Campus Call Boy

We kind of gravitated toward each other instantly. I think it took all of a second for both of us to read the other one was gay, and I guess we just dug each other’s vibe. I’d grown up in a neighborhood in Philadelphia where I was basically the only white kid on the block, and Darius was just about the only black kid in our very hip, very progressive, and very white college town. The guy was six foot one with a killer face. He looked like he belonged in a hell of a better establishment than that shitty diner, but he never acted like it and didn’t treat me like pond scum because I was working the very shittiest job in that shitty diner. He’s eight years older than me, so he took me under his wing, telling me which of the staff to look out for, which ones were cool, and how to handle obnoxious customers. I sure enjoyed his company a whole lot better than my stuck-up dorm mates who came from boarding schools and legacy families.

The dude was a townie and had never gone to college, but that didn’t matter. He had his own pad in the basement of one of the town’s ancient houses that had been subdivided into overpriced rental apartments, and any time we worked the same shift, we’d inevitably end up back at his place to drink beers, smoke cigarettes, and just do stuff like play Xbox or watch movies. I think we both knew from the get-go we were cut out to be pals, not boyfriends, and that was totally all right. Darius said he had a sugar daddy, which I wasn’t sure I believed, but I figured he was into older guys. For me, Darius was just a little too pretty I guess you could say, but I love him like a brother. Yeah, we’re still good buds.

Anyway, long story short, Darius finally told me one night he was doing this rent boy thing on the side, and I was bowled over and hella curious to know how that worked. He showed me this website run out of the Netherlands where you can post photos and a profile and start making money. He said he was bringing in an extra thou a month through “dates” and probably could be doing a lot better if he wanted to travel. The closest big city is three hours away, so he was just making cash from his regular, local customers and an occasional john passing through town.

A couple days later, I sat down at my laptop and studied that website. On average, guys made a hundred and twenty bucks per “meet.” I supposed, living in a small town, I’d have to charge on the low-end, but even if I just did five meets a month, I’d be making more money than I took home at my part-time job at the diner. Meanwhile, I was racking up big debt on student loans. My parents were working class folks, and neither had ever been to college. I qualified for the maximum federal financial aid along with a big merit scholarship, but I was still left with half of my tuition to finance along with dorm, books and basic living expenses. If I did ten “meets” a month, I could quit working at the diner and be six grand ahead on an annual basis, which would pay for housing and my meal plan. If I could market myself to charge more like a hundred fifty or two hundred a pop, I could pay some of my tuition out of pocket, cut my loans in half for sophomore year, and start making small monthly payments while they weren’t accruing interest.

That started sounded awfully appealing. And I was hardly opposed to sex. At eighteen years old, I’d already had a lot of experience. I don’t want to freak anybody out, but I was an early bloomer. Always consensual, mind you. I knew what I wanted by the time I popped my first boner back in grade school. My grandparents paid to send me to an all boys Catholic school, and at a sixth-grade overnight retreat, I snuck off to a bathroom stall with this kid, and we jerked and sucked each other off. At thirteen, I had a seventeen-year-old boyfriend down the street who tapped my cooch in the backroom of his father’s hardware store. My ninth-grade Spanish teacher gave me rides home from school in return for letting him suck me off in his car. I could go on and on, but the point is, I was well acquainted with sex, including getting down with guys I wasn’t necessarily that into.

I gave my friend Darius’s website a try for a while, but thinking like an entrepreneur, I figured out some things to make the work more profitable. Fall semester sophomore year, I was taking a course in digital marketing and applied what I learned to building my own website with SEO optimization so I could take control of my brand and build my clientele directly.

That’s when Max Wilde was born.