Love for sale…Appetizing young love for sale.
Love that’s fresh and still unspoiled,
Love that’s only slightly soiled,
Love for sale.
Who will buy?
Who would like to sample my supply?
Who’s prepared to pay the price,
For a trip to paradise?
- Cole Porter
Ah, February…the month when the media trucks out the usual “Aren’t Couples Wonderful?” or “Dear Couples – Drop Dead! Love, Singletons” articles. Why not instead look at someone who makes his living from love – or the simulation of it: the male escort.
In researching this article, I must admit I had my biases. For one, I think prostitution should be legalized and regulated. Thousands of years of legislating laws against it has not worked. So why not make it a profession? In this attitude, I’m not alone – many people think we should legalize it, take the crime out of it, and take the health issues out of it. In Canada, we seem to tread the middle ground between legalized prostitution, like the Netherlands and other countries which have harsh penalties against it. Gary Courtney of local law firm Courtney Aarbo provided me the legal advice on this article.
In Canada, it is illegal to carry on the practice of prostitution, yet it is not illegal to call yourself a prostitute. Section 213 of the Criminal Code talks about communicating in a public place for the purposes of prostitution being illegal; it doesn’t talk about communicating for the purposes of prostitution if you’re outside of a public place (i.e. private residence, hotel room).
That being said, if an escort or their client makes regular use of either’s residence to complete the transaction, they risk getting charged as being inmates of a Bawdy house. As for hotels, this gets a little harder to prove – unless it is a situation where the hotel staff is aware escort X has five to six clients coming in every Saturday night. If the escort gets charged - on the first occurrence at this hotel - the authorities will give the owner/staff/agents notice. On subsequent investigations, if the owner or their agents cannot prove that they have taken reasonable steps to prevent the recurrence of the offence, they can be charged as well for keeping a Bawdy house.
Yet being an escort is a legitimate profession. There are situations where someone requires a “rent-a-date” for an event, and there is no sexual contact. You can claim to be an escort on your income tax – regardless of whether the income came from being a date to a Christmas party, or from making whoopie. Furthermore, in order to run an agency or to be an escort, a business license is required from the city – like any other legitimate business.
It’s in an escort agency’s interest to maintain that legitimate front. If an agency owner encourages their employees or contractors in any illegal activities, he or she is aiding and abetting that criminal behavior and can be charged with it, as well as possibly being charged with procuring. For the agencies themselves, it’s a case of “cover your ass” if they ever get busted by the police. All it takes is something in writing and signed, stating that the escort is not to offer sexual services. Corroborate this with a statement to the police that, as part of their new employee training, escorts are told offering clients sexual services is not part of their business practices, and the police do not have any recourse (unless the agency and their escorts are being blatantly obvious or stupid or both). The onus is then on the Crown to prove their case beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Furthermore, the attitude of the Police seems to be one of laissez-faire. As long as the escort is not under age, as long as it’s not out in public, as long as the escort or agency is not being obvious, it’s not a great concern. Unfortunately, this puts the police in the position of being a moral judge where legislation has failed. You may get a police officer who has decided that his morals against prostitution gives him leeway to be stricter with enforcement, while his predecessor may have thought that as long as the escort is not out in the open, not being blatant, he’ll leave them alone. Generally, most police don’t bother escort agencies.
Certainly, being an escort (and for the purposes of this article, we’re not talking about the streetwalkers – what some people would derisively call “crackwhores”) is safer than it used to be. A lot of this has to do with the internet – taking sex away from the streets and making it safer for the escort and the client, while keeping it out of the public view. Growing up in Edmonton through the 80s and early 90s, I can remember the $300/night “ladies of the evening” plying their wares on Jasper Ave. Thanks to the internet, they and any high end male escorts work through agencies and contact clients through the web.
Locally, there are a handful of male escorts on www.boys2rentnow.com and www.men4rentnow.com, where you can look up their stats and hourly rates. One critique is that contacting guys through these websites seems to be a hit and miss affair. Out of four men I contacted for this article, only ONE got back to me.
