How Could You Know? A Response to a Friend Who Suggested I Prostitute Myself to help with my Financial Woes

Thank you so much for your apology. I, of course, accept your apology and I know that your comments were a bit tongue-in-cheek and not intended to cause offense; so I am not sure if an apology is necessary or if apology is really the requisite word. However, I was saddened ultimately by our conversation that day, as you now know, so it is appreciated that you have extended yourself here and have been so sweet about it, too. I admire your poise and I believe it is constructive to have the conversation.

Part of this was beyond your control: I am feeling really vulnerable these days - it has been a tough two and one-half years here - and your quips hit square in the middle of a tender button for me but you couldn't know that. I would have told you straightaway that your words confused me but, well, I was confused and not able to articulate my feelings in the moment; my failing.

What I would like you to know is that I am wired a bit differently than you might expect. I am not all that interested in everyone else's exterior and in particular, not fascinated with my own, although I do try to take care of myself as I would any vehicle with increasing mileage. I am an admirer, too, of the male form, so I can understand the spirit in which you expressed some of my potential options for financial gain, which can be summed-up quickly: blow jobs for bucks on the beach.

A little about me: I was a complete nerd in school; a straight-A student, I won several scholarships, excelled in trigonometry, creative writing, advanced biology, art and other interests. I once suffered from a most devastating ugly complex and I suppose I should be relieved that this often comes as a surprise. I also received some inappropriate attention as a child but much of this has lost its charge. I only mention these things not to inflate myself nor illicit pity but merely to illuminate some components of who I am a bit more for you.

I have always been fascinated, surprised and occasionally offended (or all three, at once) when I feel I am being objectified because I don't really have the soul or mind of a plaything, regardless of how someone might perceive my appearance. The experience for me often results in a somewhat deflated feeling and the wistfully dark thought, "Is that all that he/she/they think(s) I have to offer?" That said - more power to the playthings out there, if being objects of desire is a happy experience.



It can be daunting for anyone to have the goodies inside overlooked because so few will look past the wrapping, a covering which is ephemeral in nature, at best. Difficult in particular for me, given the fact that I don't tend to agree that I am "all that." I am happy with how I look but I would rather develop my heart, mind, soul and my connections to those things in others than swim in the shallow end of the pool. I just don't find the physical as interesting - it can be an extra gift, that's all. And yes, it is powerfully fun to feel attractive but that feeling in me is usually generated from within.

Would it sound too tragic and spoiled to say that I suffer from 'flirt fatigue'? One could argue that I am a lucky man to have these problems and I would agree, in general. But what can I say? My mind is often somewhere else and I am completely clumsy when it comes to handling the attention and generally humbled by it: it does not appear that is going to change.

Anyway, I am just offering a glimpse of why your suggestions, although apparently in jest, hit a nerve. Put simply, it was the old "I'm being looked at but not really seen" feeling again - a sensation I thought I had left behind a long time ago. Again, so much of this is not your responsibility - how could you know?

Like any misunderstanding between friends, navigating this one will only serve to deepen our connection, so in the end, I am glad we got to know each other a little better in the process.

It's Time for An Upgrade

Hi. I'm a Realtor. I would like to sell your home. I know, it's forward of me to say that but I am a young man building a business here. The only reason I am here today is because I am driven to succeed. I don't have time to dance around the subject. My time is my stock and trade, and I'll sell my time and expertise to you for a 6% commission. But I have to know you're serious or I'm not interested.

Like, for example, what's with the For Sale By Owner stuff? Are you serious or what? Do you really want to sell your house or are you just working something out?

Is it a threat you made to your wife during an argument? And now you have to live up to it or she won't ever do what you say again because she will no longer respect you?

Is that it? Because that's the only reason someone would decide to sell their home on their own. Do you realize the potential liability you are exposing yourself to?

And I've got to tell you, buddy, judging from your furnishings - and I have to guess they're furnishings or assume something is incredibly wrong with my vision and that frightens me - you can't afford a 1/8th butt cheek of exposure.



