HOOK: E-zine By, For, and About Men in the Sex Industry

We all have a history. Some of ours contain closets of sardine-packed skeletons, and thus a young Mack Friedman took the task to track down the vast shadows of men in the sex industry. This tale (as told in his critically-acclaimed book Strapped For Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture) threads together intimate biographies, journalistic research, and his own explorations to shed light on the men of our past and what that means to us today.

Manned with a strong wit and attitude, Friedman and his research have opened up some new discussions about the industry while paying respect and tribute to the many strange and powerful identities of the past.

HOOK: How did you even get introduced to sexwork? A person? Something else?

Mack Friedman: I've been fascinated with hustlers since 1985. My best friend Eric was a paperboy who would sometimes get blowjobs when he made his collection rounds. A little something extra, you know—“Here’s a tip.” Eric invited me along but I wasn't ready. I was only 13. But I was curious and kept asking questions. In that sense, I've been studying male sexwork for the last 15 years. By my sophomore year in high school I was a full-fledged naughty nerd and used to spend most of my free time in libraries. Reading was the way I found out about being gay. And a lot of the books in the sexuality section, like The Boys of Boise, brought up male prostitution. Sometimes I got so turned on I would jerk off right in the stacks, or hunched over a study carrel. So if you ever saw a scrawny, gawky redheaded kid going at it in the middle of the library - well, thanks for not saying anything. So, yeah, I was an exhibitionist at an early age, and it wasn't a big leap to start stripping and hustling in college.

HOOK: Did you think it would play such a strong role in your life?

MF: I had no idea. No idea. But I've always been fascinated by sexwork, so I'm not really surprised. And there's a sense of belonging that I've always felt out there. Even when I didn't fit in at school, or at work, or at a club, I could always fit in on the streets. But if the street scene vanishes completely, I might have to go back to school and find something new to spend my time on.

HOOK: How do your parents feel about your time in the industry? Have they ever told you not to pursue these things?

MF: I feel incredibly blessed to have such smart, generous, radical, loving parents. When I first told them about my time in the industry, I was also coming out to them, and I had just dropped out of school, and I think it was a lot for them to take at once. I can imagine it was a real shock. They've been very supportive of my research and my work on the streets, and have really kept me grounded when everybody else around me seemed to be losing their shit or going to jail or getting killed.

HOOK: How did you come to focus on the industry as an academic study?

MF: Well, most of my sources were academic, especially before the 1950s. I was looking at legal documents, sexology books, journalism. If my writing got too goofy, it would have completely undermined my source material. But also there's a real void in the queer studies literature. When I was sexworking, I couldn’t find very much relevant information in bookstores—even the gay ones. The material that's out there tends to be either way too academic, published in obscure journals, or way too simple: it’s either very dense and hard to find, or it’s porn. I wanted to give sexworkers a history that was intelligent and agile and sexy, and I wanted to give sexworkers a voice, because it's so rare that they get a real, honest voice.

HOOK: Has that changed the way you perceive guys in the business?

MF: You mean the research? It’s made me aware that the struggles guys have faced are very old, the problems are deep-seated. Violence, poverty, drugs, police harassment, stigma, poor housing conditions – none of these are new to American sexwork. My research has given me more compassion for male sexworkers as individuals, and less patience for organizations and institutions who don’t support sex workers. My message is really that sexwork shouldn’t be illegal. If we can fight to decriminalize sex work, we can improve working conditions one corner at a time.

HOOK: You quit school to work in the business, and then returned to school
leaving it all behind? Was it for the money? For the experience?

MF: I was totally broke, really horny, and completely inexperienced (with guys, anyway). I think all virgins want sex for the experience as much as the orgasm. So it was for all three reasons, about equally. I figured sexwork would be a foolproof way to meet guys who wanted to have sex with me! The main reason I stopped doing sexwork was because AIDS scared the hell out of me. In the early 1990s, guys were dropping like flies. It was horrifying to watch. We still didn’t know for sure what was risky and what wasn’t. I thought I might have more control over my sexual risk if I got to know my partners better.

HOOK: What were your clients like?

MF: Mostly white, mostly in their 40s and 50s, some married with kids, some gay. On the whole they were very sweet and friendly, and I even met a romantic partner along the way. But there were a couple of real jerks, and you know what they say...one bad asshole spoils the whole bunch.

HOOK: Did you feel like you knew what you were doing with them? Or do you look back and go, “I wish I had learned some things first?”

MF: I wish I had known more about what to do and what not to do. I wish I’d made more friends while I was out there. They might have helped make my nights less lonely. That’s what drew me to HOOK, in fact. Your site rocks!

HOOK: Thank you for including HOOK in your history of the industry. Do you think that information like your history, like HOOK’s archive of tips and stories may help guys from having a smoother transition into and out of (if they choose to) the industry?

MF: Every newbie sexworker should find HOOK. I mean, a primer on male sexwork? Tips to deal with the cops? How to tell your parents? Where else can you find this information? Ain’t too many outreach workers knocking on the doors of dial-uppers. Hell, ain’t too many outreach workers period, with the Bushies fucking around with abstinence messages. It’s absolutely essential information, and y’all do it in such a caring, informed way. HOOK is like an easy mark that turns into a friend.

HOOK: I loved the way that the history of “trade” itself was drawn back to a number of very masculine images that society wants to paint as blatantly heterosexual. I recently viewed a premiere of Master and Commander, a film about men in the British navy, and at times, the movie pointlessly stressed the heterosexuality of its shipmates when your research uncovered the subtle homosexual relationships between men on long voyages. Do you think society will ever be ready to cope with these relationships without labeling them overtly “gay” in any traditional sense?

