After waiting almost an hour for the CAT bus, I decided to skip the second transfer and walk the rest of the way home. I was tired from working a late shift and the Citizens Area Transit buses ran less frequently after midnight. My grandparents warned me about being out in the middle of the night, but it was only a forty-five-minute walk home. Surely I was far enough away from the strip that it was safe to do so. Besides, this was Las Vegas––what could possibly happen?
I was about a mile from home, when I noticed a group of lit up cop cars across the street. Before I could make out what was happening, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto a bus stop bench.
“Come ‘ere,” she whispered. “Sit next to me until the pigs leave. I don’t want them to think I’m workin’.”
“Workin’?” I wondered. “Here?” Confused, I looked around and then down at the wad of cash she was holding. “Oh, okay.”
"Did you make all that in one night?"
"Yeah. And all I had to do was suck some oriental guy's dick and pee on another guy's face while he jerked off," she sung out in a beautiful southern accent.
"Like, at the same time?" I asked.
"Nah," she laughed. "Not this time. But I made about five hundred dollars, so I think I'm done for the night." She began to show off the wad of bills by flicking them like a deck of cards.
"Dang. That's good money," I said, genuinely impressed but not surprised. She was beautiful. Probably in her early twenties. Her clothes did not look like not what I imagined a hooker would wear. At home, most of the hookers wore miniskirts, tube tops, and cheap wigs to disguise the fact that they were men. She had on a floral dress and wore her long blonde hair in a braid. From what I could tell, she barely had any makeup on––her cheeks seemed naturally rosy, and her lips were pink and glossed.
"Did you do it here?" I asked, motioning at the long-term hotel suites behind us.
"Oh yeah. There are a lot of rich pervs that stay at them places," she laughed, then leaned into me. "You know. You could do this and make a shit ton of money. You're young and pretty––got a nice mouth, too. All yuh gotta do is tell ’em you’re under-age. Perves love that."
"Really? You think so?" I asked, flattered by the compliment.
“Yup. Don’t look a day over sixteen. You got that goin’ for yuh.”
"I can't, though,” I remembered. “I'm gonna be a pop star. If people found out, it would end my career.”
She smiled at this information, zipped up her tiny Dooney & Bourke bag, rested her arms on it and sighed, patiently watching the cops who appeared to be leaving.
“Do you ever do it for free?" I asked. “Like with a boyfriend or something?”
"No," she said, amused. "I ain’t got time for a boyfriend. Besides, I'm not the boyfriend havin’ type. I would have to quit doin’ this. And I’m not about to quit for a man. I’m just not that kind of girl."
The rest of my walk home, I thought about what she said, and agreed. I did have a nice mouth. But becoming a sex worker was out of the question. Maybe getting a sugar daddy would be a better option, I considered. Tori, a tall young Hawaiian boy who worked in the sales department at the same clothing store where I worked, was always flaunting gifts from older men he dated––a new watch from Cartier, a bracelet from Tiffany's, a Gucci sweater.
"Where do you meet these guys?" I asked him once.
"At the club, or here, at the store," I remembered him saying. I was eighteen, years away from being old enough to get into a club, and I worked in the stockroom, so I spent most of my shifts not interacting with possible suitors.
"Who do I need to talk to if I wanna work on the sales floor?" I asked Wendy the following Monday as we filled a baker's rack with the previous day's clothing replenishment.
Wendy and I met during employee training. We barely spoke to each other until the training instructor played a video in which the actor wore a black T-shirt, pressed, and tucked into a pair of chinos. A large necklace of pearls resembling golf balls strung together completed her ensemble. I assumed this actress was trying to demonstrate how anything could be dressed up, or down. That, we learned during training, was how you could sell just about anything, telling the customer they could achieve such versatility with whatever it was they were looking to buy.
Wendy and I both looked at the actress, weighed down with those glossy golf balls, then at each other, and busted out laughing. Wendy asked the instructor where she could buy "those beauties" to dress up a pair of old gym shorts she had, and if we could get our employee discount on them. The instructor was not amused. For the remainder of the training, Wendy and I were quite unproductive.
"Maybe ask Scott. He's our manager. He might know," she suggested. "Why do you wanna leave the stockroom? Who am I gonna sing with and tell jokes to?"
"Your mom," I responded, as usual.
"See?" she roared.
"I want a sugar Daddy, and I’m not gonna find one working in the stockroom."
"What? You haven't even had sex yet, and now you want a sugar Daddy?"
"Yeah, well, I got this job so I can use my paycheck and discount to buy nice clothes and look like a pop star. Fast forward three months later, and I still can't afford nice clothes with what I make. I wanna look like I belong in NSYNC, not 98 Degrees,” I whined. “Look at Tori; dudes buy him clothes all the time and he looks great. Even when he gets that big cold sore on his mouth. And even though I have the perfect mouth for it, it’s either that or become a male-prostitute,” I rambled. “It's too dangerous though. What if MTV finds out? What if I get hooked on drugs?"
