The other day I was speaking with Bruce Benderson. Both of us were lamenting the hard economic times.
“I’m four months behind in my rent.” Bruce still lived in the East Village.
“I’m only one month.” I had been economically cleansed from East 1Oth Street by a $10,000 buyout from the managment company. The money helped buy me a car in Thailand for my wife and daughter Angie.
“Then you’re practically rich,” cackled the infamous writer of gay hustling scene around the world. Critics in Europe had loved THE ROMANIAN. It had sold less than five thousand copies in the USA.
That wasn’t bad, considering most American don’t read.
“And I recently finished my novel about hitchhiking across the country in 1974.” I called it BACK AND FORTH. It had no plot. I had sent the pitch and first chapters to thirty agents. None of them had gotten back to me.
“I hitchhiked out to San Francisco in 1969 with my friend. We had about $100 in our pocket. We made it last, because we hustled here and hustled there. One time we were picked up by this really straight guy in Denver and he asked if I wanted to make some money. I said yes and he gave me $20. I felt so dirty. It was lovely.”
“My novel has me meeting a Peggy Lipton lookalike tranny.” Maya had been driving a Porsche convertible.
“And did you do her?”
“More than once.” We shared a satisfying week in Santa Cruz. Maja was never a man to me. She wore fancy lingerie in a dark bedroom and one candle helped tell the lie.
“Those were different times.” Bruce had a few years on me. He had been places that were where it’s at before I got to them when they had lost their luster.
“John Waters hitchhiked across the country last year.”
“That old queen got rides?” Bruce was looking good for a man who had never exercised in his life.
“He went without a film crew too.” I had been jealous hearing this story. “A band passed him in Kansas and thought he was a bum, but then one ot them said that he looked like John Waters and they turned around to pick him up.”
“Amazing, but I was speaking with him the other day and John told me that he can’t get any money to make a film. Now he does this stand-up routine traveling from place to place like a vagabond.”
“John Waters can’t find financing for a movie?” I was trying to scrap up cash to film my diamond district movie BET ON CRAZY. I was a nobody. My chances of gettting a backer were close to zero, but John Waters had filmed PINK FLAMINGOS and no one in Hollywood was planning on repackaging Divine’s opus extraordinaire.
“It’s a tragedy, but we outlive our usefulness, although I have to new boyfriend. He’s only twenty-six.” Bruce liked them young.
“Then you’re rich too.” I dreamed about sleeping with my son’s mother all the time. Mam was on the other side of the world and the $40 in my pocket wasn’t enough to pay a ticket to Chicago. Hitchhiking to California wasn’t a problem, but getting a ride across the Pacific was an impossibility. Tramp steamers were as extinct as hitchhikers, except in B Traven’s DEATH SHIP.
“I suppose I am.” Bruce cooed aglow in the warmth of a young man’s love.
“I wish I was.” I wanted to see the faces of my four kids.
“You will be. Old hustlers always have a last shot at the big time and you’ve got a couple more left in you.”
It was wishful thinking, but that’s the best kind when you are on the road to nowhere.