I went to the bathroom to shower, and noticed a little blood trickling down the back of my leg. I wasn't surprised. Back in the lounge room, he passed me an envelope and a glass of water and we said a friendly goodbye. I walked towards the train station through the beautiful resort-style building, feeling empowered. It wasn't like the movies. There was no regret, no disgust. I hadn't ended up a self-loathing wreck crying on the shower floor. The second time I was propositioned to be paid for sex, a strange guy wanted to give me money to defecate in his mouth. That was not going to happen. I didn't grow up with lots of things. My parents were middle-class, but Dad was stingy with money. We lived on acreage south of Adelaide, around the vineyards. Dad was a partyer. There were always parties. Looking back, I can see that he was an alcoholic. Mum was a bit submissive, but I guess I enjoyed having the freedom to roam around the scrub. Dad's drinking got progressively worse. He was cheating. There was abuse. He left when I was about 10. They sold the acreage and we moved into a dilapidated old house that I hated. I was impressed by nice cars and big houses. After a year or so, Dad came back and my parents sorted things out in their minds, but nothing had changed. Sick of the fights, my sister left home at 18, and I fled as soon as I could at 15. I followed her to Melbourne but living together didn't work out, so I ended up in the system of refuges and transitional housing where you'd be placed with another young person who'd also have issues. You put two young people together, both with problems, and it's hard. It wouldn't work and they'd match me with another troubled teen, via a youth refuge. I was still trying to go to high school, but every time I moved house, it would be across the other side of Melbourne so I'd have to change school. I finished year 11 but that was as far as I got.

I remember admitting to myself that I had an attraction to guys when I was 14, but I used to date girls, too. I thought I liked both. My hormones were a bit haywire at that age. I first slept with a guy when I was 17 and it gave me the instant realisation – that's what I like! The whole bisexual thing went out the window. By the time I turned 18 I knew I wasn't going to stay in the world of public housing and Centrelink. I had the job at the juice bar and I moved in with a friend who had a private rental property. Over the next four years, there were two more occasions when I was paid for sex. Once while travelling in the US, once after reading some graffiti on an Adelaide men's room wall: "Jerk off for cash." The following year, when I was 23, I caught up with a friend for coffee in Melbourne after he'd returned from a year in Sydney. "What did you do for work?" I asked. "When I first moved there, I actually tried escorting at a brothel in Surry Hills." "Wow! What was that like?" I was all ears. He laughed. "When I went for an interview, they asked me a few questions and made me show my dick." He said he only lasted a day. Outwardly, I was trying not to appear too interested, but in my head I was taking notes. As it happened, I was planning to move to Sydney soon after. When I got there, I looked for a normal job for about two weeks, had a couple of unsuccessful interviews, spent some money, then picked up the phone and dialled the brothel. The next day I was outside the place, surprised at how ordinary it looked. Just a discreet terrace house.

A guy walked past me without looking and went in. I knocked on the door and he answered: "Oh, it's you," he said. "You don't look like the usual boy who'd be looking for a job here." With my half-sleeve tattoo and boy-next-door vibe, I suppose I stood out from the others who, I would soon see, had more of the feminine thing going on. He took me into the office and asked me a couple of questions. He must have been impressed. He didn't even ask to see my appendage. He didn't want my real name, either, just what name I wanted to work under. "Tyson," I said. He never asked for a tax file number or ID, either. I was 23, though they advertised me as 21. Youth is everything in the gay world. At the brothel, we were always referred to as "boys". I was 183 centimetres and 73 kilograms. The guy told me the clients paid $250 an hour. I'd get $150 of that. I could work whatever days I wanted. Night shift or day. The only thing was that if I started a shift, I had to finish it. I was ushered out the back where all the other boys were sitting. I said hello, sat down and watched the telly. A client would come into the office and the worker would show him our pictures on a screen. He might say he wanted to meet some or all of us. The worker would come out the back and one by one we'd go into the office to meet the client. I found I got picked a lot. I've got to admit that made me feel special. But there was a big downside. Each time I got chosen, I could sense the other boys' growing anger. I'd come down from seeing a client and their eyes wouldn't lift from the TV. "Here comes moneybags," someone would mutter. There was nothing to do but sit back down and watch some more telly.

