There are certain stereotypes assigned to what most people would imagine a prostitute’s life is like. More so, perhaps, to those attached with a male prostitute, or gigolo. An anonymous user, jerrygigolo claimed to have served as an escort for about 4 years and posted an AMA discussion on Reddit recently, and the insights subsequently offered, were intriguing to say the least.
Here’s him answering some questions that most of us probably wonder about the profession.
Were you not attracted to any of these women? Were you able to perform, or did it have to be someone who you were genuinely into?
Some women took more work to generate attraction to. Being unable to perform was always the biggest fear I had, but when showtime came around I had usually done enough sexual build up that I’d convinced myself of attraction as well, and maintaining integrity in the bedroom wasn’t an issue.
There was the odd time I knew I wasn’t going to be convincing without some assistance, but I had Viagra on hand for cases like that, or the extreme rare chance where clients I was genuinely attracted to wanted more but I was out of gas. Both of these cases were extremely rare, I didn’t like feeling like I needed to take pills to do my job, so if I had a session with a client who was that difficult to generate attraction to, or was insatiable to the point where I was basically harming myself to provide, I usually wouldn’t let them see me again.
What prompted you to become a gigolo? And what did the role entail?
Prompt: Girl I thought I was going to marry moves for career reasons. One of my flirty PT clients basically throws me pity sex (she’d always been flirty but I’d stonewalled due to relationship). She thinks I’m great at sex, especially oral. I just want it to be a one off thing. She persists, I decline. She offers me $100 to take care of her again. I realize I’m onto something.
Role: Mainly companionship. Sex and looks (I had a fantasy body at the time) got me in, but with most of them they wanted someone to connect with. So paid dinners, walks in parks, paid weekend getaways, that kind of thing. Very much a service role, they wanted that ideal romantic experience and I did my best to give it to them. Bit of a rocky start, but again I think looks/sex let me get away with the initial growing pains, but being “on” for hours/days at a time was a lot of work.
What prompted you to give it up?
I hadn’t been in a serious relationship since I started escorting. My relationships were either professional or casual sex with people I had met through my PT job or regular living. There’s a stigma attached to being an escort, it isn’t something I could avoid telling someone if I wanted to pursue a longterm relationship, and most women seemed to be writing me off as the guy who was good for a fling as a rebound, or a temporary escape from their own longterm relationships, so there’s that.
I was also getting tired of the ingenuine sex I often had to have. I did (and do) still have the desire to meet someone and settle down, and I felt if I kept up with the escorting for too long I might eventually become so accustomed to fake attraction that I wouldn’t know the difference anymore.
I think I just grew out of it. It was fun at first and that kept me going, then it was the money and paid vacations, and then I realized I was sick of it, and could still focus my energy on becoming something else if I wanted. So I gave it up.
Who was your most common client? (I.e. Older women? Men? Etc) And what’s the weirdest thing a client requested you to do?
Straight gigolo, so my most common gender by default was women!
As far as ages go, it varied. Oldest woman I had was in her early 50s, but most common would be late 20s or early 30s business professionals. Too focused on their career to want a serious relationship, but still wanting to have memorable experiences with attentive and experienced men.
I didn’t have any off-the-wall sexual requests. One client did request I wear her passed husband’s favorite watch and tie while we were out on our dates, that didn’t strike me as very weird though. More something she did to enhance the experience for herself, made it easier for her to feel connected to me. Sometimes she’d talk to me like I was her husband back when they were young (ie. I remember the first time you saw me), I’d keep quiet and stroke her arm when she went like that. I felt like she had some loss she needed to work through, I was afraid of speaking when she’d reminisce because I didn’t want to ruin it for her.
She was in her mid-40s, so it wasn’t like she was “gone”. Had a significant loss and needed someone to help her through it, and I was there.
Did most women look just for sex or were you replacing some one i.e. the tie and watch?
When you went with a client to various establishments, was your role well-known by most people, or was the part you were playing less obvious to the casual observer?
If someone wanted to get into this, how would they go about it? How did you? How did you find new clients and how many total clients did you have?
Craigslist is how I started. It took a couple weeks to get my first genuine bite (lots of trolls, gays and lookie loos. The hardest part about initiating with any new client was convincing them I was worth spending money for. Women can pretty much be wine and dined by anyone, so to get your foot in the door you have to convince them you’re something exceptional, and the first few starter dates were payment at the end of a sample service. After I’d built confidence in them I’d go to collecting at the start of each date, having to ask at the end is a mood killer, and I’d be able to charge full price as well.
I tried getting listed on some male escort services that said they could middleman the service, but in reality they just charged me to list and I heard nothing, or they charged me to list and would then ask if I did gays. So I wouldn’t recommend that route.
I’d occasionally take out ads on the paper, mainly trying to time it with local events where people would be coming in (I received some paid-for sex with two women who were very good friends by doing this – they did it just to see what having an escort was like, and enjoyed themselves so much that they hired me to spend the following day with them).
I was constantly putting myself out there, whenever I got someone who really liked me and called regularly I wouldn’t have to list for a couple months though.
Keep in mind I wasn’t doing this fulltime, I didn’t want to drop as a PT and end up having a work gap to explain down the road, so I was working this around my actual work schedule. Luckily with my real job I could control my work schedule based on how many clients I had (there were longtime regulars but most came and went), so if a woman I had was being demanding I could mold some of my PT client schedules around my escort client’s requests.
I had thirty-one clients over the four years.
An explanation for there being nothing disrespectful in the profession.
Design Credit: Rohit Jakhu
Disclaimer: The images used in the article are not a direct representation of the person in question.
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