This was a submission to Columbia University’s student-run newspaper, The Lion, According to the editor, they “verified the author’s background, and though he wishes to remain anonymous, he is in fact a male escort who attends class at Columbia.” —

On more than a few occasions, I’ve been paid about $800 to sit in a room and pop balloons while a woman masturbates.

It’s not the strangest request I’ve ever gotten, but it’s probably the easiest as far as regular clients go, if you ignore the jarring anxiety and probably permanent ear damage that comes with popping balloons for two hours.

I have plenty of escort friends who will proudly announce their line of work to anyone who listens, my girlfriend included, but I’m always a little paranoid of it getting back to my parents. They would probably be distraught to learn that the checks I send home are the products of dating women looking for affection and not the kind of hard work they sent me to school for.

I come from the kind of lower-middle-class, traditionally Catholic family that has ten million kids. As well as it pays, I’m not exactly looking for my baby siblings to dream of growing up and making it big as an escort.

But fuck it, if I can get paid $15,000 to spend a December week lounging on a beach in Tuscany instead of freezing my ass off in New York, I’m going to do it, while I’m still young enough to be hired for that sort of gig.

Read the whole story at Columbia Lion