Would You Pay To Date These Men?

THESE MEN? The male escort business is booming. Its new clientele? Young, ambitious career women who want more than a one-night stand*.Thea De Gallier investigates*with regular guys

- Thea De Gallier

I have only seen my date on a computer screen, but I have looked at so many pictures of him I feel as though I know him. There’s the picture of him on a beach with his top off looking intensely into the camera. And the one of him in a top hat in what appears to be a nightclub. Most of the pictures show him with other women – cradling their heads, or kneeling at their feet. They are tender pictures, filled with intimacy. If I were a different sort of woman, I might be jealous.

The door of the restaurant opens and I spot him immediately. He’s almost twice my age, and looks like Zach Galifianakis (you know, the beardy one from The Hangover). That, or the sort of man who might try to flog you shell necklaces on a beach.

My first thought? He’s not really my type. My second? People pay this guy for sex?

Because they do. In their droves. You see, my date for the evening is called Seani Love (yes, that is his real name, I checked) and he is an award-winning male escort – Sex Worker Of The Year 2015, no less*.

In case you missed the memo, male escorting is now big business. Huge, in fact. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of male escorts rose by a third. Which is curious given we live in a world in which technology has inadvertently made free sex, or ‘hooking up’, as my generation has decided to call it, plentiful. I say curious, because the more I have looked into male escorts (and, believe me, my browser history lives to tell the tale), the more it is clear they are not just servicing lonely, single women, as the cliché would have you believe. Male escorts are going after a millennial audience – and they are getting it.