Works by
Rick Whitaker
(Writer)
[1968 - ]

Biography/Memoirs

• Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling (1999)
  Only one year after his last trick, Rick Whitaker divulges the very personal and complex reasons that drove him to prostitute himself. He reflects on what it cost him to live a life of half-truths and emotional lies, a life of sex and drug dependence, depression and near life-threatening despair.
  
  Not unlike many young New York-bound writers, Rick Whitaker arrived at the Port Authority by bus from the Midwest with only a few dollars. He hadn't anticipated the turns his life would take, but he ventured forth willingly, entering into prostitution--first on his own, then through escort agencies--for the money, or so he told himself, and to spite a lover who had left him.
  
  Whitaker takes hustling out of the realm of cop shows and tabloid tell-alls. He looks at his life straight on, with an unsentimental and unsparing eye for detail, from his unconventional upbringing to specifics about paid encounters with men. Whitaker brings prostitution into everyday settings: at the doctor's office, in a wealthy Upper East Side gentleman's penthouse, at a lonely lawyer's apartment in Brooklyn.
  
  Although Whitaker doesn't fit our comfortable stereotype of a prostitute, he found himself at a point in his life when hustling made sense. Now, with the distance of time, he delivers a story both compelling and repelling, a chronicle of his slow descent into prostitution and drug addiction and his real-life resolution.

Other

• The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara: Reading Gay American Writers (2003)
  Those who first met Rick Whitaker through his unrepentant memoir know that he was not a typical prostitute. This "Wittgenstein- and Freud-quoting" hustler is at core a thinker—and a voracious reader, one who has written book reviews for The New York Times and The Washington Post. In The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara, Whitaker discusses the books that have altered his perception and influenced the way he conducts his life. Although not all of Whitaker's favorite books are written by homosexuals, many — all included here — are. Linked essays on gay writers include David Wojnarowicz, Emily Dickinson, Frank O'Hara, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, and Walt Whitman. These sexual outsiders share what Whitaker calls a "gay sensibility": they describe without describing, show while hiding, and sing while keeping silent. Black-and-white photographs are also featured.