"So then he made some more drinks and asked me why I didn't takeoff my clothes and I said what about him and he dropped his pants displaying a very beautiful cock and I took off my clothes and we sat bare-ass on the sofa drinking our drinks. He made a lot of drinks. Now and then he would take my cock in his mouth and this was the first time in my life that I ever had a mouth around my cock. I thought this would look like hell in a newsreel or on the front page of the newspaper, but evidently my cock hadn't ever seen a newspaper because it was going crazy. So then he suggested that we get into bed and we did and the next thing I knew the telephone was ringing and it was morning.
"It was all dark. I was alone. I had a terrible headache. I picked up the telephone and a voice said, "The lime is now seven thirty. Then I felt around in bed to see if there was any evidence of a come but there wasn't Then I went to the closet and looked at my wallet and all the money-about fifty dollars-was gone. Nothing else, none of my credit cards. So the hustler had teased me, given me a Mickey Finn and taken off with my money. I lost fifty dollars but I guessed I'd learned something. So while I was shaving the phone rang. It was the hustler. You'd think I'd be angry with him, wouldn't you, but I was all sweetness and friendliness. First he said he was sorry that he made my drinks so strong I had passed out. Then he said I shouldn't have given him all that money, that he wasn't worth it. Then he said he was sorry that he wanted to give me a marvelous time for free, and when could we meet. So I knew he had teased me and stoned me and robbed me, but I wanted him badly and I said I would be in at about half-past five and why didn't he come around then.
"I had four calls to make that day and I made them and I made three sales, which was good for that territory. I was feeling all right when I got back to the motel and I had some drinks and he came in at half-past five and I mixed his drinks this time. He laughed when I did this but I didn't say anything about the Mickey, Then he took off his clothes and folded them neatly on a chair and he took off my clothes with some assistance from me and kissed me all over. Then he got a look at him sell in the big mirror on the bathroom door and this was the first time I ever saw a man who was narcissistic, what they call. One look at himself naked in the mirror and he couldn't get away. He couldn't get enough of it. He couldn't tear himself away. So then I figured out my options. I had cashed a check and I had about sixty dollars in my wallet. I had to hide this. While he was loving himself I was worried about money. Then when I saw how deep he was, how really absorbed he was in the way he looked, I picked my clothes up off the floor and hung them in the closet. He didn't notice me, he didn't see anything but himself. So there he was, fondling his balls in the mirror, and there I was in the closet. I took the cash out of my wallet and stuffed it into the toe of my shoe. So then he finally separated from himself in the looking glass and joined me on the sofa and loved me up and when I came I nearly blew my eyeballs out. So then we got dressed and went out to the Chinese restaurant.
"When I got dressed I had some trouble getting into my shoe with the sixty dollars in the toe. I had credit cards to pay for dinner. When we walked to the restaurant he said why are you limping and I said I wasn't limping, but I guessed he knew where the money was. They took Carte Blanche at the restaurant and so I wasn't a lonely man in a Chinese restaurant anymore, I was an old queer with a young queer in a Chinese restaurant. I've been looking down my nose at couples like this all my life, but I've felt worse. We had this very big, very good dinner and so then I paid the check with my Carte Blanche and he said didn't I have any cash and I said no, I'd given it all to him, hadn't I, and he laughed and we went back to my room although I was very careful not to limp and wondered what I would do with the sixty dollars because I wasn't going to pay him that much. So then I hid my shoe in a dark corner and we got into bed and he loved me up again and then we talked and I asked him who he was and he told me.
"He said his name was Giuseppe or Joe but he changed it to Michael. His father was Italian. His mother was white. His father had a dairy farm in Maine. He went to School but he worked for his father in his time off and he was about nine when the chief al the dairy farm started to blow him. He liked it and it got to be a daily thing until the dairy chief asked him if he would take it up the ass. He was eleven or twelve then. It took four or five tries before he got it all the way in but when it worked it felt wonderful and they did this all the time. But it was a very hard life going to school and working on the farm and never seeing anybody but the dairy chief so then he began to hustle, first in the nearest town and then the nearest city and then all the way across the country and around the world. He said that that's what he was a hustler, and that I shouldn't feel sorry for him or wonder what would become of him.
"All the time he was talking I listened very carefully to him, expecting him to sound like a fairy, but he never did, not that I could hear. I have this very strong prejudice against fairies. I've always thought they were silly and feeble-minded, but he talked like anybody else. I was really very interested in what he had to say because he seemed to me very gentle and affectionate and even very pure. Lying in bed with me that night he seemed to me about the purest person I have ever known because he didn't have any conscience at all, I guess I mean he didn't have any prefabricated conscience. He just moved through it all like a swimmer through pure water. So then he said he was sleepy and tired and I said I was sleepy and tired and he said he was sorry he robbed me of the money but he hoped he'd made it up to me and I said he had and then he said that he knew I had some cash in my shoe but that he wasn't going to steal it and that I shouldn't worry and so we fell asleep. It was a nice sleep and when we woke in the morning I made some coffee and we joked and shaved and dressed and there was all the money in my shoe and I said I was late and he said he was late too and I said late for what and he said he had a client waiting in room 273 and then he asked did I mind and I said no, I guessed I didn't mind, and then he said could we meet at around ha If-past five and I said sure.
"So he went his way and I went mine and I made five sales that day and I thought that he wasn't only pure, he was lucky, and I felt very happy coming back to the motel and I took a shower and had a couple of drinks. There was no sign of him at half-past five and no sign of him at half-past six or seven and I guessed he'd found a customer who didn't keep his money in his shoe and I missed him, but then sometime after seven the phone rang and I slid a base to get it, thinking it was Michael, but it was the police. They asked if I knew him and I said sure I knew him, because I did. So then they asked could I come down to the county courthouse and I asked what for and they said they'd tell me when I got there so I said I would be there. I asked the man in the lobby how to get to› the county courthouse and he told me and then I drove there. I thought perhaps he'd been picked up on some charge like vagrancy and needed bail and I was willing, I was willing and eager to bail him out. So when I spoke to the lieutenant who called me he was nice enough but also sad and he said how well did I know Michael and I said I'd met him at the Chinese restaurant and had some drinks with him. He said they weren't charging me with anything but did I know him well enough to identify him and I said of course, thinking that he might be in some line-up although I had already begun to sense that it would be something more serious and grave, as it was. I followed him down some stairs and I could tell by the stink where we were going and there were all these big drawers like a walk-in filing cabinet and he pulled one out and there was Michael, very dead, of course. The lieutenant said they got him with a knife in the back, twenty-two times, and the cop, the lieutenant, said he was very big in drugs, very active, and I guess somebody really hated him. They must have gone on knifing him long after he was dead. So then the lieutenant and I shook hands and I think he gave me a searching look to see if I was an addict or a queer and then he gave me a broad smile of relief which meant that he didn't think I was either although I could have made this all up. I went back to the motel and had about seventeen more drinks and cried myself to sleep."