Then another client would come in and part of me would not want to get picked again, but the part wanting to get picked was stronger. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I realised I got a kick out of people putting a price on me. Hell, I was worth $1000 a day. Me. One of the other escorts pulled me aside once: "I used to be rolling in it, too," he said. "But I've been here for a year. I'm old and crusty now." He was my age. One of my first clients was a normal suit-and-tie type who became a regular. He always visited during office hours. He was a good client and a nice guy, but he talked sleazy and was a bit aggressive when it came down to business. He had his sex routine. It was always the same, always climaxing with me standing facing the wall. I discussed it with the other boys and they told me he did the same with them, too. They also told me he was a Liberal politician. I Googled him and sure enough, there he was, with a wife and kids and all that. I'd go on seeing him for years. I mentioned once that prostitution was legal in Australia, and he corrected me. "It's not legal, it's decriminalised." That was him. Always had to have his say. He was taking such a risk coming to the brothel. I remember later, him leaving his wallet and phone out while he took a shower, leaving himself open to exposure and blackmail. Not that I'd ever do that. After three months at the brothel, my new-boy honeymoon period was waning. I wanted to go out on my own. I'd had three months' experience to see how the business worked and what was expected. I knew I was organised enough, smart enough. I needed an apartment, a personal trainer, gay porn and toys, and to stock up on condoms, lube and amyl nitrate. I wanted to be seen as a professional. I used a website for independent gay male escorts. You put your pictures, phone number and details on it. A lot of guys didn't show their face, but I did because I had some distinctive tattoos so anybody who knew me would recognise me anyway. Nevertheless, I kept my new career a secret from all my friends.

One of my first jobs was a call to a big antiques warehouse after closing time. A man in his 50s opened the door and locked it behind me. He seemed a bit funny. I knew he'd likely be as nervous as me, scared he'd just let some meth-head into his shop, so it was hard to gauge if he was frightened or awkward or just weird. I looked around at all the creepy old furnishings in the darkness, the bars on the windows. There was no escape if things went bad. It was a sensation I would come to know well. But I realised early on that if you ran from every situation that seemed dodgy, you'd never get any work. I had a job to do, so I did it. The price was $250 and I would keep it all. He tossed a pair of footy shorts at me and smiled. He turned out to be a nice guy who didn't want much. Some chat and a bit of a massage. He became a regular. He always had a new pair of shorts for me to wear, but I'm not sure I ever saw him completely naked. It went well for a while but he became strangely clingy and perhaps a little unhinged. Even though regulars were the most important thing to have in this business, I had to stop seeing him. The politician was another semi-regular, but the client who would go on to be my longest "relationship" was a guy of Middle Eastern background whom I would see for the next seven years. I still know nothing about him. I knew him as Ahmed. He was in his mid-30s when we met. He mentioned once that he was married. He contacted me either on a special phone, or with a secret email account. We had a deal where he'd only give me $100 because he was in and out in 10 minutes. There was no point paying for an hour. He could never book an appointment, so it was always on short notice. He'd call and if I was home and able to do it, I would. I'd have to leave the door unlocked: it was his kind of fetish to be able to walk into my place whenever he wanted, as he liked to play the dominant role. Ahmed wasn't a bad-looking guy, so it was fun and exciting at first, but as the months ticked by it became routine. He was like the politician. He wanted it exactly the same every time. He always had the dominant role in the sex stuff, but as soon as it was over he was a nice guy. A couple of times when I was sick, he left me cold and flu tablets and some soup at the grocer next door. He'd sometimes see me twice a week. One time he got me to organise a threesome, which I thought might be fun but he had a script. He was to be in the room with the other boy and I had to come in without speaking, stand there, do what he wanted me to do, and leave without saying a word. We did a few of those over the years and they were never very successful because he was so particular. You just couldn't get into it.

