Note For Rent

A Moving Target

I was worried that a good friend might have a tumour. He went for an MRI, and we found out that he was fine; but the next day a different friend tested positive after his visit to the Clinic; so it is his life, instead, that has been turned inside out. What a bloody mess.

The world gets rearranged so quickly. He is not very old, my newly positive friend. He is, in fact, quite young; and foolish in the way that the very young are, out in the world on their own recognizance for the first time, getting into trouble and making bad decisions. Confusing distinctions like sex and love. Confusing them, and spinning like a needle at a magnetic pole, as you can; as you do when you can feel your attention being pulled outwards by all the things so worthy of attention, the beautiful things on the horizon. And now he doesn’t know where to look at all. The horizon isn’t where he thought it was. Negative and positive not just words, but actual polarities.

I received a phone call the day he found out. He left a message asking me to call him back. It was just a few words, but you can hear the tone in the voice, something bad enough that it makes your heart skip a beat in panic. I’m a terrible one for returning phone calls in a timely fashion, but I dialled him immediately. “I got some bad news,” he said, and my soul shrunk a little. I collapsed a little inwards as I tried to think.

He (Midway, let’s call him) is the first friend I’m aware of to have been diagnosed during the course of a friendship. It’s hard to know what to say, especially to someone so obviously still assembling their abilities and tools to deal with life and the world. You don’t know what they’ve already thought of, what they’ve sorted out for themselves; and you don’t want to patronize, or drown someone in cliché; but there are also things that you need to say, and things that people need to hear, after a doctor detonates bad news from behind a desk, sitting in a sterile office. This is not the end. Things are not what they were. You’re not going to die today.

But the diagnosis is a fatality. It kills that certain mystery that wanders about, haunts especially the gay man’s life. The spectral question that swings over the consummation of all those sexual fancies, it gets released; and you suddenly know what’s most likely to do you in, in the end. If you ignore the likelihood of buses and trains, or terrorist explosions mid-air, the seal of your death gets stamped on your passport out. It becomes something to hold and look at. Stare at. Something very heavy indeed.

So what do you say? Illness is so arbitrary, so moral-less, that unless you can believe in a vengeful God, there’s nowhere to really point the finger. Everyone can be careful, and take precaution, cover penises in latex -- or every piece of furniture in cellophane, wear Kleenex boxes on your feet -- but you cannot take a hold of all the variables; the microscopic world is beyond our ability to manage. Ultimately, you can only play the odds, imagine the likelihood of running into unfavourable circumstances, and hope for the best. Worse things happen, I could say that. Worse things happen to better people, all the time; and something’s going to kill us all, in the end.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” was what I settled on. “What do you need?”

“Hugs,” Midway said.

It is heavy, whatever it is or turns out to be: skulking tumour, broken part or invisible virus. It’s a dense presence warping the field, drawing the fabric down like that lead marble on the sheet, showing us where all thoughts go; the gravity-well of a designated future. You have to do things differently, now. Every time you think of the future, there is a point you get drawn to, unavoidably. That’s what can ruin a life. If you can’t find a way to accommodate the change, the weight of probable cause can make you lose it. You can fight the fact and lose it.

It was such a sunny day for bad news. Somewhere, someone is cheerful, I thought.

The spectre of the degenerate alphabet had to make it in here sooner or later. I have sat down to write about the stacked letters (stacked in the senses of connotation and fairness; loaded in the sense of how dangerous three characters can be, how three characters can lead to four, and how you are tested on them); yes, been at the computer a few times, and the attempts have not come off well. It’s a morass in there, all the stigmas interlaced with fear and confusion. These are viruses that are identified with morality, and so many self-righteous opinions in the way, secular and non.

You can’t avoid HIV in the sex industry. You have to think about it all the time. You have to worry about it all the time. We are all cautious, or say we are. I only really know what I do, the care I take when I’m working and playing. I go through condoms like water. I use them for friggin’ everything anal – but I’m not obsessive, double bagging or fretting over a little oral-genital contact. My threshold of concern hovers around what I see as the likelihood of infection, from all the things that I’ve read, the advice of my doctor; and I also have an unwillingness to live a life paranoid – I prefer to live it practical. Others have different lines drawn. I worry about the really young ones, those that believe that they don’t have to give it a concern, because it hasn’t touched them yet. They don’t know, and no one has died; and they make some foolish decisions. I’m dumbstruck when some of their ideas fall out of their mouths, the misguided illusions that appear sometimes when you’re both naked, and they just tell you to forget it. I’ve made it a point now to highlight how stupid they’re being.

