Male escorts tell Howard Hardiman
about how HIV impacts on their work and private life
Photos Jay Eff
Doctors,
lawyers, clergymen, it all goes on. Busy people, married men… a few
come to me because they love getting fucked. But I’ve never had anyone
famous… oh, except that prince.”
Sam laughs. It’s a sunny summer afternoon on the balcony of his beautiful
central London apartment. Sam’s a devastatingly handsome escort in his
early 30s; muscular, well dressed, immaculately groomed and HIV positive.
Sam no longer picks up clients in bars and clubs. He gets most work online.
“Usually, it’s a ten or 20 minute massage then they want to suck
my cock and 98 per cent of guys want me to fuck them. Only a few last the
whole hour.” He charges between £120 and £150 an hour and
gets 14 to 20 clients a week.
“I got into it when I was 18 through my then-boyfriend. I started for
the fun and money. I was earning £200 a week from shit jobs; now I get
that in half a day. I couldn’t imagine going back. In 2002, I tested
HIV positive. I’m pretty sure I got it from a client. I was off my face
and couldn’t tell if he was using a condom. Once he came, he left in
a rush and I never heard from him again.”
Disclosing
to clients
According to Sigma’s 2004 Gay Men’s Sex Survey and the Working
Men’s Project’s analysis of escorts using advice and support,
roughly ten per cent of male escorts are HIV positive, a rate similar to that
found among gay men with multiple partners. Just under eight per cent of men
who had paid for sex were HIV positive compared to an estimated six per cent
of gay men generally.
“I don’t disclose to clients,” says Sam. “If I was
hiring an escort it would put me on edge. I’m confident I’m always
safe, but it’s up to the individual to look after themselves. Of course,
I wish I didn’t have HIV. What if clients asked for a blood test? It’s
not unreasonable when they’re paying that much. I hide my meds from
them as it is.”
“Some clients ask for bareback but I wouldn’t do it. The condom’s
like a barrier between me and them. I even make them wear a condom for oral
sex. If someone is offering £500 for bareback, they’re probably
bullshitting.”
For art’s sake
It’s not always so easy to be as successful or confident in managing
HIV. In another central London apartment, Chris, 23, from Switzerland tells
me how he’s been escorting for the last two years to fund his work as
an artist.
“I have to do it. I’ve just moved here but as soon as I can make
money from art I’ll stop. It’s not as glamorous as you’d
think. I once met a really wealthy guy who owned a huge mansion. He turned
up in a Jag but then haggled on the price. It’s stupid; these men will
spend millions on nothing but they don’t want to pay the boys their
due.”
“It’s harder work here than in Switzerland. There’s lots
of competition and it’s less money than, say, Paris, where you can get
£180 an hour and three clients a day.”
Chris struggles to get more than £100 an hour and one client a day.
He planned on becoming a teacher but hated it.
“I need to work a little but earn a lot to keep me going because the
art just doesn’t make enough money.”
Chris’s last HIV test, four months ago, was negative and he wants it
to remain that way.
“This guy messaged me at 5am offering £500 for bareback, five
times what I’d usually get. I think he was on drugs but
I was like, ‘no way.’ I don’t want to get it and I have
to assume he is HIV positive.
I don’t use condoms for oral but am really careful with fucking.
“Last summer, I fell in love with a guy and the condom came off but
we carried on. I’d never do that with a client – £100 is
so little money, it’s never worth it. Not even for ten, 20 times that.
My health is the most important thing I have. This job’s too stupid
and unimportant to risk it.”
Lifestyle and law
Chris dislikes the lifestyle because the clients have got him into taking
drugs.
“I don’t like it; I’m taking them all the time now. You
end up taking drugs and having sex privately with other escorts. Clients are
busy men; they don’t have time to cruise. It’s more likely escorts
get infected from cruising or from each other. I always use extra strong condoms
with other escorts.”
Even Sam feels a bit trapped. He doesn’t want to return to Australia
but can’t get a ‘normal’ job because he only has a
student visa. “I can’t start submitting tax returns now as they’d
work out I wasn’t getting this money from bar work.”
Prostitution is legal, but advertising in phone boxes or shop windows is considered
a public nuisance and is illegal, as is loitering or soliciting in public
for the purposes of prostitution. Advertising online or in gay magazines is
less problematic. Tax evasion, immigration and drugs offences remain more
likely reasons for male escorts to fall foul of the law.
