“It also occurred to me that I could bring men back to the hotel room, but I never did, and as a matter of fact I went to Albany one evening a week for months before I ever made it with anyone. I wasn’t looking for sex. What I wanted was to pass as a girl. To look completely like a girl, to be taken for a girl. To walk around in full drag and have everyone relate to me as a girl.
“I got better and better at it. I would go someplace for a hamburger, or go to a movie, or just spend a lot of time walking around. I would have gone to a gay bar, I suppose, but I didn’t know how to find one or who to ask. And I didn’t want sex. Well, I did, but I was afraid to lead someone on and then have him discover I wasn’t what he thought I was. I mean, it was awhile before I stopped panicking when I had to use a ladies’ room. I thought, suppose somebody can tell? But with anything like that, after you’ve done it a few times you loosen up.
“I would flirt like mad. Do tricks with my eyes, all of that. I’ve learned a lot since then, but I was good at it even then. Oh, at the time I wore falsies, too. I outgrew that when I came to New York.
“I would pick someone out and flirt with him, and occasionally let myself get picked up and taken out for coffee, but it was a long time before I let it go any further than that. Then ultimately I let an older man buy me dinner and take me for a ride, and he parked the car on a dark stretch of road and we necked.
“See, this was the first time I had ever had any of this. The kissing and petting. And it was such a wonderful feeling, such a feeling of total warmth that I had never experienced before. You know, I think that was a tremendous turning point, because it made me see how incomplete it was, what I had in my hometown. Those other boys had wanted me because I was easier to get than a girl, and because I was a weird experience for them. But this man wanted me!
“So I was thrilled, and also I was terrified, because he was going to want to fuck and he was going to be dismayed to find that I had a penis instead of a vagina. I had my cock tucked way back so that he wouldn’t hit it on a casual grope. Even so!
“When we stopped for breath I gave him the predictable story, that I was having my period, a very heavy flow, all of that. And also that I had to get back home in a hurry or my mother would have a fit. Before he could decide that I was a cockteaser I went on to say that I didn’t want to leave him frustrated, and I would go down on him. Which was fine with him.
“Funny thing. When he dropped me back at the bus station, he said something that didn’t register at the time. That I was the first girl he ever met who really knew how to blow.
“It hit me about an hour later. That of course he had had homosexual experiences, or how could he have a basis for comparison?
“After a couple months of the double-life routine, I dropped out of school and came to New York. There were so many reasons for this that I won’t go into them now. Let’s just say the time was right. I was very young, just sixteen, but I was ready to bid a fond adieu to home and family.
“I didn’t have any trouble finding the gay scene here. It would have been harder not to find it. And it was a very heady experience for me at the time. All at once I was meeting hundreds of other boys who were feminine to one extent or another, who would cross-dress and make up and the rest. And I was meeting men who were attracted to other men, and some men who were specifically attracted to feminine men.
“And instead of being the local queer, the boy-girl, the freak of Schoharie County, I was literally treasured! I didn’t have to pretend. I was being sought out by men who thought I made a beautiful girl but who were delighted that I was genitally a male. I don’t think I can make you understand what a wonderful feeling that was. There was never a point where it even occurred to me to be homesick, because it was as if I was finally home after spending the first sixteen years of my life in a hostile foreign environment.
“Not that it was all roses. There is a hang-up I have, and I’ve come to think that it’s a hang-up of the human condition. You never quite find what you’re looking for, or if you do find it you discover it wasn’t what you hoped it would be. Also, my wants were ambivalent. I wanted to prove myself with as many lovers as I possibly could. I wanted proof that they liked me, loved me, lusted for me, respected me, everything. At the same time I wanted to be somebody’s wife, to form a totally monogamous relationship with a really strong straight man whom I could adore and respect. And the old Catch-23 — I wanted my man to be completely heterosexual, but if he went for me that proved he wasn’t, and if he didn’t I didn’t get him. Even when you realize the basic contradiction, that doesn’t help you get out of the bind.”
Brendan’s hustling is worlds apart from the world of the Times Square hustler, and neither his motivations nor his life-style have much in common with Alan’s. He does not solicit a fee for sexual favors and frequently has contacts without receiving any money.
“I am only a hustler — I hate the term — in that I do get supported by men. I’ve had jobs from time to time but there’s no denying that men support me. But I never whore. I don’t charge. And I don’t go with anyone who doesn’t appeal to me. Admittedly I like a lot of men, sweetie, but I’m no Will Rogers. I’ve met men I don’t like, and there’s no way they can seduce me or buy me or anything. I can’t be gotten. I have to like the idea.”
But men give Brendan presents and do him favors and pick up his tabs. When he is short of money he will mention this to his lover, who will in turn press a small loan upon him. Brendan never offers to repay the loan, and repayment is never expected. From time to time Brendan shares someone’s apartment without paying rent. He is given money for cab fare. His drinks and dinners are bought for him. He certainly gets far more financially out of his sex life than does Alan.
He has had some sexual experience with females. “Once with a lesbian, it was sheer bedroom farce. We met at a party and she thought I was a girl and I thought she was a man, and we both got hysterical about the whole thing, and decided to ball just to see what would happen. It was the weirdness of the whole thing that excited us. We ate each other and fucked a little. And I’ve been at group scenes with straights and gays where everybody does everything with everybody, and it isn’t as if I became impotent with a girl. I can perform, I can get excited and I can satisfy a woman and I can come that way. But the excitement is only physical. I don’t really get into the whole thing. I feel as though only a portion of me is involved. In that sense, I feel more involved and more completely myself when I go down on a man and don’t have an orgasm or even become physically excited than I do having complete sexual relations with a girl.
“You know, the number we ran earlier about fag hags, well, there is a kind of girl who is sort of marginally in that classification who gets tremendous satisfaction out of seducing male homosexuals. Not in the standard sense of flirting with faggots because she knows it’s safe, but really meaning it and wanting to get a gay guy in bed with her. I suppose to prove what a dynamite woman she is if she can manage to ball a faggot. Well, we all have our ego trips...
“I have a certain amount of girls who will come onto me like that, and occasionally I take them up on it, more or less to see how I react to it. One of them had had lesbian experience and I think saw me as an acceptable way to get that old kick again. But the experience I have not had is to make it with a girl who was absolutely reacting to me as a male and who didn’t even know I was gay, or feminine, or whatever. And now and then I will imagine myself coming on totally butch and picking up a girl that way and finding out how I would relate to it and whether or not she would want me, and what it would be like.