My life as a male escort

Here, Mark Powell, a 36-year-old novelist who also teaches literacy to children, describes the six months he spent working as a male escort while researching his new novel, Box. Mark lives with his partner Angela, 30, a public relations manager, in Essex.

Standing before me, her hands placed firmly on her hips, the wealthy middle-aged woman who had just spent £40 an hour to spend the evening with me told me exactly what she expected for her money.

'I've paid for your time, your dinner and all your drinks - now you are going to have sex with me,' she declared. Then she pointed up the staircase of her sumptuous London home and turned on her heels.

Clearly, I was expected to follow. Instead, I cleared my throat and repeated what I had told her moments earlier when we arrived at her front door. 'You've paid for my company, nothing more.' And this time, I added, for good measure, that I was an escort not a prostitute.

Clearly, I'd hit a nerve. At this point, this no doubt normally respectable and apparently happily married woman - with two clever sons away at university, as she had boasted over dinner - slammed the door in my face.

And so ended another night of me being treated as nothing more than a sex object by a woman to whom I wasn't remotely attracted, but who truly believed that buying me dinner was a passport to intimacy.

Now I know this is a situation most women have encountered at some point, if not routinely, for decades, but it is one that never failed to make me feel extremely uncomfortable.

In the four months I spent working as a male escort to research my latest novel I was treated as little more than a plaything by many of the women who booked my services.

Even though the agency I had signed up with had a no- sex policy, it was made clear to me that what happened between clients was a private matter, and the majority of women certainly expected to get full value for money.

Some were young, beautiful and successful - the kind of women I would have loved to have dated in ordinary circumstances. Others were old enough to be my mother. Most of them were predatory and desperate for sex.

The one thing they all had in common was that they were lonely - and prepared to pay a man to spend time with them rather than find someone who would happily do it for free. Men might have been doing the same thing since time immemorial, but I always believed women were above that. How wrong I was.

Of course, I only went ahead with my partner's full knowledge and support. This was research - nothing more - I stressed, and she admitted she was intrigued herself by the concept of women paying for male company.

We agreed limits as to how physical I should get. A peck on the cheek and an affectionate arm around the waist was fine, but nothing more.

The next step was to sign up with a national agency. I chose one I'd seen advertised in various glossy magazines. The agency used to provide female escorts mainly, but such is the growing market for male escorts that it decided to expand its database. Men on its books charge £40 an hour, with 25 per cent going to the agency.

I was interviewed at the agency's office in Central London by one of the three female directors. It felt more like the offices of a taxi firm than a highclass escort agency.

The director wanted to know about my hobbies, and whether I smoked. There would be no embarrassment at having to deal with the messy business of taking the cash, I was told - all that was arranged through the office.

She also explained the agency had a no-sex policy (because of legal problems over immoral earnings rather than any moral stand). But, she went on, if my date and I fell into each other's arms at the end of the night, well that was a private matter.

Most of the clients, she explained, were wealthy and bored. They wanted someone to make them feel special for the evening and would pay handsomely in return. It sounded great to me, and my first few jobs had no seedy strings attached.

My first date, a week later, was with Wendy - a beautiful 33-year-old lawyer who saw hiring me as a pre-emptive strike to fend off criticism from her friends that she was still single. The venue? A wedding. And it was up to me to play the convincing boyfriend. She was, she told me, happy being single but weary of having to justify that to friends.

By the time we reached the church, we had agreed our story. We had been shopping in the same supermarket, I had been irresistibly drawn to Wendy, and had handed her my number in the hope she would call to arrange a date. It was a story I would go on to use with other clients who wanted to parade me in front of friends or relatives.

I have to be honest, I really enjoyed myself. It was like being on a blind date that would never go any further but with no hard feelings on either side. Wendy's friends accepted our story without question, and I found her fun and interesting to be with.

We both found it hilarious that no one even suspected that she was paying me to con them. When I dropped her back at home just after midnight, she thanked me and I headed back to Angela - having earned myself £500.

The next morning, I told Angela all about it. 'Sounds a bit too good to be true,' she said.

My next date was even better. Brenda was a 52-year-old divorcee who wanted to go to a football match. It was something she'd always wanted to do, and she needed a man who knew his way around to arrange it for her and look after her. I couldn't believe my luck: I was being paid to watch Arsenal play football.

But I quickly realised that the bulk of my work would be nothing like these first two jobs. For my third date, I was given an address in a fashionable part of the city. I was told that the door would be on the latch and that I was to let myself in.

I was aghast that the woman who was hiring me felt confident enough, having seen nothing more than a photograph of me and heard about my hobbies and vital statistics, to let me walk straight into her home like that. Beyond asking me for an address and my mobile phone number, I wasn't aware that the agency had made any in-depth security checks on me.