“You’re going to encounter it, sooner than you’d like to.” And fervently hope that it won’t be you that gets unlucky, that you’ll play the odds, stack them in you favour, and get to walk away with just some stories and a few hickies, not unwanted visitors in the blood. We influence random chance with pragmatism.

Unless you believe in a vengeful God. I sometimes do when I’m sleepless, staring at the irrational labyrinths on the ceiling, and trying and trace a path out of the worst convolutions and dead ends. Those nights, I can’t help but picture Him with a handful of feathered atrocities, carelessly practicing His aim. Throwing darts at the human board.

On

I make coffee the way Faust would have drank it, somewhat reminiscent of pitch, and capable of caffeinating an ungirded sentient into another plane of existence -- which is just as it should be, far as I'm concerned.

I had a couple of cups as I was getting ready for a late-night booking, as I was flagging, and less than my normal, scintillating self. Job went off without a hitch, but now it's Three AM. I have read two short stories, a magazine article, and have gone back to a novel I left off a few months ago; still, no exhaustion... not even a droopy lid.

I've done this to myself. Oh, tempting demon; all my choices have been my own.

Room Keys

I like being able to say "no". This may be a character flaw, but it feels good; it feels like I've been waiting to say it for months... years, maybe.

Can you do it for less? How about water-sports? You're having a good time, how about another fifteen minutes, free of charge?

No. No, no, no. But considerately, of course: sweetly; patiently; sympathetically... concierge style. I've always been one to kill with kindness, smother resistance under the down pillow of an accommodating smile.

See what a few years of customer service will teach you?

I really like being in control of my own docket. If these first couple of weeks handling myself are any indication, moving my clientèle exclusively towards a more executive class is not going to be nearly as hard as I thought. Thanks to my price point, my ability to write decent advertising copy, and the aplomb with which I wield a negative response, I'm already got a start on my very own Little Black Book, something which is making me feel very authentic and professional as a prostitute. I think I make things out in my head to be more complicated than they often are in real life. Had I known it was going to be so easy to differentiate myself in the market, I would have done this months ago.

Live and learn.

I also much prefer working in hotels. There is something certain and polished about preforming sex-for-pay were everything is buffed, sanitized and wrapped individually before you even get there, and the knowledge that any residuals left behind will be swept away and binned the next day. I like the solid beds, and the big, over-sized white towels.

As I was pulling my socks the right way out to pull them back onto my feet, I was chatting with a client. Somehow the conversation turned to favourite hotels (interesting because, although I've seen the insides of a great many of them, very seldom have I paid to stay in one, whereas he lives out of them for almost half the year) when out of the blue, he launched into a strange little almost-tirade.

"But Montreal, this is why you can't trust them! They insist on calling it Quatre Saisons!"

"The Four Seasons?" I asked.

"No, no! Quatre Saisons, there. They have to change the name of everything."

"But it's just a direct translation..."

"The French are always doing stuff like that!"

"And, I don't think there is a Four Seasons in Montreal. Not from the hotel group*, anyway."

"You wouldn't know because they re-name everything!"

Okay. At that point I thought it best to wrap the conversation up with a different topic.

"But you're off to Bangkok next, aren't you? That'll be a nice change."

"The bloody French," he muttered.

"Goodnight," I said slipping out the door.

You sometimes wonder what little thought-projects accumulate in the minds of people, the stuff that brews far away from the conversations of the everyday. I assure you, have sex with a few for money, and you'll get some idea; whether you want to, or not.

* They don't. I looked it up.

I'm On Me Mobile

I now have two phones. One is a fancy, bells-and-whistles sort of deal: it blinks, and croons, and gets my attention with pretty little animated graphics. It begs me to use it's 3 mega-pixel camera. It intermittently reminds me that it can disseminate Microsoft Office documents, fax things, do the laundry, order pizza from the moon....

It winks at me in the dark from my bedside table.

Frankly, it's a bit of a lemon (I won't tell you what kind it is 'cause, well frankly... they're listening....) and lately, besides Spark, hardly anyone calls me on it.

The other is black; mat and jet; simple. Flip it open: keypad, back-lit cool blue, with simple ring-tones. It's battery lasts for friggin' days.

It cost me about 10 times less* than the giggle-me-widget contraption, and when it goes off, people offer me money.

I like the money phone.

* This is a bit of a lie. It would have cost me about 10 times more to buy the uber-phone, but it's getting whittled down in instalments, and I fully intend to skip the country before come close to even a fraction of the contract.

Romance and Modifiers

A few things (mostly) unrelated to work:

* I have continued to date Spark, which has probably been wise, as well delightful. We get on well, and if you're going to see someone romantically when you're a hooker, words can't really express the simplicity achieved by dating another one. He's actually had a greater amount of experience in the field than I have, and being able to trade war stories after a couple of days apart really helps to clear out any residual emotional backlog that can sometimes accumulate as you jump from bed to bed, in and out of position. As we're both traveling, the romance has taken on a dewy, rose-coloured summer-fling type quality -- which is about all the romance that I'm really built to handle at this point in my life. Vive l'amour temporaire!

