we’d leave out the exotic dancer part, since the wealthy gay guys at this party would be likely to discount me as an artist if they knew about it. Yeah, well, we thought that would work.

It didn’t take a full 30 minutes to remember why I avoid these types of scenarios anymore. Someone came up and interrupted my conversation with a guest, making it known that he recognized me from Swinging Richards. I then watched him go around the room whispering this to everyone, and saw each individual pair of eyes cut across to me in scandalized glee.

Great.

Well, I’m not ashamed, so I didn’t avoid the conversations that followed. However, there was a distinct and sudden change in the way I was being treated. For the first few minutes I was simply mingling shyly and having light conversation. A few men had begun flirting with me (as gay men normally do with each other), and I was engaging in some intelligent discussions for a brief time.

Gradually, I was becoming the focus of everyone’s attention. I drank my second glass of wine too fast and had to sit down. Within a few moments I was blocked into a corner by a wall of crotches and people were feeling on my head, hair, shoulders, and arms. I started to get nervous actually. I was buzzed, didn’t know a single person there (except Dave, who was mingling elsewhere), didn’t know really where I even was (since I don’t live in Atlanta), and have a couple stories in my past that I’ve not shared yet concerning sexual assault. No one wanted to talk to me anymore, they wanted only to hurl their fantasies at me from every direction at once. A few proceded to tell me how far they could stick various objects inside themselves or other people. One went into great detail about how he knew how to fist someone deep enough to cradle a person’s heart in his hand and feel it beating. (It brings tears to my eyes and bit of a gag reflex in my thoat just thinking about the relish with which he describes this – it’s fine if you’re into fisting, but I’m very squeamish about some stuff).

I’m sorry, I don’t normally vent or curse here, but this is fucking ridiculous. I went there to talk about art, which was going just fine at first, but then I was suddenly transformed from a person into a rubber doll. I don’t tolerate this well at all, so I have to say that I’m proud of how diplomatically I diverted all this. I’m not sure anyone even knew I was offended, let alone a tad scared. As it became clear that I wasn’t going to perform any freakish circus acts on the spot, some lost interest and wandered away. From there I was able to manage and redirect the remaining conversations before excusing myself.

The kicker is that only at the end did I finally get to speak with the person whom I was brought there to meet. He was very excited about my projects. Just as I opened the door to leave he blurted out, “I’m so glad you’re a real dancer. Now I can have some respect for you.”

Well, fuck you too…

This party brought to roaring life all the many reasons I write this blog. When you interact with adult entertainers outside of where we work, please try to avoid reducing us to a pile of mechanized anatomical parts. I know it might be hard to believe, but we really do have feelings… Promise… Not making it up.