Episode 1 ❤️‍🩹 1974: the chalice, pt 1

dirty socks, rough trade & money

Hit the ❤️ button at the top or bottom left and warm my cold cold

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The hustlers in The Chalice¹ think sucking cock for money doesn’t make them queer, that money changes everything.

It’s something to think about.

Chino brought me here last week; I’ve been here every night since. It’s a fag bar, so no one is buying me drinks, no one asks for ID or gives a rat’s ass I’m underage. No one cares if I get all drunk. I panhandle Penn Station after work for an hour or so and I have enough to hang out and drink all night.

The young boys are pretty—prettier than me. They stand on the tiny dance floor, swaying to the music on the juke, touching themselves and rubbing their crotches against the old men, the chicken hawks. Waiters in tight leather pants and no shirts carry trays of cocktails and vials of amyl nitrate.

The bar reeks of dirty socks. Poppers.

In the corners, in the shadows, the rough trade boys. Cruel, muscular boys with hard stomachs and harder hearts in tight jeans and cut-off denim vests.

They wait, making the old men come to them.

Wait, until an offer is made, until money changes hands.

The old men come and I can hear them: Let me suck your cock just watch me while I jerk off let me watch while you jerk off I just want to touch it I know you’re not a fag I can get you a place to stay some coke a leather coat a car how much money do you want?

As long as there’s money, as long as they still fuck girls,
fuck me,
they’re not queer,
they say.

Yeah. Okay

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

Hit the ❤️ button at the top or bottom left and warm my cold cold heart.

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Talk dirty to me

* How do you define sexuality? Actions? Intention? Fantasy?
* If I just think about something forbidden, have I already crossed a line?
* What about if I write about it? If I read about it?
* When is the line crossed and who decides where that line is? 

1. Historical footnote: The Chalice occupied the underground space that’s currently Smalls Jazz Club at 183 West 10th Street. The tiny storefront next to it, no wider than a door, was a gypsy “tea room.” The mama would send the younger kids out in the night to bang up cars in the area. Come morning, the older boys “wandered by” offering to pull out dents that’d mysteriously appeared overnight. Between the hustlers & the gypsies, West 10th Street between 7th Avenue South and West 4th Street was a very entrepreneurial corner of the city.