Why I Can Never Be a “Real Person”

Or the Deep Dark Truth About My Employment Gap

“Please explain any gaps in your employment,” barks the online application form, almost sharp and piercing. It’s like a defensive guard dog angrily making its presence known when I’ve intruded on its perceived territory, as if it’s demanding I slink away with the most humiliated of body language.

“Uhm, I was ‘freelancing.’ Yes, ‘freelancing,’” I say aloud to myself while hammering the implicit, unconvincing lies into the keyboard; another defeated long-term unemployed body trying to sound a tad more employable.

“What was your previous salary?”

“I don’t know. In-call, out-call, overnight, weekend or travel?” I quip back, as if this résumé-screening software has any form of sentience past parsing out keywords and developing metrics for some busy-body recruiter who will gingerly decide if I have any utility.

It’s not so much I was actually lying about freelancing. I was a freelancer — a freelance fucker, a contract worker of cock, a part-time pud-whacker, a temporary ass-tapper, a seasonal sensual masseuse, a penile picket-crosser. To be legally exact, I was an escort — but I’ve always considered myself to be more of a whore.

Though I do appreciate a fair amount of self-deprecating verbosity about who I am, I certainly never outright offered sex in exchange for payment. Hustling was always more of my style — it allowed you to get to know the men who would later treat you like human garbage, tossing you aside once the texture of your genitals and various orifices became uncomfortably familiar and no longer produced the same level of excitement they once enjoyed.

With very few exceptions, the treatment of most of my previous clients is exceptionally vanilla to my current encounters with the average hiring manager—somehow being choked by an obese daddy who’s spitting into your mouth while calling you a “worthless faggot cock-whore” is less emotionally-offensive than the grilling one receives over a first-contact phone interview.

To be honest, my interpersonal skills over the last seven years have included excessive uses of the winky emoticon, going commando and coyly smiling at greasy men in nightclubs. All my tricks-of-the-trade are completely bunk in a professional setting. In a sense, I’ve been rendered powerless in these situations; whipping my cock out or talking about how smooth and shaven my mancunt is simply does not convince a future boss or coworker I’m worth the money.

My résumé no longer consists of “chill and discreet above-average looking thick powerlifter hipster with eight-inch uncut cock into most safe scenes.” (Writer’s note: the copywriting for the down-to-fuck is exceptionally cheesy and totally cringe inducing.) No longer can I rattle off the list of fetishes, preferences, or sexual roles I am capable and willing to indulge. And a portfolio of tasteful-but-lewd photos no longer titillates.

As a professional, I am a thirty-year-old man with no recent experience or relevant skills. But I wasn’t always this broken, over-sexed cum-dumpster of a person, devoid of humanity, empathy, and self-esteem. I had a promising life.

At fifteen, I was one of the youngest high-school graduates in my school district, with a higher-than-perfect grade-point average. I had 500-plus hours of volunteering, multiple scholarships, and the list of generic high school accolades goes on. When it came time to choose a university, I was forced to go to the local state school despite getting into every university I had applied to from the an Ivy or two to the east-coast art school.

But as a young gay teen with an identity issue and not-yet-diagnosed Tourette’s syndrome, my inability to fit in became problematic—I was too young to participate in most school activities and too awkward to make genuine friends. Now sixteen years old, I did what most teens did in the 2000s and turned to the internet, unsupervised.

Within a few months, I became well aware of what a pedophile was, contracted a sexually-transmitted disease, and acquired a full-blown stalker. My life had become so chaotic that I was barely keeping up with school and began having panic attacks: I had literally no one to turn to except those who kept enabling me.

When summer came, I transferred out-of-state and went to live with my aunt. Being seventeen at the time meant I was more passable as a peer to my classmates and had learned to suppress my awkwardness, my fears, and my otherwise unbearable traits.

Life was good, even though I had fallen back into my problematic behavior — which included regularly cruising the internet for sex, light drugs, and hanging out with a crowd of wayward souls—a drug-dealing transvestite, two hookers, a few porn stars, a suicidal mental patient and a pill-popping trust-fund kid. I even had a bona fide boyfriend, the first and last boyfriend I ever had, who was so deeply in the closet he got blackout drunk each time we had sex.

During this year “abroad,” I picked up two jobs: one as the design editor of the student newspaper, and the other as an assistant to a radio disc jockey. Much to the dismay of my parents, I had become a media professional. As much as I liked the new place, it wasn’t home; it lacked the comforts and conveniences of my much wealthier home state.

But I felt safer. My stalker had stopped calling and pestering me about being the lying, worthless, cock-addicted slut I am. In retrospect, my biggest fear wasn’t death or danger. My fear was that my stalker was right—I was human garbage.

After a year away, I returned home and continued my design career at a local publishing company. Within a year, I was creative director of a publishing house with a circulation rate of over 100,000 and had developed an in-house agency. The company grew rapidly and I was on my way to earning a B.A. in Urban Planning as a backup. But as my paychecks grew in size, so did my appetite for sex, drugs and alcohol — my daily routine consisted of getting a gloryhole blowjob, chugging down a six-pack of beer, smoking a few joints and occasionally going to class.

When I turned twenty-one, I went from party animal to full-blown alcoholic. “Casual” sex was putting a new notch on my bedpost a week. And while I was holding everything together physically, emotionally I was falling apart. All I wanted was a part-time job as a waiter, a degree in structural engineering, and a future working with bridges-and-skyscrapers. What I got out of life was something completely unexpected.

