By Nicholas Deroose
“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable, at the tone please leave a voice message.”
Beep.
David paused over the receiver wondering if he should leave a message. He had texted his date earlier but didn’t get a response and he did not want to come off as too pushy or desperate by leaving a voicemail but neither did he like being left hanging. He lifted his cigarette to his lips and took another long drag, the white stick burning in his inhalation and turning ashen before falling to the ground. Pondering for while, feeling the resistance of his pride before deciding: “O what the heck, what else have I got to lose?”
“Hey, its David here, I was wondering if we’re still on for tonight. Give me a call back. Ciao.”
He ended the call and threw his phone aside blowing out a swirling cloud of smoke that lingered in front of him before vanishing into the darkness of his apartment. A pale half moon hung in the cloudless night sky casting a faint light onto his balcony, illuminating a solitary deck chair that reached towards him with its shadows. Deciding not to wallow in the stench of cigarette smoke anymore, he got up from his couch and slid open the glass door separating his living room and the balcony.
Immediately, as he cracked open the door, a cool breeze rushed over him, bringing a brief sense of relief, lifting some of the tension he felt in his shoulders. He inhaled one more, this time a little deeper, in an attempt to purge some of the toxins in his body. Staring at the city’s skyline, he watched as the multitude of lights twinkled from their fixtures like a thousand fallen stars boxed in concrete prisons.
Up here, away from the chaos, the city looks so peaceful. The scenery exudes a clam is carried by the wind and soothes the tired soul. A sigh escapes his lips as his eyes wander over the landscape, peering into the lights, each flicker a sign of activity, a hope away from his solitude and darkness.
David walked up to the ledge, his palms pressed against the railings cool to his touch. He is probably not going to call back, he thought to himself. He wondered whether moving back to the city was the right thing to do. It probably wasn’t the best thing but it was the easiest thing at that time. He had spent so many years living within the hustle and bustle, that it pace was beginning to wear him down. So, when they decided to move to the suburbs, it was a welcome relief for him. But now he’s back here again. It’s funny how our ability to agree on certain things is easier than our ability to articulate their reasons.
A familiar ache was slowly welling up in his chest, a dull pain that latched itself around his heart like a chain refusing to leave and slowly squeezing his center from within suffocating him out one tug at a time. The breeze had turned into a chill and he wrapped his arms around his shirt to try to warm himself. David bit his lower lip, his body clenched and tried to compose himself, trying to fight back what he already knew was going to happen.
How does one begin again after so long?
David closed his eyes and inhaled once more, this time blowing out an imaginary trail of smoke through his pursed lips. For a moment, the lights of the city fade out and the darkness consumes him as he is revisited by the scene once more.
“So are you saying that this is it?”
He is back at their house again, sitting on their bed, in their room, in their home. David looked up to his partner who is sitting on the edge of a chair in the corner across the room. The wallpaper is ivory with pale stripes that the compliments the chestnut furniture. There is a large cupboard on the right and a dressing table on the left cluttered with various perfumes and creams and a portrait of both of them at the beach. Their faces happy and sun-washed.
“It’s just that we have grown apart and I think that it is best that we move on.” His voice is steady and without hesitation, his arms resting on his knees and expression placid and forward. His eyes cold and dead.
David rubbed his hands together stretching the tired tanned skin over his knuckles and back again. He looked down at them and saw the years staring back at him. The years that he had spent with Louis, the years that he had kept himself faithful, the years that he spent trying to look youthful, the years that had now crept to a halt. 15 years.
“Do you not find me attractive anymore? Doesn’t the time we’ve spent together count for something?”
David turned his gaze to the corner, his eyes searching for an answer, a reason, a sign, anything, anything but the frozen look that was casted in return. David rubbed his skin even harder, trying to stretch and force his lines away.
Where does the all good go? Where does all happiness and joy end up after it has ended? Doesn’t time spent deserved to be weighed not only by its faults but also by its merits?
David lifted his hand to cast away a tear that had escaped, brushing against the creases in his face. His fingers paused at his temple as he began to trace a line down his cheek, trailing every familiar mark. He used to have such smooth skin. That was what Louis would tell him. It was when they first met at the beach that he told him this. He remembers been mesmerized by his blonde hair that seems to catch the sun forming a halo around him and his board chest brunt red from hours in the sun.
