I began to hang out at Jack's Bop Town, an after-hours jazz place on Post near Fillmore, in the black section of town. It was a dilapidated old place which has since been torn down, but we loved it. The prices were reasonable and the company, mostly black, was lively and entertaining. Like all after-hours clubs, Jack's was loud and smoky. It was a place that reeked of life, and sometimes death. Characters that would have had our great American authors scrambling for their typewriters were abundant. I learned a lot at Jack's.
It was my first real exposure to the drag world. At that time only musicians smoked marijuana, and only people who lived in the black Fillmore ghetto of San Francisco were on junk. The cops never bothered places like Jack's, so it was known as "safe." The only white people tolerated there were musicians who could blow jazz like the blacks, no Lawrence Welk types. If you had soul in you, it came out the minute you blew your horn or hit a drum skin. If you didn't, you got frozen out with hostile looks and threatening manners. And if that didn't work, somebody simply stuck a knife into your gut, so you'd get the hint that your presence was not appreciated.
There were no honky tourists at Jack's. Knife fights were fairly common, and bleeding people always seemed to make it outside, so that the place wouldn't get a bad name.
The first time I went into the John there was a guy at the.urinal, pissing. Next to him, on the toilet, sat a black chick with a tourniquet around her arm, shooting shit into her veins with an eyedropper needle and a rust-colored spoon. She didn't even look up when I entered. The guy finished, so I took my turn. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, and she was breathing deeply. I could see the darkish needle marks all over her arm.
All of the junkies were black and all of the women were prostitutes, working the white trade in the Fillmore or the Tenderloin. After a while I got to know most of them on a first-name basis, and they looked after me as they might look after a little brother. But it all was superficial. When you're on junk you think about only one thing, your next pop. Junk was all you lived for. People would go into, the John, looking fidgety and nervous, and come out in a calm stupor, eyes dilated and gait temporarily steady. There was so much shit around you could make a buy openly from almost any cat. Nobody was sweating it. It wasn't uncommon to see some pretty perverse sights. This was before the pill, and one thing the local hookers didn't need was to be knocked up. The garbage cans in the alley beside Jack's had seen more than one newborn, smothered to death, wrapped uncaring in newspaper, and dumped unceremoniously along with the eggshells and old potato skins. Once I saw a pretty, young black girl sitting on top of a table at Jack's, nursing a baby obviously fathered by some anonymous white John. To everybody who passed" by she would ask, "Take my baby, mister? Take my baby? Please take my baby?" She didn't want to kill it, as the sisters of her trade had done with theirs, but she couldn't work to support her habit and be a mother at the same time. Knowing what I now know, it's hard to believe that most of those babies didn't die from narcotic-induced respiratory depression at birth.
I got to know them all, those who worked the Tenderloin, the Fillmore, the International Settlement, and the fancy Nob Hill hotels. As time went on we broke a lot of bread together, those broads and I. Aside from the junkies, they all were good friends. Many times when it was very late, when I was tired from playing a gig or hustling too many Johns, I would stay at the apartment of one or another until it was time to go to school. If they weren't living with an "old man" or a lesbian friend, we often slept in the same bed, often naked, but I never tried to touch one of them. We were close in a way that made it kind of like sleeping with your sister. Even though I would have loved to have fucked a few of them, their attitude made it plain that they weren't interested in.me, or any man except maybe their boyfriend or lover.
I never asked my friends how they got into the trade, but through normal conversation I usually found out anyway. They were all adamant about my staying in school and getting good grades, and eating well and sleeping enough. The good grades I did get were more to please them than my parents. A few of the girls even used to buy clothes and small presents for me. They loved to play mother to somebody who they didn't really have to take care of. It made them feel more like real women.
Most people think that all whores are the same, but this is a fallacy. As in any other profession, there is a pecking order. At the top is the call girl. These girls work in several ways and fall into several subcategories, but they have in common the fact that they all are young and beautiful; or, to turn it around, you won't find any old or ugly call girls. Most of them have at least a high-school education and quite a few have been to college. Polly, an old call-girl friend of mine, was working for her master's degree in sociology.