By twenty-three years old, I had seen a rough road—112 sexual partners, seven addresses, five rapes, four sexually-transmitted diseases and one liberal arts degree in urban planning. By late 2007, I was working at a Starbucks part-time and living in my car in a downtown parking garage my last semester of college. I had given up my new high-paying job at Hearst Media to finish my degree.

There’s almost a tantalizing irony to a future urban planner now rendered homeless by the poverty he dedicated his half-assed academic career to ending. I had become everything I was taught to reform. But the irony only grew thicker. I graduated in 2008 in the exact field of study that led to the collapse of the economy.

For months post-graduation, I lived back at home and applied to jobs and internships only to find I would have to head north to New York or west to the Pacific to find a future that didn’t exist. I had begun volunteering for a city council and even took on a role in the state chapter of the professional association. But, as much as I tried, there was nothing.

So I went back to my old habits of hanging out with addicts, drifters, and musicians, spending the nights out partying and the days on various strangers’ sofas. With no income other than a small savings and the occasional graphic design gig, I soon learned I had something that people wanted.

Selling my body at first was innocent enough. Flirting for a few drinks here and there. Blowjobs in exchange for dinner dates. But soon, all that turned into something more sinister. Within a year, I had become a full-blown rent boy, gleefully sitting on some dirty man’s face in exchange for a little spending money and maybe a place to crash for a bit.

I don’t remember much of the next four years. It’s all a haze of alcohol abuse, regret, and personal terror. I had completely stopped looking for an exit, as I didn’t perceive I had one. I had begun to assume the worse:

that I was HIV-positive and that I was going to die no matter what I did. It’s hard to plan a future — to get that first internship, to get that entry-level job and make something of your life — when you’ve already given up.

One day I do remember is November 24th, 2012; it’s the day my memory started working again. I pulled off the interstate to stop at a Wal-Mart to get some protein powder and a pack of cigarettes. While walking the pharmacy aisles, a box had caught my eye. “Quick, fast, at-home HIV testing. No lab required,” the box read in bold writing on the front.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I have HIV. So, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone,” I whispered, nearly crying in the store. I held back the tears and tucked the box under my arm, darting towards the self check-out registers. Sitting in my car, I quickly tore open the box, pulled out the directions and set-up the mini-laboratory of swabs, vials and various liquids.

What followed was something I never expected—especially after the sex, the rapes, the blackouts and the unending appetite for raunch.

I was HIV negative.

I couldn’t believe the negative result. I went back and bought another test and it was the same. And one more test, just to be sure—it was also negative. I began to break down and cry in the parking lot. I had lived as if I had no future because of my past. Within two months, I was off the booze and completely sobered up.

In the last two years, I can only think of a dozen times I have been drunk and I’ve never enjoyed it as much as I remember I did. Perhaps it wasn’t getting drunk I had enjoyed, but getting gratification for punishing myself for what I had become.

In the following months, I tried piecing my life back together, though that came with significant failures. I picked up powerlifting as a hobby, began taking cello lessons, and moved to New York for a few months in hopes of landing an internship. But I learned I was simply too old, too beat up, and missing far too many qualifications to even get my foot in the door. After the sublet I had ran out, I had neither the money nor the credit to move into an apartment.

The Long Island Railroad became my home. From Manhattan to Montauk, I could get two-and-a-half hours of near uninterrupted sleeping time. With the train running all day and a monthly pass costing just under $500, the LIRR had become my new wandering apartment.

And I was back into my old routine: that routine, the one I had tried to quit.

Though the LIRR was warm, the city was frigid and within two months, I contracted a serious case of bronchitis. Without much money, insurance, or a place to go in New York, I went to sunny Florida, where I happened on an opportunity to do bookkeeping for a semi-retired lawyer.

One of the first things I did once I had enough cash was purchase a laptop capable of handling Adobe and whatever else I needed. I poured over Codecademy and Khan, trying to regain my knowledge of editorial design. I was, after all, a successful designer in the days of print. But design and technology had changed so much since the days of flash websites and sloppy code that I literally had no tangible skills.

As a male companion and as a terrible person, there was one thing I was absolutely great at doing: faking it.

I began manufacturing convincing fake advertisements and websites for products, start-ups and companies that didn’t exist. I started to fire off salacious emails to various important people around New York City. I was getting noticed for my work and being invited to interviews at some of the most impressive places.

My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. I was just looking for a little bit of stability in what had been an otherwise turbulent life. But I knew I wouldn’t ever be offered a job, there’s too much “off” about me—my past, my Tourette’s, my personality, and the hollow look of sadness that fills my face.

After fourteen months, a few job interviews and breaking away from my past, here I am writing this article anonymously on Medium. Why? I felt like I needed to share my story—to someone, somewhere, in hopes they never make the mistakes I did. These are things I’ve never admitted to anyone.

I think I’m going to give New York another shot since the only thing I’ve ever done for a living that wasn’t sucking cocks was graphic design. I don’t know if I’ll make it. I don’t know if I’ll be alive in another month. I don’t know a lot of things.

But future employer, I do know you don’t want me to answer that employment gap question honestly.

(Conflict of interest, maybe? I am an otherwise active writer on Medium. I’ve also applied for a job at Medium. Out of the several hundred jobs I’ve applied for, Medium is one of less than two dozen to have ever treated me as a human being.)