He had just arrived from Vietnam less than a year ago to settle into a new job and decided to take a trip to the beach since it was a long weekend. Sitting down by himself on his beach towel, David stared at the roaring waves when suddenly he noticed a pair of feet beside him and when he looked up, it was Louis. He asked if he could sit with him for a while. He replied yes and when he did they started to chat. As the sun trailed across the sky, their bodies leaned in closer and closer till their shoulders began to brush against each other.
As evening approached and the beach umbrellas begin to close one by one, Louis asked if he would like to join him for dinner. Smitten, David replied yes and that evening the seed of their relationship was planted and soon blossomed over the next 15 years.
He thought that he could start over. These days with more gay bars than ever and the hundreds of gay websites out there, it should be easier right? We have so many more choices now. Doesn’t that make things better and easier for us?
David returned to the ledge once more. His gaze forward but unfocused, his head tired and tilted to the side. Up here, the silence can be deafening. A silent reverberation that ripples through the body and settles on your fingertips. David closes his eyes once more and leans forward to catch the breeze feeling it rush through his hair as he begins his descent.
My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker: A Requiem for Cragislist Erotic Services
Ester Amy Fischer
Author, "American Courtesan"
June 2, 2009
On Wed. May 13, Craigslist announced that it will shut down its erotic services section, marking the end of an era. With the negative publicity generated by the Craigslist Killer and a stampede of outraged attorney generals calling for its demise, Craigslist Erotic Services will be no more. This is a requiem. And a plea for a rational discourse about sex work.
I know it seems strange to eulogize what was basically an online red light district, but in my experience there was a brief moment when Craigslist Erotic Services transformed both the meaning and the means of being a sex worker. There one could open a virtual lemonade stand which operated according to self-imposed rules and regulations. Anonymity was almost guaranteed. Craigslist Erotic Services made sex work accessible to people who would never have considered doing it otherwise. I was one of those people.
It was the autumn of 2003. I'd come back to New York after an extended period away with the realization that yet again, I was flat broke. A struggling writer and artist, I'd been earning a living as a licensed massage therapist. I'd used Craigslist once before to find a subletter for my Brooklyn apartment. That had worked out incredibly well, so I decided to advertise my massage business there (in the therapeutic services section). It seemed ideal.
I confess that at that time, I was pretty disappointed with my love life. Like many New York females in their 30s, I still hadn't found Mr. Right. I was becoming increasingly frustrated at his failure to manifest. Love was desired, but seemed elusive. In the meantime, I dated. Oh boy, did I date. I was a professional dater and a longtime veteran of internet dating. I was on JDate when people found it eccentric. And I was having a lot of crappy experiences with men of dubious integrity. It had occurred to me more than once that I might as well be getting paid.
Thrown into this mix of loneliness and financial need was aggravation, aggravation that when I did begin advertising my massage business in the therapeutic services section of Craigslist, all anyone seemed to want was sex. I was indignant. I considered myself a healer. I had gone to massage school. I had studied a variety of healing modalities and been praised by my clients as being extraordinarily gifted. I could cure sciatica and alleviate anxiety. I could soothe PMS and increase cervical mobility. I just wanted a few good regular clients. I had never blended my massage work with anything remotely sexual.
Nor had I ever so much as glanced at the erotic services section of Craigslist. But one day it came to my attention that many "providers" who should have been posting in the erotic services section were posting in the therapeutic section. I wrote to Craig Newmark. He graciously responded. He assured me that Craigslist would be more vigilant in removing misplaced ads. But for some reason, after that, I kept looking at the erotic services section. Something had snapped. I never would have expected it, but reading the ads had begun to turn me on.
I just want to pause here (in part because I can already hear the voices of my detractors and also because I don't want to appear insensitive to any human suffering). I recognize that I'm a privileged, educated woman who could have done many things for a living, but opted to do sex work largely because it was exciting to me. I recognize that there are women who do it reluctantly and out of necessity. I recognize that there are also women who are forced into doing it. I recognize that violence against sex workers and indeed against all women is a real threat and a dark shame. However, this piece is not about that; this is about me.
And what happened to me during the fall of 2003 was that boundaries I had heretofore firmly established and carefully guarded were becoming blurred. The combination of financial need, dissatisfaction with my love life, sexual frustration and some age-old fantasy that was stirred up in me from God-only-knows-where was taking over.
