T he last picture I send to my part-time boyfriend, the man who was once a former client, depicts me spread out against a gray, leather sofa, showing off my bubble ass. The upper portion of my back is cloaked in a shadow that slants from my right shoulder to the left, giving the appearance of me being a decapitated boy-toy, solely evoked for the purpose of being used. As an escort and as a lover, I am hardly acknowledged from anyplace above the waist and hips, with my lips being the exception.

The waist itself is slender, contorted by the right leg raised against the top of an ornamental, throw pillow. Feet clad in black socks contrast against the lightness of honey-brown skin, where the cotton fabric rises just above the bones of protruding ankles; legs are paler in the back than they are around the knees, which are closer in color to dark rosewood or mahogany.

The same dark color also frames the forbidden fruit at the root center; plump mounds of flesh, towards the arena in which they conjoin, display a trail of curly hair that holds the musk of former experiences. The hips are wide, much broader than the waist, insinuating the voluptuous qualities of fertility in male form.

“H ave you heard from, what’s his name? The guy that’s been giving you money?” my aunt interrogates over the telephone. In September, I received an email from my part-time boyfriend’s assistant about a fundraising dinner for Joe Biden’s campaign. It was being held at his deluxe property in San Francisco. For a minimum of a grand, I could “say hello” to the future president of the United States.

“He said he’s going to Greece at the end of the month. I haven’t spoken to him in over three weeks, now,” I tell my aunt through the microphone of headphones I purchased months ago. The over-the-ear VModa 2’s come with rose-gold trim; not actual gold, just a pretty plating, although I did have the option to upgrade the design for a thousand dollars. I declined.

The majority of my family lives paycheck-to-paycheck or worse. My disabled mother, barred from work after a resurgence of complications related to multiple sclerosis, lives at the poverty level. It’s been this way since I can remember. Growing up in a household of four brothers and one parent, there were few variations in fortune over the years; my mom was briefly married to the father of my youngest three brothers, but he proved to be a verbally abusive alcoholic, so that didn’t last. He couldn’t afford to buy her a home, so he moved into our three-bedroom apartment in a questionable neighborhood, near the downtown area of Raleigh, North Carolina.

I now live in a small city that’s considered up-and-coming, due to the influx of development that accommodates the recent upper-middle-class settlers. The median household income has skyrocketed in the last few years since I first moved here. Holly Springs is for people with money now. In the fifth-richest city in the state, its earners average an income of $101,341, a three-percent increase from the previous year. The county average is $73,577 in comparison.

My earnings this year, rounded to $20,000, would be a much more daunting figure, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m unemployed. I made a paltry $6,000 in 2018. I haven’t worked in over three years, not for lack of effort or experience.

I met my part-time boyfriend while working as a writer at a CMS firm in San Francisco. I charged him $150 for our first date at an empty bar. He paid me double. By the time we met again, after several sessions, three years had passed. He moved overseas, where he was appointed by President Barack Obama as an integral part of an architectural exhibition.

“Are you serious?” my aunt asks, her voice soaring like a robin’s song. “He hasn’t called you?”

“He’s too busy hosting dinners for the former vice president.” I jab my finger against the computer screen, prying for answers, praying for dirt.

D uring my second date with him as an escort, I grew petrified after agreeing to meet him at a sushi restaurant. Before that night, I’d never eaten sushi, other than a California Roll in college.

The Russian Hill restaurant we attended in San Francisco had dark wooden tables and dimmed lights, and the menu indicated that he’d be paying at least $100 per four ounces of food. The clientele was middle-aged, refined, and all-white (couples, no children), except the Japanese men in gray chef jackets and myself.

I wondered if others would know what I was up to, whether or not my skin color or my date’s ash-blond hair would give me away at this dinner. I’d been inaccurately deemed as biracial in high school, so maybe my skin tone would serve as a saving grace among the affluent crowd. Maybe they’d mistake me for his son. Or, I was an actor and he was the director. I wasn’t ready to be outed as a professional.

My nerves were frazzled. After seeing me fumble with my chopsticks, my part-time boyfriend suggested I use my hands. I looked around with a stealthy gaze, admiring all the guests who used their chopsticks with effortless efficiency, and my appetite was spoiled after three pieces. I pretended to be full and told him I’d take it home for later. His steely blue eyes were sympathetic when he told me it wouldn’t be any good. How embarrassing.

