The Code of the
Callboy
By DAN SAVAGE. Op-Ed
Contributor, NYTimes on the Web, November 8, 2006
Seattle -- I ONCE had a friend
who did sex work, which is a nice way of saying that he was a prostitute.
He was based in Los Angeles and one of his clients was a movie star. Not
just any movie star, but a top male movie star. A sex symbol. This
guy used to fly my friend first class to far-flung locales, usually to unwind
after a big location shoot.
Sorry, but I can’t tell you who this movie star is. It’s not that I’m
afraid of being sued or that I disapprove of outing. Nope, the reason I
can’t tell you the name of this movie star is, well, I don’t know it. No
matter how many times I asked, no matter how much I pried, my friend simply
wouldn’t tell me the guy’s name. My friend wouldn’t even tell me where he
was meeting his famous client, lest the places where his films were being shot
offered a telling clue.
My friend took the callboy’s code of silence seriously.
Besides the sheer scale of the hypocrisy, the Ted Haggard scandal doesn’t tell
us much we don’t already know about closeted gay or bisexual men; closet cases
will take enormous risks to get their needs met and will often do great harm to
themselves and to those they profess to love. What’s new in the Haggard
scandal — perhaps we should call it a flameout — is the refusal of Mike Jones, a
former male prostitute, to honor the callboy’s code of silence, the omertà of
gay hookerdom.
On the Web site where Mr. Haggard is said to have found Mr. Jones, the callboys
describe themselves as discreet. That’s their solemn promise not to blab
to the wife, if you’re married; to the tabloids (or prying friends), if you’re a
movie star; to your congregation, if you’re one of the most powerful evangelical
ministers in the country. The fear that callboys can no longer be trusted
will make the lives of men like Ted Haggard that much more lonely and difficult.
Back in the bad old days — the mythical 1950s, the era social conservatives pine
for — most gay men were closeted, which made it relatively easy for them to
arrange discreet trysts. You could rely on the discretion of your sex
partners because they were relying on yours. It was the era of mutually
assured destruction, both in terms of nuclear warfare and gay sex. Your
partner couldn’t reveal your secret without revealing his own.
Needless to say, a sex life infused with cold-war-style tensions didn’t lead to
many healthy or lasting relationships.
Today gay and bisexual men live openly, making the modern closet a much less
crowded place. While once all the best gay men were closeted, now the only
adults you find in the closet are the fearful, the pathetic and the
hypocritical. The men you meet in today’s closet are the ones with a great
deal to lose if their secrets are exposed. They’re gay men with lucrative
careers that would collapse if they came out; gay men whose obscenely wealthy
families would disown them if they lived openly; or gay men leading large
congregations that would dismiss them if they knew the truth about their pastor.
A less crowded closet doesn’t just mean slimmer pickings for men like Ted
Haggard, but unreliable ones as well. While once you could be certain that
the closeted gay man you were sleeping with would still be closeted 10 or 20
years in the future, now you never know. The closeted gay man you entrust
with your secret today may be out next year. As he has nothing left to
hide, your secret is no longer safe. Better hope you parted on good terms.
Which is why so many powerful closet cases turn to callboys. It’s not just
the callboy’s promise of discretion, but the sense that the old dynamics —
mutually assured destruction — remain in force. A callboy can’t expose
your secret without exposing his own. There’s still a stigma attached to
selling sex.
So why did Mike Jones speak out?
Because today it is arguably more shameful and damaging to be a hypocritical
closet case than it is to be a sex worker. Even those delighted by Mr.
Haggard’s disgrace — disclosure: I count myself among their number — ache
for his five children, all suffering now for the sins of their father. And
let me be clear: their father’s sin is not his sexual orientation, but his
deceit and hypocrisy. His sin is the closet.
When Representative Mark Foley flamed out, Pat Robertson said: “Well, this
man’s gay. He does what gay people do.” That lie might have worked
when most gay Americans were closeted, but it doesn’t work anymore.
Seventy percent of Americans today know a gay person; for straight Americans,
hitting on teenagers, hiring prostitutes and snorting meth are not things their
gay relatives, friends and co-workers typically do. (Or not at appreciably
higher rates than their straight friends.) An openly gay man is
accountable to himself, his family, his partner and his community. He is
free to form healthy relationships, which is why he is far less likely to be
I.M.’ing teenagers or hiring hookers than some desperate closet case.
Ultimately it was Ted Haggard’s hypocrisy — railing against homosexuals and
campaigning against gay marriage while apparently indulging in sex romps with a
gay escort — that prompted Mr. Jones to shove him out of the closet. The
homophobia promoted by Mr. Haggard and other agents of intolerance, if I may use
John McCain’s phrase (he’s not using it anymore), undermined the callboy code of
silence that Mr. Haggard himself relied on. Most callboys are gay, after
all, and most are out of the closet these days.
And while most callboys will continue to respect a code of silence where the
average closet case is concerned, the Ted Haggards of the world have been placed
on notice: You can’t have your callboy and disparage him too.
Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle
newsweekly, and the author of “The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My
Family.”
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