"Or raped, or murdered, or both," she added.
"Yeah, see. So, I'll just get a sugar daddy and leave him when I become famous."
Before I went home that day, I asked Scott about transferring to the sales department, and the following week, I was training on the sales floor.
It didn't take long for me to become one of the top salespeople. I was highly motivated. At the prospect of a sugar daddy, yes, but also by the company contests with free clothing rewards. I won every single one. Offers from male suitors began pouring in, but I was too afraid to accept them.
"What do you think about this?" a customer asked me, lifting a shirt from the table I was leaning on while inconspicuously rubbing his thumb up my crotch.
"Let me check the back for you," I offered, and quickly disappeared. Most of the indecent proposals, however, occurred in the fitting rooms.
"How does this look on me?" a pantless man asked after opening the fitting room door, wearing a silk and cashmere sweater in apple-red and the biggest hard-on I’ve ever seen, in midnight black.
"You can dress that up,” I said nervously, knowing he had no problem getting anything up, “or down,” I shouted as I rushed out of sight.
"How's this?" a woman asked me once when she opened the door stark naked.
"Oh honey, no." I said and shut the door.
Tori, who had taken me on as a protégé, was becoming frustrated with my lack of suitors.
"Listen, I'll give you one of mine," he offered.
"No, I got this. I can do it. The next guy that makes a pass at me, I'll go out with him. I promise!"
"Okay. But don't fuck him right away," Tori advised. "Just go on a date and feel him out first. If it looks like he’s rich, then go on a second date. Oh, and make sure you get there on your own. Last thing you want is to be stranded out in the desert. Trust me."
"But, how will I know if he’s rich?"
Tori told me to pay attention to a man’s clothes and jewelry. Ask questions like what they do for a living, whether they own property, and what they drive. “Things like that,” he said confidently.
"Yeah, but what if he’s rich but looks and acts poor? In my hometown, we had this homeless guy we called Wolf-man who walked all over town pushing a cart while collecting cans, and it turned out he wasn’t poor, he was the richest man in California. If I applied your rules, it would be a total missed opportunity."
“You’re an idiot,” he said. “Just do what I said.”
That following day, I had off due to a scheduled voice lesson across town. It was a two-hour commute from home because of all the bus transfers I had to make. For months, I had pleaded with my grandmother to let me use her 1989 Nissan 240 SX. A tiny white sports car my grandfather bought had her as a birthday gift ten years prior. I loved that car.
"Mama Maria, please! I'll pay for the gas and wash it once a week. Getting to voice lessons takes forever, and scary people ride that bus line. When I become famous, I'll buy you a new one!" I pleaded.
"Quando te hagas famoso, when you become famous?” she scoffed. "Que espera? What are you waiting for? You should hurry up and become famous, so you don’t have to ride the bus!”
"Mama!"
"No!"
I boarded the CAT bus two hours before my voice lesson, after a 15-minute walk to the bus stop on the corner of Dessert Inn and Boulder Hwy. At every stop, I stared at the people boarding. I wasn’t usually a people watcher, but it was hard not to be one when every other person getting on the bus looked like a meth addict. You had to be careful not to make eye contact because that was seen as an invitation to sit next to you. But there was an art to eye-contactless people watching that I never mastered.
"Hola?" A nice older man greeted me with a thick accent. "Sit? Here?" he asked.
"Yeah, sure," I said, moving my backpack to my lap, annoyed that he chose to sit next to me on a half-empty bus. I turned to look out the window and after a couple of minutes the old man tapped me on the shoulder. He looked frail, probably in his seventies. His skin was dark, not naturally, but like he worked outside. His fingernails were dirty, and his breath was bad.
"Jew go school?" he asked.
"Yup," I responded. I could tell he spoke Spanish but didn't want to get into a conversation, so I decided I would just continue speaking English unless he asked.
"Es-speak-a-span-eesh?" he asked.
"Fuck, me," I thought. I wasn’t about to lie. "Si," I sighed.
"Ah, que bueno. I'm glad. Are you from here?" he asked.
"I'm not. I'm from California, but I live here now."
"Ah okay. I've been here thirty years," he said and began to talk about his son, who was my age, and his wife, who had passed away a few years before from breast cancer. His son was in the Midwest somewhere going to college and barely spoke to him. He was in Vegas all alone. He asked me what I studied, and I told him about my plans of becoming a pop star. We talked about my voice lessons, and dance classes, and the community theater productions I had been in. He asked about my family and where they were from. Turned out, he and my grandparents were from the same small town in Mexico. I began to feel guilty for trying to dismiss this poor old man. He was in this big town, all alone. I thought about what that must feel like. It’s one thing to never have kids and wind up alone, but to have one who wants nothing to do with you––that’s rough.
