At first his sex work was incidental. Wearing the tightest jeans possible, he smiled at the men passing in automobiles and was sometimes motioned over. The slight drawl he had tried to erase since his arrival in San Francisco, he now emphasized when negotiating fees, learning that an accent from the outer reaches made him both exotic and slightly threatening, an unknown quantity whose mystery was worth the risk.
“Are you working?”
“Sure am. What can I do for you?”
“Is that package you’re showing all you?”
“Every last damn inch of it, pal.”
“How much?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty? You gotta be kidding me!”
“If you don’t think the tool’s worth the price, I’ll find another guy who does.”
Most of the time, the customer agreed to the price. It was only when he had the fifty dollars in hand and the stranger was trying to wrap his mouth around Randy’s humongous member, that the client was informed that Randy’s ejaculate would cost another twenty dollars, payment in advance. Yet he was generous, willing to kiss and happy to comply with whatever fantasy was tentatively suggested. He remained affable unless asked to be otherwise. He took to wearing cowboy boots and a leather jacket, and to walking with a swagger. Soon he had enough to move to an apartment right on Eighteenth and Castro streets, a small, dark one-bedroom on the lowest floor. Better yet, he got hired at the Neon Chicken across the street. There he bussed tables or tended the bar. He joined City Athletic Club, took to wearing flannel shirts year round and, only on the rarest of occasions, found reason to head north of Buena Vista Park, west of Twin Peaks, south of Harrison Street or east of the Opera House. He was one of many men, a community of men convinced they had reinvented the world. A few years later someone dismissed them with the quip: Castro Clones.
“If that bulge is for real, you should be in movies.”
“Every damn inch of it.”
“Meat or potatoes?”
“Plenty of both, buddy.”
“Here’s my card. Seriously. Call me. I’ll put you in pictures.
You’ll make some money, too. But what’ll we call you?”
Randy took the card and stuck it in the hip pocket of his Levi’s. Sex work had become infrequent; it was hard to sell what so many men were giving away with enthusiastic abandon. Only when the bug bit him did he don his leather jacket and cowboy boots and swagger down Polk Street to score the odd fifty to tide him over until the next payday. Knowing he could sell it made him more particular about whom he gave it to for free. In this he was like his peers for whom sex, youth and beauty were the commodities being exchanged daily on Castro Street, where appendage sought orifice and semen was the negotiated price of pleasure.
In a few days he was on the phone with the Star Maker. The day after that, Randy was sitting across the man’s desk in a sleazy office too far South of Market for Randy’s taste, a former warehouse filled with props, lights and sets too fake to suspend anyone’s disbelief. The man lit a cigarette and looked Randy over. “Well, let’s see it.”
“You’re the boss.”
“Hot fucking damn. It’s for real. Shit, boy.”
“It’s not all the way hard yet. Give me a second.”
“Take your time. Fuck, I don’t know anyone who could down that thing. I mean, I’m a big cocksucker and I don’t think I could manage that monster.”
“Maybe you could. Wanna give it a try?”
“Hell. Why not?”
The Star Maker put out his cigarette and, dropping his own jeans to the floor, caressed himself as he ministered to Randy. He admired the member for several seconds before taking a deep breath, opening his mouth wide and inhaling the bulbous head and the first few inches of the thick shaft.
“Fuck, yeah, that’s it, buddy. That’s it. Come on, you can suck a few more inches. Yeah. Man, oh, man, you’re good. Fuck, yeah, use both hands. Up and down, up and down. That’s it, that’s it. Keep sucking, buddy, keep sucking. You’re gonna make me cum, man, gonna make me shoot my load. Give me that head. Oh, yeah! Oh motherfucking goddamn! Here it comes, man, here it comes! I’m gonna blow, I’m gonna blow. Yeah, yeah, yeah!”
Randy smiled as he watched the Star Maker swallow three times and keep nursing on Randy’s shaft as he stroked himself to completion.
“That’s it, baby, that’s it. Shoot for me, baby, shoot it for me…”
After the Star Maker had caught his breath, wiped his mouth of any residue and recovered enough composure to talk business, the conversation continued, Randy’s flaccid trouser trout hanging limply, still wet with spit and cum, from his open jeans.
“How about this? Randy Johnson! Or maybe Miles Long? How about Butch Studley? Butch Boner? I know, Ben Boner! No, how about Tom Kat? Travis Bent? Or Dick Dickerson? Maybe Dick Shooter! Ben Bender, Dave Dawson, Mike Sergeant?”
“I liked Ben Boner.”
“Then Ben Boner it is. Now we gotta find a guy who can handle that much meat. Can’t be too hard to find a whore with his asshole stretched to hell. Any preferences?”
“None of that ugly street trash you see in those peep shows. Lots of hot guys in this town happy to take it up the ass for a few bucks.”
“They’re all trash, but don’t worry. I’ll find some cute clone to throw up his legs. You’re a hot top, so stay that way. I don’t care how versatile you really are, just remember: bottoms aren’t stars.”
Billed as a Castro Bartender, Ben Bohner—the h added for class, Randy shot a dozen super-eights that became legendary. He no longer swaggered up and down Polk Street, yet more opportunities presented themselves as he went about his daily business. His fee doubled in correlation with his celebrity. His fans frequently contacted the Star Maker, but he was reluctant to act as a liaison without receiving a commission that Randy refused to give him, the Star Maker having made enough money off of him. When the Star Maker was arrested on drug charges, Randy was happy that he had refused the services of a pimp.
He kept his job at the Neon Chicken, tending bar and enjoying the camaraderie it provided. To his regulars he was Randy. To those who sought him out with money in hand, he was Ben Bohner. Randy joked with his friends in the upstairs wine bar; Ben Bohner asked his patrons to meet him later at the Twin Peaks, Toad Hall or the Rawhide, where fees could be negotiated away from the prying eye of a boss that had no qualms about employing a whore as long as the whore was discreet enough not to transact business on the premises.
“Keep your cock out of the cash register! That’s what my dad taught me!”
“Sure, Mel, whatever you say.”
Life went on, his former exuberance tempered with experience. Coming from a small town, Randy found comfort being a neighborhood fixture. Strolls to Cliff’s Variety, Cala Foods or the Norse Cove were filled with nods and greetings. Only rarely did strangers accost him with undying love or unquenchable desire. The former was something for which he had no cure, the idea of romantic love between men an alien notion to him; the later meant money. At once collegial and chauvinistic, the locals defended Randy from unwanted attention, vocally deriding the tourists smitten with unfathomed desire as they watched Randy copulating to the silence of a projector’s rattle.
Just as Randy thought his celebrity was dissipating, he was visited at work by the Famous Porn Star responsible for Ben Bohner’s transition to sound. From Los Angeles (where Randy had never been), he was in San Francisco looking for talent. He was intent on working both sides of the camera, transitioning to where the real money lay. He came to the Neon Chicken just before closing, arriving in a flurry of narcissism and self-importance, too tanned for January and showing too many perfect teeth. Randy recognized him at once, his fame preceding him. A part of Randy blushed, another part was flattered to merit the Star’s attention.