What do you say in your head Mr. Married to Mrs.' We'll-have-to-use-the-paper-plates-once-everyone-gets-here-because-we-don't-have-enough-glass-dinner-plates? Do you say, "Oh, if something comes up after the sale, we'll take care of it." And I suppose that kind of confidence comes from the fact that you have a team of impeccably dressed lawyers waiting in your one car attached garage for the slightest hint that you're in trouble and at such time they will unleash such an assault on the perpetrator as to forever change the criminal justice system as we know it today? I hope it's warm out there in the garage for those lawyers or did you just give the team a space-cadet heater?


Why am I being such an asshole? Because I don't think you're serious. I think you're pussyfooting. I think it's some kind of passive-aggressive bullshit you're putting out to the world and I'm giving it right back to you, aggressive-aggressive style. Because, you know, when you put a For Sale sign on your house, you get people's hopes up. There is no other way to slice it.

For example: a woman drives by, sees your house. She's recently divorced, from an abusive husband and living in a motel. She's depressed and angry and waiting to get on with her life. Night after night she's living in the motel room with the dark brown wool curtains so full of cigarette smoke that if you bump them, they ash. She squats above the toilet because the seat is so old and filthy she can't get it clean, no matter how hard she scrubs. And then there's the deeply disturbed industrial orange carpeting festering beneath her feet that she swears can move on its own it's so stained and full of DNA. And she's living in this shit-hole all because she has taste and she can't find a house with enough charm so she wants it so much that she makes an offer. And she has the money - that's why she's living in this petri dish. She knows she has taste and that taste costs money. She only got so much in the divorce from that asshole. He was abusive but he was rich. And so traumatized is she from his abuse that she never wants to be married again, so she's hanging on to that money like a shark to a surfer's leg. And she's feeling all this, and has gone for a drive, right into your neighborhood because she feels drawn there for some strange reason and then she sees your sign. She's in love again. She knows, while looking at your house, that if she can love a home this much, she can love a man again this much. She sees it as a sign. And she chuckles to herself, "Oh, how funny - it IS a sign. And here I'd been asking for a sign from the Universe and the Universe has given me this SIGN!" She's talking about your For Sale By Owner sign. For the first time in many years, the healing has finally begun!


So she gets out of her car then and there, marches up your front walk and knocks on your door. And you answer it and she says, "Hello. I absolutely adore your house. I must have it. Let me give you $50,000 over your asking price. No - don't say another word, just accept this cashier's check. Please!"

And you can't believe your eyes. You've done it. You've not only sold your house for a ton of money (you knew when you priced it that you overpriced it), you're right and your wife is wrong. Then there are things you know are wrong with the house, too, but most importantly, there are things wrong with it you don't know about.

So you accept her offer and have her sign the ten-year old sales contract you bought at the stationery store the last time you threatened to sell the house during an argument. Then you and the divorced-lady-on-the-verge are in contract and in escrow. So you say to yourself, "Ha-ha, much man am I! Ruler of my domain and layer of the law! I'm practically a lawyer!" And your wife is not only no longer pissed at you, but she's happy with the extra money and impressed at how you handled it. Not just impressed with a little "i" - impressed with a big, erect, pulsing, long, hard ejaculating "I." And you feel like you're fuckin' Tom Jones again man. Suddenly, you've got a big cock, tight pants and you're humming "Kiss" by that little purple faggot in your puny little head. And the sweet little divorced buyer is thinking to herself, "My, what a wonderful day - and how wonderful that I feel so lucid for it even though I have stopped taking my medication."

And escrow closes, without the benefit of one Realtor's eyes on the contract, and you've moved out, and you meet with the sweet buyer lady to give here the key. And you're both feeling so good, you give here your new address so she can stay in touch. You hug and say in unison, "Goodbye! It was SO wonderful meeting you!" And you laugh together.

