Herbert Huncke
Herbert Huncke was born into a middle-class family, but he became a drug addict and hung around criminals and hoodlums when he was a young man. He worked for Al Capone in Chicago and decided that he wanted to start his own hustle by selling himself as a male sex worker. In 1939, he moved to New York City, and began selling himself there. He earned the nickname “Mayor of 42nd Street”. Huncke used the money he earned turning tricks to pay for his drug addiction. He was a significant part of the Beat generation because he became friends with Jack Kerouac. He showed Kerouac into the world of sex work, and the writer based a character named “Elmer Hassel” in the novel On The Road after him. Herbert Huncke published a few of his own books, where he explained some of his wild stories. He also became friends with another writer, William Burroughs, and introduced him to hard drugs. Later, Burroughs would write Naked Lunch, which has become an iconic piece of literature from the Beat generation.
In the 1940s, he met Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who became famous for his “Kinsey Scale” of sexuality. Huncke helped Kinsey to learn more with his sexual research in the prostitution community. He called himself “Kinsey’s pimp”. Herbert Huncke pumped chemicals through his veins on a regular basis, and he put himself in potentially dangerous situations with clients. He even spent five years in jail for stealing. Despite all of the rough and crazy times in his life, he lived to be 81 years old.