“You’ve got to view your body as a business,” says Sam.
“I invest a lot: cycles of steroids, a personal trainer, facials, healthy
food; maybe £250 a week. I can’t eat junk food or it shows. I
guess it costs £1,000 a month, minimum. I’ve had Botox, rhinoplasty,
skin rejuvenation, fillers and non-surgical facelifts. You’ve got to
spoil yourself in this work.
“Sure, I’ve got to hide my meds sometimes, and it makes me panic.
I don’t want to miss a dose, but don’t want clients seeing me
take the pills. Healthwise, I’m really well. My viral load’s undetectable,
I see a doctor every couple of months, but I don’t know my CD4 count.
I haven’t told the HIV clinic about my work.
“You gotta keep looking after your health and body, and in this business,
that’s what really pays off.”
• SW5 is THT’s sexual health information and sexual health support
service for male and transgender sex workers. www.sw5.info, 020 7370 0406,
11 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court, London
• The Working Men’s Project, www.wmplondon.org.uk
I
found out I was HIV positive before I became an escort. I moved to London
from a Canadian forest town aged 20, came out and found the scene at 21 and
was diagnosed at 22. I knew who gave me the ‘gift’ of HIV, because
he told me I now had Aids. I worked for him in a hotel, quite a charismatic
older man.
At the time I refused unsafe sex. I was 12 when I first heard about Aids,
on the radio. After that I learned a lot about safe sex, determined it wasn’t
going to happen to me. But one morning I found myself being torn awake. He
had his pleasure, I had my gift. Then he kicked me out.
I had the transitional rash a few months later and knew instinctively he hadn’t
been joking. The doctor confirmed the news and I asked how long I had to live.
I think he was shocked by my calm and direct manner. I refused counselling,
relying on my faith instead. I had a small nervous breakdown in the tunnel
between Notting Hill and High Street Kensington and rushed to the river. Flowing
water is good; it carries thoughts away and brings new ones in their place.
The doctor said I had years ahead of me but all around I saw people dying
so I disregarded his positive spin. I wanted to see as much of the world as
I could before I left it, but how could I on a hotel wage?
After an embarrassing first attempt at escorting, I went to a brothel in Earls
Court to learn the trade. As a child, other kids and adults called me ugly.
But this is not how others saw me and I knew I could use this to my advantage.
I went to a brothel, took off my clothes and got on with the job.
I wasn’t there to spread my gift around. I was there to get the money
to start travelling and learn how to deal with clients, how to behave and
what to say and do. Most of the 30 guys stuffed behind a two-way mirror with
me in the backroom were there to make money to buy E and coke and party all
weekend. I learned my trade and then left to start travelling. I carried HIV
with me and only disclosed to three people. In one case it’s brought
us closer together. Clients often become friends. Ours was an honest, intimate
exchange. I knew being an openly HIV positive prostitute was probably pushing
it a bit and possibly wouldn’t buy me that ticket to New Zealand. I
won’t get into the two hideous relationships that I ended up in. Suffice
to say they made me feel terrible as a human being because I was both HIV
positive and a prostitute. This didn’t stop them enjoying the money
though. Strangely, the prostitute had to buy love as well.
I was choosy. It was always about engaging with the person inside not the
animal coming knocking. My clients included princes, politicians, movie stars
and paupers. I know all escorts say this, but I have no reason to lie. They
came back time after time because they knew I wouldn’t sell their asses
to a newspaper. They didn’t need the hassle and I certainly wasn’t
going to take a dip in the mud for a couple of hundred grand.
After 14 years, I called it a day. Sex had become too mechanical. There is
a difference between sex for business and sex for pleasure. At 36 I wanted
to stop being somebody else and feel good about myself and my HIV. I wanted
to venture out and meet others living with HIV and exchange coping strategies
and laughter. I wanted to finally live. I’ve travelled first class and
five-star and there are places I still want to see, but I’ve grown tired
of the airports and hotels and I want more. My journey with HIV hasn’t
been a happy one but I defy anyone to say theirs has been sunshine and roses.
Paying a Price?