Maybe 50 per cent of my clients lived a straight life, and probably 40 per cent of them were in relationships with women. I came to realise that sex work was real work, just like that of a therapist, a masseur or hairdresser. There is a human need for intimacy and friendship, and for whatever reason my clients had to use an escort for that. I was seeing some amazing, great-looking, normal people who used my service as it was the only way they could fill that need for connection. There was not a lot of competition in those early years, around 2011. I was making a lot of money and it changed my life. I'd never had money before. But I spent it as fast as it came in. Rent was expensive. My personal trainer cost a bit. I was getting laser treatment trying to look good. When I'd go out and party with friends, I spent way, way more money than previously. I was making less money. This was deflating. At 25, now I was the old, crusty one. Credit:Getty Images It was strange that even though none of them knew what I was doing, I felt the need to create a high-living façade so that if they ever did find out, they'd be like, "He might be doing a dirty job, but look at his amazing life!" Every time I travelled for work, I'd check in on Facebook so people could see I was living large. Me. One of my my best regulars was a periodontist. He sometimes worked in emergency at a hospital and would come in the early morning after his shift. He'd do cocaine and we'd drink expensive champagne. I didn't like drugs but I did drink. He loved to party so I would indulge a little bit, but I always wanted to be in control. It was about money for me. Not partying. Sometimes there'd be lines of cocaine and he'd go to the toilet and I'd push my line into his and pretend I'd snorted it. These sessions would go eight or 10 hours during the day, which was good because I could sleep at night.

At one point, I told the periodontist that I wanted to get out of escorting and was planning to do a personal-training course. He told me he was planning on renting a city apartment and I could live there while studying and he'd visit on weekends. Like a lot of clients, he lived with a male partner who didn't know about me. I thought that would keep a distance between us but he ended up renting a big inner-city terrace, then broke up with his partner. Suddenly I was his full-time, live-in, kept boy. I got swept up in it, choosing the furniture, enjoying the city skyline views, his platinum credit card, the cleaner, the dog walker. My misery. He'd been a cool, relaxed guy before, but he became clingy and possessive. I'd been able to navigate the notion of getting paid by the hour. Clock the emotions on, clock them off. But this was different and I didn't cope. I did the course, stayed sober, never bought anything on his card for myself because I didn't want to owe him. And after six months, I fled. I was working as a personal trainer, but as so often happens to sex workers I was sucked back into the escorting vacuum. Things had changed in the six months I was away. A lot of my regulars had moved on. Some came back but I had to start from scratch. And as the financial crisis had unwound, a lot of boys from Europe and South America had come to town. The RentBoy Australia website went from 30 to maybe 200 escorts in Sydney, and they were all from exotic places: Spain, Italy, Brazil. I was making less money. For someone whose self-worth was assessed in dollars, this was deflating. At 25, now I was the old, crusty one. My solution was vodka. I never drank at home alone, but I lived close to nightclubs. I wouldn't remember how I got home. I wasn't happy.

