Note For Rent

Satisfaction, Part 4

Friends, Family, Strangers and the Fuzz

During small talk, like say, to the person next to you on the plane, what do you say your job is?

That answer usually depends on how creative I’m feeling at the time. Lately, I’m a trust-fund brat traveling to avoid commitment to the family or grad school. In the past I’ve relied on previous jobs to make me seem like an upstanding member of society, but I’ve most often played it safe and said I’m part of the service industry.

Do you pay your taxes?

I haven’t done my taxes in years, mostly because I’m lazy. However, I am set up to do them, should I ever be asked -- or threatened with an audit. I have a registered business number (that’s right, I’m incorporated), and an accountant who has experience getting money down on paper, in the smallest denominations conceivably plausible, mostly for ladies of the trade. He was slightly amused to meet me.

Are there any naked pictures of you floating around the Internet?

As of about a month ago, yes. All are decapitated or faceless, though.

Do your parents know what you do?  If not, what have you told them?

No. Although, I think they sometimes suspect that I’m up to something shady -- but they’re probably more inclined to suppose that it’s drug related. I usually tell them that I’m bartending or some-such menial, beneath my potential kind of thing.

Has anyone from your past (eg friends from high school, distant relatives) accidentally found out?

I have no friends from high school, so I don’t much worry about anyone from that era knowing anything about me at all. As for distant relatives, I couldn’t say, but I would be surprised if any of them had. I haven’t told my friends back home what I’m up to, either. They knew about the stripping, but haven’t been informed of anything beyond that. I’ll probably break it to them when I get back, but until then would prefer them not to worry.

Don't you have to worry about getting busted, or have I been watching too many police shows on TV?

I worry about running into unmanageable clients more than getting busted, but a healthy amount of caution makes either unlikely.

Satisfaction, Part 3

Close to Home

Are you based in the UK?

My location is a secret.

Approximately how many miles you travel a year in your profession, and what was the furthest that you have ever been flown by a client?

As this is the first year that I’ve been working in the Business, I haven’t an average yet to speak of, but it has been common for me to travel up to 100km one way for a job, around once a week. This has become less frequent now that I’ve started charging half my rate for travel time, which is just fine for me. Most of my work to date has been restricted to the city limits of my situation, and most men who arrange to see me are impatient for me to arrive; ordering a hooker is a lot like any other id-driven impulse, if the fixation takes too long to materialize, reason usually kills the desire. There are not many people out there who are inclined to arrange too far in advance, or commit a sum of money and time to someone that they may not get along with. That said, as I develop my working relationships, travel becomes more and more of a possibility.

Although the number of men say they're going to take me places is high, and averred in breathless sencertiy, I put these opines into the category of pre-orgasm gibberish, as you don’t hear much about it after the stutter, and the buck, and the subsequent slackening. I’ve only been asked to go on an extended trip in earnest twice, and both times fell though: once because of a WHO advisory, and another because my companion’s work situation suddenly changed.

Conversely, I have a number of clients who have flown into a city just because I was going to be there, once quite a long distance, and that's something quite flattering. I also have a few invitations extended to spend indefinite amounts of time at various places about the globe, remuneration (not travel cost) included, but it’s an option I’m not interested in pursuing at the moment.

Mind you, out of blue, this morning, I got a phone call asking if I’d like to be flown out to Berlin for a number of days; that is something I am interested in, should it turn out to be genuine -- but it’s going to take some negotiation.

What other professions do you think you'd be good at?

My father always thought I would end up in PR, and I think my mother still sees me as a university professor. I imagine I’ll be quite good at writing books.

What's your academic background?

Successful and disastrous, in turns.*

What color are your eyes?

The short answer is hazel. They’re actually grey, gold and green. I’m not kidding.

What color is your hair?

I am not a successful blonde; as a redhead, a little shocking; currently, I’m brunette.

In your opinion, what's your best physical feature?

My smile.

Do you ever do drugs with your clients? Have you?

