Flavor of the Week: How Not to Be a Whore

After my comedy group The State made a pilot for MTV, the network left us hanging. I was 23 and for months I thought, I’ll either be on TV next week or I’ll be homeless. One rent day, I walked the streets scanning the ground for change, like a kid looking for Easter eggs at a Seder. I didn’t know how to make money. The only thing I was good at was pretending I pooped my pants onstage. But my roommate Ray had an idea. “People don’t know it,” he said, “but prostitution can be fun!”

Other friends might suggest getting a loan or temping, but Ray paid for brunch so I was all ears. It made sense that he hustled; he was the dealmaker type who happened to like sleeping with older men. And he looked like a cub scout at Disneyland.

“I’ll tell you the Seven Laws of Successful Whoring!” he said, like a life coach for the downwardly mobile. And I have to admit, the laws were adorable. Sweetie, phone home. That was an E.T. reference. Money before honey. That was a crucial one. Hard to get’s an easy bet. Actually, that might just be something I read in Jane Austen.

The thing is, I’ve always been willing to do anything for money, as long I can procrastinate on my career. Also, I love having sex with strangers! Ray insisted that as long as it was safe sex, it would be nothing but fun. I saw it as a personal challenge. Hustling seemed like something a wild man would do—not an overly polite Catholic schlub from Ohio. Hadn’t Kerouac and those guys done it? I decided they had.

It’s a shame I forget the rest of the Seven Laws now, but the truth is I’d forgotten them that same night when they’d have been much handier. Rounds was an old hustler bar on the Upper East Side, all blue velvet and smoky red light. The guys my age clearly rode the sex train in from Sexytown. They were 18 to 28, then there was an age gap; everyone else owned banks and looked like bison.

You know those European movies where the characters mostly just glance at each other? Someone raises a brow and you sense that what just happened was supposed to mean something. Well, everyone else at Rounds had a lot to say without words. It reminded me how different I was from Ray. I couldn’t read people like that. I wasn’t a dealmaker. I wasn’t even attracted to older men. I must have looked like a startled housecat.

Suddenly, someone grabbed my hand and I went reeling. Oh my God, I thought, it’s Rush Limbaugh!

It was not Rush Limbaugh. Just a twin soul. He held my fist to the light and showed it to a friend. “Hair on the back of his hand,” he said with a sour face like he’d found a slug in his soup. “That means there’s hair on his ass, too.” The men sauntered off. I was very done with this.

But then, there was this tall, dark yuppie in a suit, staring. At first, he looked like the dude who mocks everyone in school but is too flabby for fistfights. But he was in his mid-forties, younger than the others. “Be a smooth operator Kevin,” I whispered while spilling beer down my shirt.

He came over.

“What are you, brand new?” he asked. He was already scoffing at me. “Yeah!” I laughed. “First time!” The worst possible answer.

“Well, I’m Nick. I’m not gonna dick around. We’ll go back to my place—say 75 for a half-session.”

Now, Ray never mentioned “half-sessions.” And $75 seemed low for anything. Would I have to come back to this bar nine times for the rent?

Before I could protest, Nick was shoving me in a cab. I thought Sweetie, phone home. That meant I was supposed to have called a friend from the bar to say where we’d be going. But while I was struggling with my seatbelt, Nick was already going for my waist belt.

“Whoa! Wait,” I said. “What about… the terms? The terms of the… transaction?”

“The huh?” Nick wasn’t actually slick. He was just a bonehead trying to seem that way. At least we had that in common.

Now he was yanking at my fly. “Hold on! I mean—where’s the money?”

“Eh, we’ll get it at my place,” he said. Money before honey was a wash now too. “Look, you’re supposed to act like you like this! Just let me see your dong.”

His tough-talk was inane. No one I know says “dong” unless they mean a Filipino I knew in fifth grade. Dong Cervantes once showed me his dad’s Playboys. I asked, “Does your mom have any magazines?”

Nick got my pants down. I was what the kids call “dick out” in a cab. He was bobbing for my crotch, but we were bronco-bouncing over potholes now. And somehow, he got tangled in my seatbelt too.

I snapped at him. “Not. In. The. Car. Sir!”

“Not in the car, siiiir!” He mocked me.

We began slapping each like little girls. The driver checked his rearview. Clearly he was stuck with the homo Laurel and Hardy. We couldn’t even finish our sentences.

“What the f—!”

“You assho—!”

“Fuck y—!”

Then, like Dorothy, I was home. As the cab neared Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place, I yelled, “Driver, pull over here!” and yanked up my pants.

Nick played baffled.

“What are you thinking?!”

Yeah, I thought, where is my sense of decorum? I jumped out. I felt powerful. I wanted to embarrass this guy.

So I screamed as loud as I could: “You wanna suck my cock—you can pay for it first!!”

The car flew off. Then I realized, it wasn’t him I embarrassed. For an overly polite Catholic schlub from Ohio, I sounded like a tranny crack-ho from Hell. A crowd of about two dozen people stared at me on Sixth Avenue.

The next morning, I told Ray I still didn’t have the rent. And he told me there was a message on the answering machine. The State had been picked up for series.

Nick had been right, of course. I was supposed to act like I liked hustling. That might even have been one of the Seven Laws that I forgot. But I felt like Nick and I had been cons conning cons. And I’m just not cool like that. A few days later, I was rehearsing comedy with The State, and I didn’t have to act like I liked it. I was creating my own kind of cool. The kind that comes from pretending you’ve got poop in your pants.

Kevin Allison is the creator and host of RISK!, the live show and free audio podcast where people tell true tales they never thought they’d dare to share. To learn more, go to [www.risk-show.com](http://risk-show.com/).