It may seem like an obvious question – why am I a straight male escort for women?  I’m university educated, with 20 years of experience running businesses.  The short answer is that I love my work.  It’s the best job in the world, for me.

But there is a longer answer too.  It touches on why many people choose this industry.  And why many of us stay in this industry for a long time.  It also speaks to our nature as people and the nature of this job.

I chose to be a sex worker because both times that I started (in 1998 and again in 2010) I needed more money than my work in the IT industry could provide.  Especially in 2010, after the GFC, much of the kind of web design and basic IT services work that I provided dried up as businesses cut back and their budgets shrank.  I lived outside of Sydney, in an area where heavy industry was shrinking and there was little work for *anyone* let alone someone with my skill set.

Sex work offered me a simple way to boost my income that was compatible with continuing my IT work at the same time.  Which I did for another four or so years, before sex work became my full time job.  

Lots of people get into sex work this way.  It’s a convenient and powerful way to solve a financial problem that doesn’t require a big investment of money, or time to try.  For many people though, that’s all it is – something that they dip into once or a few times in their lives, a handy tool to fix a problem.

But for some of us – like myself, we find that it is the thing that we have been looking for.  An industry that lets us express who we are without judgement from my peers.  That provides us with a reliable income that may be much more than we would be able to earn in other industries – or, if not more, then earn at a lower personal cost.

If I had stayed in the IT industry, I may have been able to build a business, over enough time, to equal or exceed what I earn as a sex worker.  But it would have been a 10 hour a day, six day a week job that would have crushed my spirit.  It would never have allowed me the time and creative space to study writing, photography, and film making.  Or given me the opportunities to travel that this job has brought to me.

Nor would it have lead me to meet the wonderful people that I have met as a male escort.  Or allowed me to grow as a person in the same way.

I also like to think that I have been able to provide a service that is needed.  That there are women out there who’s lives I have been able to improve in way that others could not.  I certainly feel that it is a privilege and a responsibility to work with the women and couples who come to see me.

John.