I don’t, but I have. Alcohol form time to time; presently, when a drink is offered, I’ll usually take one, but only have a few sips. I have been known to go through a mini-bar or a bottle of spirits with a client, pre my curb-the-drinking resolve.  Little bottles of Amyl are often about, but my relationship with the boot cleaner is a very wary one. Besides that, as someone who has tried just about everything once (twice, three times – you do have to be sure), there’s little that I have not encountered outside of work, so know where my boundaries and safe-zones reside. I had a client, a few months ago, take out a kit after I arrived, and offer me a small range of options. “I don’t suppose you do this when you’re working,” he said. I was in a particular mood, and had absolutely nothing to do the next day, so indulged with him, and we had a really great time. He gave me three good pornos as a tip. That was the only time I can really recall. Cocaine used to make a regular appearance, but I haven’t seen much of it lately, and it does very little to help my sexual performance.

What is, in your opinion, the best feeling in the world? And the worst one?

Musical ecstasy under the stars, hands flung out, eyes open, when you can feel the planet move concentrically in heaven’s spheres without one word to prove it; and, the moment you feel your heart collapse into a sucking memory of the love that used to fortify it against all the terrors of the world.

* Despite being a very good student, winning awards, pursuing a lengthy degree at an institution of higher learning, and being generally “most promising” to my academic mentors, I have never graduated from a single thing in my life. The psychoanalyst of my future will undoubtedly have a field day.

Satisfaction, Part 1

The Big Questions

How did you start with prostitution and why are you doing it?

It’s like cats. You can see them provoked into exploration across a narrow ledge, focused just to see the other side of a precipitous roof; it’s always been the same for me. If I want to see something from a different angle, figure something out, uncover a certain unknown, there I’ll be, inching out across a drainpipe.

I started as a go-go dancer/stripper. This did not involve prostitution in and of itself, in fact, was probably just as lucrative for me as hooking, even with it’s own set of issues and complications. However, it was my gateway profession. You get propositioned a lot by men in burlesque dance clubs, especially as the blokes get drunker and drunker throughout the night. When you turn them down, they make what they think is a natural assumption seeing as they’ve been paying you to take your clothes off, or as it often happens, have watched other people pay you to take your clothes off, and then start asking you for a price to come home with them. Turning them down becomes reflexive and sometimes stylish, with clever retorts that sometimes take their fuzzy brains a little while to figure out. (“Alright, baby. I’ll charge you to wait outside the club.”) But every once and a while, someone moderately attractive and sexy would ask, and that question would float up: what would be the harm?

So I started by seeking out the answers to questions I was asking myself, mainly what it would be like, who the people were that were asking, and how I would feel about it afterwards; all queries I’m still searching through.

I also like money.

What type of prostitution do you do, for example are you a "High-end" sex-worker?

I don’t know how these distinctions really break down, especially in the gay-male world of companionship-for-pay. The labels are most likely self-imposed past the level of “blow you for a twenty” off the street in Boystown, something which I have never done. I have worked in brothels, I have solicited my own clients randomly from clubs (never planned), and am now booking my services by advertising on the Internet. I price myself at the top end of the scale for the area that I’m in, and below what traveling porn stars and the evidently statuesque body-builders do; but not by much. I seem to be developing a stable of clients who like the fact that I’m educated and speak in complete sentences, and that I’m easy to take out in public. Ideally, I would like to have a few regulars who book me for substantial periods of time, and very little fuck-and-run business, so I guess that this would put me in the Higher-end, but by no means exclusive range.

Gay-male companionship comes with a different set of stigmas and complications than the male/female dynamic. Many of my clients are married, heavily closeted and uncomfortable being identified as a man who desires the romantic or sexual companionship of another man; this necessitates an even greater level of secrecy and discretion than most female sex-workers have to contend with -- it also greatly reduces the amount of business that I might otherwise conduct out in public, as a paid date or travel partner, even though they might like to if they weren’t quite so self-conscious.

What do you call yourself or your profession? Would you consider yourself a prostitute?

I do consider myself a prostitute, and as a man who loves synonyms and his thesaurus, I like to use the whole spicy mélange: garcon de joie, call boy, cocotte, concubine, courtier, hooker, hustler, midnight cowboy, model, party boy, pro, slut, tramp, trollop, whore, working boy.