You buy a bigger house with the extra money. You stretch yourself a bit - why not? - you're a big real estate tycoon all of a sudden. You can afford it. The wife wants to remodel the new house a bit - add a deck, a pool with a cabana for entertaining. She's suddenly interested in cooking as well as fucking. And she wants the best possible stove for the cabana. She's going to cook out there for parties. So the cabana needs nice teak French doors that can be opened up while she's entertaining next to her tiled black bottom pool. And you say, what the fuck! We're rich now! But really, you're broke now and months have passed and your wife is getting ready to host her first party in her new entertainment pavilion. Thankfully you didn't spend that money on a Realtor's commission or lawyers or anything.


Meanwhile, the gay divorce' is enjoying your old home. It has a nice, vintage charm. Like your wife, she has a vision. the woman-no-longer-feeling-the-need-to-take-her-medication-anymore-or-call-her-shrink-because-she's-so-happy decides it's time for an upgrade. She starts with the kitchen because she feels it is the soul of the house; the warm womb that took her in after such a trying time. Physically, she hasn't been feeling so well lately. She suspects she has bronchitis, but she's never had it this bad. She believes the house is healing her, clearing out old, destructive energies. She begins work on the house to get her mind off her illness. So she starts with the kitchen, which is directly below the upstairs bathroom. Good thing she doesn't know about the time your wife left the bath running and flooded the whole goddamn place. And you decided to just mop it up and forget about it.

And as her contractor, the wannabe building inspector, the one who's brother is a real estate attorney, opens up the walls in her kitchen, he comes across the most toxic mold, the likes of which he has never seen. The mold has spread throughout the walls. The entire house will have to be taken back to frame.

The gay divorce' is not feeling so gay anymore. She's coming after you buddy. She is sick as hell from the mold, and the fungus is the salad that will soon be covered with the blood from your bank accounts as dressing. And so is the contractors' real estate attorney brother whom she is now fucking. She's going to start getting in touch with you again real soon - or, at least, her boyfriend-at-law will.

And that, Sir, is the anal-thrusting style kind of liability that you are exposing your little tight virgin ass too.

With a Realtor on your team, you may still get it in the sphincter a little but at least you'll be practicing safe real estate. Think of me as a condom for your next escrow.


So, for the last time, are you serious ab out selling your home? My time is precious to me. I don't have time to dance around the subject. My time is my stock and trade, and I'll sell my time to you for a 6% commission. But I have to know you're serious or I'm not interested.

My Time Ain't Money

So I take my client Autism-Boy out to see two rather humble abodes on the market. It's raining and I'm driving a loaner car from the garage that has the name of shop painted and plastered all over it. My car has been vandalized so now I'm driving around in a giant billboard with a car somewhere underneath.

It's a bad week. Taxes are due, money is tight - as in nonexistent; the rain is back, my car has got an owie and as much as I like rain, the sunshine before sure did feel good. I'm a miserable creature, feeling particularly foolish and like a big heaping failure-at-everything as I drive to pick the client up in the wet and dismal gray world.

Autism-Boy once told me he has a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, thus the nickname, which basically means he's a pain in the ass who is extremely cautious and afraid of everything - he generally pumps his foot on a brake pedal that's not there the whole time I'm driving, while maintaining an aura of intellectual superiority. Well, to his credit, he is a rather bright and interesting fellow even though he is absolutely convinced the world is ending. I don't exactly discourage him, which is my responsibility, but he does go on most of the time I am with him, creating something of a post-apocalyptic scenario Mad Max-style world vision of the future. The truth is I totally wimp out around this stuff and just end-up agreeing because I'm exhausted from arguing with all the gloom and doom - is the world coming to an end new information? He has no idea that while he's talking I'm telling myself a better story in my head, which these days for various reasons usually involves a bunny with cookies.The first place is none other than a goddamn modular home from the seventies next to a run-down cottage, all blissfully sinking into five soggy acres of abandoned farm land.

