This is what it’s like being a male sex worker

The following article contains posts of a sexual nature, it's NSFW and you have been warned.

Sex work often gets an exceedingly bad rep in the press. It's portrayed as seedy, dangerous and often just 'wrong'.

However, the reality is that the practice is the source of a steady income for many, who genuinely enjoy their time and profession.

To try and bust some myths and dispel negativity surrounding sex work, male escorts and sex workers have been sharing anecdotes from their time in the industry.

Here are just a few shared to the popular r/AskReddit forum:

It helps your cash flow

I wasn't a full time hooker, but I escorted exclusively for just one man. I was a uni student, he was married with kids. He was actually a very attractive man. [...] Our sessions never lasted more than 10min and I never sucked him. Started off as £80/bj, eventually went up £160/bj. Sometimes higher if he was feeling friskier. It lasted for three years and I easily made at least £600 every month. Paid off all my student loans and I'm now debt free! 

Some evenings are fairly standard, others not so much...

I used to work as a male model at nightclubs in Shanghai, China. From there I was introduced to a bunch of people who offered me jobs at other places, and to make a long story short I ended up working basically as a straight up escort.The clients were usually wealthy, high-end women over 35 years of age. Oldest client I took on must have been around 55.The most common requests would either be:Dinner at a fancy restaurant, followed by drinks in some VIP Lounge, followed by spending the night at her hotel room.Being her date at an event, her showing you off to her friends, basically acting as her boyfriend for the night. Then spend the night at her hotel room.Go directly to her hotel room, have sex, then leave.I didn't have many weird requests, no pervy stuff. Although the most memorable one I can think of was when I was asked to have sex with a 30-something woman in front of her much older husband. She kept yelling things at him in Chinese while we were having sex, as he was sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, wearing nothing but underwear, a shirt and a suit jacket. He also looked super pissed every time she yelled something at him.

It's a living.

I'm a male sex worker and porn performer in Australia that's been doing this job full time for the past four and a half years.I only see female clients. Looks wise, I see everyone. All ages, from 20 up until nearly 70. All body shapes and sizes. If you're working as a sex worker and you're discriminating based on looks you're not going to very successful.There's a common misconception that there must be something wrong with clients, that they're not able to go on a date or sleep with someone outside of seeing a sex worker. In my experience that's never the case. For the majority of clients it fits into one of three categories:It's convenient. A client might not be able to invest the time in seeing someone. Or they might be an an unfulfilling relationship that, for whatever reason, they're not able or willing to leave.They have a particular fantasy. Sometimes they'll want something specific and it's easier to hire a sex worker than it is to go through the process of dating to find someone that will do what they want.A bucket list item. I've seen other sex workers who wanted to know what it was like to be a client. Virgins. Lesbians who wanted to see what sleeping with a guy was like.A lot of the time it comes down to wanting a certain sexual experience in a safe environment where it's all about the clients desires.The most common type of booking is just one that involves a fair bit of talking and sex. Nothing overly kinky with my clients for the most part. Sometimes there'll be a bit of light bondage involved, tying someone up, blindfolding them, using toys and perhaps some light spanking.When it comes to the "least common" requests, I don't do anything I'm not comfortable doing. I'm a sex worker, not a sex slave. I still choose what I want to consent to. There have been plenty of times I've said no to a request.

Don't always expect the same experiences

I worked as a nude housekeeper in college for what I assume were gay men (30s-60s). I would just strip down and do various housecleaning tasks in the buff. If they had a secluded yard, I sometimes did gardening. I got paid 100 dollar an hour on average. I would occasionally have anal or oral sex if they were attractive or offered me a lot of money. I found most of my clients on Craigslist or Grindr or by word of mouth. Most of the time they just watched me and jacked off. Sometimes they made me wear skimpy underwear or a jock strap. There were a couple of creeps but mostly the guys were nice. My best experience was with this guy who lived in what had to be a 5 million dollar swanky modern looking house on a lake. We ended up eating chef prepared food, crushing around in his boat and swimming naked in his pool and he paid me 3k to spend the night and have sex with him. Some retired guy who had some business in oil. I didn't clean a thing that day.

Sometimes it's just about companionship.

Throwaway here. In the 90s I was living in Toronto and met an older woman at a neighbourhood bar on a quite afternoon. She was attractive and fairly drunk and I took her back to my place. It was a thing on my bucket list; she was 47 and I was 23. We had amazing sex, she was very confident and direct with how she liked things and I was happy to oblige. We met many more times at hotels, bars and restaurants where she always picked up the tab. Each time we ended up in bed. She was divorced, financially well off, kids were off on their own. Once we went to Mexico for 2 weeks at a snazzy 5 star joint. Our social lives never intertwined.About 6 months in, she asked me if she could 'loan me out' to a couple of her girlfriends. Of course I jumped at the chance, I went out with 3 of her friends a couple times each and it was always the same. Dinner, drinks then sex. Occasional just showed up at a hotel for sex for a few hours or overnight. Two of them were (unhappily) married and the third was divorced. They always paid the expenses but no cash directly to me. They bought me clothes and gifts occasionally. All of those women just wanted the companionship and sex they weren't getting at that point in their life; a good long, sustained pounding and the original woman was a master at oral like I've not experienced since. Eventually I move from TO but that was a pretty sweet run I had.

More: 7 things you should never say to a sex worker