We made a date; 20 minutes later my cab pulled up to one of the more fleabagged of fleabag hotels. And there he was outside, sitting on the steps, in jeans, sneakers, T-shirt, a baseball cap, looking agreeably lifelike. We shook hands, went in, Stone paid the "concierge" for the room and up we went.

The room, even by the fluid New York City definition of a room, wasn't one, but rather a dingy cubicle containing a tiny color TV on a side chair, a window like a porthole and a change of clothes for Stone -- this was his office. Getting down to business, he asked to be paid and, eager to prove myself respectful of the nature of our business transaction, I threw 10 20s on the bed. Robotically he began to disrobe, as if in anticipation of a physician's anal probe, and when I expressed a sensual interest in assisting him, he suggested I just take off my own. I lingered, clinging to the erotic appeal of being half-clothed while the former Playgirl Man of the Year lay nude in anticipation on the bed (cot, really). But seeing him naked in the flesh, without benefit of ambience or stylists, in a continual waiting state -- waiting for me to get naked, waiting for me/us to jerk off, waiting for me to leave, waiting for the beeper to go off and the cycle to be repeated -- made any attempt at an erotic atmosphere painfully beside the point.

First I made the mistake of attempting to engage him in conversation. I should have known that the last thing he wanted to be reminded of was his glory days, so when I asked about Playgirl, he said that wasn't something he really had anything to say about. OK. When I joked about the heterosexual charade the magazine indulged in with regard to its models, he muttered something about "being straight" at the time he posed, and he spoke with such a separation of words from emotion that I decided to just get on with it and get out. His perfunctory zombie act was having a chillingly reciprocal effect.

Then I made the mistake of taking his previous declaration that he did "everything" at face value. Spanking? He made a face of the mildest distaste. Of course, I didn't need to be told that kissing just wasn't done. All right, so nothing resembling foreplay -- what were we going to do for an hour? Deciding to assert myself, I declared I wanted a massage and flipped over onto my stomach. After a few minutes of indifferent back-rubbing, I rolled over on top of him. He grimaced -- it was his back, he explained. I needed to be a little careful.

Now I was irritated, and when I'm irritated (and sometimes when I'm not), nastiness kicks in. I asked if Mom and Dad were still alive. What could be more cloying to a whore than to ask after the parents? He didn't talk about personal stuff, he said monotonously -- as if I wanted to hear anyway. At that point, I decided the situation was so perfunctory it wasn't worth masturbating. I told him to go ahead while I watched. A minute or so later, two pathetic, Susan B. Anthony dollar-sized spunk puddles stuck sadly to his 50-ish gut -- which told me just how many times tonight he'd performed this act on himself. I got dressed, we shook hands and I left him with Jay Leno. I cabbed it home and met up with friends to celebrate my return to the land of the living. The next day I remember waking up wondering if I'd done anything for my birthday.

Postscript: In a recent classified ad, I noticed Stone had lowered his rate to $150. I myself have since been working to decrease a rather marked bald spot on the top of my head with some Rogaine-like ingredient. It's all about cutting your losses where you can.
salon.com | June 8, 1999

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