Three Months as a Gay Male Escort Derailed My Life for 30 years

Respect, trusted friendship, and the promise of more clashed early in the 1990s.

Not long ago I realized that a friendship I had for 10 years was based on a lie.

My best friend and roommate put herself into my life to silence me, overshadow me, redirect my life, and take away my personal power. She was intelligent, charismatic, and I sunk into her shadow.

She would speak for me. She would make plans for us. She would pick the friends that we had over to our house on the weekends. She was firmly in control of my life, and I didn’t know it. In my life, from 19 to 29, I was on a short leash, in a cage, I couldn’t see, not allowed to grow into my own individual person.

She never saw me as her equal. I was her “project.” Little did I know that “the project” was to destroy me.

During her presence, her influence on me was not that of a “good Christian.” She didn’t try to set an example for me of a righteous life. She didn’t try to show me the strength of forgiveness or compassion. She saw me as broken.

She used me as a weapon in her more rebellious phase against what she saw as restrictions in the church against women in roles of leadership and their narrow-minded view on sex. I was her toy. I thought she was my friend and I trusted her.

Thirty years later now, I see how foolish I was to listen to her advice of “liberation.” She took an abused and confused young man, fresh into the world at the age of 19, and turned him into something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

A moral young boy, I refused to have sex with anyone, until I reached the age of 18.

I felt like I wasn’t ready, so I didn’t do it. I was always mature for my age. She took advantage of that innocence and planted the seeds of my destitution.

She had read Mayflower Madam by Sydney Biddle. Since I was her best friend, her roommate, her first gay friend, and her project to experiment on, she decided to give me a copy of the book for myself. For the next few weeks as I read Sydney Briddle’s story, “my friend” would talk to me about the benefits of the world of prostitution.

We spoke daily about how much money I could make. We spoke about gentlemen flying me around the country to vacation with them at 5-star resorts. We spoke about the connections I could make for any future career, any career path that I chose, I would be set for life. We even named our cat after Sydney.

My rent was $870 per month at my first apartment. I didn’t want to be a failure at life right out of the starting gate. I was working for 50 cents an hour above minimum wage until minimum wage went up to $4.50 per hour, then I made minimum wage working at a retail bookstore. I worked less than 40 hours per week. I didn’t have health insurance. As a college dropout, I had no clear path forward in life.

At the age of 18, I had already been screwed over by my first boyfriend in my first gay relationship.

He ended up going to prison in Texas for Grand Theft Auto. At 18, I thought I had already seen the worst that the world could be. With our daily conversations and her encouragement, I began to break. I started to believe in the lies that I was being seduced by from the book, from my roommate, and by my own naïve and gullible young mind.

I was only a gay escort for 3 months, but it was a label of shame that would stick with me for the next 30-plus years. No one told me about that. No one told me about how I would never be able to speak about a chunk of my life experiences- -to anyone. No one ever told me that I would forever have my view of sex and love distorted. No one ever told me the resentment I would feel towards my friend.

She abandoned me and our core group of friends 10 years later when she married and returned to her rightful place within the Christian Church. Her rebellious phase over. She had done her duty. She had played her part in ruining the life of a naïve and gullible handsome young man. She played her part in making nightmares out of what should have been good memories of youth. She was forgiven. I was not.

The weight of bearing a secret for 30 years shows to those outside of you.

Those who are jealous or wish to do you harm may not know your secret, but they will use the fact that you have one against you. What you hold inside and hide away from others in shame gives power to those who make themselves into your enemies.

I no longer wish to give those people power who for whatever reason see me as their enemy. So, this is my confession. I made a mistake once when I was 19 years old. It has marked me for life. It has made me less open and honest than I wish to be. It has made me much more jaded and less trusting than I should be.

I was wrong when I believed that I saw the worst that humanity could get when I was only 18. I was raped once and sexually assaulted once during that three-month stint in what was supposed to be a glamorous life among the rich and famous, my ticket to opening doors leading to a successful future.

I was exposed to the dark side of humanity with much more frequency at a young age than I should have been.

When I hear the word “whore” I am drawn back to that night when I was sexually assaulted and humiliated in California at a client’s home.

I did not realize the situation I was walking into since he did not make his intentions clear. I would never have gone if I knew that his fantasy was to abuse and humiliate a prostitute. I made my escape when he went to the bathroom for a break.

After that, my roommate and I found a cheaper apartment to move to, and I went to work at an office job for $9 an hour. I had to work all day from 8 to 5, but I made more money than I did escorting because I could stomach doing the work.

Over the last couple of years, even though these events are over 3 decades old, I hear the voices of condemnation in my head.

I sometimes think that people know when they pass me on the street. I feel their condemnation on my soul.

These judgments are made from a point of massive assumption and pure ignorance. I am done with this secret having power over me. I am done with the malformed shape it is taking outside of me, turning into something that it wasn’t.

It was not a jet-set life of glamour among the rich and famous with champagne and money flowing endlessly. It was midnight drives halfway across town on the 31st of the month to some lonely old man’s house so that I could make rent on the 1st.

I wasn’t spitting in the face of love. The experience may have drained me of my ability to give all of myself that I could in a relationship. It is an experience that has cut off a certain segment of humanity from me. There are people who would never consider dating me. It was a reaction to a world that paid me $640 a month if I could get 40 hours of work that charged me $870 a month for rent.

I don’t blame my former friend, confidant, and roommate for taking advantage of me for her own entertainment. I should have never fallen for those deceitful bright lights.

I do however place at least partial blame on a society of 40 years of stagnating wages,

a country that moves its jobs overseas, a country that lets powerful corporations get away with paying zero dollars in taxes, and a country that feels that it is its duty to have the world’s largest military policing the world putting an unfair burden on its taxpayers.

It is into this world that I was born. A world of predatory loan sharks that sold me college loans that I still owe today, 40 years later. A farce of a crime long ago handled in the UK. It's only in a world this cruel that a young Mormon boy would turn to prostitution.

I cannot think of any other scenario when this would happen as it is unthinkable. I’m done beating myself up on the inside for the situation I found myself in when I was 19. We must really hate our country, its citizens, and our children to allow such things to happen.