Life of a Male Sex Worker
(Marc Olivier Jodoin, Unsplash)
By Kirstin Cierzniewski
They may seem like the average person that walks your dog or the audio engineer that sets up the DJ booth at your party. But they are also male sex workers and provide sexual services in exchange for money.
Sex work in 2020 is not limited to physical sexual acts, but includes virtual sexual acts as well. This is where sex workers like “Aye” and “Liesl” got their start in the industry. Some provide a more extensive list of services than others, but all are part of the sex worker community.
“Aye” is the name he goes by professionally. For the past year, he has dipped his toes in sex work. He got his start in through close friends who were in the same field. Before then, Aye was a lot heavier than he is now. Four years ago, he decided to make the life altering decision to have a gastric bypass weight loss surgery. At the time of surgery, he weighed 454 pounds. After two years of achieving his dream body at a now healthy weight of 220 lbs, he felt comfortable enough with himself to show his body online and make some money from it.
Aye’s work involves producing and selling sexual content. The “content” is made up from requests of paying clients. He says, “I will provide but I am also not limited to, videos of me masturbating while ‘relieving myself’. I get requests for using lubrication like lotion or spit in my videos. Also producing pictures of my genitalia with things like ice or whatever else a client may request.”
Aye usually has set pricing. It is not a list he shows to the public, but something he has made up himself. “I know what I am worth,” says Aye. “It’s also just easier to have standard pricing for something as simple as videos and pictures. Either way it is strictly profit.” Ten to 20-minute videos are $25, five pictures cost $15 and one picture is $5. Aye accepts payment only through the app Cashapp. This allows him to easily connect his debit card and bank account. The funds immediately get transferred to him. His clients set up the app the same way.
Aye says he earned about $7,000 for sex work in 2020. “Not bad for just a beginner,” he says.
His audience has strictly been confined to what he calls “super closeted gay men.” He calls them “bears,” meaning men who are very masculine, but gay. He rarely receives any requests from females. Although some requests he has received he says are, “The females that do buy from me inquire me to relieve myself on pictures of them and send them the finished product virtually,” he says.
Although this is only a “side hustle” for Aye and his main job is an audio tech engineer, Aye has dedicated a Twitter page to his business, where he promotes and advertises his work. Aye usually clocks in an hour a day here and there on his professional Twitter.
Even though he only works an hour or so daily, he is basically on call 24/7. “When someone hits you up requesting sexual content, you have to reply immediately,” he says. “Otherwise they lose libido, and you lose out on a ‘sale.’”
Just like any other worker, Aye has strict rules on what he will and will not do. He will absolutely not show his face, enabling him to remain completely anonymous. His location is not known, and he will never meet up with someone, regardless if he knows the customer or not. This is for his safety.
Aye says he won’t no say names of clients or anything that is too specific. This allows Aye to continuously make money by selling the same “content” to different customers. He says, “I have made about $375 just off one video I have sent to multiple customers. Straight profit without extra work.”
He sells to many customers and says he has “five regulars,” who are the same returning clients.
In spite of the precautions he takes, Aye is afraid of people finding out his identity, or someone becoming obsessive. He has already been blackmailed once by someone finding out who he is. “They were threatening to tell all of my family and friends what I do for work,” he said. “Their demand was to send them more pictures and videos of myself at their request.”
To everyone outside of his sex work, he remains a regular audio tech engineer.
(Alex Iby, Unsplash)
“Daisy/Liesl” is a sex worker who provides physical sex acts for clients. Despite the fact Daisy/Liesl was born with and currently has female genitalia, he goes by male pronouns with his clients and in his personal life. He labels himself specifically as a “male” sex worker.
Liesl has been doing sex work as his source of main income since the age of 18. He is now in his late twenties and has just reached his anniversary of 10 years in sex work. At this time, he has put sex work on the back burner while pursuing other activities like school, along with having what he calls a “societal norm” job of dog walking. He still makes a large portion of his income from sex work.
As for pricing when it comes to his content or physical acts, it all depends on the client. There is no set price, but ranges anywhere from, $75 to $500 per sessions with a client. Liesl says that he can inflate prices whenever he feels like it. “It all depends on how I feel, how much I can make from one client,” he says. “One client I might charge $350 for one oral sex session, and another I will charge $500, solely based on me and how much I think I can profit from them.”
Liesl’s annual salary ranges roughly from, $25,000 to $35,000.
Liesl started selling his content on the forum of Tumblr but has now moved to the popular platform Twitter. He started in the profession by selling the same type of “content’’ as Aye. He has moved on to providing full service in-person sex acts. His specialty, he says, is “mobile oral sex.” Liesl says he also offers other services, “Plain ol’ regular vaginal sex, anal sex, married couple sex, three people in one session, bondage, and any sexual act involving sex toys.”
Just like any other sex worker, he has standards. He says he will, “absolutely not do anything with any randoms, by that I mean people I have never met” and “always always always use protection.” He says that just because he performs physical sex acts with clients, he will not do anything involving bodily secretions. “No urine play, and no scat play” (Scat meaning fecal matter).
Liesls parents don’t know the full extent of his work. They only knowing aspects of having a certain client like, “Queens client/the underwear man.”
His Queens client first became acquaintances with Liesl on Tumblr. He was aware that Liesl had female anatomy but preferred being called by male pronouns. “It was almost as if Queens client liked the idea of me being physically female, but mentally male,” Liesl says. They started by requesting pictures and videos of him performing sexual acts on himself while using sex toys and pictures of him in lingerie. It progressed to a more intimate relationship where Liesl started to sell him his old worn underwear. Later, it blossomed into full blown meetups with the client asking Liesl to be his “sugar baby.”
With “three trusted stable clients” and many fans from Twitter and Tumblr, Liesl still faces danger. There is always the vulnerability in meeting up with someone he does not know.
Within the last six months, Liesl says he has been blackmailed twice by two separate people, as well as being “doxed.” Doxing occurs when someone on the Internet tries to find your location and all your hidden personal information, and then exposes it to the public. “It is basically someone stalking you through the Internet,” Liesl says. “It is rather creepy and scary to think that people go through the effort to do all of this, simply pathetic if you ask me.” Regardless of the dangers, there is a community of sex workers on social media platforms like Twitter that support each other. They inform each other of any “creeps” or “red flags.”
“One of the major things we like to warn one another about is if someone is underage and trying to sell videos or pictures of themselves or trying to have sex for money,” Liesl says. “That reaches a whole new level of wrong and basically plain illegal. We proudly have our own little supportive community, it’s a safe haven.”
Liesl does not see himself ever stopping sex work. He only sees himself becoming more comfortable in the sex workers’ world. He plans to further his already extensive resume in sex work. “I want to go deeper into the bigger and scarier sex world,” he says. But he also has no plans to give up his job as a dog walker.