The call girl is the cream of the play-for-pay crop. Some are in it part time, and some full time. I have met office workers, secretaries, stewardesses, nurses, and even schoolteachers who had a setup with a telephone. Some of them go into prostitution for a definite goal, saving enough money to buy a lot of blue-chip stocks, buying a fashionable boutique or even wanting to meet and marry some rich but stupid guy. Others get into it because they can't think of an easier way to make a buck than by lying on their backs. Some do double duty, living part time in a house where they meet a select number of Johns by careful prearrangement, including the use of code phrases, and taking calls from "safe" Johns at local high-class hotels. Others work only the houses, and still others work only the hotels. This is the kind of girl a visiting businessman can take out on the town for an enjoyable evening, knowing in advance that he will be able to fuck her. It usually costs him one hundred to two hundred dollars for the evening, or twenty-five to fifty for just a quick one. Depending on the John's proficiency, that amounts to just about one buck per stroke.
Some call girls do accomplish their goals and get out of the business, but most get into The Life too deeply. If they ever did enjoy sex, they don't anymore. If they ever really liked men, many turn sour and go lesbian, not because they tend to learn that way but because they've become disgusted with the selfish barbarity of the male animal. And if some modern authorities don't agree on this point, then I say they're full of bullshit.
After a while the eyes begin to go hard, the wrinkles start to show, the alcohol or pill consumption goes up, and the call girl finds herself on the next rung down the ladder.
She becomes a bar pickup, competing with many amateurs. I've spent a fair amount of time playing cocktail lounges and I've seen all types. If I played a bar and saw a single chick, or two girls sitting together, I never assumed anything in advance, because there were too many possibilities. They could be a couple of chicks from the office up the street out for an honest drink together, with no thought of foolin' around. They could be single girls hunting for a date, and, hopefully, a husband. The chances were very good that they were a couple of divorcees, lonely for male company. They could be out to pick up a couple of guys to buy them dinner, planning a fast brush-off after the liqueur, and this was quite frequent. They could be office workers, nurses, etc., who were also part-time bar whores. Or they could be ex-call girls who couldn't cut it in the big money, top circuit, anymore. The biggest menace was the alcoholic, and there were a lot of them. They could bleed-a wallet dry hi record time, and then look- fox another sucker. I don't know what it is about alcoholic women, but many of them seem to prefer open-toed shoes, or sling-pumps or mules. I would look at the shoes first, and if I saw toes sticking out, I would forget it. A bulging belly or roll of fat around the middle is another tip-off to the alky. On the other hand, if I saw a girl with a very large handbag, called a "trick bag" in the trade, I knew that she was a pro, and needed the large bag for douche equipment, spare stockings, panties, etc. When these broads couldn't make a living in the bars anymore, there was only one place for them to go, the street.
Nowhere in all of whoredom are there more different types than among the streetwalkers, who have their own hierarchy. The better-dressed, nonflagrant ones usually went the route from call girl to bar girl to street girl. They could be found in the classier tourist areas of town, around the strip joints on Broadway, and the better downtown hotels. Most worked alone or with other girls; very few had pimps.
The street girls have then: own way of doing things. They will smile at a single man as they pass him on the street. They will walk slowly and stop often, always trying to put themselves into a position where a man will talk to them. They will then try to get the guy into a doorway, where they will ask if he is interested in a "date." If he says that he is, they will ask point blank if he is a cop. Because the lady hustler, just like the male, has to be smart. She knows that enticing by police officers is illegal, so even if the John is a cop and she takes money from him he still can't arrest her. Either way, she's pretty safe. Lower-class streetwalkers usually get hustled for vagrancy or some other nuisance charge, and then have to spend the night in the can, get a VD examination, which is usually positive, a shot in the ass, and a fine.
Higher-class streetwalkers usually aren't bothered too much by the police. They prefer to get convention Johns to take them back to the hotel, but often this is not possible. The John might be a local married man, or a conventioneer with a blue-nosed roommate or a wife waiting back at his own hotel. So the girls usually keep what they call "trick pads." These are rooms in cheaper downtown hotels or apartment houses. The girl pays 'the rent and the John is usually not expected to cough up anything for the room. The girls don't live there, the pad is strictly for sex tricks. Many make their residence in nice apartments out in the districts, or even in homes, if they have children, where a babysitter or husband may wait while the girl commutes downtown to work. But if high-class streetwalkers are subtle, the low-class girls are the extreme opposite.
They come from varied backgrounds. A few started as call girls or bar girls and worked their way down. Most are junkies of the type I knew at Jack's. Many are just poor ghetto girls or uneducated white girls who can't make it any other way.
