or appearance: There are the young and the goodlooking ones—the ones about whom you wonder why they prefer to pay someone (who will most likely at least not indicate desiring them back) when there exists—much, much vaster than the hustling world—the world of unpaid, mutually desiring males—the easy pickups.... But often the scores are near-middle-aged or older men. And they are mostly uneffeminate. And so you learn to identify them by their method of approaching you (a means of identification which becomes instinctively surer and easier as you hang around longer). They will make one of the standard oriented remarks; they will offer a cigarette, a cup of coffee, a drink in a bar: anything to give them time in which to decide whether to trust you during those interludes in which there is always a suggestion of violence (although, for some, I would learn later, this is one of the proclaimed appeals—that steady hint of violence); time in which to find out if you’ll fit their particular sexfantasy.
I learned that there are a variety of roles to play if you’re hustling: youngman out of a job but looking; dont give a damn-youngman drifting; perrenialhustler easy to makeout; youngman lost in the big city please help me sir. There was, too, the pose learned quickly from the others along the street: the stance, the jivetalk—a mixture of jazz, joint, junk sounds—the almost-disdainful, disinterested, but, at the same time, inviting look; the casual way of dress.
And I learned too that to hustle the streets you had to play it almost-illiterate.
The merchant marine at the Y had been the first to tell me that With Mr. King I had merely acted instinctively. But I was to learn it graphically from a man I had met on Times Square. As he sat in his apartment studying me, I leafed through a novel by Colette. The man rose, visibly angered. “Do you read books?” he asked me sharply. “Yes,” I answered. “Then Im sorry, I dont want you anymore,” he said; “really masculine men dont read!” Hurriedly, his sexfantasy evaporated, he gave me a few bucks. Minutes later I saw him again on Times Square talking to another youngman....
And so I determined that from now on I would play it dumb. And I would discover that to many of the street people a hustler became more attractive in direct relation to his seeming insensitivity—his “toughness.” I would wear that mask.
By now, of course, I have met several of the shadows along Times Square.
There was Carlo, an actor, whom I met coming out of the subway head, who took me home and for a week came on strong—“helping me out”: How sad that I should hang around the streets. If I move in with him, he’ll give me Everything I Need. And when I was almost conned, he got a job in Hollywood, and, with apologies, split, giving me $5.00 that night—and a smiling! triumphant! goodbye!...
And Raub—a bastard—whose frog-shape and inclinations make me remember him as a “fraggot”—the fraggot with the enormous black-velvetdraped bed on Park Avenue: I was swiftly succeeded by, as I had very briefly succeeded, a string of others.... And there was Lenny from New Jersey, whom I saw twice a week, until one night he didn’t show; and I learned later he’d been arrested for selling pornographic pictures.
There was, too, Im perversely glad to tell you, a cop met in an extension of the same world of 42nd Street. After midnight walking from the west to the east side, I crossed Central Park, and he was out rousting the bums sleeping in the park—the wagon parked a distance away. When he stopped me, I came on I was square: Just Now Came To The Big City. And he goes through the identification scene. “Well, you havent really seen New York then,” he said. “Maybe I can meet you somewhere on my day off and I’ll
I learned that there are a variety of roles to play if you’re hustling: youngman out of a job but looking; dont give a damn-youngman drifting; perrenialhustler easy to makeout; youngman lost in the big city please help me sir. There was, too, the pose learned quickly from the others along the street: the stance, the jivetalk—a mixture of jazz, joint, junk sounds—the almost-disdainful, disinterested, but, at the same time, inviting look; the casual way of dress.
And I learned too that to hustle the streets you had to play it almost-illiterate.
The merchant marine at the Y had been the first to tell me that With Mr. King I had merely acted instinctively. But I was to learn it graphically from a man I had met on Times Square. As he sat in his apartment studying me, I leafed through a novel by Colette. The man rose, visibly angered. “Do you read books?” he asked me sharply. “Yes,” I answered. “Then Im sorry, I dont want you anymore,” he said; “really masculine men dont read!” Hurriedly, his sexfantasy evaporated, he gave me a few bucks. Minutes later I saw him again on Times Square talking to another youngman....
And so I determined that from now on I would play it dumb. And I would discover that to many of the street people a hustler became more attractive in direct relation to his seeming insensitivity—his “toughness.” I would wear that mask.
By now, of course, I have met several of the shadows along Times Square.
There was Carlo, an actor, whom I met coming out of the subway head, who took me home and for a week came on strong—“helping me out”: How sad that I should hang around the streets. If I move in with him, he’ll give me Everything I Need. And when I was almost conned, he got a job in Hollywood, and, with apologies, split, giving me $5.00 that night—and a smiling! triumphant! goodbye!...
And Raub—a bastard—whose frog-shape and inclinations make me remember him as a “fraggot”—the fraggot with the enormous black-velvetdraped bed on Park Avenue: I was swiftly succeeded by, as I had very briefly succeeded, a string of others.... And there was Lenny from New Jersey, whom I saw twice a week, until one night he didn’t show; and I learned later he’d been arrested for selling pornographic pictures.
There was, too, Im perversely glad to tell you, a cop met in an extension of the same world of 42nd Street. After midnight walking from the west to the east side, I crossed Central Park, and he was out rousting the bums sleeping in the park—the wagon parked a distance away. When he stopped me, I came on I was square: Just Now Came To The Big City. And he goes through the identification scene. “Well, you havent really seen New York then,” he said. “Maybe I can meet you somewhere on my day off and I’ll
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