Donning the leotard that I gogo danced in, my appearance amplified the shame. My black eyes darted back and forth from the sea of celebration around me, down towards the hem of my camouflage jacket, and I began to feel like the night was constructed from a stream of faux-pas. I was strikingly out of place.

“Y ou know, you never told me your name,” I said, feigning conviviality, but wanting to get right to the sex part as to avoid further humiliation. During our first date at a hip bar in the Tenderloin, I was sent home without so much as a French kiss. As a hustler who’d once traded my body in exchange for a warm place to stay and a decent meal, I wasn’t used to meeting clients that were gentlemen. Cal was of a different breed, or he appeared to be.

“You never asked,” my date responded.

“Fair enough,” I admit, scanning the cosmic black lacquer that coated my fingernails.

“Calvin,” he revealed. “My name is Calvin.”

Despite his charm, I couldn’t shake my doubts. My anxiety made me worry about the future: would I be equipped to handle this type of lifestyle? Would I be brave enough, bold enough to handle criticism from family? From strangers? At least with dancing in the clubs, I was anchored in an element that was familiar. Being a gogo-boy wasn’t a steady way of making money, but neither was escorting, despite its perks of meal tickets and diamond-star hotels. However, working as a content creator wasn’t paying the bills, and I’d dropped out of university.

The writing was the only chance I had at a real career, but after the Internet commoditized the industry there were fewer opportunities for decent pay.

Was being a callboy for wealthy men a viable pathway toward success? What good is a kingdom on earth if one never gets to inherit it for himself?

C al is referred to as a “bundler” in the alternative press. This is defined by the reporters of Open Secrets as a person “with friends in high places who,” after maxing out in personal contribution will request the help of friends and associates, to create a bundle of dollars to fund a politician’s campaign for office. People in my tax bracket typically don’t receive invitations for these events, unless — like myself — you happen to become the part-time boy-toy of such a wealthy man, in which case the invite may accidentally land in your inbox.

Known by the media as a Silicon Valley Shark, Cal was cited as having raised between $300,000 to $400,000 for Obama in the 2008 campaign. “Yes, we can.” He accumulated at least $400,000 more in 2012 on behalf of the 44th president’s second term.

Online I find a short clip of donors arriving at my boyfriend’s Sea Cliff mansion. In the video, there is a group of people in suits entering the front door, located on the side of the property. The driveway opens to a foyer that’s constructed of beige stone with tile inlays. I haven’t had a chance to witness the marvel in person. I suspect his ex-wife inherited the property, following the divorce. They share two children, twin girls, both in middle school. Cal once told me he has full custody. Father of the year, part-time boyfriend of the century.

The caption of a news outlet’s Twitter post reads: “If you’re a #SanFrancisco donor with deep pockets, chances are you’re at the dinner for @JoeBiden tonight.” I replay the clip again, noticing the rolling hillside in the backdrop, the clarity in the sky — an azure blue — with no clouds in sight. The glimmering ocean is visible toward the bottom of the canvas, oscillating with breath and beauty, despite the stillness of the thumbnail. A vision of serenity.

I pause the clip and study for signs of the man who I’d been seeing: a custom Italian suit, his tall stature, his ash-blond hair that was still fairly thick considering his age, the man who insisted that I was special, that I was part of his world, an integral part of this new phase of life in truth. It’s what he told me was the key ingredient of our new partnership together, that our dealings were based on foundations of trust, and I believed him. Now, I’m not so sure. Seeing his name in the news attached to outstanding worldly achievements makes me recount the night at the Japanese restaurant before I learned to eat with chopsticks, or knew better than to save sushi for later.

My aunt begins in a reserved voice. I toss a Louis Vuitton clutch onto the mid-century armchair that doubles as a dresser in the home office, where I sleep. I gaze over the room and its contents, my pallet on the floor, a shoebox that stores miscellaneous trinkets. Behind a rolling chair, there is a particle-board desk, a grid of amethyst crystals, and essential oils organized on its surface. I use the file cabinet to house an assortment of cosmetics and supplements, ranging from fish oil capsules and turmeric tinctures to a Burt’s Bees cleanser.

My aunt and I review the photographs in silence, aside from the occasional remark:

“He ain’t got no nice furniture,” she states, matter-of-factly.

“I like the chaise in the master bedroom,” I counter. “It might be staged, but sometimes people use what they already own.”

