He was about six feet tall and accentuated his thinness with cowboy clothes. He wore tight Levi's, a fancy western shirt, and a faded work jacket, with a Stetson set at a daring angle on his carefully tousled blond hair. He was the kind of guy who had a baby face, so you couldn't tell how old he was, but I'm sure he had been in the Navy during the war. Even though he lied a lot, he spoke so knowledgeably about life onboard a ship that I believed him.
A group of us came in to jam one night, but the place was packed. There were no available tables and I happened to stand against the wall, next to Bobby. He leaned down to me. "Cruisin' for trade?"
"Huh?" I said, noticing him for the first time.
"You cruisin' for trade? You know, hustlin'?"
"Nah," I said, still not sure what he meant. "I'm just waiting ray turn at the drums."
We were silent awhile. Finally he bent down again. "You ever hustled?"
"No," I answered, getting slightly annoyed and trying to concentrate on the great jazz.
He put his lips close to my ear, so that I could hear him above the noise, and whispered confidentially, "Jees, man. You're built good for it. You could make a bundle. I seed you had the equipment th' minute you walked in. You could really make a bundle."
"Yeah? How much?" I said, getting a little interested and wondering what he meant by "equipment."
"A hunnert a night."
"How much?" I almost yelled.
He put his finger to his lips and his hand into his Levi pocket, withdrawing a bundle of bills large enough to make my eyes open wide. He must have had seven or eight hundred dollars in his hand. I had never seen so much money all in one place at the same time.
"Course," he continued, "it ain't all from tonight."
"Yeah?" I said, now really interested. "Tell me, just how do you go about hustlin'?"
The room was filled with smoke and the noise from music and conversation was so raucous that I could hardly hear Bobby as he tried to tell me how he made so much money. Finally, in exasperation, we decided to go outside. There, leaning against a building and idly watching the parade of assorted hookers, transvestites, and other-world characters, he told me exactly what it was he did. It was simple. He let homosexuals suck him off for money. They liked young or young-looking boys who wore tight pants to show that they were hung. Most of the homosexuals were closet queens, that is, they appeared to be straight, or heterosexual, and many were even married men, suffering from a compulsion to suck cock. For that reason they were always pretty scared and wanted to get your gun off fast so that they could get out.
I had never thought of anything like that, mainly because I had never heard of it before. I didn't know that there were people who would actually pay a guy just to be allowed to suck him.
"How do you meet these guys?" I asked.
"Aww, it's easy's fallin' off a log," he assured me confidently. "See that there corner?" He pointed to the corner of Mason and Market. "Well, man, all you have to do is stand against the building there and look sexy."
"Look sexy?"
"Yeah, you know, make sure your whang makes a big bulge in your pants."
"Oh," I said.
"Then, as the guys walk by, you just kinda lock eyeballs with 'em. If they're tricks, they'll give you the look and kinda slow down at the corner and start hangin' around, like they're waitin' for something."
"Then what do you do?"
"You walk up near 'em, not to 'em, but near enough, and keep lookin' at their eyeballs while you put your hand in your pocket and kinda stroke your peter a bit, so's they can see it."
"Gosh!" I said, completely awed.
"Then they'll come over to you and say something about the weather, or ask directions, or something like that, 'cause they're kinda bashful. That's when you come on with your pitch. You tell 'em you're tryin' to get back to your little ol' home in Idaho, but the bus fare is twenty bucks and you sure wish you could think of a way to raise it."
"And then they just give you the twenty?"
"Nah. Then they'll ask something like if you like bein' blowed by guys."
"And what do you say?" I was fascinated.
"You say you have a few times and it's okay, but you'd really like to raise that twenty to go home on. Then they'll just offer you the twenty if they can blow you."
"Yeah, but you're standing out there on a public street. Where do you go?"
"The Pics movie house just a few doors up the street. Tell 'em to take you there. They can either blow you in the show, if it's not too crowded, or in the John. Then there's that hot-dog joint next door. They got a dark room in the back with booths that show girlie movies for a quarter. You can watch the movies and get blown at the same time. Then there's glory holes all over the place down here."
When I asked what a glory hole was Bobby looked at me like I was the stupidest thing on earth. "Jeeesus!" he said, shaking his head slowly. "A glory hole is a John where queers hang out. Don't you know nothin'?"
"Not much, I guess," I answered, embarrassed.
"And the two most important things to remember is always get the dough first and never go to a hotel room, or someplace you can't run away from if the guy turns out to be a freak."
We talked awhile more, as Bobby filled me in on his life as a hustler. He said that when he had saved ten thousand he was going to go to Wyoming and buy a ranch. It was something he had always dreamed of. I believed him because he sounded so sincere.
During the next few days I thought about it a lot. After all, I reasoned, it wasn't like being queer yourself. Getting blown was getting blown, and who cared if it was a female or a male mouth. Your cock didn't know the difference; it had no eyes and no brain, and certainly no conscience. And I could make a fortune, even more than by playing jobs. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I would try it. Not only the money, but also the element of danger involved intrigued me.
The next night I hid behind a light pole across Market Street from the Owl Drugstore and watched Bobby at work. He was leaning against the front of the store, one foot propped against the building. Pretty soon a man in a business suit and a fedora hat came by, and damned if he didn't stop on the comer and pretend that he was looking for something. Bobby sauntered slowly over near him, and they both stood apart for a minute. Then they apparently began talking. In another couple of minutes the man withdrew his wallet and handed something to Bobby, which he stuffed into his pocket. Then he followed Bobby into the hot-dog stand with the girlie movies in back.
Ten minutes later the man walked out, followed at a discreet distance by Bobby, who sat on a stool in front and got a cup of coffee. The whole thing had taken twenty minutes, and Bobby presumably had made twenty dollars. A dollar a minute wasn't bad.
That Friday night I went into business for myself, and learned my first lesson in marketing analysis. I couldn't wait to tell Bobby, but he was nowhere in sight. Well, I figured, I'd just make a few bucks while I was waiting for him. I stood on that goddamn corner for three hours, freezing my ass off, looking my sexiest in tight, faded Levis, but not one John came by. I couldn't seem to catch anyone's eye. All I saw were families and guys with girls, on their way to one of the many theaters then on Market Street. Bobby never showed. Saturday night I got out of a date with some chick to go down there and try again, but all was in vain. It was a repeat of Friday night, families and couples strolling along the street. Again, Bobby never showed up. I just didn't get it. He had made it all look so easy.
Monday night I had a job playing a stag show for a fraternal organization at a hall on Polk Street. It was my first stag. They had hired some girls to perform, and we provided the bumps-and-grinds music. There were four girls, all quite naked, and all mingling and chatting nonchalantly with us backstage before they went on. Of course, we all were trying to act nonchalant, too, like we were used to talking with naked women every day of the week. I concentrated on keeping my eyes on theirs and not looking down, also not standing too straight, since I had a hell of a hard-on. The girls were pretty tough, and talked like sailors who had been at sea for a while. Just before they went on, they put a little glue around their nipples and slapped on pasties with tassels attached, and G-strings. That way, they conformed to what the law said you had to wear as a minimum if you didn't want to end up in the can. Then, if the room proved to be free of cops, they could peel it all off.