Hustler at the Capitol
By:
Kenneth Kirk
(© 2022 by the author)
The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's
consent. Comments are appreciated at...
kkirk@tickiestories.us
Chapter 1
Loosely based on true events
The time was 1979 and I was a fresh graduate from the accounting program at a small college in Kansas. As a very closeted former farm boy, I felt quite fortunate to land a job at an oil company headquarters located in the big city of Denver. I happily moved there a few weeks after graduation. Somehow, I found a room for rent in the basement of the home of a couple whose kids were grown and living in the suburbs. My little room (which cost me $85 a month if I remember right) was in their basement and I had use of the laundry, a private bath, and my room.
In
all the years after puberty, I had been dealing with a growing attraction to
guys but I never risked acting on my “unnatural” desires. I made it through the
four years at college pretty much the way I had made it through high school: as
a painfully shy loner, looking but never touching. The only person I knew who
seemed to share my situation was a guy who was in some of my classes at
college. He was very effeminate and a campy, bitchy queen (though I didn’t have
the vocabulary then to describe him this way). I was terrified of him and
extremely threatened by his mere presence in my sphere. A few years later, I
would have been much more open to him, but back then, I just completely avoided
him whenever our paths might cross.
Anyhow, in the summer of ’79 I knew almost nothing about gay life, gay bars, gay community, or gay sex and really had no idea how to learn anything. (If you came of age in the ‘80s or after, you may have a hard time imagining how ignorant I was with no gays on TV or in movies. The first few widely available gay magazines, such as Blueboy and Numbers, were just starting to publish in the late ‘70s. Without the internet, searching for information was either word-of-mouth or flipping through library cards.)
I’d only been in Denver a month or so when I received a phone call at work one afternoon. I was surprised to find my elderly aunt from Topeka on the other end of the line when I answered. She was calling to tell me that she would be in Denver the next evening for one night and hoped I could have dinner with her. Since I didn’t know anyone outside work, I was obviously free to join her. She told me the name of the hotel and I arranged to meet her there at 5:30 the next afternoon.
When I found the hotel’s address in the yellow pages and its location on my AAA map (no GPS or Google Maps back then), I realized it was only a couple of blocks from the State Capitol Building, which I had visited on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks earlier. To avoid the confusion of one-way streets in downtown Denver and the headache of finding a parking spot for my car, I decided to park at the Capitol and walk the short distance to the hotel.
The Capitol had a drive that circled around the building and had parking spaces facing away from the structure. At 5:25, there were only a couple of cars parked there, so I found a spot and ditched the vehicle. The walk across the Capitol lawn and down a short distance to the hotel was pleasant in the July afternoon. My aunt selected a cafeteria next door to the hotel for our meal and we enjoyed a pleasant hour at the restaurant catching up on my relocation and new job along with her “see the West” bus tour that would take her to places like Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Zion National Park, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Santa Fe, to name a few. At that time, I had not been to any of these scenic places, so was green with envy that she had this amazing opportunity. After dinner, we visited some more in her room and she sent me home at 8:30 sharp since the bus would be departing at 7:15 the next morning and “old women need lots of beauty rest.”
A gentle breeze blew across the city as I took the short walk back to retrieve my car and return to my spartan room a few miles away. When I rounded a corner and came within sight of the Capitol, I was mystified and oddly intimidated when I became aware of a rather continuous line of cars circling the building very slowly. As I got nearer, I could see a few figures walking back and forth a bit amongst the cars. When I was close to the activity, I noticed the vehicles were not parking but occasionally one would stop. A man would approach the driver’s window and they would converse.
I didn’t understand what was happening (I was a naďve farm boy from Kansas, after all). I worried about how I would manage to pull out of my parking spot into all that traffic and get through the circle to the exit. I got to my car with no issue and sat a few moments inside as I looked about me to try to determine just what was happening.
It was then that I noticed several young boys in tight jeans and tank tops or shirtless loitering about on the steps to the Capitol. They would sometimes wave at a driver and if the car stopped, the one who waved would saunter over in a particularly slinky walk. The ones I could see clearly looked even younger than me (at 22) and mostly handsome. When I saw one guy move from the driver’s door around the car and get in, I finally understood they were hustling.
With that realization, my stomach churned, my face got hot, and fear raced through my heart. There was nothing to fight, so I took flight. I started the car, backed quickly out, and joined the cars circling the building as I inched toward the exit. From this vantage point, I could see at least a dozen guys sprawled on the steps or leaning against a wall or column, calling to the drivers, rubbing their crotches, and smiling provocatively. My heart beat excitedly and my cock twitched even as a cold sweat covered my face and began soaking my shirt.
It took maybe 5 minutes for me to get through the crush of cars and guys to reach the exit from the circle so I could escape and head towards home. I had never been this close to sex before, except with breeding farm animals, but trust me, that is nowhere near as exciting as hustlers at the Capitol.
As soon as I got to my room, I stripped off and beat off, spraying a monumental load across my abdomen and chest as I remembered some of the guys I had seen offering themselves for sale. I lay awake for hours processing this flood of information about the local gay community and my own personal possibilities.
To be continued...
Posted: 01/14/2022