I never use gigolo. It makes me think of some smarmy Italian fellow with a vulgar preponderance of gold jewelry. 

Do you have female as well as male customers?

I don’t; although I know a couple of guys who do.

Do you ever have customers that want to please you, and do you ever get pleased from a customer?

All the time, and often.

Most clients want to feel that you are enjoying the experience together as much, if not more so, then they are, and want to feel desired and skillful as lovers. They are often not terribly desirable and not very skilled, but if you have a knack for it, you can learn to visualise past their shortcomings and start using them as masturbatory aids, thereby helping with the whole fantasy aspect of the work.

But the ratio of genuinely enjoyable johns to not is probably higher than you would think.

Could you ever imagine yourself initiating a private relationship with a customer?

Yes, and I have; but it became very complicated very quickly, and the lines of emotional and monetary commitment became hard to negotiate in almost no time at all. It’s not something I’m inclined to attempt again.

Do you have a partner that you love ( with whom you have sex with)? Does that sex differ from the sex for sale? How?

I have a partner that I’m very fond of and see often, and we’ve been having especially fervent, window-rattling sex lately, so yes, it differs, as all recreational sex differs from that which happens as part of a transaction.

No matter how well I get along with someone, if they’re passing you a stack of 50’s to have you in the room there’s an onus to perform the service you have advertised. If you want to provide a quality service, this informs the decisions, choices and pace you pursue during a session. Unless you’ve developed a rapport, this generally means the sex is not as spontaneous as it might be between two people who are just dying to rip each other’s clothes off.

What is the difference between sex in work, and sex in private or more specific sex with love?

Sex with love bends all reason, light, gravity and electromagnetic force to a super particle of wordless exclamation; and paroxysms that burn with wonder.

Otherwise, outside of love, it runs the rest of the world’s painful spectrum: muddled to mundane, tiresome to terrific, gratuitous to gratifying, yet always an act that refuses to go out of style, despite the fact that it’s hopelessly overdone.

What is love to you?

I could write a book.

What is prostitution to you?

Ignoring issues creative and metaphoric, sex for money.

Do you ever get tired with sex?

Oh, god. Yes.

Is the money a major factor in your job?

Money is the major factor in my job; as it is in most jobs.

If you could choose to be something else that you enjoy making the same amount of money would you do it instead? Is this work just like any other work to you? Is it "only" a work to you?

Prostitution affords me a number of things, but most prominently it gives me free time. Any alternative I could be busying myself with, that would render me a similar annual yield, would not give me that luxury. I will not be at this forever, but as I travel and try to figure out the other aspects of my life which have been burdening me with choices, and not enough room to work them out, it's ideal. It’s work unlike any other; it’s bizarre and exhausting, not to mention dangerous if you don’t keep your wits about you and make your calls cautiously and sensibly. I don’t know if anything can be termed “just” work, as everything a human being involves her or himself with requires different kinds of focus and attention, drains and rewards in its own way, but sex-work is good for me right now. I’m relatively good at it, and it remains engaging as well as profitable. When I reach the point where it tires me to think about it, let alone perform, I’ll be retiring gracefully.

Do you have trust in people? What is your general opinion about humans?

My trust in people is nominal, not because I think most are malicious or out to use others, but because most are hopelessly un-empathetic, self-cantered, obtuse and lazy. Trust is something I consider hard-won, but those I do, I do unreservedly… within reason.

As far as humans go, those clay-formed, divinity-fired pots so full of promise but so easily broken, I don’t know. They make me laugh a lot. They make me weep myself dry, too.

Modus Operandi

I have to say that I was prepared for it. After looking at all the ads put up by other guys promoting their services around the Web, with their warnings of "No Time Wasters" and such, I figured that I'd get a number of calls from guys thinking that they wanted an escort, right up until they had to commit, or realise that they were actually going to have to pay, and then back out at the last moment. I guessed, even before I put up the ad, that I would get a ratio of something like three or four soft enquiries for every hard booking. The ratio's solid, and has turned out about right, but it's always interesting to see what form the time-wasting takes, and how they'd like to engage you without actually devoting any capital to the experience. Attempts to foray into dirty talk on the phone (a late night occurrence, I've worked out -- no more taking calls after 10pm), and clever lines of reasoning to try and haggle are at the top of the list. Sometimes they make me furrow my brow:

"So, how much would it be for one hour of erotic massage, and a half hour of escort?"