From a young age, I'd learnt to keep moving. Instead of facing issues, I ran. I moved to Brisbane. I guess I was going to be the new boy there, and the rent was cheaper, so I could get a better place. It's amazing how different the clientele is in different cities. There were a lot more "straight" clients in Brisbane. And they wanted to bargain a lot more with prices and know a lot more about me. I'd never answer private numbers because of the time-wasters: "Do you suck dick?" I'm like, "Der, I'm an escort." Brisbane was slower than I'd hoped, so after three months I moved back to Sydney. I reconnected with Ahmed and a valued Chinese client, and made new clients. But while I was in Brisbane, I had started acknowledging that I was drinking too much. I went into Alcoholics Anonymous and stopped drinking. A lot of my friends didn't think I had a problem but I just knew I wasn't happy with myself: blacking out, spending a lot of money, losing my wallet. I had a lot of anxiety, so alcohol was great to kill that. Looking back, I can see a lot of it was created by the escorting. I was paranoid about who knew, who didn't. I guess I cared a lot about what people thought of me. Around this time, I finally told my sister I was an escort. "Now I get it," she said. "You were always so social when you were younger. Then you started never wanting to do anything. You spend so much energy being social with clients, you're emotionally exhausted. You've got 10 different relationships on the go at once." I knew I'd changed in other ways, too. I was more uptight and more stubborn. My sister pointed out I'd got a lot more vain. I'd become so particular about my look. My hair. Going to the gym. Eating certain things. I decided to give up escorting again and move to Melbourne to be around good friends and family. I got a job at a gym reception, thinking I'd get back into the training side. I lived the "normal" life for eight months but it didn't make me happy. I thought if I was unhappy with escorting and unhappy without escorting, I might as well take the freedom, the travel and the money of the sex work.

It paid off. For some reason, I started making a lot more money again in Melbourne. There was a lot of work travelling to Perth for the fly-in, fly-out workers. One of my regulars was a Buddhist monk but he clearly wasn't so good at banishing his earthly desires; he got so clingy and weird I had to let him go. A client took me to London for a week and it made me wonder if I could make it there. So, after a booming year in Melbourne, I moved to the UK. That was a hard market. Some very attractive people move to London. I was competing against guys with perfect six-packs, giant penises: the beautiful youth of the European Union and Brazil who'd do it for £80 an hour. I managed to survive. Weaving my way through all those clichéd English fetishes and trying as best I could to avoid the heavy "chemsex" scene: the mixture of drugs and sex that was huge over there. In London, I decided to wean myself off the antidepressants I'd been on for a couple of years. I shouldn't have done that. My symptoms came back even worse. I drank a lot. Drugs were a lot easier to get hold of. I did more cocaine and ecstasy. I turned 30 and my mental health fell apart. I was suicidal. I never planned to be doing this work at 30. I fled home to Adelaide to visit my mum and while staying at a friend's house, drinking, the night thoughts got me. I was old, had no career, nothing to show for it. So when my friend and her kids were sound asleep, I decided it was time to die. I had a bottle of Valium I'd bought on the way home in Thailand. I went rummaging through my gear but I'd hidden the tablets because I hadn't wanted my friend's kids finding them, and now I couldn't find them. I pulled my stuff apart but they were nowhere to be found. There was nothing to do but sleep. I woke up the next day pretty scared. That was last year. I've never escorted again. I worked in a hotel in south-east Asia for five months and that was good to have to get up each morning to go to work, but also to see how happy people can be with no material wealth.

I could never return to escorting. I would not want people to see me on some website, seven years after I was that new boy on the scene, still trying to turn tricks. That in itself would make me want to kill myself. I'm back in Sydney working a normal job. It's like I'm starting a whole new life. I'm looking for true love, but I haven't been in a real relationship for eight or nine years. I'm so used to being on my own, I don't even know how to be in a relationship. I've started feeling better mentally. I'm on a new antidepressant. I'm starting to make friends again. Real, proper friendships. You can never get too close to people when you're escorting because you're always lying about something. I never felt good about that. With a lot of clients, I was able to go somewhere else in my mind, to picture them being someone else. That was all part of switching off my emotions, building solid walls, which I guess was detrimental to my life in the real world. It's definitely done some damage. Can I get my personality back? I do feel that there's a big chunk of me missing. I enjoyed people putting a price tag on me. Does that mean I'm less of a person? I couldn't even look at an escorting website now. That would trigger me. Not just because they're young and fabulous, but because it would take me back to those big highs: I'm carrying a big stack of cash. I'm going to fancy hotels and restaurants. I'm going to the opera in Barcelona. Me. * Tyson McLaren is a pseudonym. Story as told to journalist Mark Whittaker.

