The Code of the Callboy

[Broadwayboobs]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 7:28am

Op-Ed Contributor
The Code of the Callboy
By DAN SAVAGE
Published: November 8, 2006
Seattle

I ONCE had a friend who did sex work, which is a nice way of saying that he was a prostitute.

He was based in Los Angeles and one of his clients was a movie star. Not just any movie star, but a top male movie star. A sex symbol. This guy used to fly my friend first class to far-flung locales, usually to unwind after a big location shoot.

Sorry, but I can’t tell you who this movie star is. It’s not that I’m afraid of being sued or that I disapprove of outing. Nope, the reason I can’t tell you the name of this movie star is, well, I don’t know it. No matter how many times I asked, no matter how much I pried, my friend simply wouldn’t tell me the guy’s name. My friend wouldn’t even tell me where he was meeting his famous client, lest the places where his films were being shot offered a telling clue.

My friend took the callboy’s code of silence seriously.

Besides the sheer scale of the hypocrisy, the Ted Haggard scandal doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know about closeted gay or bisexual men; closet cases will take enormous risks to get their needs met and will often do great harm to themselves and to those they profess to love. What’s new in the Haggard scandal — perhaps we should call it a flameout — is the refusal of Mike Jones, a former male prostitute, to honor the callboy’s code of silence, the omertà of gay hookerdom.

On the Web site where Mr. Haggard is said to have found Mr. Jones, the callboys describe themselves as discreet. That’s their solemn promise not to blab to the wife, if you’re married; to the tabloids (or prying friends), if you’re a movie star; to your congregation, if you’re one of the most powerful evangelical ministers in the country. The fear that callboys can no longer be trusted will make the lives of men like Ted Haggard that much more lonely and difficult.

Back in the bad old days — the mythical 1950s, the era social conservatives pine for — most gay men were closeted, which made it relatively easy for them to arrange discreet trysts. You could rely on the discretion of your sex partners because they were relying on yours. It was the era of mutually assured destruction, both in terms of nuclear warfare and gay sex. Your partner couldn’t reveal your secret without revealing his own.

Needless to say, a sex life infused with cold-war-style tensions didn’t lead to many healthy or lasting relationships.

Today gay and bisexual men live openly, making the modern closet a much less crowded place. While once all the best gay men were closeted, now the only adults you find in the closet are the fearful, the pathetic and the hypocritical. The men you meet in today’s closet are the ones with a great deal to lose if their secrets are exposed. They’re gay men with lucrative careers that would collapse if they came out; gay men whose obscenely wealthy families would disown them if they lived openly; or gay men leading large congregations that would dismiss them if they knew the truth about their pastor.

A less crowded closet doesn’t just mean slimmer pickings for men like Ted Haggard, but unreliable ones as well. While once you could be certain that the closeted gay man you were sleeping with would still be closeted 10 or 20 years in the future, now you never know. The closeted gay man you entrust with your secret today may be out next year. As he has nothing left to hide, your secret is no longer safe. Better hope you parted on good terms.

Which is why so many powerful closet cases turn to callboys. It’s not just the callboy’s promise of discretion, but the sense that the old dynamics — mutually assured destruction — remain in force. A callboy can’t expose your secret without exposing his own. There’s still a stigma attached to selling sex.

So why did Mike Jones speak out?

Because today it is arguably more shameful and damaging to be a hypocritical closet case than it is to be a sex worker. Even those delighted by Mr. Haggard’s disgrace — disclosure: I count myself among their number — ache for his five children, all suffering now for the sins of their father. And let me be clear: their father’s sin is not his sexual orientation, but his deceit and hypocrisy. His sin is the closet.

When Representative Mark Foley flamed out, Pat Robertson said: “Well, this man’s gay. He does what gay people do.” That lie might have worked when most gay Americans were closeted, but it doesn’t work anymore. Seventy percent of Americans today know a gay person; for straight Americans, hitting on teenagers, hiring prostitutes and snorting meth are not things their gay relatives, friends and co-workers typically do. (Or not at appreciably higher rates than their straight friends.) An openly gay man is accountable to himself, his family, his partner and his community. He is free to form healthy relationships, which is why he is far less likely to be I.M.’ing teenagers or hiring hookers than some desperate closet case.

Ultimately it was Ted Haggard’s hypocrisy — railing against homosexuals and campaigning against gay marriage while apparently indulging in sex romps with a gay escort — that prompted Mr. Jones to shove him out of the closet. The homophobia promoted by Mr. Haggard and other agents of intolerance, if I may use John McCain’s phrase (he’s not using it anymore), undermined the callboy code of silence that Mr. Haggard himself relied on. Most callboys are gay, after all, and most are out of the closet these days.

And while most callboys will continue to respect a code of silence where the average closet case is concerned, the Ted Haggards of the world have been placed on notice: You can’t have your callboy and disparage him too.

Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly, and the author of “The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family.”

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 7:57am

Nice column. Thanks for posting it.

Maybe Mike the Masseur is really Zola Q. La Playa...

[lazyafternoon]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 8:19am

I found this in the same site that carries Dan Savage's column. It offers a different perspective.
--------------------------------------------

This Male Escort Doesn't Think Mike Jones Is a Hero
BY BENJAMIN NICHOLAS

Once upon a time, the first rule of being a high-priced male escort was that you didn't talk about who's sleeping with you, the high-priced male escort.