My world was changing.
The first time I had sex with a client it was entirely unpremeditated. A runner training for the New York Marathon, he'd come for what I thought would be a therapeutic massage. I was encouraged when he'd contacted me. I already had a number of regular clients who were distance runners and I found them to be very reliable -- the best of my clients.
He was trim, nice looking, clean-cut, but seemed a little nervous as I led him into my apartment. I tried to crack a couple jokes to set him at ease, then instructed him to disrobe and get onto the massage table -- underneath the towel, face down. The usual massage therapist schpeil. I left the room.
When I returned he was in position, so I began to massage him. I moved the towel out of the way and tucked it in slightly to cover his buttocks. Then I honed in on his legs since, from my experience with runners, legs are usually the trouble spot. His were long, lean, well-muscled.
But instead of relaxing, he continued to seem uncomfortable, squirming a little on the table, shifting his head in the face cradle.
"Do you not like the face cradle?" I asked.
"No, I want you to massage my whole body."
Perhaps I had been spending too much time on his legs. I began to massage his back and then his arms. But when I started to work on his hands, he suddenly grabbed mine and clasped them in his.
Now, it's not like anything like this had never happened to me before, but ordinarily I would have quickly diffused the situation. What made it different this time was that a little jolt of sexual arousal had seized and overwhelmed me. Maybe I had been thinking about it too much, maybe I had actually already unconsciously resolved that I would do it, but the next thing I knew, I was on the table, naked and he was massaging me.
When it was time for him to leave, he asked me how much he owed me. Now it was my turn to feel uncomfortable. I knew that I had given him extra, a lot extra (although we didn't have intercourse) and I wanted extra. But I was too ashamed to ask for it.
"Well, I usually charge $80, but you can tip me whatever you want."
He gave me $160 and at that moment, I realized I had gone down a path I would never be able to retrace. It had been easy, pleasurable even. I would move on from there to greater and greener pastures.
I read the erotic services section almost everyday, until I found an ad I wanted to answer, an ad for an ongoing arrangement. He was offering a very tidy sum: $3000/month for weekly meetings. I figured I had nothing to lose so I answered it, almost expecting to not hear back. When I did, I was floored. We had an email exchange over the course of the next few days. He wrote that although he was for the most part happily married, his relationship lacked "passion" and "eroticism." His writing was thoughtful and sincere. I became even more intrigued.
I sent him a series of incrementally more revealing photos with the head cropped off -- a virtual strip tease. When he asked to see my face, I told him that I'd have to talk to him on the phone first. He called from a real number, his work phone. The conversation reminded me of conversations I'd had during my internet dating days: we talked about ourselves, our hobbies. I told him about some of my art and writing projects.
We agreed that we would meet in public first and if I felt comfortable, I would give him a therapeutic massage. But since, at that time, my neighborhood hadn't been over run with cafés and condos, there really was nowhere to go. Through our communication, I'd grown comfortable enough with him to invite him over.
I fretted all day and changed my outfit several times in anticipation of his arrival. When I opened the door, he had a jacket draped over his arm and bemused expression on his face. He was in his mid-30s, very conservative looking, wearing a pin-striped oxford shirt and tidy, pleated khaki trousers.
At first I couldn't tell if he thought I was more or less beautiful than he'd imagined I'd be. But as we settled in to what would become our customary positions in my living room, I knew from the intensity of his gaze that I had him "hooked."
In a sense, I was "hooked" too. Not by him. He was, although pleasant looking and mild-mannered, a little bit dull. But I loved playing the seductress, I loved feeling him in my power. Exciting him excited me. The fantasy spurred me on.
We talked for a fairly long time and by the time we got down to the nitty gritty, I was very aroused. He gave me a huge orgasm, then a huge wad of bills. When he left, I was incredulous at my good fortune. "This is the best fucking job I ever had," I thought to myself.
Alan came to see me once or twice a week for a couple of months and then without warning stopped calling. I never knew why he'd lost interest, but I found myself a little distressed: not only from the loss of income I'd come to rely on, but also, whether or not I'd admit it to myself, I'd become a little attached. A friend who was a confidante at that time told me, "Dude's a john, not your boyfriend."
After that, I saw a few more men for both erotic massage and GFEs (girlfriend experiences). They were mostly decent chaps, the kind of guys I might have known in real life, the kind of guys I might have gone to college with. Well, actually over scotch and conversation after a "session," I discovered that one of them did go to college with me.