“Hmm,” she responds, unimpressed. “Doesn’t look like it’s worth that much money.”

“This is what 20 million can get you in San Francisco,” I clarify, wanting to laugh at the ridiculousness of the price tag, but also brewing with ambition. “I’m gonna live in a house like this one day.” As an observer, I’d fallen in love with symbols of status, a lifestyle I’d tasted but which felt so far away, as vast and quiet as Cal’s absence.

My aunt and I are in mutual awe of the view from the living room, overlooking the beach with the Golden Gate bridge over a sunkissed horizon. “He can step right off his deck and into the ocean.” Dollar signs flash before my eyes like traffic lights. “I see why he never got me that apartment in New York, he was too busy with this place.” I sigh and chuckle a little to assuage my envy. I realize even a whiff of resentment would be unwarranted; I wasn’t dense enough to think he’d actually follow through with every promise he made to me, an apartment among them, but I did dream, from time to time that we were real.

The neoclassical villa features five bedrooms and is over six thousand square feet, including a guest apartment. The walls in the master are “gunmetal gray,” the ones in another bedroom blue-green like the backyard ocean; two beds placed side-by-side cause me to suspect this is the room where his daughters used to sleep. There are white marble bathrooms galore, even accompanying the smaller bedrooms. The property features a temperature-controlled wine cellar, along with a wet bar and rooftop deck.

“T his is how the one-percent live,” reads the comment of a spectator in one of the articles. An accurate description; Cal was neighbors with fellow tech tycoons, like the former president of Facebook. This sale is one of the top deals of the year in San Francisco. A person in the comments claims a property in Haight sold for $22 million; Zillow and Redfin confirm this.

Under the right circumstances, I believe that love and commerce — business and pleasure — have the potential to exist in harmony. I believe that following my passion and doing what I love will always manifest positive and purposeful results. However, purposeful isn’t synonymous with permanent. For me, Cal was more than another client; I still care for him deeply, even without the recurring stream of remuneration I’d gotten used to. I traveled around the country, stayed at diamond-star hotels, spent my days at the spa, treating myself to pastries and herbal teas at decadent NYC cafes, but I still didn’t get everything I wanted, anything solid, a foundation.

As much as I wanted to dream of myself as part of that exalted world, my proximity — or lack thereof — to the intimacies of Cal and his affairs proved otherwise. No matter how many lavish suites we shared, midnight conversations exchanged, or the total sum of his monetary gifts (over $20,000 in a year), I was still another outsider looking in, and that’s OK. The most exquisite breakthroughs are often created by those of us who dwell upon the fringes, molding destiny as we envision it, unrestrained by the traditions of those who demonize our experiences.

Still, I am human. Here and there, I pity myself, but mostly I laugh at the absurdity of it all. Take this conversation, for instance, when Cal asks where I see our relationship heading. I tell him living together would be nice, but that I never envision a specific outcome for us, as it would feel presumptuous, forced, a bit unprecedented for a person with my history, although we’ve heard the stories of the infamous kept boys and girls who float through the terrains of sex work, high and mighty, unscathed, halfway ruined, but innocent enough to claim redemption as wives or husbands. I can’t imagine only being known as an executive’s husband; I want a taste of the merit for myself.

I t’s possible that my lack of a solid picture of our relationship is partially responsible for the distance between us now. His vision at the time was more succinct: “You in a leotard…us fucking and married and maybe a blindfold.” For a man that can buy any number of beauties, how much is a marriage with one playmate truly worth? Just look at any site where boys and bodies are for sale. I’m a fish among the Pacific, no matter how good I look in scanty underwear.

I’d like to think that I will, one day, achieve a taste of my lover’s lifestyle, being — not only included — but in charge of the happenings of elite circles.

I suppose somewhere along the line the Richard Gere to my Pretty Woman fantasy remembered his reputation, his position in the social order, became practical after years of fetishization and fantasy (he called me his “Ebony,” after all). It’s ironic, whenever he mentioned us being a long-term proposition, I would demand practicality; I wanted a blueprint. I guess that blueprint got lost in the mail, right along with my official invitation to Biden’s dinner.

They say it’s all about who you know, but sometimes being in bed with the right person still isn’t enough to ascend.

Celebrating the free-wheeling spirit of the Bay Area — one sentence at a time.

Art-school dropout, part-time mystic. Full-time student of the chaotic genius of incarnation.