Simple enough, right?

Since the dawn of time, when man no doubt used shells and sticks to acquire such services, the ability to "rent" your fantasy partner has worked well for the famous and for those who wanted an extra layer of anonymity.

It was understood that as a male escort, you were not only required to please your client 110 percent of the time, but to also keep every minute of that time in the utmost confidence. This was, obviously, before the days of celebrity browbeaters like Nancy Grace and other scandalmongers in the modern media. Sex scandals are just too good for the ol' ratings to pass up.

This past week, the media have been doing their level best to make Pastor Ted Haggard a household name. Thanks to their efforts, Haggard will without a doubt take his place in the pop-culture pantheon of Family-Values Hypocrites.

It was a bad week for the good pastor. The ultraconservative, anti-gay Christian evangelist was not only fingered for hiring a gay male prostitute, but for buying meth off the sex worker as well. (The sex worker claims he didn't sell Haggard the meth, just hooked him up with someone who would.) Haggard has since resigned from the 14,000-member New Life Church, the Colorado Springs, Colorado, megachurch he founded.

Mike Jones, the male escort in question, has since embraced his 15 minutes of fame, hitting as many media outlets as he can. Jones was quoted as saying that he was "sad for [Haggard] and his family" and that it wasn't his intent "to destroy him and his family... My intent was to expose a hypocrite."

Give me a ****ing break.

You were paid for sex, Mike. The most important rule you can follow when taking people's money in exchange for sex is that—no matter what—their lives stay their own and whatever passes between the two of you remains private. Period. Your leap from paid crotch monkey to gay-rights crusader certainly doesn't impress your fellow sex workers. If this had happened in any other form of organized crime, you would be found in the trunk of a 1992 Lincoln Town Car three weeks from now. So consider yourself lucky that you're getting off with a scolding.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm no apologist for Haggard. He crossed a line by attacking gay people while enjoying gay sex, to say nothing of deceiving his children, his wife, and his congregation. Does Haggard deserve this media hailstorm? Possibly. Did he deserve to be outed by this hooker with a heart of lead?

No, he didn't.

When Haggard paid Jones for these "massages," he was in effect not only paying for the intended sexual action, but also for something much more important: privacy. Any professional in the sex industry worth his or her salt would agree that Jones was wrong to expose Haggard, however offensive the pastor's hypocrisy.

In my four years in the gay-escort industry, I've worked hard to earn the trust and confidence of all the men I see. I strive to be professional without seeming clinical or businesslike. This has helped me become one of the most widely recognized and busiest male escorts at work today. Whether I'm seeing celebrities, politicians, athletes, or anyone else, it's my job to make sure that each person is treated with the same respect and confidentiality. If a client's actions inside or outside our time together affect me in a negative way, then I can drop that particular client. I don't pass judgment on them, and I sure as hell wouldn't "out" any of them.

How dishonorable. I hope that Jones feels great shame in knowing he's ruined someone else's life, while also confirming the worst stereotypes about male sex workers: that we're a bunch of drug-dealing whores. The vast majority of us are no such thing, of course, but it will be harder to convince people of that now. So thanks for nothing, Mike. Now, in your quest to achieve secular sainthood, maybe you can adopt a Namibian child, help Al Gore save the planet, or find a cure for HIV.

Whatever you do now, Mike, your 15 minutes won't last much longer. So you might want to get that book deal inked while you still can.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 8:33am

Callboy Catfight!

Posted: 11/8/06 at 9:05am

Wow, usually you have to pay extra for a catfight!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 10:58am

So, let me see if I understand this correctly. There is a code of ethics among prostitutes? Or is it only male prostitutes? And does this not include theft, blackmail, drug use/sales, or violence for which I have actually known male prostitutes to engage in? I mean, seriously. Ok, a boy needs to make a buck, but there's no confidentiality agreement. Regarding that second article, I just don't know where he gets off (pardon the pun) criticizing another hooker for immoral or unethical behavior.

"You were paid for sex, Mike. The most important rule you can follow when taking people's money in exchange for sex is that—no matter what—their lives stay their own and whatever passes between the two of you remains private. Period. Your leap from paid crotch monkey to gay-rights crusader certainly doesn't impress your fellow sex workers. If this had happened in any other form of organized crime, you would be found in the trunk of a 1992 Lincoln Town Car three weeks from now. So consider yourself lucky that you're getting off with a scolding."

Uh, is this supposed to be a convincing argument on the "ethics" of illegal activity? Sounds like sour grapes to me. Perhaps Benjy didn't realize his Sunday afternoon regular was Haggard until it was too late.

I mean, I've seen numerous hit men exposing the suburbanites who hire them, yet I haven't noticed the Hit Men's Local 531 staging a picket line for the media in protest to his represensible behavior. And I'm not sure that it would convince me to support their cause.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 11:04am

"The Code of the Callboy"??
Is this ANOTHER Star Wars episode?

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 11/8/06 at 11:04am

Charlene's best friend from Poplar Bluffs, MO, Montette, was the secretary of her local chapter of the hooker's union...

you should ask her.