Almost all of them work with colorfully dressed, Cadillac-driving pimps, who bleed the girls of almost every cent they make in order to keep them in bondage. In return, the pimps bail out the girls when they get busted, and beat up their own girls if they appear to be goofing off. They stay close but out of sight all evening, ostensibly to protect their property from bad-humored Johns, but actually to be sure that the girls don't hold back any cash from them. Anytime we'd see a girl walking around with braises and a lip like a harmonica, we'd know that her "old man" had caught her trying to pocket a few bucks for herself.
The white girls mainly work the Tenderloin, and the blacks, the Fillmore. A few have trick pads and may keep their own cheap hotel room in the same or a nearby building. Most, however, have arrangements with a local hotel that the John will pay four or five dollars for the use of a room for a few minutes. They may rent the same flea-infested room ten or fifteen times per night. The tricks mostly are servicemen and blue-collar people, with a smattering of conventioneers who don't know any better.
These low-class streetwalkers are obvious in their dress and brazen in their approach. They will walk right up to a single man and ask him if he wants a date. If he declines, they will yell profanities at him all the way down the street. Around payday it's not uncommon for them to get drunken servicemen to their trick pads and have their pimps show up to roll the poor bastards. Car tricks also are common. A lot of guys will cruise, looking for girls from their cars, or the girls will go right up and proposition single guys stopped at red lights. They will drive to some dark alley and service the guy right in his car. Actually, they prefer this because it's quicker and because they know their old man is probably parked a few cars in back of them.
To all whores, time is money and only a volume business counts. The prices go up on payday and down before the end of the month, when all the Johns are broke. The girls use lots of little tricks to help conserve time and energy. Some are so good that corporate efficiency experts could take lessons from them.
They don't wander too far from their trick pads, or too much time will be wasted in walking the John back. They will blow any guy who will allow it, to conserve the delicate membranes of their cunts. Failing that, they will jack the John's cock until he's so close he can't stand it, and the second he shoves it in he'll come, thus protecting the girl's most precious resource, her pussy. If they can't do either, they'll let the John slip it in, and then, faking passion, jerk their hips and hump so violently that before the guy knows what's happened he's shot his wad. Toward the end of the evening, when their cunts are sore and the Johns are full of booze, or when they're menstruating, many will resort to a technique called "greasing." A girl will surreptitiously slip a little vaseline or KY on the palm of her hand. Then, when the John goes to shove his prick in, she'll move her cunt up out of the way and grab his rod with the greased hand. The John feels something soft and slippery and think's he's got it in her, when really all he's getting is jacked off. Some of the girls are so good at greasing that even sober Johns don't know the difference.
New call girls are the only ones who seem to enjoy sex at all. After a while it becomes more and more distasteful to them, and if not distasteful, then neutral, like washing your hands. At the other levels of whoredom the girls are so hung up on their personal problems, drugs, booze, or general neuroses, that they don't have the capacity to enjoy sex. It's simply a way to make a living, and from a moral point they'd think no more of screwing you than they would of having a fast cup of coffee.
One type of whore I haven't yet mentioned is the queen. Queens are male transvestites or transsexuals who dress like women; they are not homosexuals in the strict sense. Some of them dress so garishly that they are obvious even to the squares. Their mincing walk and over exaggeration of what they consider feminine is so outlandish that they couldn't fool anybody. But there are others with the same sex drives and more brains. They shave their legs, tape down their useless cock and balls, wear good falsies or get hormone injections to increase their breast size, dress like regular female whores, and wear the same high-type wigs that their sisterly sisters wear. They apply makeup heavily but not too heavily and modify their motions to a near approximation of a real female. They also work the lower-class bars and hustle on the street.
Those of us who spent any time around the Tenderloin could spot a dragster a block away, but the squares from Podunk and the servicemen got taken again and again. The techniques of their hustling were interesting. Of course, they would always try to blow a John if possible. If the John didn't want to be blown, these "girls" had a way of throwing their legs back and taking pricks up their asses. They had engaged in anal intercourse for years, and regarded their assholes as a normal woman regards her vagina. They would give their trick a story about being in a hurry, or being afraid that a boyfriend might come in, so they wouldn't have to strip- Then they'd take the poor bastard up the bung, and usually he never knew the difference.
