Money’s on the Dresser: Escorting, Porn and Promiscuity in Las Vegas (3 page)

As a child, I didn’t completely understand what “gay” meant. I knew I enjoyed looking at attractive men and I remember falling in love with guys or having crushes at least once a week. I had no clue why, but I knew it raised a few eyebrows when my sibling’s friends came over and saw me playing with dolls, dressing up, or playing house in the basement. My parents never encouraged me to play with girl’s toys, but they knew it was what I liked and I don’t think they knew quite how to handle it, so they just loved me and tried their best to make me content. I have to give credit to them because not every parent would react so graciously if they had a son as effeminate or as vocal about wanting to do everything my female schoolmates did.

Before I came out of the closet to my family, friends would laugh at me when I told them my parents didn’t know I was gay. They would look at me as if to say, “How could they not know? Look at yourself.” It wasn’t meant as an insult or mean-spirited, and I understood where they were coming from, but I honestly believe my family was pretty naive and really had no understanding of what being gay was, or even what gay men were really like. They knew I was different and loved me for that. For that I am forever grateful. Telling them was still difficult even if all signs pointed to G-A-Y. They couldn’t fully be okay with it because from what they knew, and from what the Bible taught, homosexuality was wrong and there was no way around it. To my family, the Bible was the word of God, and that was that.

When I was struggling about whether or not to tell my family I was gay, my friends would often ask, “But doesn’t your family want you to be happy? If being gay is who you are and makes you happy, isn’t it all that matters?” I would think,
Not to my family,
but would simply tell them, “I guess so.” For many Christians, happiness is not the most important thing in life. Holiness and following God’s word are more important. Therefore if you are not happy, it is something you need to pray about. Growing up, I was taught that your personal relationship with Jesus Christ was all that mattered, and you needed to do whatever it took to work on that relationship according to the Bible. Everything else was secondary. Your happiness was not an issue you focused a lot of attention on.

I was taught by my family and church that even if you had to bear burdens, such as an addiction or sexual dysfunction (like they thought homosexuality was) here on earth, it would be okay as long as you suppressed the urges. The struggle and pain would all be worth it when you reached heaven. With this mindset, I grew up thinking being both gay and happy wasn’t an option. I would have to be holy and miserable to get into heaven and bear my cross of homosexuality. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

I grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and there was—and still is—very little gay culture. In my family, I don’t remember having a television during the first years of my life, and when we finally got one, it was black and white and only had three local television stations. We really had no clue about what was going on around us as far as pop culture, and I had no idea about the growing gay culture of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

For my family there was church, school, and a lot of books for learning. The dinner table was where the majority of the conversations took place every night. When I was five or six years old my sister, in high school at the time, was reading about a new disease called HIV/AIDS and told us that most of the people being infected were gay or drug users. One of my brothers—as well as myself—didn’t know what being gay meant and when we asked, my sister told us, without being too graphic, that being gay was when two men had sex with each other.

From that simple description, I realized I must be gay. Even at that young age, I knew I had a deep connection with men and a desire to be with them. I didn’t know what sex was, but I knew I was attracted to other boys my age, as well as older men, so I figured it all meant the same thing. I must be gay. Jumbling the facts, I figured that if I was gay, I would inevitably contract HIV/AIDS and die like the men described in my sister’s book. I felt like the overall tone of the book was that gay men and drug users deserved to get HIV/AIDS because what they were doing was immoral and wrong. It wasn’t rational, but I was young and had no real understanding of what being gay really meant. Instead, I gathered from my family’s reaction that being gay was dirty and disgusting; that these gay men were vile individuals. At that moment I decided I should definitely keep my mouth shut about the neighborhood boys I had a crushes on and try my best to hide these feelings.

From a very young age, I felt like my fate was sealed. I was gay, would be rejected by my family, die a slow horrible death of pneumonia, lying in dirty diapers as I shit myself in a hospital bed somewhere surrounded by people wearing face masks and hospital gowns afraid to touch me. Every time I remembered hearing my sister talk about the disease, I immediately experienced a sense of loneliness. From that point on, I felt an immense sense of rejection and isolation from everyone around me, because my family wanted nothing to do with gay people, and I was sure I had this sickness called homosexuality.