* I am packing up and organizing myself to make it to this. I fear I may be traveling to gay Mecca.

* As I continue to not drink, I move closer and closer to becoming a morning person. This disturbs me.

* I have a new favourite band. Justin, they'd climb up onto your sexyback and ride you like bad, bad pony.

* Unbidden, life plans have begun to formulate out of the nether-regions of my psyche. Apparently certain ideas and prospects have been circulating amongst themselves back in the vaults, because I woke up a week or two ago and realized that I had a plan, and that the plan was good. Sex-work being what it is, that mysterious way station between so many things, it has never bidden a greater calling for me -- its fascination has primarily been to uncover the secret faces, and get a sense for the characters that people it -- but what my experience has revealed is a wonderful support mechanism that I can use to facilitate other ambitions. Money has never had enough of an allure to rule (re: motivate) me, and consequently my potential earning power has never looked terribly promising -- my family points out that I have made some astonishingly un-prudent choices -- but with my ability to work this angle now fully mapped out, apparently I've become empowered to make some decisions that I otherwise would have been unable to. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

I could explain what the plan is, but that would be telling.

* I keep coming back to the desire to get my nipples pierced, primarily because I think it'd be sexy as hell, and as my nipples have been more or less duking it out with my cock for primacy as an erogenous zone for as long as I can remember, getting them outfitted with little metal barbells might just settle the argument once and for all. I had almost given up on the idea until I had a client (a very dirty old man, bless him) really into tattoos and piercings, who kept mentioning how he wanted to do mine for free, and when he showed me his I was so turned on that I mounted him. The only catch is that I would need to give the poor things six weeks to heal, so if I'm going to do it, I'm also going to have to go on hiatus.

Modus Operandi

I have to say that I was prepared for it. After looking at all the ads put up by other guys promoting their services around the Web, with their warnings of "No Time Wasters" and such, I figured that I'd get a number of calls from guys thinking that they wanted an escort, right up until they had to commit, or realise that they were actually going to have to pay, and then back out at the last moment. I guessed, even before I put up the ad, that I would get a ratio of something like three or four soft enquiries for every hard booking. The ratio's solid, and has turned out about right, but it's always interesting to see what form the time-wasting takes, and how they'd like to engage you without actually devoting any capital to the experience. Attempts to foray into dirty talk on the phone (a late night occurrence, I've worked out -- no more taking calls after 10pm), and clever lines of reasoning to try and haggle are at the top of the list. Sometimes they make me furrow my brow:

"So, how much would it be for one hour of erotic massage, and a half hour of escort?"

Um. It kinda makes you want charge a consulting fee.

I'm still getting procedure mapped out, and diplomatic, pat answers to common questions so I don't come off as an ass-hole, but this morning I had two separate hopefuls try to book me, and then try to get around the travel fee by saying that they would come and collect me, and return me home after, in their own car. When I didn't agree, both dropped me like a hot cookie tray. At the time, I hadn't really brought my faculties to bear on the issue to have a sufficient explanation for them -- it was fairly early in the morning, and I hadn't had any coffee -- but the more I think about it, the longer the list becomes as to why such an arrangement is a bad idea. Observe:

1) Safety. Mum always told me not to get into a strangers car, and I'm sticking to that piece of wisdom, thank you. I require a phone number and an address before I go anywhere for a job. I call the number to confirm before I head out, and if you're not there when I arrive, I'm coming straight home. Climbing into your mystery vehicle and being spirited off to my supposed destination does not peace of mind invoke.

2) Time management. Time really is money. The idea behind managing my own portfolio is that I won't be seeing as many clients in a week, however, as some derivative of Murphy's Law, it can be guaranteed that everyone who wants to see you will probably want to around the same time on the same day/s. I can't be waiting around for you to come an collect me on your own schedule, be it early or late, and hope that you're an efficient driver.

3) Privacy. I don't want you to know my neighbourhood, let alone my address. Let me tell you, stalking often begins very innocently -- those nice ones that seem so kind and attentive? They are, but they're also inclined to obsessive, creepy behaviour under the right circumstances. Better they don't have any idea which streets to troll up and down. Especially if they own a car.

4) Hassle. As there's no way that I'd be letting you pick me up at my front door, so I'd still have to get myself organised, out of the house and to a rendezvous point to meet you, which half-defeats the purpose of you coming to collect me in the first place.

