THE HUSTLERS BY PARKER ROSSMAN
The following is one of the sections of the fifth chapter of Dr. Parker Rossman’s Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys (originally published in 1976), entitled "Support From Adolescent Culture", and introduced here. It appears from both his quotations from interviews of pederasts and the studies he cites that it is based on American society in the decade or so before publication..
The Hustlers
Adolescent tribalism and secrecy converge at one point to provide the most serious example of how adolescent culture frequently provides the structure for pederasty. No one knows how many boys, as amateur prostitutes, offer themselves to men for money. Two surveys of adolescent sexuality project that of the over six million adolescent boys in the United States aged fifteen years or younger, at least a million of them will engage in sex play with a man for money.[1] The happy hustler is not merely the poor boy who needs money. Often he is the middle-class hitchhiking adventurer or the upper-class runaway, one of the kids who are products of a commercial society where everything is for sale, and of a sexual culture which “shoves kids back underground every time they try to come up for air.”[2] It tells them: You are queer if you enjoy masturbation, intercourse with a girl is statutory rape, enjoying yourself with your friends is deviant and illegal! So, many boys decide that if it is illegal and punishable anyway, one might as well go for the money. How else explain the impulsive decision of a nice middle-class boy to go hitchhiking when he hears a warning at school about what might happen? There’s a marvelous anonymity to hitchhiking which, from the boy’s point of view, fits right in with his decision that he can explore sex, have fun, and earn some money while taking a spine-tingling step down that ladder which others have found so exciting. One pederast has described it thus: “The boy first decided just to hitchhike down to the YMCA and nothing happened, except some friendly conversation and the discovery that hitchhiking is easy. Next, he thumbed a ride out to a lake where a friend had a boat. A nice man went several miles out of his way to take him to the boathouse and offered to pick him up on the way back if he’d like to go to his apartment to see a movie of some girls. “Adult only” films were forbidden to the boy so the opportunity enticed him, with the thought that if the man was interested in girls it ought to be all right. He had been warned that there might be tragic consequences. Young teenagers sometimes got hurt or killed, but he needed a ride home, stranded as he was at the lake. So by the time the man returned he was waiting impatiently. The tragic consequences? He had the time of his life, more fun than he had ever had before, and his only problem was, from his view, that like his masturbation, he couldn’t tell anyone about his new friend, the sexy movies, and his pleasure at being fellated.”
[1] Robert Sorensen, Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary America (New York: World, 1973), and Parker Rossman, “The Pederasts” in Goode, Erich et al. Sexual Deviance and Sexual Deviants (New York: William Morrow, 1974), p. 171.
[2] Troy [sic] Saxon, The Happy Hustler (New York: Warner Books, 1975). The author’s real name was Thom Racina, and his pen name Grant Tracy Saxon.