I remember a few years later we were all sitting at the dinner table and there had been a news story about gay men on television. My mom made it very clear that “I could handle it if one of you had a child out of wedlock but I don’t know what I would ever do if one of you told me you were gay” and shook her head in disgust.

Even though I did not have a clear understanding of the complexities of being gay, I knew I was. If not, why did I want to kiss boys so badly and not girls? But I learned at a young age to quickly bury that feeling deep down inside. There was no way I was going to let anyone find out, and I would go to great lengths to hide it not only from others, but even to myself. It would be years before I would be able to finally admit to myself I was gay, and even more years before I would be comfortable with it.

It was clear that I was not like other boys. For my whole childhood, people would question who I was and the activities I took part in. I was taunted and ridiculed daily by my classmates and often went home crying. As a young boy and a teenager growing up in a prairie town in Saskatchewan, I would be called names, people would jokingly ask if I was a girl, and I would be the butt of many jokes. I can remember on a daily basis someone would call me a faggot, a homo, sissy or a fairy. This created a lot of social anxiety in me and I would be petrified walking into an unknown situation such as a birthday party, a school or church event, or the beginning of a new school year. You’d think church would be a safe and loving place, but I remember attending church events and kids would laugh at me because I looked and acted effeminately and I was a lot more sensitive than most other boys. In the eighth grade my mother, school councilor, and I decided enough was enough and I needed to change schools. The teasing, loneliness, depression, and tears had become too much, and it seemed like the only option. Within my first thirty minutes at my new school, a fellow classmate had walked over to me, asked me if I was a faggot, and before I could even answer, he grabbed me, put me in a head lock, and choked me, and I nearly passed out. I didn’t understand what was happening. It was almost as if I had the words GAY and PLEASE BEAT ME UP tattooed on my forehead. Nobody in the new school had even said two words to me, but I guess everyone could tell there was something off about the new kid and decided to make me their new punching bag. To this day, the anxiety created is something I struggle with. People have often told me that when they first met me they thought I was bitchy and standoffish; I wouldn’t describe myself that way, but the truth is I can be aloof and distant. I’m not trying to make excuses, but I think this all comes from the social anxiety I had when I was a kid.

As I grew older, the crying from all the teasing stopped because shame set in about showing emotion. In my mind, crying was a sign of weakness. Weak men were effeminate, and effeminate men were gay. Any signs of weakness seemed to attract more negative attention from school bullies and neighborhood boys who would walk by and call me “faggot” on a daily basis. It was obvious to everyone I was effeminate, but I vehemently denied being gay and refused to accept the label.

Trying desperately not to attract attention from peers my own age, I was also trying to avoid any odd looks or suspicion from people in the church and even my family. Nobody seemed to have any understanding of homosexuality. For them, it was simple: Gay men had sex with other men, and men who had sex with other men usually contracted AIDS, died, and went to hell. All of this negativity caused me to close off more and more, and my sadness as a young kid turned into a very dark, deep depression by the time I was a teenager. I started to become incredibly angry at the world, and there was a never-ending sense of sadness and gloom in my life that I could not resolve. I hated who I was, and I hated the same sex feelings I wrestled with daily. Sometimes, when I reread my journals from my childhood, I see a hurt, sad, angry, wounded kid crying out from the pages. I was petrified of death because I wasn’t sure if I would get into heaven if I died because I constantly struggled with same-sex feelings. I knew I was gay, but I wished for death almost every single day to end these feelings of sadness. I would think about how amazing it would feel to be taken from this world in my sleep, and pray there was a way to die without feeling pain or having to do it myself. The depression I felt was all I knew then, and looking back, it is devastating to think that such a young kid constantly fantasized about a way out of this world.