5) Value. Probably most key. It's the value of my time, and the quality energy that it takes to spend with a client. As I've said before, I enjoy my sessions with my guys for the most part, but it is work, and it taps reserves of attention and energy that run deep, right to the source. Putting on the glamour, focusing your mojo for another person requires something that you can't just rely on indefinitely. Bridging the gap during a car ride is not only going to be awkward, but also draining. I can use the ride in a cab to put it on, pull the persona over to fit, feel sexy with it, and get into the right frame of mind. Forced small-talk in a closed space is just that, forced, and it's not doing anyone any favours. So, if I'm going to be in your presence, sorry, but it's going to have to be on the clock.

If ever asked again, I think I'm just going to site the safety thing.

Notes Passed

Oooh. It's official Bleeding Hearts Day... that is to say, Valentine's or some-such. Has anyone agreed on which story/myth, or which saint for that matter, we're referring to when it comes to this bloody arrow? I get conflicting references.

Sorry about the lack of posting -- I've been up to my eyeballs in the sticky logistics of managing my own clients; but it looks like I've hammered out a system to vet them, adopted a firm yet encouraging phone manner, and bought a high-quality day planner, so I'll be quitting the Confederacy as of next week, which should free up a great deal of time. Ergo, more pieces on the web, and a harder time explaining to the flatmate how I seem to make money without going anywhere for long periods of time. If only he didn't know that I went to the gym....

Everyone, give your darlings a smack on the ass for me -- in the spirit of romance.

Hey! I've been fingered by Chelsea Girl over at Fleshbot. I've been waiting months for that to happen.

They do God's work there. Kudos, kids. Kudos.

Procedures In Marketing (re: Vanity)

* On my rather dawdling, poky quest to go solo -- cast off the shackles of the Confederacy and build a private client base where I am my own authority -- I finally came to that bridge where I had to shuck my clothes and pose in front of a camera. The attitudes I struck for this particular shutterbug were not terribly impressive, but then again, he was closer to an enthusiast than a professional, so I wasn't squandering my dime by not being at my personal best. I am one of those unfortunate people who, although I can strike a devastating posture alone with the mirror, or even (it has been said) dancing on stage, the threat of a recording device makes me unable to find a comfortable angle for my neck, or even remember that I have good posture -- I'm frankly incapable of smiling naturally if I'm forced to think about it. Consequently, I did look a fright in some of the photos. Damn that mechanical, unblinking eye.

But I was unrealistically dismal in my assessment of the shoot as I walked home, scuffing with the soles of my shoes, and grumbling about being more photogenic: a bunch of the pics didn't turn out half bad. I busied myself today rendering the lighting a little more flattering and amputating my head with Photoshop, so now I finally have some calling-card images, framed and posted on my very first commercial attempt at the Inter-web. Small steps to Independence.

The photographer did the deed out of good graces and desire to build his own portfolio. Bless him, he did try to get me to sport a woody for him, but as I didn't know the burgeoning artist from Adam, my reasoning held that I could still maintain plausible deniability should images of yours truly ever surface, with a head, somewhere on the shore of the Net's river of data. Someone could find the body. It's just art, darling. Art.

As grateful as I am for the Confederacy, along with our bookers and handlers, I'm finding the constraints on my time and my money less and less tolerable. One of the benefits of whoring has always supposed to have been free time, after all, and I've been finding myself underwhelmed on this count, as I subject myself weekly to working designated shifts that are still so prone to the ebb and flow of inbound clients. Where is my stable of horny gentlemen? My roster of affluent patrons? Perhaps waiting in the wings.

I steadfastly refuse to fall into a maudlin rut at this point in my life. Months ago, choices were made to avoid a number of things; poverty, for one; boredom, most especially, was another. If prostitution isn't providing a reprieve from at least those two, then it's probably time to pack it up and head home -- something I don't feel I'm ready to do, just yet. My plans have never been of a definite sort, but I do know when I'm not living up to my own wordless expectations.

As far as managing my own talent goes, the whole process feels a little like the first day of school: entering into a situation both familiar and totally alien, with the tense promise of new-beginnings and unknown quantities. I certainly don't know what I'm going to be learning at this stage in the game -- it's a new syllabus, after all -- but I'm prepared to do the work; and it's a great excuse to buy all new materials.

I guess I'm off to the shop.

* And for those of you who've been wondering and pestering me: yes, that nipple belongs to me.

Law of Averages

Sometimes you don't know what you're going to pull out of the hat.

"What would you like me to do?"

"Um... I want to do to you."

Okay. So, I just lay back and...

One lick and one kiss: left nipple, right nipple, belly button. Pause. Suck cock, for about twenty seconds. Pause. Repeat.

For an hour and a fucking half. I'm not kidding.