Tourists were often taken, too. There's the story about a Cleveland salesman who went into a queen palace, or bar where transsexuals hang out, but he didn't know what kind of place it was. He picked up a girl and took her to a table in the back, where she bled him for a few overpriced drinks. He figured he was going to get his money's worth, and slipped his hand up her nylons. Just as he was going into shock from grabbing balls instead of cunt, the fuzz busted in and raided the joint. Mr. Cleveland was so embarrassed that the cops felt sorry for him and let him go.
There was a fairly high mortality rate among the queens in the Tenderloin. Sooner or later some suspicious John would find them out. Usually the queens just got the shit beaten out of them by an irate customer, but occasionally one would get killed. If the Johns didn't kill them, other queens, jealous over a stolen lover or some imaginary slight, would carve them up. Petty jealousies and irrational thinking were a way of life for the queens. They always made me sad, these poor souls, trapped in a body despicable to them, with their falsetto voices and continual mock-hilarity. On the inside they were so lonely and misunderstood that many of those who weren't murdered committed suicide. Maude, with her high blond wig, purple dresses, and net stockings, looking like a leftover from a macabre Halloween party, was a friend of mine. She was always laughing, always gay and happy, hadn't a care in the world. She was found dead on the floor of her ratty hotel room. Her severed cock and balls were in her hand, and near her was found a note which read simply, "Dearies: I never wanted them anyway."
Many came to the Tenderloin, ostracized from their homes and small towns all over the country, only to end up like Maude.
When I didn't go to Jack's after work, or if I didn't have a gig to blow, I would hustle. It never became a thing with me the way it did with many hustlers. I never counted to see how many tricks I could turn in a night, and I was lucky that most evenings I worked I could make between fifty and eighty dollars, or three to four tricks.
After being blown I would clean my tool and then get some coffee, or drop into the Streets of Paris for a while. In about forty-five minutes I would go to the men's room and try to work up a hard-on. If I was even half successful I would go back out to the street and look for another trick.
At first Bobby and I worked together, but it became increasingly difficult. He was never around when I was, and vice versa. If we ran into each other it would usually be by accident. I found out about other good hustling spots around the Tenderloin, and I used those, also. Further down Market between Third and Fourth in front of another hot-dog stand that had girlie films in back was pretty good. Still lower on Market was a theater that showed risquй movies, and standing in front of it wasn't too bad. The corner of Powell and Geary was very good on weekends, and Union Square was best during the day but dangerous as hell at night, when the freaks came out.
Sometimes I would cut school and work the square, because the Johns up there were mostly married businessmen who had the twenty and wanted to get it over with as quickly as I did.
It wasn't long before I knew every sleazy place in downtown San Francisco where a guy could get sucked off quickly and in comparative safety. There was hardly a glory hole I wasn't familiar with, the restrooms of various garages and restaurants, the backs of several alleys, the movies, the peep shows, the front seats of cars parked on side streets, and on and on.
I became an adept bullshit artist, making up plausible stories to suit what I thought the John wanted to hear. I even developed a number of steady tricks, homosexuals who would come down, and look specifically for me because they had enjoyed blowing me before.
At first it felt good, a nice, warm, soft mouth running up and down my shaft until I blew my load into it. But eventually I found that I was becoming like the call girl who has been around awhile. Over a period of time I got my cock sucked so often that I swear I couldn't feel it anymore; it was like the whore said, shaking hands.
Soon it all became a blur of faceless mouths rooting on my organ, dispassionately sucking out my juice to nourish the holes in their psyches. Day by day I could feel myself becoming harder.
By this time I was wearing Levi's that were washed almost white, and paper-thin. It was as close as I could get to being naked and still remain legal.' I cut a hole in the bottom of my right pocket so that I could, at will, stand on the street and with a few discreet strokes get myself "half-hard and handsome." One night two young men walked up near me. One was about twenty-five, small and effeminate-looking. The other was about forty and was built like a pro-football linebacker. They were eyeing my bulge and talking quickly to each other. The little one carried a small black case that looked like the kind in which custom pool cues are kept. After a few minutes he came over to me.
"Are you for hire?" he asked softly, wasting no time.
"Are either of you police officers?" I countered.
"Goodness, no!" He laughed. "We were wondering if you would do some specialized work for us."
"How special?"
He opened the little pool cue case just enough for me to peek in. It contained a black leather whip, taken apart in sections.
I whispered softly. "Are you two a couple?"
He said that they were.
"Then why don't you do it?" I asked.
"I love him. I don't have the heart anymore," he said simply.
