“I f–king hate it.”
I wasn’t expecting that.
When I sat down with Marcus Richardson, Australia’s highest-paid male escort, I thought we’d be talking about how he was seemingly “living the dream”.
Luxury apartments, wealthy clients and an unusual career that sees him earn thousands of dollars an hour.
Instead, within seconds of our interview beginning, he admits something that immediately changes the direction of our conversation.
“I hate it with a passion,” he repeats.
It’s a stark contrast to the confident image I’d seen of him online. Covered in tattoos, with impossibly white teeth and charging around $2500 an hour, he looks every bit the stereotype people might imagine when they think of the industry.
The reality, I quickly realise, is much more complicated.
A life unplanned
Marcus never planned to become an escort.
For 11 years, he served in the British military before suffering a brain haemorrhage that left him in a wheelchair and struggling to speak.
“I spent two years in rehab becoming a human again,” he tells me quietly. “Realistically, I shouldn’t even be sitting here talking to you.”
When he finally recovered, he packed his bags and moved to Australia in search of a fresh start.
Then one night, completely by chance, everything changed.
“I was in a bar in the Sydney CBD,” he laughs. “A guy came over and said, ‘My wife thinks you’re hot.'”
Marcus assumed it was a joke, but the man made him a very serious offer.
“He asked if I’d come back to the hotel and sleep with his wife while he watched.”
He laughs as he remembers his own disbelief.
“I think they’d just sold a gym or something and were celebrating. Then he said, ‘I’ll give you $6k.'”
“So I thought… why not?” he shrugs.
The next morning, he realised there might actually be a market for what he’d just done.
“I started looking into high-end escorting,” he said. “And it just snowballed from there.”
At first, almost nobody knew.
He kept it from his family until the money became impossible to explain.
“I told my sister in confidence,” he says.
She promptly told their mum. “She cried.”
“I think she imagined me standing on a street corner,” he laughs. “When in reality I was eating caviar and getting paid ridiculous amounts of money.”
Years later, his family still hasn’t come around to the idea.
“They hate it,” he admits simply.
More than sex
For all the headlines about escorting, Marcus insists most people misunderstand what the job actually involves.
“The beautiful side of it is helping people,” he says. “People think prostitution is just prostitution, but it’s very rarely about lust with female clients.”
Instead, he says every client arrives carrying a story.
One woman had survived breast cancer and undergone multiple surgeries after having both breasts removed.
“She hadn’t taken her top off in front of anyone for two years,” Rich explains. She wasn’t booking him for sex. She just wanted her confidence back.
“We got to the point where she felt comfortable taking her top off again.”
Moments like that, he admits, are the reason he struggles to completely dismiss the work.
“I don’t think it’s my calling,” he clarifies. “But I do think I’m good at helping people.”
A high price to pay
Today, he charges around five times the average rate of most male escorts.
At first, increasing his prices was a way of slowing demand. Instead, people kept booking him.
“When someone is paying two and a half thousand dollars an hour,” he explains, “you feel like it has to be perfect every single time.”
Eventually, the pressure became unbearable. “I just don’t want to do it,” he admits. “And that’s not fair on the clients.”
The problem is, walking away isn’t as simple as deciding to quit.
“I’ve created a really expensive life,” he admits. The luxury apartment. The huge television. The high lifestyle.
“It’s easy for people to say, ‘Start a business’ or ‘Write a book’,” he said. “But those things take time.”
In the meantime, the rent still needs paying.
It’s a trap he says many people in the industry fall into.
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The cost of intimacy
As our conversation continues, it becomes clear that the highest cost hasn’t been public judgement. It’s what the work has done to his personal life.
“I have no interest in sex anymore,” he admits. “None.”
He describes recently spending time with someone he genuinely liked, saying, “I couldn’t get into it. It just felt like work.”
Years of trying to give clients “the best two hours of their life” had followed him into his own relationships.
“I felt like I had to perform, to impress and I just wanted to leave.”
It wasn’t only his libido that had changed. “I am so f–king lonely,” he confesses.
Then, after a long pause, he laughs softly.
“But when I’m with someone… I want to leave.”
It’s a painful contradiction. He wants connection, yet the work that has made him so successful has also complicated his relationship with intimacy.
Where to from here?
Marcus doesn’t know exactly what comes next.
People have suggested writing a book. Others have encouraged him to become a motivational speaker.
He’s not convinced.
“I’ve got terrible imposter syndrome,” he admits.
“I still think, ‘Why would anyone want to listen to me?'”
I couldn’t help but disagree.
This was a man who had survived a brain haemorrhage, rebuilt his life from scratch on the other side of the world and spoke with remarkable honesty about a profession most people only ever reduce to headlines.
The escorting may have made him famous. But it isn’t what makes him interesting.
Before we wrap up, I ask him whether, knowing everything he knows now, he’d still make the same decision all over again.
He thinks for a long moment.
“I don’t regret the people I’ve met,” he said. “I regret what I’ve allowed it to do to me.”
Read more columns in the Between Us series, here.
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