LOWHANGERZ

It’s hard to believe that it was 20 years ago that I graduated medical school and moved from New Orleans to New york City.  I was accepted into a Urology residency at Generic Medical Center (that is where my father worked as an attending Urologist since 1959.  if i was going to become an addict, why not do so at my father's hospital.  I remember during my senior year of med school – I took two separate one-month rotations at New York City hospitals (NYU and Albert Einstein Med center).  I cant imagine how I must have been perceived – I thought I would have it made because my dad was a successful Urologist in private practice – after all, that is the mindset my folks instilled into me – that I was special and “better than” just because I was Ben and Frannie's son.  while at NYU for the month, i stayed at a friends co-op and got high every night while frequenting the local bath houses.  by the late 80's, the baths were all shut down due to the emerging AIDS epidemic. 

I had gone though med school and unfortunately the only thing that I really cared about was my ability to cruise the French Quarter every night, get high, and go to the Gretna adult bookstore, on the other side of the Mississippi River. that was the best place to go for cruising video booths - the 'good' ones with the ‘glory holes’).  It’s just amazing how I led such a hedonistic, narcissistic existence for such a long time -  It's amazing how many thousands of times i stuck my cock and balls through a hole in a wall so that they could be sucked and jerked off by some man whom i would never see nor utter a word to.  These glory holes and bath houses were filthy, disgusting, roach-infested gathering spots for horny gay men (and  some stright men in denial).  my life centered around them - it didnt matter where i was, i could always seek these places out while traveling - just like a good drug addict will always have a source.

  In my years as a college and medical student in New Orleans, i must have had annonymous male sex with well over a thousand partners, maybe 1500.  that leaves alot of memeories.  i think the worst thing that happened to me as far as diseases was that i had a case of gonnorhea which cleared up after a couple of days of antibiotics.  it is aptly described as "pissing razor baldes".  AIDS was just being discovered back in the early 80's and to this day it's a miracle i am HIV negative.  Actually, i did catch hepatits B early in my second year of med school.  i had just started one of my daily 3-mile runs and really felt lousy and tuned back.    when i went to pee, my urine was coca-cola colored.  my eyes were jaundiced and my skin was starting to turn yellow. i was weak and constantly nauseaus.  my liver enzymes were way elevated and i was sick.  i couldn't keep anyfood down.  once i was diagnosed with Hep B, my mother flew down to help. she slept on the floor next to my bed.  she really wanted to make me better and help me.  she loved me too much and it was this kind of smothering that screwed me up.  i missed about two weeks of school - i had friends bring over the daily lecture notes and i was lucky to keep up and re-enter my class.  throughout this illness, one of the most shocking things was that  i still felt strong enough to masterbate... i had a copy of Inches and got real horny as i fantasized about the hot male model, and when i finally exploded onto the hand towel spread out on my lower stomach (i liked to be neat when i jerked off, so it would always land on the towel and i would just wipe off my dick head and be done) and the ejaculate came out rust colored.  shocking... never saw that before.  i guess the jaundice got into all of my body fluids.  i remember i had to jerk off on lying the floor of my bathroom because my mother was downstairs in the living room.  and then i had to hide the magazine and semen soaked rag underneath the bathroom sink - you know, behind all the cleaning stuff. 

it's funny - back in those days i really didnt dig uncircumsized men.  i went to high school on the north shore of long island and there were no latin men, just white and black and everyone had a circumsized penis.  then something hit me and i developed an appreciation for a foreskin. 

  Everything about my life back then was so contrary to being a mature, responsible adult (let alone being a doctor).  I look back on those years and just cant tell myself that I would succeed if I could do it all again.  It was a period in my life where I just pursued only those endeavors which gave me immediate gratification – like an orgasm, getting high, gambling - spending money that I was given and never earned.  i always felt guilty when cashing a check for spending money and using it to pick up a male hooker.  Back then, i could have me a good-looking male hustler and bring them home, sometimes they would spend the night for under $50.  i was young and good-looking too, so i didnt have to spend as much as the fat, old men.

There are so many factors that went into the equation that it would be (it is) hard for me to paint a picture of what it was like.  A typical day would be getting up and going to med school, taking extensive notes in class (using four different colors of ink – I had one of those BIC pens that let you click on blue, red, green, or black ink), getting home by 3 or 4, going for a run (I ran 25-30 miles a week back then), changing into jeans and having dinner at the Pontchartrain Hotel, and then getting in my car and going down to the French Quarter.  i ate at the Pontchartrain almost 7-days a week and would always sit with Jackie or Jennifer.  I would smoke a joint on my way down, and then everything happened as the night played out.  I would sometimes go slowly cruising down Bourbon Street to Esplanade Avenue and then come back up either Royal street or Chartres Street.  It was noticeable how the Quarter changed once you crossed St. Ann Street – that was the dividing line between the well-lit bars on Bourbon Street, all blasting the Dixieland Jazz, and the dark, quiet streets in the back of the French Quarter where the hookers walked.  It’s funny, because I don’t really remember if there were any female hookers that worked the back streets of the Vieux Carre – just the young guys, 16 to 30 years old.  They walked the streets and usually when they saw me circle around the block a few times, slowing down as I passed them, they would either stop and wait for me to circle again, or they would quickly approach my car as I slowed down and hop in.  Sometimes I would drive a block ahead of them and pull over to the side of the street and just sit in the car.  As they passed by, they already knew I was interested because of circling them a few times –and if I pulled over it was because I liked what I saw.  They were hustlers and they knew it, and I was just a 25 year-old “john”.  Sometimes I rolled the window down as they approached, and other times I parked with the windows open – not too obvious, huh?  They would approach and the conversation seemed to start spontaneously.  They knew I wanted them and they seemed to know that I wanted them to take control of the situation.  It didn't take long before I was on my way home with them, usually smoking a joint, or I was on my way to a $25 motel for an hour or two.   It’s amazing how many motels that I knew of and how dirty the sheets on the beds were. i picked up a good portion of hustlers at the Parade (a gay bar on St Ann and Chartres).  This is how i spent my years at Tulane Medical School.  i learned and mastered  the required material, but i never bonded with my classmates or went to any social functions.  my desires were to be in my car cruising for men at adult bookstores, bath houses, bars, parks, and the streets.  that was my whole life.

And this was all basically pre-crack.  during school I was a pot head and  a sex addict with very unusual paraphelias.  The crack phase really started the next segment of my life when i graduated and moved to New York