We decided on thirty dollars and I walked with them to their car. The big one was George, the little one was Otis, and I introduced myself as Dick. In the Tenderloin there are no last names.
We drove to a small, brick apartment house on Polk Street. Their pad was on the second floor, with a beautiful view of an alley. Otis was an excellent housewife. The windows were covered with fine, lacy curtains and the sofa had doilies neatly pinned to the arms. Not a bit of dust or dirt was to be found anywhere in the place. They offered me a little glass of cheap wine, which I declined. I had heard too many stories about people being drugged, and made it a point never to take food or drink from a John. Usually I wouldn't go to a John's pad, either, although I made exceptions if I thought it was safe, Otis came close to me, put his arm lovingly around my shoulder, and whispered, "Order him around. Order him to do things for you. He likes to be humiliated before he's whipped."
Now came the problem, my mind went blank. I couldn't think of a goddamn thing to order George to do for me. But after stammering around for a while, I did come up with some half-ass ideas.
"Go get me a cigarette," I ordered sharply.
"Yessir, yessir," George answered obediently, running happily to a dainty cigarette tray on the coffee table.
"Light it for me," I snapped. George fumbled with the match. "Goddamnit, you stupid queer bastard, can't you do anything right?"
"I'm sorry, sir, really, I'm so sorry," whined George. He started to cry softly, as the intensity of my browbeating increased. He apologized for his clumsiness and thanked me profusely at the same time. Finally, I had him gratefully licking my filthy Price's marine cordovan shoes. I was looking for some kind of opening, so I could whip him and get out of there.
Otis was sitting at the kitchen table with his little peter out, stroking it and eyeing me. I knew what he wanted, but that wasn't part of the deal, and damned if I was going to give it to him if he didn't cough up another twenty.
George missed a spot on my shoe and I chewed him out good and told him that he would have to be punished for the unpardonable error. Actually I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but Otis was coaching beautifully from the sidelines.
George literally tore off his pants and underpants in his eagerness to be spanked. I opened the case, which Otis had put on the kitchen table, and put the whip together. George, this big, hulking man, looked at the whip and started to whimper in pleased anticipation. I ordered him to lie on the couch for his punishment, but he testily informed me that he liked to be punished on the bed. I felt like I was a character in a play, acting out a role written long ago by somebody else, some macabre playwright.
Otis ran his hand along my leg as we walked into the bedroom, but stopped abruptly when I gave him a menacing look.
"For twenty more, I'll let you," I said.
"Ten?" he asked hopefully. "After all, we've already given you thirty."
"Sir, I'm waiting for my spanking. Please hurry!" George was getting impatient.
"Okay, ten it is," I said, "but you gotta do it while I'm spanking him, so I don't waste any more time."
"Okay," said Otis. "I'll give it to you after."
"Now," I said.
"God, will somebody please spank me?" yelled George, who was becoming frantic.
Otis got a ten out of the cookie jar and handed it to me. Then I laid George out on the small bed in which both of them must have slept, except when Otis had his period, and teased him with the whip, rubbing it slowly over his back and buttocks, slapping him gently here and there. He was in heaven.
Meanwhile Otis was on his knees in front of me, fumbling with the zipper on my pants and beating himself off.
I started to crack the whip in the air. George writhed on the bed, humping into the covers and moving his huge hand under himself to grab it. When I felt Otis' mouth sucking my cock, I really started laying on the whip, cracking it hard and swinging my arm in a wide arc for full effect.
What a ludicrous scene, here was George on the bed, getting his ass whipped by me, while he was jacking himself off and blubbering about how should hit him harder and really hurt him. Then there was Otis, sucking me off and masturbating at the same time.
Finally George, in a wild orgasm, got his rocks off all over the bedspread, with an ass that was striped red and bleeding slightly in a few places where I had laid on the whip too hard. Then Otis shot himself all over my Price's shoes, which George had just licked so gloriously clean, and then he got mine down his throat.
When I pulled out of him I was raw and sore. The motion of my whipping George while Otis was trying to suck me had made him scrape the delicate skin of my cock with his teeth. I cursed. It wasn't Otis' fault, but I was finished for the evening.
Holding hands, they thanked me from the bottom of their hearts, and I left, tired, bruised, and pissed off. I had wasted all that time for forty lousy bucks and got put out of action besides. If I had just worked my normal trade I could have made twice that much in the same amount of time. I resolved never again to do a S-M trick. I didn't mind weirdos, but these guys were a bit much, even for me.