Page 3 of 5
The idea of becoming a sex worker first occurred to Gray in Thailand, where some female sex worker friends had paid their way through college. Then, while back in San Francisco and undergoing his sex change, for which he would definitely need to make some money, he happened to read an essay by local sex worker and author Kirk Read in the anthology Nobody Passes. The essay is about Read's first two sex gigs, and how he had rearranged them in his mind to tell a more palatable story about sex work.
During Read's true first experience, he had snorted crystal meth, believing it to be coke, then sucked cock all night long in a dirty basement apartment, only to be shorted on payment. But instead of telling that story, he found himself reverting to his second appointment, in which he was paid in full and his client proclaimed him a healer.
This essay appealed very much to Gray's obsession with honesty, and ignited in him the desire to take "a beautiful risk" in defying conventional wisdom by becoming intimate with strangers. Sex work fascinated him, and he also liked the idea of being wanted so badly for his particular body that gay men were willing to pay.
So far, Gray says he hasn't gotten much grief over his vagina, which is surprising, considering gay men are often spooked by female anatomy. But when you consider that Gray's Craigslist ads were always upfront about his plumbing and that he announces his lack of a penis before he disrobes, it begins to make a little more sense. When he does get rejected, Gray feels terrible.
One night at Deco, men were strip-dancing, and some guy approached Gray and told him he should get up there and take it off. No way, Gray said. He didn't believe a vagina would go over well in a gay bar. But the guy kept pestering him to strip, and requesting a private show after, and finally Gray snapped.
"I don't think I'm what you're looking for," he told the guy.
"It's not like you're trans," the guy retorted. "You have an Adam's apple."
"Actually, I am," Gray fired back. "And that's my trachea."
The guy looked confused, so Gray took his hand and put it on his crotch. "I don't have a dick," he said. The guy stepped back, then bolted. From across the bar, a friend who saw what happened mouthed "I love you" to Gray. "I felt very protected," he said. "But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."
Gray is sensitive to criticism, even if it comes from a stranger. Luckily, in his sex work — which he says has provided him with meaningful experiences and a surplus of material for storytelling — his clients tend to shower him with compliments.
That's not all they shower on him. "A piss bottom," he explains earnestly, "is basically someone who likes to be peed on in various forms." Some even like to swallow it. Gray is into all things piss play.
He doesn't like to try to intellectualize that desire, because he feels it's very intuitive. Just something he likes to be subjected to. He's really into fluids, though, so if he had to guess at why he loves piss so much, he'd say it's because piss doesn't carry HIV.
The sex-positive movement in San Francisco is arguably the strongest in the nation, and although Prop. K, which would have decriminalized prostitution, didn't pass, there's a strong contingent here that touts the ability of sex work to improve lives.
Sex workers frequently claim that theirs is a job like any other, an exchange where two people get what they want. Some say it's even better than that, because they are offering intimacy to some extraordinarily lonely people. There's a word for that they use: healers.
Those same healers, however, will simultaneously admit that they sometimes opt out of sex work for personal reasons. Emotionally revitalizing a client can be emotionally draining, they say, and part of being able to keep the job under control is to know when to take a break.
In recent years, plenty of academics have come out in support of the idea that sex workers are healers and that their profession should be legalized, including Jeffrey T. Parsons, professor and chair of psychology at Hunter College, where he researches sexuality.
"There are psychologically well-adjusted sex workers out there," he said. It just depends how and why the sex work is done. For "the male escort of the 21st century" — who doesn't live in a brothel or have a pimp — Parsons doesn't see a problem: "He advertises. He screens his clients before they come over. He may very well negotiate what's going to happen ahead of time. He has a lot of agency in the work that he does."
Parsons would appear to be describing someone like Gray. But as much as Gray has enjoyed his sex work, there have also been times when he has experienced guilt and shame about it.
During a spiritual healing session of his own (the "hippy-dippy" kind, not a sex encounter), he realized that the image of one particular professor having sex with him had been chasing him for months, and he didn't like it. He realized he felt like a failure in connection with the sex work, which was why he was hiding it from friends and family members.
Comparing it to a fall from grace, he says he was no longer perfect or good in the eyes of others. He was, in fact, a criminal, and eventually he internalized that. But after recognizing that he was feeling guilty for no good reason, he says he was able to move past it. "What is so fucking wrong with being a sex worker?" he now demands to know.
While he may have emerged from his own guilt, Gray is still seeking the general approval that came so easily to his former female self. Sometimes that need, coupled with his tendency to take risks, can get him into trouble.