Um. It kinda makes you want charge a consulting fee.

I'm still getting procedure mapped out, and diplomatic, pat answers to common questions so I don't come off as an ass-hole, but this morning I had two separate hopefuls try to book me, and then try to get around the travel fee by saying that they would come and collect me, and return me home after, in their own car. When I didn't agree, both dropped me like a hot cookie tray. At the time, I hadn't really brought my faculties to bear on the issue to have a sufficient explanation for them -- it was fairly early in the morning, and I hadn't had any coffee -- but the more I think about it, the longer the list becomes as to why such an arrangement is a bad idea. Observe:

1) Safety. Mum always told me not to get into a strangers car, and I'm sticking to that piece of wisdom, thank you. I require a phone number and an address before I go anywhere for a job. I call the number to confirm before I head out, and if you're not there when I arrive, I'm coming straight home. Climbing into your mystery vehicle and being spirited off to my supposed destination does not peace of mind invoke.

2) Time management. Time really is money. The idea behind managing my own portfolio is that I won't be seeing as many clients in a week, however, as some derivative of Murphy's Law, it can be guaranteed that everyone who wants to see you will probably want to around the same time on the same day/s. I can't be waiting around for you to come an collect me on your own schedule, be it early or late, and hope that you're an efficient driver.

3) Privacy. I don't want you to know my neighbourhood, let alone my address. Let me tell you, stalking often begins very innocently -- those nice ones that seem so kind and attentive? They are, but they're also inclined to obsessive, creepy behaviour under the right circumstances. Better they don't have any idea which streets to troll up and down. Especially if they own a car.

4) Hassle. As there's no way that I'd be letting you pick me up at my front door, so I'd still have to get myself organised, out of the house and to a rendezvous point to meet you, which half-defeats the purpose of you coming to collect me in the first place.

5) Value. Probably most key. It's the value of my time, and the quality energy that it takes to spend with a client. As I've said before, I enjoy my sessions with my guys for the most part, but it is work, and it taps reserves of attention and energy that run deep, right to the source. Putting on the glamour, focusing your mojo for another person requires something that you can't just rely on indefinitely. Bridging the gap during a car ride is not only going to be awkward, but also draining. I can use the ride in a cab to put it on, pull the persona over to fit, feel sexy with it, and get into the right frame of mind. Forced small-talk in a closed space is just that, forced, and it's not doing anyone any favours. So, if I'm going to be in your presence, sorry, but it's going to have to be on the clock.

If ever asked again, I think I'm just going to site the safety thing.

Procedures In Marketing (re: Vanity)

* On my rather dawdling, poky quest to go solo -- cast off the shackles of the Confederacy and build a private client base where I am my own authority -- I finally came to that bridge where I had to shuck my clothes and pose in front of a camera. The attitudes I struck for this particular shutterbug were not terribly impressive, but then again, he was closer to an enthusiast than a professional, so I wasn't squandering my dime by not being at my personal best. I am one of those unfortunate people who, although I can strike a devastating posture alone with the mirror, or even (it has been said) dancing on stage, the threat of a recording device makes me unable to find a comfortable angle for my neck, or even remember that I have good posture -- I'm frankly incapable of smiling naturally if I'm forced to think about it. Consequently, I did look a fright in some of the photos. Damn that mechanical, unblinking eye.

But I was unrealistically dismal in my assessment of the shoot as I walked home, scuffing with the soles of my shoes, and grumbling about being more photogenic: a bunch of the pics didn't turn out half bad. I busied myself today rendering the lighting a little more flattering and amputating my head with Photoshop, so now I finally have some calling-card images, framed and posted on my very first commercial attempt at the Inter-web. Small steps to Independence.