The moment I open the door of the double-wide, we're blasted with cold, musty air smelling of a thousand smoked cigarettes and mildew. I immediately start sneezing but am too caught up in imagining the scary old couple who once lived there, so I walk in before I know it.

I have a moderately large nose equipped with a ridiculously powerful sense of smell. I can often tell someone what they've had for breakfast but I had to stop revealing this "gift" as I end-up as an olfactory sideshow wherever I am, with a line of people asking me to sniff them. Why does everyone, upon smelling something horrible, offer it to me saying, "Oh this STINKS, here smell it?" So how did I find the air inside a mildewy old home? Let's just leave it at "too much information." I was practically bowled over. I think I could even smell the last meal cooked in the kitchen (smelled like reheated pizza and perhaps some fishsticks.)

I'm also quite allergic to mold so just after I smelled more than I wanted to, my nose seized-up and began to run. I've learned to keep tissue with me at all times, so I covered my mouth as I began to hack and cough. Autism-Boy smiles saying that's why he likes working with me - the built-in mold detector - and I struggle for a reason to say why I like working with him.

The inside of the home I would define as creepy-child-pornographer-meets-emphysema-research-and-development-facility, the kind of home where the sounds of belching and farting still reverberate with ghostly echoes, and the man of the house can be imagined spending most of his time with one hand down his pants. Parts of the ceiling are missing and the linoleum has warn through in the kitchen revealing what looks like cardboard. I peek outside the windows at the other structures and something in my mammalian survival instinct kicks in - I'm afraid. I can hear an imaginary audience screaming "Don't go in the barn!"

My client is unhappy, too, discovering that even in this meltdown your money still won't buy very much around here. We're out of there but it's too late - I'm going to be sick for days from all that I've inhaled. (In fact, it's been three days and I'm still sneezing as I write this.)

The next home we see is much better and I even begin to entertain the notion that this fellow might actually buy something after two years of looking. I've lost count of the houses we've visited but the one we're standing in outshines every experience. He gets very excited and begins to ask a lot of questions. It is a short-sale, which pretty much can suck, but I've closed a few and they are not insurmountable.

It's just a house but it has a nice yard and an "artist studio," which is basically four walls, a roof and a floor. It's also been fenced well and surprise-surprise, it is surrounded by open pasture land, so it's nice and private (easier to protect from the post-apocalyptic right-wingers coming to steal your organic vegetables.) We agree to meet back in two days with his wife.

The two days pass and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling that perhaps...just maybe...there's a paycheck in my future.

I'm back again with them both. She's complaining that in the summer she might be able to smell manure from the open pastures, the very reason he liked the house. I'm starting to get that they will probably never agree, which explains why they are approaching their seventies and are still renting - this should have been my first clue. The real shocker comes when she informs me that upon reviewing their numbers once again, it turns out that he "made a mistake" and they can't really afford anything. After she says this I think my knees visibly wobble. I start wondering again if anybody needs a bartender out there - I'm a quick learner and I promise not to drink too much of the profits - really!

I can barely speak as I get back into the loaner billboard car and head home to figure out how to pay my bills. Autism-Boy refers me to a couple of websites for more research on how the U.S. dollar will be worthless soon and what to do to prepare for the violent survival free-for-all that's coming. I wonder if he sees any irony in the tons of my time he's wasted.

I think there's a misconception that Realtors have a lot of money and really just do this job because we like to pee in other people's houses. Alright, that last part's true.

Do You Know What Your Tree Did?

While visiting a house I have in escrow for a buyer, I heard the inevitable voice calling in that "woo-hoo" tone from over the fence to the east. I'm attempting to duck in and out, just doing my work quickly. I have to complete something called an Agent's Visual Inspection Disclosure as part of the disclosures given to the Buyer. It's when I get to tell the Buyer that the paint is cracked and the carpet is stained, as if he didn't notice already.

So, here's this neighbor, peering at me over the fence. She's a tad corpulent, with short hair and owl-like glasses.

"Is this your house? Do you know what your tree did to our yard?" she asks, accusingly.

