There were some really weird scenes that I got into. I can go to someone’s house and be their pet for the night, and let them do whatever and I’ll do whatever, and I’ll get paid. I read an article in the advocate, a few months before making the leap, about the life of a gay male escort here and he was really open about everything. But I’m not gonna have sex with a rich woman. I thought there would be some of that, and there would be some like well, I’ll have sex with some of them.

I thought, I really did, that I would get to escort people to Studio 54. I knew there would be sex, but I didn’t think it would be like the situation that I found myself walking into. JH: I didn’t know I was gonna be a hustler. And so you’re in the big city, an adult, but you’re a hustler? But if you were in the street you had more of a getaway. They would jump you and throw you against the building, rob you and then run off. It wasn’t lit like it is now.ĪP: Wait, what could happen to you on the sidewalk? You had to walk in the street, not on the sidewalk, and it was dark. I spent most of my time out on the streets at night, because most of the tricks were at night, and I learned that you had to be careful. I definitely don’t know what it looked like, and I’m sure it’s nothing like it is today, because today we have the cleaner, sanitized, more corporate version of everything. I wanted you, and everyone who was there, to feel that and to go back to another time, New York City in 1983.ĪP: Tell me a little more about New York City in 1983. Then I found these colored LED bulbs: I tested different ones and I finally got the right colors to go with the tape-purple, pink, and black light-and when everything hit I saw that glow that I remember beaming out of the machine. But just the flagging tape wasn’t enough for the glow. I found flagging tape, which is something that Tony Feher, who died of AIDS, used in his work his estate is now represented by Sikkema Jenkins. Every day I would play that game and that light would beam out of the machine, and so I wanted to recreate that glow. I mean it wasn’t a hustle bar, it was just a bar in the village. I played Pac-Man every day, soon after arriving here, at a cruise bar. I spent about a year developing or testing lights and curtains to create the glow that I remember seeing beaming out of the Pac-Man machine. And the way I thought that I could do that was by having the gallery black, you know, getting rid of those white LED bulbs. I wanted people to feel what I felt when I was a runaway and a sex worker and scared to death, but also having some fun. JH: When you play Pac-Man, you’re in a maze, so I wanted to take the public into the maze that I remember from playing the game in the 80’s.

Pacman chasing ghosts