The online diary of a gay courtesan.

In light of what is happening with Rekers there are a great many conversations out there dominated by people who should shut the fuck up.

“Escorting is a livelihood, not a career.”

Oh, really? Well, look who knows so much.

Let’s take a moment to evaluate whether or not escorting is a career. A career is that work one does for which one is paid, and it is generally supported by personal investment, training, expertise, and networking. I would like to address each of these in turn as a proof that although escorting can be “only” a livelihood, it can also be a full-fledged career.

Personal Investment

As Dolly Parton said, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Let me just tell you what I have to pay in order to play the part. Equivocate this to paying for college if you will; however, know that careers generally involve a huge investment on an individual’s part, and adult entertainment is no exception. This is what it costs me to maintain the Devon Hunter brand:

1. Personal training at $40/hour, 2-3 times/week
2. High quality food at $100 – $150/week
3. Products from Aveda (because you may was well eat what you put on your skin) at $150/month
4. Therapeutic massage to break down muscle and remove toxins at $65/hour, 1-2 times/week
5. Supplements such as vitamins and muscle maintenance at $125/month

If you want me to keep looking like I look, it’s going to cost me about $1500/month. At about $18,000/year, that is a college education. This doesn’t include the in-kind spa services that a friend treats me to (I probably got $500 worth of hair coloring, teeth bleaching, and face peeling yesterday). I am investing in my profession, so that I can remain competitive in a glutted market. I have to offer what employers want. Period.

Training

I cannot speak for all escorts, but the best among us study and train. We hire at first, in order to emulate, or associate with high quality escorts who help us avoid pitfalls. We learn a code of conduct. We talk to people who hire escorts to understand the culture of the interactions. We are honed into the equivalent of courtesans in Europe and geisha in Japan. We are artists with a variety of techniques and skills of many types and purposes. I happen to be a very vocal and open escort (concerning my thoughts and my humanity), but you are naïve if you think my experiences differ all that much from any others’. There is a process to becoming an escort. Any tramp can be a two-bit whore who throws his legs in the air for $20 with 10 minutes notice. It take time and skill to be what we are. Art is what makes it look easy.

Expertise

Every career has a set of skills unique to it which require a submission of the self to the technique. It goes without saying that a skilled escort will have honed his expertise for a particular group of clients. I happen to focus on the Boyfriend Experience (BFE). It’s what I like, and it is what I would want for myself. And that makes it easy for me to offer, and it makes it pleasurable for me to give. I would be a terrible fetish escort. I would fail at it. It isn’t my area of expertise. I am very gifted at emotional and personal connections. I am good at it. Other escorts have learned the safety issues and refined practices for whatever it is they do (e.g. S/M, B/D, water sports, extreme play, etc.). They practice their skills and learn the body. We, all of us, learn about people in intimate ways that rival the intricacies of professionals in other fields. And we charge professional fees accordingly. If you want a two-bit fuck, then go pay $20 for one. They are available, and it might be what you need. But… If you want an experience that goes beyond this… Well, you pay for that too.

Networking

Whether it be through advertising, introductions at social events, or any other method of contact, a professional escort has to build and maintain a network. The best escorts see the same clients over and over and over and over. Why? Because we’re professionals! In whatever industry you are in, how much of your sales come from established accounts, and what would happen to you if you were not to maintain those relationships? It should go without saying that professional adult entertainers of all types are highly organized, savvy, and professional people. My rant here doesn’t make me less of a professional, in my opinion. I would equate this entry to making the outside world privy to the break room banter that I would have with any other professional in my industry when something is vexing us.

You have just witnessed what I would say to any escort or exotic dancer when some stupid ass tells me that my profession is “only” a livelihood.

I have been bouncing around the country lately, and had not had both the time and the images until now. When I had time, I had not gotten the pictures; however, I got the pictures back a few days ago, but was traveling. At any rate, these five new pictures are available in the Gallery. I have placed them here as well, for initial viewing, because the carousel displays the images randomly, and there are many images on the slide show already. This was an artistic/fashion shoot, and there are other images I will share, but which will not go into the Gallery, because I am not alone in them. This has to wait until they are published in the magazine for which they were shot, because of copyright agreements.

Well, where to begin??? As always, too much to do in too little time; however, I prefer being overwhelmed to being bored ANY DAY. I have to say it: I entertain myself pretty well. What with all my projects and drama, there’s never a dull moment, eh?

Okay, so it’s time to start getting ready for the summer. This is going to be a time of change for me. Literal physical change. My exclusive contract with Sean Cody will run out at the end of May, 2010, and my friends at Fabscout (whom I don’t believe I’ve mentioned until now) are is hopefully going to be keeping me pretty busy with a variety of gay video projects. One of the many aspects I have enjoyed with Fabscout so far is their unrelenting expectation that their models use condoms. I wouldn’t continue on with the porn if I thought I’d be expected to do bareback scenes.