"Well, the possibilities are endless," I say.

Exasperated: "Did you get the letter I sent to you." I reply, "Oh, this isn't my house - I'm the Buyer's Realtor."

"Well, did you get the letter I sent to your company?" She's armed - she's holding a rake. And it's rusty.

I'm not sure how to clarify this for her, so I say in my most patient tone, "Oh, you would have probably sent the letter to the Listing Agent. That's the agent selling the house for the owner. I'm the Buyer's Agent - I'm the agent for the person buying the house."

"Oh, I see," she responds dejectedly. "Well, this tree has just ruined our yard. Does your Buyer know about it yet?"

"No." I'm feeling the urge to chew my leg off.

"You should tell him. Get that letter from the agent," she orders and waddles away.

As soon as my Buyer appears, I tell him about her. He'll have to sign a Mrs. Kravitz Disclosure, pronto.

Den of No Equity

She lives in a house filled with filthy, post-goth teenagers addicted to cell phones. A cigarette is never far away. The pool remains covered despite the warm weather and the lawn needs to be weeded and mowed.

A young man stands before me. He is shirtless and his chest and stomach are covered with fine black hair that has grown back after a shaving about three weeks ago. Another stands at the end of the brick walk I must navigate to arrive at the porch. His hair is bleached blond and he’s wearing smeared purple and black eye shadow. As I walk around him, I notice that he has three handkerchiefs in his left, rear pocket: One yellow, one pink and one red, carefully twisted into tubes. In the infinitely small moment it takes to walk around and behind this individual, my mind calculates what sexual cues the placement and colors of the handkerchiefs might send to a gay male living in the Castro in the late 1970’s.

Sitting in the sunlight, the client smiles and smoke leaks through her teeth. She holds-up the paperwork I left with her to complete four weeks ago proudly and announces it’s almost ready. I think to myself that I must sell real estate because being a rodeo clown isn’t painful enough.

Please take this the wrong way: everyone is fucking nuts when it comes to selling or buying property. It is clear to me that it’s a hot bed of long-buried trauma triggers for most people, and Realtors are simply the sponges that suck up the dark psychic matter along with a few dollars, if we’re lucky.

How I have come to be standing here confronted with the abruptness of my current reality I am not exactly sure. Suffice to say it is the culmination of a lifetime of inconsistency; my constant hopping from one job or another, from firm to firm, navigating through the employment world in the survival, hand-to-mouth kind of way that befalls many of us who thought we were meant for much more luxurious circumstances that have failed to manifest despite all youthful presentiments to the contrary. Aim for the stars to land on the moon, and if you miss the moon, too, you might just end up in real estate.

I once imagined my days to be filled with witty encounters among the creative elite of the world, exchanging ideas, collaborating and amusing one another over trays of swank edibles, while we toasted one another to genius with glass of world-class champagne. Instead, I’m standing here, in a neighborhood at least two worlds away from the one I once dreamed. Instead of being dazzled at an art opening in New York, I’m staring with amazement the ashtray made of welded automobile parts that has replaced the abalone shell my client’s three teenage sons used to fill to the rim with cigarette butts. This new tray is full the same as its predecessor. This home is filled with items such as this malignant sculpture that serve as markers along the path of my clients self-sabotage. I’ve been subjected to the kind of anthropology found in the slices of daily human life that would give Margaret Mead the willies.

To say things are a mess in this house is only scratching the surface, which you wouldn't want to do. This is a short sale, or to the layman, the owner has over-mortgaged the property to the point that it is worth less than she owes. She’s done this with four of her properties. I’m helping her sell two. Lucky me.

Although it may sound contradictory, I do not speak here from a place of judgment; to the contrary, I understand perfectly that we all overextend ourselves in one way or the other in our lives and in fact, this boundary expanding behavior often does lead one to success. Nor do I judge how my client lives or the way in which she raises her children. Put simply, it’s just not my planet. So I feel very alien standing with her as she rubs the coagulating mascara from the corners of her eyes and says, “So get this. Last night I met a guy hot enough to fuck and wouldn’t you know it, this morning my ex decides he still loves and shows up while last night’s fuck’s still in my bed!”