"Querres chupar me la verga? Do you want to suck me off?"
"What?" I exclaimed. “Awe fuck, man.” I wasn't expecting that. Not from him. I got this all the time. At work, walking on the strip, at church on Sundays.
"I can make you feel really good,” he whispered as his hot, I-haven’t-brushed-my-teeth-since-1946 breath violated my nose.
I contemplated for a minute. I had promised Tori I would go out with the next guy who made a pass at me, but this guy? I felt like the universe was fucking with me. Maybe he's like the Wolf-man, I wondered. Maybe he's rich, rides the bus, and hasn’t showered in months to save the boatloads of money he spends on other things besides hygiene?
"No tengo dinero, I don't have money, but I have a clean apartment we can go to," he said, confirming he was no Wolf-man.
"Lo siento, I'm sorry. I can't." I said.
He looked up at me, and his face turned angry. He grabbed my wrist.
"Dude, let go." I threatened, but he squeezed tighter. "I swear to god, old man, I will hurt you if you don't let me go."
"Aye si, yeah right. You?" he laughed, then pulled my wrist toward his crotch. I hadn't noticed when or how he did it, but his penis was out and fully erect.
"Oh god!" I yelled, pulled my hand away, and kicked him off his seat.
"What's goin’ on back there?" the bus driver yelled.
"I need to get off; this pervert is trying to molest me!" I pushed him out of the way while he lay in the aisle, trying to tuck his dick back in his pants. The bus stopped, and I jumped off running down the street to hide and wait for the next bus. I watched him get off the bus and look both ways to see if he could catch my direction. He stood at the street corner for a few minutes, and then left.
After my voice lesson, I walked to a gas station payphone and called Wendy. I told her what had happened and asked her for a ride.
"That shits crazy!" Wendy said as I entered her car.
"I know, right! But dude, no way my grandma will say no to me using the car now. I got assaulted on the bus. I'm her favorite. She would hate it if something happened to me."
"No!" Mama Maria yelled.
"But grandma! I got molested on the bus! I saw his penis!"
"What do you expect!" she asked, flicking flour at me from the tortillas she was making. “Look what you're wearing!" Confused, I looked down at my black T-shirt tucked into my chinos and black shoes.
"What are you talking about? It's Banana."
"You're bananas! Tu eres bananas! Your T-shirt is too tight! And look at those pants!"
"My pants aren't tight! They fit like they're supposed to, and they're straight leg!" I yelled back. She swung me around by my arm and slapped my ass.
"Pero mira tus nalgas! Look at your ass! They make it look bigger!" Ecstatic, I turned around to look."Ah, si, verdad? Oh really? You like it?" She was not amused by my reaction. I smiled, then remembered myself. I was trying to convince her to let me use her car, so I needed to agree with everything she said, regardless of how nuts it sounded.
"No. You are right. They are too tight."
"They are too tight," she mocked with disdain and terrible broken English. "No wonder these old men want you. They probably think you're a puto! A male prostitute!" I thought about that for a minute. Here I was, looking for a sugar daddy to avoid a career in prostitution, and I was still being called a puto. She turned her back to me and continued kneading dough. I waited a minute before asking again.
"So. Caaaan?" I sang.
"Que? Can you what?"
"Use your car from now on?"
"No!”
“But what if I get raped next time?
“Well then, stop dressing like a puto!"
Weeks went by. Men had stopped hitting on me at the store and at bus stops. Tori had given up on what he now called his failed project. Work was going really well; I started making monthly bonuses for winning top sales in all categories and making commissions. I had begun to forget about my plan to become a sugar baby.
"Excuse me. Can you help me?” asked an older, six-foot tall, shaved head, blue eyed, attractive muscular man. “I’d like a fitting room.” I grabbed the clothing he had in hand, and escorted him to the fitting room area.
“My name is Luis. You are?”
"Larry," he told me. "I'm looking for some work clothes, and I'm terrible at shopping. Can you help me?”
"Of course,” I said. “Um. What do you do for work?" He looked rich.
"I'm an executive at the Bellagio." The Bellagio Casino had only been open for a year. It had an upscale reputation, rumored to be the only casino to ever have a dress code––for guests.
"Oh wow, that's fancy."
"Yeah,” he chuckled. "They said we can dress casually on Friday. It's still business casual, but all I have are suits," he told me. After an hour of trying on clothes, he bought over a thousand dollars’ worth. Before he left the store, he asked me out.
"An executive at the Bellagio?" Tori exclaimed. "He's probably loaded!"
