first and third

I do it for the money, yes, but I realize that there are other reasons, too. First though, the money cannot be denied. Let's just get that out of the way so you don't think it is some Pulpish "Common People" desire to experience poverty and sex work. Today, it was get a blowjob from an old man or starve and die. I literally had one dollar as of this afternoon to last me two weeks and no food in the cupboards, and so this evening I headed out to 46th Street, to the Comfort Inn, and smoked some pot with this guy and got a blowjob from him and got paid a hundred twenty dollars. But here is where that other reason enters: When I was leaving his hotel, out on the street, a layer of ice on the sidewalk, heavy winds blowing twenty degree (I think even colder) gusts of air at me, I saw the lights of Times Square because that is where I was and I laughed and jumped up and down remembering David Wojnarowicz and his diary entries about doing the same thing in the same place, albeit a place that is not this Times Square, that Delaney Times Square (see Times Square Red, Times Square Blue). And I read my biography as it's written years from now, (don't lie, you do this, too) and see this area of my life where Q struggled and whored himself to make money. I think of all those other gay prostitute/writers/artists. There really are a lot of them, aren't there?

But yeah, we are not past that point yet where we continue to read the narrative about the rest of his life. Time has not given us enough distance from Q's whoring days to put them in the past tense, to place in him some Genet-Wojnarowicz-Leroy continuum. There he is setting his bag, his jacket, his sweater, shirt, pants, and underwear down on the chair while the short, fat, and old man stands across from him with his hand down his underwear pulling at a dick that doesn't get hard, watching Charlie undress.

Charlie goes to piss and the old man, glee in his eyes, watches him piss, fondles his cock while he's pissing and then sucks the piss off the tip of his cock as he finishes pissing and dribbles the last couple drops into the old man's mouth. Then pot was smoked, which made Charlie happy, really happy, because at this point in his life, he also was really into smoking pot for the first time in his whole life and is so fascinated by being stoned and wishes he had more money so that he could buy pot and not just smoke other people's. You see, he had never been into pot before and would normally pass it when it was offered to him. But these were new and heady days for our subject - he was experimenting with the last few things he had yet to: paid sex, pot, watersports, etc. And he laid back on a motel bed with sheets tucked in tightly underneath him and got a long, slow blowjob from this man, who gross as he was, gave excellent head. And no, Charlie said it had nothing to do with age when the old man bragged about his cocksucking skills, citing his age. Charlie had gotten the worst blowjob in his life from an even older man. But yes, he's told you the rest, he buttons his coat, walks out that door into the cold, coldest night of the year perhaps, and laughs, jumps up and down as he heads to the subway, really happy, and not for reasons you might think.

Q even tried to claim that the joy of that night was not one derived from fulfilling some "Pulpish Common People desire to experience poverty and sex work." From his background and writings, it is clear that in fact, this was the case - that he liked the aesthetic of this life more than the one of his suburban, Northern Virginia upbringing. This involvement with sex work was an attempt to appear gritty, to appear somehow more real is the perfect exemplar for this peculiar preoccupation that he had with how he appeared. This preoccupation was in no way confined to his case. Rather, it was endemic to the times, and many of his suburban bred peers had the same concern with authenticity. There was a lot of insecurity during those early years of the twenty-first century and people had sentimental attachments to the concept of authenticity and became obsessed with it. [For similar entries see: Lofts, Alt-country, and Organic]