D: 10/22/02

Work Diary, 10/22/02

Everyone has a dirty little secret. Here is mine.

In a meeting that could be held only by three very stoned gay men, my
two friends and I decided to open an escort service. One friend was a
red head; the other, a blond; and I was the brunette. The red head had
the muscles from his gymnast days, my blond friend was the literary
type, and I?well, I guess I was the pretty one (ha!). I was sick of my
very non-glamorous job in which I waited tables in a retro restaurant
while roller-skating. Yes, roller-skating. Besides a very bad attitude,
I had calluses on my feet that could withstand molten lava. It was time
for a change.

All of us were Eurhythmics fans, so we chose the song title "Be
Yourself Tonight" as our business name. The name fit our mission
statement, it was different than the other escort names in the
newspaper, and we were shamelessly ready to begin our life of crime.
Anyway, as much money as we'd spent on Annie and Dave, it was time they
returned the favor.

I drew a silhouette of a man's face for the ad, filled out the
paperwork, and dropped it all off at the local gay rag. The clerk
didn't bat an eye as he reviewed my forms. Cost: $45.00, a pittance for
what would surely be a lucrative enterprise.

And it was, though it was far from what we expected. The phone rang
constantly, from actual clients to the menacing messages from other
escorts who hated us for taking over their turf. They were mistaken, of
course; their turf included sex-for-money, and we'd been very clear on
that from the start: Escort, yes; nooky, no.

What we offered was the simple package of a date with good
conversation, for the unbelievable fee of $50.00 per hour, two hours
minimum. It turns out we were going for cheap, but then, we also
weren't throwing in any extras.

Sordid? Maybe. Illegal? Entirely. We paid no taxes and, in fact, I kept
my earnings in the false bottom of a shoebox (who would steal a scabby
Nike box full of old bills?).

Once the sex question was out of the way with a client, the job was
pretty interesting. Sometimes it was downright fascinating. I once
spent five hours with a man from the East Coast who wanted me to take
him to all the hot spots around Denver. Since I didn't really go to any
hot spots, I found a few places in the phone book and we set out. He
even took me to dinner in a restaurant that featured the stuffed heads
of almost every living mammal on the planet. Fortunately, the client
was a married engineer whose life was boring but whose work kept my
eyes glued to him and not the pitiful dead animals surrounding us, all
of whom suffered from a dusty dandruff that was visible in the
restaurant's romantic lighting.

There was "Fat Frank," who lived in an immaculate though somewhat
sparse apartment. Fat Frank was recently divorced and clearly lonely;
ozone filled his apartment from the constant hum of the television.
FF's only requirement was a two-hour massage while he lay whalishly on
his bed. He was very thoughtful and heated up the lotion in his
microwave, and sometimes he'd fall asleep. We always knew when it was
time to start kneading him again because he grunt and snort and kind of
roll over.

Bob was a bouncer for a then-popular dance club, one of those places
with weak drinks and filthy restrooms but fabulous music. He'd
inherited quite a hefty sum from his father, though this boon wasn't
apparent in his apartment. He had two ice chests for chairs and a
soiled futon in the living room. I never saw his bedroom but his
bathroom always smelled like coconut. Bob's favorite thing was to go to
the very club where he worked and show off his prize catch for the
evening. He was quite boring but after I first met him, he bought a
gigantic TV that turned the actors a sickly yellow color but saved us
the trouble of having to make conversation.

Fred was rich and knew it. He had one of the most beautiful gardens
I've ever seen, and a treasure trove of Chinese artifacts scattered
about his house. He was the only client who had to be quickly scratched
off our list after he pawed my red headed friend and demanded some
reciprocal pawing. "Boundaries, boundaries," I sing-songed, hanging up
on him for the third time.

Jim, who'd been married to an invalid for decades, wore a very good
toupee and drove a Cadillac. He was a rocket scientist - literally. He
liked cheap hotel bars and linen sport coats, and he was the only
client I ever invited over to my apartment. The last time I spoke with
him, he told me he was getting ready to sell some invention of his for
millions of dollars. Somehow, I didn't believe him, which made me very
sad. He didn't call me after that. I still wonder if he could sense my
skepticism.

Rob was a football coach for the university. He wore his play-off ring,
featuring a huge ruby, right next to his wedding ring. Rob was a
ticking time bomb and didn't last long on the "Be Yourself Tonight"
client list. He liked to sneak the keys to the empty campus apartments
and meet us there, where he could drink beer and talk about how "men
should just love men" and "not be a bunch of sissy faggots." Those kind
of statements, when combined with alcohol, always made me keep one eye
on the door and the other on the brass poker next to the
fireplace.

Fear is what closed our doors for good, actually. I received a call
from someone new. He sounded nice - level headed, reasonable. He asked
me to wear a suit jacket and tie, a not unreasonable request. I drove
to the address I'd been given, knocked on the door, knocked again, and
stood for a couple of minutes in broad daylight, looking around me.
Finally I walked around to the side of the apartment, looked in a
window, and saw that no one lived there. The carpeting had been torn
up, paint cans littered the floor. Suddenly, that old movie chestnut,
"I've got a bad feeling about this," made a lot of sense to me. Was I
being watched at that very moment? Was this a police sting operation?
Was I about to be beaten to a bloody pulp by our rival escorts?

Naturally, I high-tailed it out of there and went home, checking the
rearview mirror the whole way. I quickly realized that the whole escort
thing was too stressful: the calls in the middle of the night, the
heavy breathers, the need to carry mace.

And the other two? We are friends no longer. The blond would move to
New York, discover its nastier side, and return to Denver. Now he works
at what is arguably the best independent bookstore in North America,
and he writes the occasional article for our local leftwing
newspaper.

The red head accused me of breaking up his relationship, stole my
favorite hat, and moved to San Francisco. He is still there, I think,
acting in and directing adult films.

Both scenarios depress me, but not because of the choices my former
friends have made. Sometimes, when I'm sitting alone in my house with
my eight sets of dishes and coffee table and guest bedroom, I long for
the days when I had the absolute gall to form "Be Yourself Tonight."
The irony of our company name is not lost on me. Was that really me, or
is the person writing this diary the real me? Am I both, maybe, and
waiting for something else?