MF: It is tragic that the sex scenes between Russell Crowe and his shipmates wound up on the cutting-room floor—especially the amputee stuff! Too bad Bruce LaBruce (Hustler White) wasn’t available to direct. But yeah, it’s a long tradition, sex between men on ships. Those relationships formed the basis of some hustling structures. You can see that in the terminology: the gay slang “chicken,” “trade,” and “fairy” all come from the sea. My hope is that society will eventually be educated enough to realize that when guys are stuck in all-male environments for months on end, they’re going to have sex with each other. We’re past the point of blissful ignorance. Sooner or later, when sailors fuck each other, it’s going to be “Who cares, it feels good,”—which is a much better motto than “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

HOOK: Why do you think the industry is so prevalent in gay life and gay
culture?

MF: Hustling has been absolutely essential to “gay” cultures for thousands of years. For many years and many reasons, sexwork has probably been the clearest, easiest way American guys could arrange to have sex with each other. Of course, the main function of sexwork has been to allow upper-class guys get what they want sexually. But that his filtered down, and the sexual availability of hustlers has made the culture iconic. Hustlers have influenced the contemporary American gay scene in so many different ways: guiding the location of our ghettos, instigating our riots, inspiring and creating our art, and turning us on. And so hustling has been a kind of muse to high gay culture, which in turn has trivialized and sensationalized it. The tale I wanted to tell was a kind of gay history of the not-so-glitzy: the story of lower- and working-class American kids, your average Joes.

HOOK: You got access to the much talked about Kinsey reports. What was your impression? What did you discover that was unexpected?

MF: I went to the Kinsey Institute in order to read an unpublished manuscript about NYC hustlers in the 1930s. It was written by a guy named Thomas Painter, who was Dr. Kinsey’s Times Square informant. Painter had also taken, to my astonishment, thousands of photographs of these hustlers, and had written to Dr. Kinsey every other day for 15 years. All of these materials were made available to me by a very gracious and efficient staff. It was like opening America’s closet, there in the middle of the Indiana cornfields, and finding Narnia. Such beautiful, sexy, hardcore, honest stuff. We have got to stop sweeping it under the rug.

HOOK: So, speaking of the Kinsey report, on the scale, where do you fall on the infamous Kinsey scale?

MF: Me? Shooot. I guess I’m a 4 or a 5. I have sexual relationships with both men and women. In the last two years, though, I have mainly dated guys. I tend to have longer, more stable relationships with women and shorter, more intense flashes with guys.

HOOK: You said in a prior interview that drugs changed the street pricing of sexwork and negatively impacted the conditions for a lot of guys on the street. With the advent of the Internet and gay publications, who do you think is on the street now? Has it severely changed the industry?

MF: Yeah, the Internet has really altered sexwork. It has certainly contributed to the vanishing of street hustlers, though of course there are other reasons for that vanishing act at work here. The Internet has basically removed middle-class and upper-class sexworkers from the streets and put them on the computer. Most of the male and transgender street workers are now low-income, under-educated people with substance abuse problems and few alternatives. They’re easy to prosecute because they rarely can afford good legal representation. Internet sexwork does keep people from wasting their time out in the cold, but it presents a whole new set of issues. Who warns Internet workers about bad clients? You can’t just debrief on the corner anymore. In that sense, the Internet has helped deprive the streets of a vital sex work community. You really have to make an effort if you want to reach out to other hustlers on the Internet, whereas on the street that kind of conversation among peers was a natural component.

HOOK: In the book, you tie particular artworks in as narratives of the moments (particular in New York). Do you think sexworkers are still emerging in the art world or has the coming out of sexwork made them unable to be the dirty little secret of so many painters and creative people?

MF: The coming out of sex work might be making it easier for sexworking artists to depict the demimonde in a more layered, human way, without the shock value. You know, depictions of male and tranny sexworkers have always stunned their audiences. As far back as 1934, Paul Cadmus created an uproar by suggesting in his painting “The Fleet’s In!” that sailors were paying female prostitutes and even getting paid by gay men. In the 1970s and 1980s, the angry, raw, hard-bitten irony of Mark Morrisroe and David Wojnarowicz satirized the sensationalist response that sexworker art has been used to receiving. And now we may be at a point where the art world is sophisticated enough to accept that kind of art on its own terms: critical success by photographers like David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, and Amos Badertscher shows that the market can accept challenging, sexy, multifaceted work.

HOOK: Are you continuing your research in the area of male sexworkers? And how?

MF: Baby, I am taking a break. But I am finishing up a novel that has some sexworkers in it. I am also doing talks on the hustler in American art. I’m a cheap ho on the lecture circuit. If you can give me a place to stay and a tank of gas, I’ll talk your ear off.

HOOK: Since doing the book, have you discovered anything new and engaging?
What currently captures your ear?

MF: I like Cat Power. She has a song called “Names” on her disc You Are Free. It’s very sad and pretty. And I don’t care what y’all think about the new Outkast—it’s hot.

HOOK: What should traditional workers know about transgender workers? Why do they fear them so much?

MF: You know, I have never seen that fear. In my experience, male and tranny workers have shared many of the same corners and work together well. So I don’t know where that comes from. Maybe they’re afraid of the razor wit? Can you tell me more about this? I guess male sexworkers should know that trannies are just like them, only they are often more curvaceous.

HOOK: Finally, in a few words, tell me where you get your strength from. Some people say religion, others from love. Where do you find it?