Female sex workers are often blamed for spreading
STIs, but is there any truth in this, and what about HIV? Calvin Holbrook
finds out…
Known
as the ‘oldest profession in the world’, millions of women around
the globe make their living from it. Yet HIV rates and onward transmission
among groups of female sex workers vary widely.
In Vietnam HIV prevalence among female sex workers is as high as 9.5 per cent,
yet in Bolivia and Mexico, rates are less than one per cent. Meanwhile a ‘100
per cent’ condom policy introduced into Thailand’s sex industry
led to a dramatic cut in HIV rates among female brothel workers, from 33 per
cent in 1994 to 20 per cent in 2000.
Sex workers are often seen as ‘vectors of disease'; blamed for STI epidemics
and for providing bridge between an HIV-infected ‘underworld’
and the general population.
UNAIDS in its 2002 report on sex work and HIV/Aids noted that significantly
higher rates of HIV were documented among sex workers and their clients than
other population groups and HIV often spread among sex workers before spreading
into the general population. While this may be true in some countries, it’s
not for others. Even UNAIDS admits the true scale HIV transmission from sex
workers and their clients to other populations "remains generally unknown".
Drug use a major risk factor
It's hard to collect data or monitor STI and HIV rates in female sex worker
and their clients for obvious reasons. Prostitution is frequently illegal
and may clients (often married men) are usually not keen to participate in
studies about transmission of STIs.
Most countries agree injecting drug users who are also street workers, are
most at risk. Sex workers in massage parlours or escort agencies are much
less likely to be infected as they are less likely to be dependant on intravenous
(IV) drugs. A large 1993 study of 896 prostitutes across nine European countries
revealed an HIV prevalence of 5.3 per cent. A third of all IV drug users (31.
8 per cent) were HIV positive compared with 1.5 per cent of non-drug using
prostitutes.
UK and Europe
A few UK studies in major cities such as London, Glasgow and Bristol tell
a similar story. But the Home Office estimates that 95 per cent of street
workers use crack or heroin, so HIV is still potentially a big problem. A
study of 280 London prostitutes between 1989 and 1991 found 228 had HIV tests
and just two (0.9 per cent) tested positive. A follow-up study of prostitues
tracked from 1985 to 1994 found this figure had increased to 1.3 per cent.
However, a 1994 study of 308 female IV drug users found 12.9 per cent to be
HIV positive. As these statistics are over ten years old, it’s clear
more needs to be done to get an up-to-date picture.
Condom use among UK sex workers
The 1993 study showed 98 per cent of working women used condoms for full sex
but only 12 per cent did so with non-paying partners. This suggests women
are at risk from STIs, not from their clients but from partners, especially
if they are also IV drug users.
Kate Dunkley, senior nurse practitioner at Manchester Action on Street Health
(MASH), a charity providing outreach services to sex workers, says unprotected
oral sex is much more common: “All the women I have spoken to have been
asked for unprotected oral sex and men do offer to pay more, but not huge
amounts, £10 extra is not uncommon. However, I recently spoke to a sauna
worker who had been selling unprotected anal sex. Thankfully, this is very
rare.”
The good news is that studies show female sex workers are among those most
likely to respond positively to HIV and STI prevention programmes, by using
condoms with clients. High levels of condom use probably explain the low HIV
prevalence among female sex workers in the UK. Rates in men who use prostitutes
is also thought to be low, with female-to-male HIV transmission generally
more difficult.
Future challenges
The UK has 81 HIV prevention projects for prostitutes, the most in Europe.
These provide outreach services, all giving condoms and 54 offering free,
clean needles.
However, few working women test for the virus. As Dunkley explains: “The
women most at risk tend to have multiple needs: eg, housing, lack of family
or partner support, and feel unable to cope with a positive diagnosis. Many
women say they don’t have time to test as time spent in the clinic is
time away from earning money.”
Government plans to legalise small brothels may allow STI monitoring, although
street workers, most at risk, would still go unnoticed. The wild card maybe
the new phenomenon of trafficking young sex workers from Eastern Europe and
beyond (often from areas of high HIV prevalence). Often forced into having
multiple sexual partners every day in unsafe settings, the chances of them
becoming ‘vectors of the disease’ or being infected themselves,
may be the next big challenge for the UK sex work industry.