Never once did I feel that I was in physical danger, although I recognized the possibility. The internet afforded me the ability to screen potential clients. For every ad I posted, I usually received a hundred or so responses. I could be very discriminating, so most of the sex was actually quite hot. I treated it as an extension of dating. And actually, most of the men I met on Craiglsist Erotic Services treated me with more decency and consideration than many of the men I had previously been dating.
I didn't hawk my wares on Craigslist Erotic Services for terribly long, less than a year all told. And while I understand that this is not every woman's experience of being a sex worker, for me at that time in my life, it was liberating in certain ways. It made me feel relaxed with my body and allowed me to be experimental with my appetites. It liberated me from a part of myself that always tied or sought to tie sex to a deep emotional connection. It gave me insight into men and male sexuality that I hadn't had before.
But one thing it never gave me was the answer to a few burning questions:
Why can't we as a society have a rational, meaningful discourse about sex work, embracing all its nuances and contradictions?
How can work which never once made me feel exploited, injure and exploit so many other women?
Why does sex work seem to raise so many people's moral hackles, when what they should be angry about are the class distinctions which never once made me feel exploited?
And finally, why do we think that something which has never gone away can be eradicated by legislation or censorship?
My life as a "Craigslist hooker" ended when I fell in love, which was what I really wanted. Now Craigslist Erotic Services is gone. The providers and clients will undoubtedly move on. Perhaps into the therapeutic services section to irritate other earnest therapeutic massage practitioners like my one-time self. Perhaps the less fortunate will move onto the street where they will face even more grave danger.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Prime%2BNews/Story/STIStory_386048.htmlJune 5, 2009
By Judith Tan
THE number of homosexuals and bisexuals here who tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) last year climbed to a new high.
The increase comes as overall figures rose 7.8 per cent, with activist groups and counsellors calling for more education across all genders and lifestyles.
Although the number of HIV cases from heterosexual transmission - which makes up the bulk at 54 per cent - has fallen from 255 in 2007 to 248 last year, the spread among homosexuals and bisexuals has spiked, rising by 16 per cent and 127 per cent respectively between 2007 and last year.
These statistics, released on the Health Ministry (MOH) website on Wednesday, show a total of 456 people tested positive for HIV, the first stage of the Aids virus, last year. Unfortunately, half were already in the late stages when they were diagnosed.
The virus can lay dormant for up to 10 years, showing little sign of infection.
Of those who tested positive, more than nine out of 10 were men and the total number infected since the first official Aids case appeared here in 1985 is now 3,941. Nearly one-third have died.
The MOH did not cite reasons for the increase in the numbers, but the increase in clinics carrying out anonymous tests may have encouraged more people to come forward for testing.
Anonymous HIV testing began here in 1991 in a Kelantan Lane clinic run by the Action For Aids (AFA), a voluntary community- based organisation committed to Aids prevention, advocacy and support.
It was extended to two general practitioner clinics in June 2006, and another four in November last year.
Apart from that, researchers and volunteers are saying there is an increasing number of gay men getting infected due to open relationships with their partners.
'The men have become complacent and do not use protection. This trend was also found by research done in five large cities in the United States and in the Netherlands,' said Mr Brenton Wong, former vice-president of AFA.
Male and female individuals in both the 20-29 and 30-39 age group had the highest increase of transmission.
AFA spokesman Lionel Lee said these age groups are the most sexually active and also travel more, increasing their exposure to the virus.
They may have also not seen the effects of HIV personally. They are therefore less likely to be afraid of contracting HIV, he said.
Another concern was the spread of HIV through intravenous drug use. Infections increased almost three times - from seven in 2007 to 20 last year.
'The use of drugs is also on the rise, impairing judgment. Younger people have become adventurous sexually and are rather complacent about having multiple sexual partners and using protection. Coupled with drugs, it is a definite recipe for disaster,' Mr Wong said.
He added that younger people are not aware of the early years of the Aids - acquired immune deficiency syndrome - epidemic when death rates were high.
'For this new generation, the educational messaging about safe sex should be consistent and persistent to knock some sense into them,' he said.
Mr Lee said the AFA is exploring new avenues to educate high-risk individuals, but added: 'We have not been able to use the mass media as this is still a sensitive topic.'
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