I had always loved to perform and take part in theater groups, but it wasn’t until the summer after I turned thirteen that things began to change. I went to a Shakespeare camp, where we studied and performed
As You Like It
. At camp I met great kids my age—some still friends—and we spent four weeks together memorizing the play, building sets for it, and costuming the show. It was here that I finally found out what gay sex was. I hadn’t realized being gay involved more than boy crushes, kissing, pressing your body up against another boy, or maybe even putting your dicks in each other’s mouths. To me, gay sex was all about kissing and holding each other and feeling emotionally connected to another guy. That was all I wanted, so I figured that was all there was. I guess I didn’t hear anyone mention anything about getting HIV/AIDS from having unprotected anal sex and cumming inside someone’s ass.

That summer at the Shakespeare theater camp, my friend LeeAnder and I were in the wardrobe room designing costumes. We were all given the name of someone else in the play whose costume we had to design. Mine was for a girl named Rita, and we all spent every afternoon working on our partners’ costumes, and the construction of the sets. While working and designing our costumes, we were all talking about Tracey, the head of wardrobe, because he was clearly gay and we thought that was the weirdest and coolest thing ever. Making fun of him was my way of diverting any eyes from me and directing it toward the guy who was so clearly a raging homosexual. Regardless of the fact that we were in a theater camp, we were eleven- to fourteen-year-old kids, and the whole concept of being gay made us all giggle. It made me squirm because I knew I was just as much a “queen” as Tracey. When talking with LeeAnder, I said, “I don’t even understand how they do it. Like how do two guys even have sex?” I asked this jokingly, but I was actually serious. I really didn’t know what sex was, outside of kissing and a few other things.

LeeAnder, who was straight, just looked at me in disbelief and said, “Are you serious?”

I just stared blankly at him. I guess he thought of all people I should know what gay sex was, but I honestly had no clue.

“Gay guys have sex by putting their dicks in each other’s assholes,” he said matter-of-factly.

His news rocked my world, and gay sex finally made sense. After that discussion with LeeAnder, along with my teenage hormones, I became hornier and very curious about what gay guys were actually doing in bed. Like most twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys, I became obsessed with sex even if I wasn’t quite sure how it all worked.

The summer theater program had been the best experience of my life so far, and I nearly had an emotional breakdown when it came to an end. I met so many wonderful people and we became best friends over the four weeks we spent together. We were all theater kids, and to some extent, most of us were a little different than our school peers. I’m not sure if any of the other kids struggled with their sexuality quite like I did and, to be honest, I think I was the only one who was actually gay. We were just boys and girls from different backgrounds who loved theater and felt that special bond. For once, it was fun to fit in and to belong.

A year after my summer doing
As You Like It,
I began ninth grade at a high school called Sheldon-Williams Collegiate. The majority of my high school years were spent hanging out with various groups of people who were all involved in theater, dance, and music in some way. I began to meet guys who identified themselves as gay, and a few girls who were open about having had sexual experiences with other girls. This was a select group of people who were incredibly open-minded and very honest about their sexuality. I continued to repress my gay feelings because I knew my family, church, and most schoolmates would not accept it. But I was unable to fully hold back my feelings. I think all my friends were tired of asking if I was gay because I would deny it or shy away from the answer, so instead they just left me alone to work it out on my own. I’m sure they figured it was just a matter of time until I came out.

It wasn’t until my freshmen year in high school that I saw two men having sex, and this nearly made my head and my dick spontaneously combust from excitement. My friends at school were kind of like band or show choir geeks, but a lot cooler. They were so “above” everyone and confident in themselves. I wanted to be like them, and they definitely helped shape my teenage years. One night, I was at my friend Jennifer’s house with another girl named Jenna-Lynn. They both wanted to show me
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. All my older friends were obsessed with the movie and knew all the lyrics and choreography to the musical numbers. When we watched the scene of Frank-N-Furter molesting Brad, I was blown away and nearly came in my pants. When the movie was done, I told my friends that it had been the first time I had seen two guys together.