The photographer did the deed out of good graces and desire to build his own portfolio. Bless him, he did try to get me to sport a woody for him, but as I didn't know the burgeoning artist from Adam, my reasoning held that I could still maintain plausible deniability should images of yours truly ever surface, with a head, somewhere on the shore of the Net's river of data. Someone could find the body. It's just art, darling. Art.

As grateful as I am for the Confederacy, along with our bookers and handlers, I'm finding the constraints on my time and my money less and less tolerable. One of the benefits of whoring has always supposed to have been free time, after all, and I've been finding myself underwhelmed on this count, as I subject myself weekly to working designated shifts that are still so prone to the ebb and flow of inbound clients. Where is my stable of horny gentlemen? My roster of affluent patrons? Perhaps waiting in the wings.

I steadfastly refuse to fall into a maudlin rut at this point in my life. Months ago, choices were made to avoid a number of things; poverty, for one; boredom, most especially, was another. If prostitution isn't providing a reprieve from at least those two, then it's probably time to pack it up and head home -- something I don't feel I'm ready to do, just yet. My plans have never been of a definite sort, but I do know when I'm not living up to my own wordless expectations.

As far as managing my own talent goes, the whole process feels a little like the first day of school: entering into a situation both familiar and totally alien, with the tense promise of new-beginnings and unknown quantities. I certainly don't know what I'm going to be learning at this stage in the game -- it's a new syllabus, after all -- but I'm prepared to do the work; and it's a great excuse to buy all new materials.

I guess I'm off to the shop.

* And for those of you who've been wondering and pestering me: yes, that nipple belongs to me.

More Work

Keep in mind that the gay-male sex trade has a preponderance of dirty fuckers, on either side of the transaction barrier. Dirty fuckers who can't, or won't, hide the fact. I have no problem with this, per sai, I'm as unruly and sexually explicit as the next successful prostitute -- but I like a veneer of respectability; etiquette, we call it. I have a habit of alienating those clients who don't display any. This, I think, is to my advantage; not to my bank account's, to be sure, but definitely to my mental and emotional health.

Today I took my first client since being inconveniently interrupted on my way home, and I was curious to see how it would go. (As we all know by now -- thank you television -- disturbing experiences can lay the equivalent of emotional/repressed memory land-mines throughout your subconscious, just waiting to be triggered by the pressure of the an appropriate event.)

I was fine. A little reserved, but fine.

He was fine, too. A handsome lawyer, silvering, of indeterminate business interests, who got down to the task at hand quite quickly, and then wanted to sit for a glass of wine the remaining half hour. We covered the gambit, sitting at the window seat in the hotel room, rested against the glass, night shining night's wants, its epiphanies and its emptiness, on the other side while we sipped; and I kept the feeling of being handsomely fucked happily beneath my white robe. We talked school, and the burden of choice after leaving school, and how unexpected choices lead you to your next set before you know it.

"You should be doing this for yourself," he said to me.

"I am," I responded.

"No, I mean, you should be working for yourself, while you're doing this. You seem like you could handle you own affairs. I mean, right now how much do you get to keep of what I'm paying you?"

It's been on my mind a lot, lately; and to be honest, it's been on my back-burner, simmering, since the beginning. I'd rather, but I've wanted to get the lay of the land, first; and setting up shop for yourself in a foreign city can be a risky business before you even know what the suburbs mean: this one is respectable, that one is not. Even the national character has to come into play, what the hot-buttons are, and how men commonly react to attitudes, current events.

"I may get around to getting my own business number one day," I responded, slyly.

He wasn't fishing, I discovered; he was mentoring, just like the daddy-figure/commerce consultant that he was. Sweet really. So we outlined a sketchy business model for myself. We agreed that screening clients was the key.

Because I could use more patrons like him, the ones with decorum, and who are out for a little more companionship than simply sex.

Plus, I'd like to travel a little more on someone else's dime.

So, my new project is to set to it and start bringing in a private roster. I'm going to need another phone line, a better travelling kit, an on-line ad that's at once charming and alienating...

And some photos. Good god, I hate having my picture taken.

