MANDATE Magazine 4/07 (newsstands January 07)

35 Cents

Matty Lee’s story of a straight hustler’s life

Matty Lee (photo by Dana Bilhimer) says in his memoir 35 Cents: “I only know that some sex is considered beautiful and uplifting and some is considered ugly and sick. To be honest with you, sometimes it’s hard for me to tell the difference.” His early years in a broken family in south Florida were rough, and the years that followed were about hustling and survival. For his first trick, he got only bus fair, 35¢. Basically straight, he drifted into hustling and the gay underworld because that’s what worked. “’Okay’ became my mantra. Okay to this, okay to that…You just pretty much say okay and then deal with the situation as it comes.”

Plenty of non-gay men find themselves hustling, but Matty Lee has written well about the experiences and the people and, yes, the sex. Beyond the sex, he understands how desperately everyone needs the human touch. He survived the juvenile justice system and the streets. Yet, as a member of Narcotics Anonymous, after he spoke a to a high school class about the dangers of drugs, something compelled him to seduce a middle-aged timid schoolteacher into giving him a blowjob in the restroom—not as a hustle but because he saw how desperately the man wanted it.

When writer/director Richard Glatzer asked Matty Lee what he wanted 35 Cents to accomplish, he answered, “To muddy the waters of sexual orientation a bit.” He says he doesn’t know or necessarily care if he writes another book. Yet he has a gift for straightforward clear prose and glaring honesty. A writer can’t do much better than that. (Suspect Thoughts Press, www.suspectthoughtspress.com, paperback, 208 pages, $16.95.)