Once inside the hallway, I called her name and she answered from a sitting room off it, telling me to come straight in. There before me sat a chubby woman in her late-40s, wearing only a see-through nightie and a smile. I stood, glued to the spot in the doorway, as she beckoned me over.

'Take your clothes off, darling,' she said seductively. 'Let's take a look at what I'm getting for my money.'

Terrified, I spluttered that there must be some kind of mistake and that she should take it up with the agency. As I turned and, literally, ran out of her house, she yelled abuse after me.

A younger man might have found the whole thing amusing - but to me it
was just tragic. This poor woman had been so desperate to have a man make love to her for the afternoon that she had put all dignity aside.

I called in at the agency to explain what had happened, but rather than sympathise my boss found it amusing. On my way out, I bumped into one of my colleagues - a perma-tanned Essex boy called Dan, who looked about 24.

He had big bleached hair, wore heavy gold jewellery and looked like he had stepped straight out of the Eighties. I was amazed any woman would buy him a drink, let alone pay £40 an hour to sit in a restaurant with him.

When I told him about my narrow escape, he couldn't believe I had walked away. 'Come on mate, couldn't you just close your eyes and pretend she's Nell McAndrew?' he said. 'It's not like you'd be taking her home to your mother afterwards.'

Then he went on to give me various unsavoury tips on how to have sex with women to whom you aren't the least bit attracted. Clearly, he and many of my other colleagues, who included teachers, personal trainers and out-of-work actors, were regular prostitutes.

Somehow, though, I didn't think any of them would admit that to themselves, let alone me. As for the agency's so- called 'rule', Dan explained conspiratorially: 'You don't tell them. They don't ask.'

According to Dan, it is a very lucrative sideline, as the women will pay whatever hourly rate you ask for. His was £100 and, he boasted, he had two regular clients - both married - whom he saw each week just for sex.

'Some of them do it with their husband's permission,' he confided. 'These blokes are at it themselves, with their secretaries, and prefer their wives to get it out of their system with someone they'll never get involved with.'

I found this hard to believe until I was booked, consecutively, by two married women - one in her 40s, the other about 50 - who both told me pretty much the same story. What they wanted was to be wined, dined and then made love to.

Afterwards, they would return to their husbands. They just wanted the experience of being romanced by another man, with no strings attached. Both claimed their husbands knew and accepted this, and both were put out when I gently explained that I didn't do 'extras'.

Even so, I have to admit that it was an ego boost to find myself so in demand. I could have stopped at any point, but I found myself thinking: 'Just one more date. Let's see who I get this time, and what she wants.'

Angela, meanwhile, was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. After four months, she couldn't understand why I hadn't got enough material for my book.

We began to row every time I got booked for a date. I even told Angela every time a woman propositioned me - without realising how much I was hurting her.

I'd quickly developed an earlywarning system as to who would demand sex and who just wanted to spend time with a man. It tended to be the middle-aged women, usually over made-up and wearing clothes which were too tight or too short, who flirted clumsily, got horribly drunk and then aggressive when I turned them down.

More than half of my dates ended on a sour note. I would sit sipping my wine and listening to them drone on about themselves, never remotely interested in me, while I nodded and smiled intermittently.

In truth, these women didn't care if I was nice to them or not: I was just something they had bought.

I'm now convinced that the reason why the male escort industry is growing is because women believe that hiring a man is an act of empowerment. It certainly explains why someone like Dan does so well.

Of course, they are wrong. Just as they have no respect for their escort, men like Dan have no respect for them. And it's terribly sad that any woman should have to pay a man to be kind to her - let alone have sex with her - just to feel good about herself.

In the end it was Chloe, a beautiful, Oxford- educated fashion designer, who ended my career as an escort. She was based in Paris but was on business in London. She had hired me, she said, so she could enjoy a night out in the city in safety. We chatted all night over dinner - we had the same taste in music, wine and films - and I felt myself incredibly drawn to her.

Before I knew it, we'd left the restaurant hand-in-hand and were kissing in the street, with both of us wanting to take it further.

It was only when Chloe murmured that she presumed she could pay me directly for any extras that I remembered what I meant to her. And how much this act of betrayal would hurt the woman at home who loved and wanted to marry me.

I pulled away and left her outside the restaurant, then drove home feeling sickened and thoroughly ashamed of myself. The next day, I called the agency and had myself removed from their books.

And so came the abrupt end to my sordid foray into the so-called world of female emancipation. One that proved to me that there is nothing empowering about a woman paying a man to spend time with her - and nothing manly about the guy who lets her.

Box is published on October 27 (Phoenix, £6.99).