He took off the condom carelessly, threw it
on the bin and look at himself in the mirror. For years, he had known he was a
very attractive man. Men and women always made comments about how good he
looked and how educated and well dressed he always was in parties, even if they
weren’t the kind of parties to dress up to. His hair had always been shiny, his
teeth white and his muscles very well toned and defined. He didn’t really have
much to complain on the front.
However, as he saw closed the door to pee in
privacy, he looked at himself again on the mirror but saw someone else. He was
suddenly looking at a short kid, kind of chubby and with a serious acne
problem, which was odd because he seemed too young to be having acne problems.
That was him when he was about ten years old, maybe a little younger or a
little older. Maybe it wasn’t really him but the image he had of himself after
so many years of looking at himself in mirrors.
The man looked on, even after being done in
the toilet. He looked at himself naked and saw beyond what people saw every
single day. They loved his ripped abdomen but then he recalled he had worked
for that body, day and night, paying month after month of a gym membership his
parents had bought him to help his poor self-esteem. They had taken the advice
of a teacher and the boy just ran with it, going every single day for a couple
of hours. He was thirteen back then.
Outside the bathroom, shuffling could be
heard. He was back in the real world, a place he hated to be in but had to love
in, like everyone else. Looking at mirrors had always been a way for him to be
at ease, because that way he could see beyond everything. His goals were always
clearer when he looked at himself on a mirror. It didn’t matter if it was the
elevator of an old building or the wet toilet of a very rundown cruising bar;
he felt mirror gave him a door, a way to escape.
Sadly, there was no one to talk about what he
felt. People always seem to now what he wanted and how he was going to get it.
It was because he was better looking and a success romantically. They only knew
the cover story but they were fascinated by that man that paid a great
apartment, a car and many other things, only by modeling in underwear for
several companies. And to be fair, he was very successful that way. But not
enough. There were always younger, hotter models to be in advertisements of any
kind, and they didn’t mind doing whatever the job needed them to do.
That was how he started performing sexual
favors in order to get money. However, at first he only did it to gain the
contracts he needed so badly to keep having a stable income. But then, as he
gained popularity, he started to do to win more money, to keep his lifestyle
alive. It was impossible to live properly by only putting on a speedo. He
needed to do more than that and he did. He took off every single piece of
clothing and became an escort for the rich and wealthy who visited the city.
He let water flow on the sink and looked at
the water for a while. He put his hands under it for a bit and then used the
humidity to comb his hair. It was a calming motion, to pull his hair back and
forth, to get it just right on his head. It made his head quieter, better for
thinking about what he was doing to do next. But the conclusion he reached was
always the same: he needed the money, so he would keep going out with those
rich men until he had enough saved to stop having sex with them.
However, saving was not something he did, not
as often as he wanted at least. Most of the money came and went, spent mostly
on clothing, skincare, his gym membership and the payment of his debts, of
which he mad many. All of that wasn’t cheap at all and only a very small amount
of money was spared every month. That tiny amount went to his savings account
but it almost didn’t grow at all. The last time he checked, he wasn’t close to
live a really freed life. Not by a long shot.
There was a knock on the door and then a deep
voice. The man outside told him that he needed to get going, so he wanted to
know if the younger man needed a ride. He answered “No”, bluntly. The man
answered back with: “I had a great time. You can stay the rest of the night of
you want”. When he heard the door of the bedroom closing, the young man stepped
outside and noticed his client had left everything in a very neat order, except
the bed sheets, which were a mess.
He let himself fall on the bed and lay there
naked for five minutes or so. It almost never happened that his clients just
left. They normally wanted to talk or play some creepy old fantasy that they
had. Even after the sex was done, they still wanted the charade to go on for as
long as they wanted. They thought that time is money and when paying a room in
a luxury hotel for a whole night, they wanted to get their money’s worth. The
same was applied to him. He was no better than something like a room, a thing.
He was very well aware of that analogy.
He was merchandise. After all, it had been him
who had started everything, even asking clients to recommend his services to
others and so on. He had a website with pictures and videos, not showing his
face of course, and it was visited daily by hundreds of lonely men. Only a
handful could actually pay the price to spend a night with him, as he had
several rules and conditions to actually let them even look at him. He used his
looks in his own advantage and he did very well.
However, he had heard of competition and there
were many young men in need of money who delivered the same services for
cheaper. They were mostly college or high school students who needed money to
pay for education. And they were younger and better looking than him, at least
in the eyes of his clients. He had to take care for them in the world of
modeling and also in the world of escorts. His life was tougher than many would
have thought so, but he had chosen and he always reminded himself of that.
He got on his feet and walked towards the
window. He looked outside: the sun was rising and, in a few hours, the streets
would be filled with people going from one place to the other. He grabbed his
jacket, which he had put on a chair just by the window, and took a lighter and
a cigarette from one of the pockets. It wasn’t allowed but he didn’t care at
all. He opened the window and started smoking, feeling the cold wind of the
morning on his thighs, penis, abdomen and chest.
He looked down, towards the people, and he
kept thinking of other ways to achieve his ultimate goal, which was to live
like a superstar without having to do everything that he did to live like that.
He could learn a proper skill, but that meant spending money on education. That
way was a no go from the start. He could create some kind of enterprise but he had
no ideas of what to do. His body was all he had and it was already difficult
enough to be a model in such a crowded industry.
The cigarette fell to the ground when he
finished smoking, when he realized there was no way out and he had to keep
doing what he did, until something else happened and changed his world. There
was no other way about it, no matter what people thought about his so-called
advantages.
He put on his clothes, looked at himself on
the mirror once again and then stepped outside the room. In the elevator, he
saw that kid from his past again but he closed his eyes until the machine
stopped and he walked fast towards the exit, into the cold streets of an
uninviting city.