I’m not sure how to respond. I wonder if the local community college has a Jerry Springer dialect adult ed evening class. I use a summarily rejected offer that I hold in my right hand as a sun visor and reply, “Yes, ironic, isn’t it?”

She then looks at her watch and tells me she must be going to pick up her just-adolescent daughter from Juvenile Hall and exclaims, “Luckily it’s only drug charges,” to which I respond, “Oh, good.”

She’s in quite a hurry, being late for leaving for her weekend getaway, a Narcotics Anonymous retreat.

I watch her as she climbs into her new-off-the-lot black SUV, aptly named the Dodge Excommunicator or something like that, and drives away playing a loud hip-hop song with a chorus that I swear is singing, “Go Fuck Yourself.” She flicks her cigarette out the window, and waves goodbye.

All of this has been so totally disorienting that I’ve completely forgot to tell her about her other short sale listing, the home on the river in which my client has allowed two of her friends, with a new baby and a pit-bull, along with a cast of guest stars to stay until it is sold. I’ve just received a call from a Realtor who described the scene she found when viewing the property as “uncomfortable.” Apparently, a motorcycle was under repair in the living room and as the potential buyers entered, they were also treated to a man scratching under boxer shorts, wandering out of the kitchen.

I promise myself I’ll search the net for rodeo clown openings as soon as I get home.

Gentlemen, May I Propose a Toast

Raise your drinks steadily and take a big swallow. There now - that's better.

I guess I believed writing down what it's like from the front lines was a good idea. The witch is falling and landing on your house, and this sure ain't Oz, either. The epicenter of the entire collapse was the real estate and accompanying mortgage loan industries, so feel as if I am merely an enlisted man, praying in my foxhole. Forgive me if I do it blog-style.

My, what a turbulent time its been. I thought maybe my stories, observations, new-knowledge-learned-on-the-fly and interpersonal experiences with clients might have some value, at least of the entertainment variety. On the job always (always), I am asked the same questions repeatedly, too. There is a lot of strain in the faces of my clients and friends right now, so no complaints here. My thinking is that putting it into this form might help centralize the anxiety a bit.

There really is no other way to begin this other than to say; if you own home or are thinking about getting into the market don't let them lie to you - its never been a sure thing and it never will be...as long as humans are involved.

Now, I'm also going to bash the hell out of the biz here, so if you're sensitive about that, don't read. Don't be mistaken - I actually love my job. I know many fine Realtors and they're not all a bad lot. In fact, being that special ingredient during a life transition for my clients is something I'm honored to do. It just that many Realtors have a facade they wear - the true salesman - and they can often seem impenetrable. I've actually done quite well for myself given the fact that I'm no salesman, not at all.



You'll never see my face on a shopping cart, billboard or at the movie theater. I do this job because I like to shop for houses and I can't buy them all myself. I enjoy helping people, and I like to set my own schedule. I'm not trying to be a top producer or a professional Mr. Handshake. Just another monkey doing a job and feeling humbled by some of the beauty of it, too. To me, it's more like being a healer but without the avant-garde Japanese pipe flute music.

Buying a house is one of the, if not the largest purchase most of us will ever make. Lets face it - the process can bring up one's shit, send you into homes that look like good places for murder/suicides and force one to midwife to the point where I feel that I'm in labor. I'm alright with all of that.

So, I've made a place to dump all the energy and information my career dumps on me. I'm suggesting a new way to play an old game. I'm not going to be perpetually perky, glossy or irritatingly positive. I'm going to do something that fights the stigma that Real Estate people are dishonest - I'm going to be brutally honest with you.

Some of my colleagues may audibly groan upon hearing that but to them, I say - get real. We wouldn't need so many damn forms if real estate had always been an honest business.