A dead-end job was all Josh could find in the former coal-mining town in Wales where he grew up. So he left behind his friends to become a highly paid male escort in London. Will Storr hears his story. He has a loyalty card scheme. Nine smiley faces earn you an hour. He asked Josh to dress in a schoolboy outfit while he attached his elasticated schnozzle and plugged his tail into place. The client rolled over and they had sex.
Josh sees what he does as a legitimate business and compares himself variously to a doctor, a masseur and an athlete. He has monthly health checks, insists on condoms β even for oral sex β and forbids people from tying him up. He parries any attempt to paint his life as dark or dangerous, insisting his moneyed life in London is preferable to life in the town in which he grew up, where the only thing to do is work in Tesco.
I asked if we could go there. And so, on a weekend of sagging cloud and sopping air, we met in Ammanford , 45 minutes north of Swansea. Josh sliced through the grey pedestrian precinct in his box-fresh trainers and shiny puffer jacket like a returning pop star. When I photographed him in the park in which he used to take drugs, a group of youngsters jeered at us.
At the end of a windy car park, the triumphal Tesco sign loomed. We passed a weed-choked demolition site surrounded by steel fencing. I asked what Josh was like as a kid. By 11 he was already hanging out with the older kids in the park, smoking weed and drinking. By 13 he was snorting up to seven grammes of amphetamine a day. I was physically fighting it.
Josh was sectioned in a Cardiff hospital. Josh had proto-sexual experiences with male friends when he was eight or nine. As the second-best-looking boy in school he got the pick of the girls.