“Z” is in his 20s. Unlike other men who are “gay for pay” he’s exclusively gay in his work. Not native to Canada, he got into this line of work when he was around 15. “My Dad realized I was gay when I was 15, so he didn’t let me into the house anymore,” Z recounts. His family is very, very Catholic, and coming from a male-dominated society may have forced his father’s rejection of Z. Homeless at 15, in his native country one of the ways to survive on the streets was by hustling. “It was not the only choice,” said Z, “but it was a choice that would give me the most amount of money the quickest.”
Talking to him, you realize several things. Yes he comes from a situation that is not unique to motivating a person to take up prostitution, but it becomes apparent he wants to succeed. Besides working as an escort, Z has a regular job in the service and hospitality industry, and is going to school part-time. He doesn’t expect that he will be an escort much further beyond the next 2-3 years: “It also absorbs you to the point that later on it’s going to be addictive…the money’s pretty good and it’s so easy to make it. I have a regular job and some studies on the go”. For him, escorting is more of a means to an end to finance his life and his studies – much like how an office drone job may finance a goal of becoming a full-time writer.
He does love being an escort – he has a roster of regular clients he sees. For him, it is work. Some of his friends have asked if he gives out free samples, but they are soon educated: “you have to pay for a service. It is just like any other business.”
Granted, it is a job with unique concerns, advantages and disadvantages. He has to watch his health (regular checkups are de rigueur for him). He operates out of hotel rooms or client residences (remember – no communication for prostitution allowed in public). He has a business license. He’s traveled across Canada for his work (not internationally yet, although he wants to – he’s waiting on his passport).
Then there are the safety concerns. No matter the dollar amount, he won’t engage in unsafe sex. “Not only because of you, (but) also for all of the people you see. Having unsafe sex in this kind of business is not something I would consider at all.” As for his own safety, while he doesn’t carry any weapons, he is comfortable in defending himself. When it comes to drugs, yes, he does indulge, but only if the client does, and only if it’s a regular where there is a level of trust built up.
The clients are the part of the job Z enjoys. He meets so many people he describes as “awesome and sweet, but without anyone to give this (love) to”. He dislikes men who put him down as being “just an escort”. Additionally, drunken clients are not his favorites because they have a tendency to be aggressive – making it the only time he would say “no” to them.
Z also says “no” to outing a client. He respects their need for privacy. When reminded of the Ted Haggard/Mike Jones sex scandal, and asked what he’d do if he was put in a similar situation, Z stands on the side of confidentiality: “Of course not. Sometimes I don’t even ask their name. That is private. No, I never talk about their lives.” This coming from a man who mentioned in the past he has had clients that were very high up in the U.S. government.
However, his profession is not something you’d talk about everyday. Yet Z does not hide from his friends what he does. “If somebody comes and asks about it, I am open with it.” He has met many interesting people because of it. As for boyfriends, he’s single at the moment, yet he did have a past boyfriend who not only had no problem with Z’s work, he also wanted to join in. As family goes, while he’s still close to his mother, his work seemed to be a grey area: “I have told my Mom that I have done it in the past, but not in the present time”. She was accepting and understanding of it – although you could probably guess that if she knew he still does it, given his plans for the future, one suspects she would still be loving and accepting of her son.
Granted, there may be other sides of Z that I’m not seeing. My goal was not to glamorize being an escort, but neither was it to demonize it. It’s a job. We’ve all taken jobs to finance our other objectives. There are jobs that I could do that you wouldn’t – it’s personal choice and experience. Z struck me as someone who had an adverse turn in his teenage years, and took what resources he had on hand to forge himself a better life in Canada. There are people who have gone into prostitution and have sunk like a rock. Z may still have issues when he gets out of it, for all we know. I stood, and still stand on the side of legalizing prostitution, but talking to a real person, in the flesh, made me ask myself some hard questions. What if I fell in love with someone who worked as an escort in their past? Would I be one of those men who’d look down his nose at this person?
I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have any issues, but given the stigma still attached to this profession, I suspect I might. I don’t know if legalizing it would solve all the problems surrounding prostitution overnight – yet thousands of years of enforcement against it seem to have failed. Isn’t it time to try a new approach?
