Advocate 8/15 ;Summer Sex Issue;

[Guest bighugbearphx]

FYI, there's a couple of articles of interest to Hoovillians in the new issue of The Advocate:

 

1. One page "First Person" blurb by escort Rod Hagen, explaining why he got into the business. Credits a book on "How to be a male prostitute" he read on a LAX-JFK flight. Talks about his first trick. Kind of a "ho's are people too" vibe.

 

2. Rather interesting article about a growing trend (?) among gay college boys to turn to gay porn to pay for tuition and books, resulting in a deluge of twink models. Goes on to say that, once they are in porn, they find the real money is in escort work.

Amateur porn producer Steven Shay says he has gotten contacted by over 200 young men from the Midwest alone, wanting to do porn, and that he provides a "family-like" atmosphere for his models (uh huh .

Article has a photo of Tom Stephenson, 21 year old who was president of his high school class, and turned to porn to finance his education; he is a junior on the dean's list every semester. Several others in that groove also discuss how they do/don't expect their porn/escort work to impact on their future endeavors.

[Guest zipperzone]

>2. Rather interesting article about a growing trend (?) among

>gay college boys to turn to gay porn to pay for tuition and

>books, resulting in a deluge of twink models.

 

I think that this trend is not just with the gay college boys - the straight ones also are thinking there's $$$ to be made in gay porn. They rationalize it by saying - what the hell, the money pays my way and if it's just for the money then I ain't gay.

 

It never occurs to them that they are at least bi.

[NASAguy]

I just got my issue in the mail yesterday. A big congratulations to Rod Hagen for yet another fine interview. It seems like one of our own family has been recognized in a national publication. Kinda nice!!!

[Rod Hagen]

I'M OUTTA TOWN. Glad you guys appreciated my article:

 

http://www.advocate.com/currentstory1_w.asp?id=33624

 

I prefer what I submitted below, but the edited version is ok too. Which do you prefer?

 

----

 

If you want to find me, or some other happy hooker, you’ll have better luck pounding the keyboard than the pavement. That’s because recently America razed the City of Night. The infamous Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards in the West and Times Square in the East emerged from this “Disneyfication” as commercial venues of guaranteed fun for the whole family. Tall, icy frap anyone? Prostitutes, the elephant in the room that nobody speaks of (or to) but upon whose back everyone secretly wants a turn, have been more or less banished from these magical kingdoms.

 

Yet prostitution now booms off the grid and over the Net for the simple reason that it is needed. As Gore Vidal wrote in 1966, “If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America painfully brief.” Add to that group men in Brokeback marriages, diffident virgins, and all those requiring discretion, and you have a community of men with two options: keep it in their pants or use the power of their wallets.

 

Of course, I didn’t enter prostitution on any such noble pretense. Nobody does. These reflections came later. In the beginning there was only curiosity.

 

Several years ago—never mind how many—on a redeye from LAX to JFK, I read one of the numerous how-to books on prostitution only because some genius at Insider’s Guide publications slapped a half-naked man onto the cover. By the last chapter, I thought, “This actually sounds fun.” When I returned home to Los Angeles, curiosity compelled me to create my working name, Rod Hagen, and father a Web site. Curiosity then pulled me up the hill in Los Feliz (an L.A. neighborhood) to ring the doorbell of my first client.

 

Forty-five and living alone, he was just back that night from a week-long gay cruise, during which—to his by now raging disenchantment—none of the 1,000 bronzed bucks volunteered to rub oil, etc., on his less than perfect bod. He told me he’d never been with an escort before (insecure myself, I kept my professional-cherry a secret) but didn’t want to end his vacation having been totally ignored.

 

Two cathartic hours later I accepted his money, thanked him, and expressed a hope that we would do it again soon. It was only in the car that I realized I’d just committed Rod Hagen to something more than a one-shot test run. At home was an embarrassingly grateful email. I hadn’t appreciated how scorned he’d been by his persnickety shipmates, nor imagined how much better a little attention would make him feel. I told him, “my pleasure,” complimented him on his hot kisses and vice-like ass, then crossed “7:30-Jim” out in my day planner and jumped back online.

 

You may want years of juicy details blow by blow—but those stories are secret. What I will tell you is that essentially every hookup—from Los Feliz to last night—distills to that first time, sort of like an Updike short where nothing much happens yet by the end everything is changed.

[NASAguy]

Hi Rod--

Your originally submitted article paints a more complete portrait of your first client, more precisely describing the basis for his need of an escort. The article as published shortchanges this a bit, but does not do terrible damage. The printed article also includes a nice wrap-up about you and you are the main subject of the work. Bottomline, I like the expanded portrait of the client but Advocate's version is pretty good too.

[Rod Hagen]

Thanks Nasa. It's the wrap-up that I don't like because it makes it too much of a EscortsRPeople too, which was not my intent. But I'm glad you think they retained its quality. THank you, I really appreciate that.