Money’s on the Dresser: Escorting, Porn and Promiscuity in Las Vegas Read Online Free PDF Page B

another guy, and neither seemed to be happening. As my depression worsened, my self-hatred grew. I hated the fact that nothing seemed to be working the way I wanted, and the only way I could escape the pain was to imagine the day I would leave home, leave the small-mindedness of Regina, and run away to a place where I could be a part of a gay community, go to gay bars, and do all those “vile” things my family and church warned me about. I remember hearing sermons and reading articles in Focus on the Family magazine on what the gay lifestyle was really about. They painted it out to be a life of drug-induced parties, orgies, and gay pride marches in leather harnesses waving rainbow flags. I fantasized about a day when I could be a part of all the debauchery and sin they warned me about and finally fit in. And so began my seemingly never-ending countdown until the days I would leave home and start a new life—a “gay” life.

 
    Chapter Three

    From Prairie Boy to Las Vegas Show Boy

    For a year after high school, I stayed in Regina to continue studying ballet at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Dance. I was focused on becoming a professional dancer and was learning ballet, modern, and jazz anywhere from four to eight hours a day and sometimes seven days a week. I earned and saved money working at a shoe store and at a children’s daycare. Eventually I began looking at ballet schools in the United States where I could study dance and begin a new life. At nineteen years old, I was accepted to a ballet school in Torrington, Connecticut, called the Nutmeg Conservatory. I continued to work hard that year to save money and refine my ballet and modern dance technique. I would usually work up to forty hours a week and study dance in the evenings and on weekends. I wasn’t completely sold on moving to Torrington, but I knew it had to be better than Regina, and I pressed forward to get the hell out of Saskatchewan.

    I packed up my things in June 2000 to move to Torrington for the Nutmeg Ballet’s Summer Intensive Dance Program. Torrington was not anything like I was hoping for. I had expected to live in a place that would have the energy of a big city and maybe a little gay culture. Instead, it looked like an old factory town that had absolutely no life in it. It was dreary, buildings were falling apart, and there was absolutely no nightlife or culture. To make the best of it, I told myself at least I was only an hour or so from New York City, and that anything was better than Regina, Saskatchewan.

    That summer, things at the Nutmeg Conservatory didn’t quite work out as planned. One of the male teachers thought my talents would be better suited to dancing in the corps de ballet, similar to a chorus position in a musical, and he recommended I work with a professional ballet company in Oklahoma City. At the end of the summer, I packed up again, this time for Oklahoma City, another shitty city, but less shitty than Torrington, so I didn’t care. I was excited to be out on my own, away from the gloomy cold weather of the Saskatchewan prairies.

    I ended up spending two years in Oklahoma City dancing for a small company called Ballet Oklahoma, which had about fifteen dancers. I spent a lot of time on my own, falling in and out of depression due to loneliness and boredom. Most of the other dancers in the company were older than I was, and it was difficult making a connection with anyone. I hoped my first year away from home would be similar to the college experience of parties, dating people my own age, drunken hook-ups, and debauchery, but it wasn’t. It was a quiet life of dancing five days a week and nothing too exciting on the weekends. I didn’t own a car that first year in Oklahoma City, leaving me to depend on my roommate, Tori, and the few friends I made in the company for rides. Tori was a nice Connecticut girl I had met at the Nutmeg Conservatory. She and I started at Ballet Oklahoma at the same time and decided