Mysterious Skin

I saw Greg Araki's latest film, Mysterious Skin, a couple weeks ago with my friend Brian from New York. Brian used to work in the admissions office at Columbia, and he was the guy who would decide which bootlicking egomaniacal applicant would be offered a spot in the undergrad program.
Like many LA residents, he moved out to the city of angels to pursue his dreams of being in showbiz. Brian is an aspiring director; exactly the kind of guy who I like to watch movies with because I like to tear movies apart, and do it who has an educated opinion about it.

Mysterious Skin examines how childhood molestation affected the life trajectories of two young men. One's a hooker, the other a mama's boy dweeb. The hooker gets off on the dangers of turning tricks, the mama's boy has blocked out his molestation experience, and believes that the missing time in his life is due to an alien abduction.
The juxtaposition of the two tales bothered me because the hooker's story was dark, and the other boy's situation a comedy of errors. I thought it fucked with the pacing of the film, but others have loved it.

The movie really romanticized male prostitution, and I found myself wistfully reminiscing about my own experiences.
Like other sex workers, I too, was molested, and of course I can't help but wonder how much of that played into my decision to do it.

I know that I have had complicated feelings toward older men. A part of me had wanted to be eroticized by them, the other was disgusted by them.

That conflict is largely resolved. I think being a hooker was strangely therapeutic for me for a great number of reasons despite the fact that it does fuck with your head.

Sex is rarely ever just about sex, and in the case of prostitution its rarely just a financial transaction.
Most male hookers don't do it because they need to; you can get a real job, you aren't a gimp. But it's a hell of a lot easier to make 250 an hour sucking an old man off than it is working at Subway for minimum wage.
But it goes even beyond that. Hookers do it because it gives them a sense of affirmation, a sense of danger, and it makes them feel special. And I suspect that for some it gives them a way to deal with molestation.

Through my experiences, I think that most men hire prostitutes in order to feel intimacy. There are a lot of lonely people out there, and the need to feel someone else is basic. We as human beings need to feel affectionate touches. As I've gotten older, I don't demonize the older men who hit on me becasue they aren't the men who molested me as a child...no, those are pedophiles. Men like Michael Jackson who are sick, depraved, and need intense therapy and castration.

In the end though, I'm trying to fully exit (I still occasionally do it for the extra cash, and the rush I'm sure) the sex industry for several reasons.
One, it is dangerous. I never had that bad of experience, but shit happens because people are fucking crazy. You can't even imagine how many men tried to convince me to have sex bareback. Or to do crystal with them. Retarded.

Two, it makes you total crazy and inappropiate about boundaries. You start to completely seperate sex and emotions, and you end up fucking up your romantic sex life. You think that having group orgies on a regular basis is okay, and bascially debase the spirtual connection that makes sex so wonderful. If you're having sex with other guys more than your own boyfriend, then there's something wrong there.
If you need to proposition men for threesomes on a regular basis, then there's something wrong there. Sex should ultimately be about sharing an intimate experience with the man you love. And no, I doubt you can love half of Chelsea and West Hollywood, although you wouldn't be able to tell that by my own past behavior.
I'm not saying I'm about monogamy, because child, I'm not about to make myself a hypocrite, but as a full-time sex worker, you're basically having sex all the time.

Three, because of the amount of money you make, you strap on the same golden handcuffs that afflict bartenders. No job will ever pay you as much money as the sex industry will, and you'll end up wasting years of your life with no credible career momentum.

Interestingly enough, Raging Stallion approached my bartending hottie, Jake, in San Francisco yesterday to see if he'd be interested in being a model for them.
He thought it was funny that they said "model" instead of porn actor/star as if the euphemism would somehow fool him into being interested.
Like I've said before, this isn't the first time he's been approached off the street. Falcon and Hot House have both tried to scout him, but he has no interest in doing it. Says he doesn't want that kind of attention in his life, and doesn't want to have the type of extreme sex shown in movies. Which is part of the reason I think Jake is so hot; he's a porn star without having made a movie.