One day, my boss commented, jokingly, “You know, you’d probably make a lot of money as a male stripper.”Ī lightbulb went off in my head, so I decided to look into it. I was curious about how much money these guys made and what the work was actually like. I started looking up male strip joints, like Chip ‘n’ Dales and stuff. They were all really far away and I didn’t have a reliable mode of transportation. I thought, “Fuck, the last thing I want is to get stranded somewhere three hours away wearing nothing but a jockstrap.” My car would overheat quickly and break down. I brought it up to my boss, not expecting anything to come of it. We were out to lunch with my his friend, who was gay, and he goes, “Do you have a problem dancing for men?” I didn’t have to think about it for very long: hell no. So, he’s like, “You should dance at gay clubs. Gay men tip way more than women for strippers.” He goes on, “It’s because gay urban professionals want to let off steam after work just like anyone else but they generally have a lot more disposable income.” In my mind, I’m thinking, well, I should listen to him because he would know. Of course, I didn’t even know where to start looking. My boss’ friend told me to look up a spot called Splash. You know what you could do? Call them up and leave a message.” I called the number he gave me and the guy on the other end of the line was like, “Oh, I’m sorry sweetie, I’m living in Miami now. I mean, who uses voicemail anymore? But, whatever, I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot. I was afraid to leave my real name so I made one up.
“This is Jack Stark.” I don’t know why I came up with that name. It sounded like a Tom Cruise porn parody. I figured I’d never hear back from them, so I decided I’d scope out Craigslist in the meantime.Ĭraigslist has a lot of weird sex stuff, but I tried to steer clear of anything involving prostitution. I’m not comfortable with the idea of selling my body, but I have no problem with people looking at me. I found this one guy up near Central Park. He had a really nice place, and he just wanted me to clean it in my underwear while he watched.
It usually took me about an hour, an hour-and-a-half to do the whole apartment. One of the requisites was that I had to be barefoot I couldn’t even wear socks. He always had me drink a glass of ice water first, practically insisted on it. He would literally just sit there, on his computer, glancing up at me intermittently. There was even one day where he didn’t look at me at all! It was weird. I did that once a week for two months, so eight times in total. He never made a pass at me, he never jerked off in front of me. Right at the beginning, he asked, “Are you gay?” When I told him I wasn’t, he was like, “Okay, good.” I thought that was pretty odd. Sometimes, we made small talk about my work and the weather.