"Probably. He asked if I wanted to go out this weekend. He wants to have dinner and go see the new show by Cirque Du Solie, O." Tori’s eyes widened. I didn't know what "Cirque" was. I had seen billboards and assumed by the name it was an indoor circus.
"Girl! Those tickets are expensive!"
According to Tori, I had hit the jackpot. I left out the fact that Larry was also gorgeous. I didn't want to rub it in. Tori's men were always old and unattractive.
Larry picked me up around five that Saturday. I wasn't out to my grandparents, so I had him honk when he arrived. As soon as I sat down in his black Jeep Grand Cherokee, he handed me a bouquet of white gardenias. I'd never seen gardenias before. At dinner, we talked about our upbringings. He grew up in the Midwest, and I in the central valley of California, but we learned that the small towns we were raised in were very similar. He was thirty-six but knew about pop music and the shows I watched. He asked me to sing for him, and although I acted shy, I was happy to do it.
The show was like something out of a dream. In the opening scene, a man was whisked through the air into the stage curtains. I’d never seen anything like it. A performer would run across the stage; seconds later, another would dive into it after it had magically turned to water. I remember looking over at Larry in amazement. "How do they do that?" I asked, and he just smiled. He was a gentleman. Kind, curious about me, and funny. After the show, we pulled up to my grandparent's home, and he kissed me goodnight on the cheek.
"Can I see you again?" he asked.
"Yeah, page me," I told him.
We went out for months before he finally invited me to his condo. He knew I was nineteen and hadn't been with anyone, so he was patient. By then, Larry had bought me clothes for the expensive dinners and shows he took me to and always had flowers or some small trinket for me. I walked into his condo, and he already had music playing and candles burning. He poured me a glass of red wine and almost immediately began to kiss my neck. I quickly became nervous. Not in the excited-to-have-sex kind of way, but the kind followed by nausea.
"Are you okay?" He asked.
"Yeah, I'm good."
"We don't have to do this, you know?"
But Tori had recently told me he had seen Larry with another boy at the club. He pressed that I needed to "seal the deal" sooner than later or I would probably lose Larry. Larry walked me over to his white coach and laid me down while he kissed me. I could feel his hardness on my leg as he slowly pulsed up against it. He then removed his shirt, exposing his perfectly sculpted abs and chest. I smiled to let him know it was okay for him to keep going, but it wasn't. I wasn't getting an erection, and I felt nauseous. He took my shirt off, and then his pants. When he started to take mine off, I wanted him to stop, but I didn't say anything.
"It's okay to be nervous. It's your first time," he said, noticing my manhood was unengaged. He took his trunks off, and then mine, and laid his naked body on top of me. I began to shake, and then cry.
"I can't. I can't do it. Not like this!" I pushed Larry, and he quickly got up.
"What! What's wrong? What happened?" he shouted, sounding afraid.
"I don't want a sugar daddy; I can't have sex with someone for stuff. I want to, but I just can't," I cried. “It’s not right.”
"A sugar Daddy?" Larry exclaimed, letting out a confused giggle. "I'm thirty-six! I’m not old enough to be a sugar daddy!" he laughed. "Is that what you think this is?"
"Isn't it?"
"No! I mean, I like younger men and I like to buy them stuff, but” he paused, "oh god. Am I a sugar daddy?" We both laughed, and I put my underwear back on.
"What about the guy you were with at the club?"
"Guy at the club? Which club?"
"The gay one, on Paradise Road."
"I haven't been to that club in years,” he assured, then sat next to me and gently put his hand on my thigh. "Did someone tell you I was there with some guy?"
"Yeah. But I think I know why. I am really sorry about all this."
"Don't be. And it’ll happen when it's supposed to happen. Don’t worry about it. Your first time should be with someone you care about," he said, then hugged me. "I'll take you home."
If living in Sin City taught me anything, it's that you can be successful at whatever you want, as long as you set your mind to it and, sometimes, mouth on it. A few weeks later, Larry and I had sex. It was awkward, and like our relationship, things ended prematurely. He stopped calling me when he met another young Hispanic virgin who worked two doors down at Express. When he did call, it was to ask if I wanted to join them in a three-way. I declined. I gave up on the idea of getting a sugar daddy and, instead, focused on working hard, getting promoted, and making enough money to move out of my grandparents' house.
About a year later, I ran into the same hooker at a bus stop in my new neighborhood. It seemed like the past year hadn’t treated her as well we mine had. She looked thinner, unwashed, and had fewer teeth than I remembered. She didn’t remember me, but after I rejected her blow job services and the finger in my ass she’d throw in for free, I told her about the old man on the bus, and how she inspired my search for a sugar daddy. "I bet you got one too," she said in her southern accent. "You have a good-looking mouth."
"Thanks,” I smiled. “But no. Turns out I'm just not that kind of guy."
❤️