Better Up To Date

It didn't take being beaten up and robbed for me to get back to the keyboard, just so you know. It was a happy coincidence: I finally resolved my ISP issues a mere two days before the incident took place. I've been languishing broadband-free for months, which, I have to point out, reduces my beautiful computer (who has been having his own hardware issues of late) to a glorified paper-weight. A paper-weight that you can type on.

(If I can't publish the words, I've always preferred writing long hand. Take a look at my several volumes of journals if you have any doubt. On second thought, don't. No one gets to read those.)

However, in the interest of continuity, dissemination, and the freedom of information (so far as a non-localised, pseudonym authored blog can be concerned) here, in no particular order, are oddities I have experienced, along with realizations and observations that have come to pass over the past month or so:

* I've made friends with a few other Working Boys. They continue to interest and amuse me; and many of them will probably continue to be friends long after I've left this city and this line of work. None of them are what you would expect, besides being slightly crazy.

* Of all the Working Boys I have met so far, only a couple have not made a play for me; which I find flattering.

* I let a man take a whole slew of photos of my cock. I did this because when I analysed my emotional response to the idea, I didn't find it offencive, and I had a hard time imagining how anyone besides myself would actually recognise the equipment, no matter where the images ended up. It didn't excite me at first, but he was really into it. Halfway through, the sheer force of his arousal kind of leaked-in, and I have to say, we got some damn fine shots out of the session, if you like that lone-erection kind of thing to begin with; and here I thought it was going to be boring.

* Was completely ticked by the public opinion nuke that was the last U.S. Election.... Ticked. To. Death.

* Although I am very happy with the progress I have made at the gym in the past year or so, I began to wonder if the body I want is naturally attainable... or, if I'm going to have to quit drinking to get what I want. Shudder to think.

* Kudos to all those married men out there who can suck a cock better than I can, with not a flinch or a flutter of gag-reflex. Anyone who can take me right down to the base, nose pushed into my lower abdomen, has to be commended: you boys have put some serious time into that physical study.

But I ask you, why is it always the married ones?

* I saw the movie Shortbus, and recognised at least 2 people I have pashed. I laughed. Good film.

* I've realised that I miss love. Not being in love -- that shit can keep itself in the coffin where I buried it -- but I miss the hard won commitment, the coalition and camaraderie of my dear ones, and platonic affection. The lust I've been exploring in surplus is a poor substitute. As a result, I'm actively interviewing for Extraordinary People. It's a big city, I've got to be able to shake out two or three.

* My back wisdom tooth shattered. You'd think it would hurt, but it didn't, and that made me think: maybe it's true... maybe we hookers are dead inside after all. Or maybe I'm just abnormally lucky. Twistedley, bizarrely lucky.

And Then...

There was a dry spell.

And work was scarce.

And my bank balance whittled away in the dark.

No free market is free from these turbulations, I realize; but we're talking sex here, aren't we? Where's that very dear axiom now: sex sells?

Am I going to have to take issue with the marketing experts?

Light Comes On, Light Goes Out

Whilst working at the Stupid Job, I was intrigued by two young women. They were conspicuous in their beauty and remarkably well done up, especially for the venue: not quite in evening wear, but deficidedly not formal; tony, but not vulgar for the situation: black straps, a shimmer of silver, and high high-heels. It became more mysterious when I overheard their conversation. Both were from obviously different backgrounds, their accents were more than half a world apart; which is not unusual in itself, people do make friends outside of their heritage, but their body language was decidedly remote. My first impression was that they were waiting to be collected by their dates, at which point a tidy foursome would depart, but they continued without the anticipated apparition. Then one said to the other:

"You have to make them think they're getting more than what they wanted, by doing something unexpected. Then they don't push you."

The second nodded empathetically.

I looked again at their long, well coiffed but decidedly unbound tresses.

Oh, I realized. Working girls.

The Stupid Job

Blah blah blah, clean-up, blah-blah blah blah, those need to go upstairs, blah blah pay more attention, yadda yadda blah-diddy-blah blah blah and a something something..."

It's not that I don't care, it's just that tomorrow I'm going to quit.

Which reminds me: book an appointment for a Brazilian.