What does this mean in terms of going to the next level? Well, I am going to workout with my trainer an extra day each week during the next few months, and I have restarted a system of very clean and high quality supplements by Cellucor (I will be doing the Lean Muscle Growth system). I know some of you will see some red flags in this, because of what I have said in the past about anorexia and Dysmorphia; however, there are videos on Cellucor that explain how the supplements work. I also want you to know that I am approaching this from the perspective of healthy, sustainable gains, not obsessive or exaggerated notions about my shape. Also, I am keeping the word “supplement” firmly in my mind: I am definitely eating (I just polished off a whole box of couscous with two chicken breasts, 1/8 yellow bell pepper, a cup of fresh spinach, and a handful of cherry tomatoes… and I’m still hungry. My baby gotta eat!).

Don’t worry: I AM EATING. I’m just getting polished up. Always remember, my little ones: Pain is temporary… Video is forever!!

I am not so worried about getting help with body fat – I have been trying to monitor refined carbs (CHOCOLATE!!!! xoxoxo I love you, and I miss you dearly… we shall meet again soon one day…), and I’m confident I can manage that on my own. But what I am preparing for right now is to do some photoshoots in the coming weeks and video shoots beginning at some point in June. I gotta get my sexy on in a hurry!

OMG… I have to hang with the Big Fellas again… I really do hope this isn’t Swinging Richards all over again. I’m not feeling (in terms of social mores) any conflict about this, and once I get some fine tuning done on the chassis I think my confidence will be just fine. I am excited at the idea of working with models who are gay. No matter what, that has got to make filming easier than what I did last summer: I really don’t dig working with Paysexual dudes. They’re pretty to look at sometimes, but the ladies can have them, thanks very much.

I absolutely LOVE Chicago! What a wonderful city – no wonder I have consistently heard such nice comments about it. The streets are clean, there is no litter to speak of, the lake is beautiful, the food is good, the shopping is excellent, the people are friendly, and I just went into the most tasteful art gallery I have ever seen. The artists there are just spectacular. If you get a chance, you really must visit Atlas Galleries at 535 N Michigan Avenue. (Click images to enlarge them.)

I was walking back from breakfast, and saw a gallery window above me on a bridge. Out of curiosity I went upstairs and landed smack dab in the middle of Magnificent Mile (and it is aptly named!). The sculptures and canvases on display were fantastic; however, between two columns my retinas were seared by the most intensely monocrhomatic red painting I’d ever seen. I was instantly enthralled and felt compelled to get a closer look.

The canvas was overwhelming in person. I started crying. I know: That’s gay… but I’m an artist, and I get very emotional when I am in the presence of brilliance. The paint had been applied very thickly in lush layers of comingling reds, crimsons, and burgundies, accented with razor thin lemony yellow crests on the frozen waves of sanguine oils. It looked to be slathered on like icing on a cake. And this is what is even more impressive: It was a still life. “Just” some flowers. How many fucking times can someone do flowers??? But this artist managed to breathe life and movement into her flowers – I looked around and she had done LOTS of landscapes and flowers, and ALL of them looked to be moving, breathing, and glowing in the light of whatever seasonal sun was captured.

JalinePol W creates masterworks. The textures and colors are vibrant, and it’s impressive that she can create so much depth with such gross swipes of a trowel… But this is where it gets even better: She has perfected a technique of blending colors on her knife so that they bleed into each other without completely mixing. This creates a gradient effect that lets one color exhale into the next. I can only guess that she uses different thicknesses of paints to allow some colors to rest on top of others in order to create the various transparent dissolves that make her flowers look (despite the heavy coats of thick paint) to seem light, airy, and translucent.

She is a genius! I would cover the walls of my home in her work. You really MUST find her pieces. They are mesmerizing in the way they convey tranquility and desparate “aliveness” at the same moment. You could bite into her succulent canvases, and they would erupt or spurt with creative juices. Just marvelous. Stunning. My iPhone cannot possibly do them justice.

It was brought to my attention that there are sites that do nothing but discuss the material that is generated at places like Sean Cody, Corbin Fisher, and Randy Blue. What’s more, it was brought to my attention that people can respond to those critiques/discussions. There are so many opinions out there… It’s pretty amazing how much they can differ from person to person or site to site. It’s also amazing the extent to which some people try to invade the privacy of others.

What I have read essentially brings me to balance: There are at least 15 sites I have found that have discussed and/or reviewed my solo at Sean Cody. This was not something I’d thought to consider before I did it. It never occurred to me that there were full-time movie critics and peanut galleries for Sean Cody; however, these not only exist, they proliferate in large numbers. And that is what is interesting: I am only one person, and yet some of the responses I elicited from people were as divergent as you could possibly imagine.

Some people were revolted at the thought of me being gay and 32 years old. Others liked me specifically because of it. There were as many comments that I was fugly as there were that I was gorgeous. All of the reviews themselves were glowing, but it was the conversations that followed that could be startling. And yet, after all that reading, what I have finally accepted is that I am who I am, and that’s going to just have to be good enough.

So, although some people have called me a pasty grub and others have called me a creamy boystud; and although some have called me a nelly gay-faced homo, while others refer to me as a hot gay jock; and whereas there are people who think me ancient and/or decrepit, there are others who applaud me for admitting my age (which makes me seem, to them, even more youthful); and since in the same conversation there are people who think I am nothing arguing along side of people who think I am everything… What all this essentially means is that all the negatives are cancelled out by positives, and I’m left right where I was before: Me.

And that’s not such a bad scenario.