"Marcus," the first male prostitute at Nevada brothel the Shady Lady Ranch, would be a great character for a screen play. However, based on the interview he gave Details, he will make for a lousy businessman.

Seriously, this very earnest creature would be an excellent protaganist for The Big Man Comes to the Shady Lady: How Marcus Remade the Nevada Desert in His Image: The Movie, preferably played by Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame. He's a 25 year-old college dropout from Alabama who quit the Marines and returned home to Alabama to find no opportunity so he drove his '98 Honda Civic to L.A., where he couldn't find a job and ended up in a Santa Monica homeless shelter before reading about the Shady Lady on the internet and sending in an application.

But "gigolo" is not a word that he likes, probably because it conjures up images of Richard Gere's sweat-drenched abs in American Gigolo, and that is not something that Marcus needs to compete against, now is it. Also, because he takes himself laughably seriously:

And it's more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, "I want to do this for a living." And be protected under law to do it. It's just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I'm doing the same. I'm actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn't about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.

He's also come up with a charter—a fucking charter—about the lifestyle a "surrogate lover" (the term he prefers) should live. They include being more, having "the heart of a saint, the mind of a philosopher, and the skills of the devil," not calling women bad names, being totally independent, and having no relations outside of work.

Well, it sounds like Marcus has thought this whole thing out. However, like everything in America, it's only going to work if it makes money, and it doesn't seem like our man has thought that far ahead with his plan. Here is why his gambit is bound to fail.

  • Price Point: The Shady Lady will charge women $200 for forty minutes of Marcus' time. Sure some ladies might want more than an hour, but this is still remarkably low. Considering most of the gay hustlers on Rentboy.com start in the neighborhood of $300 an hour it seems on point, but once the brothel takes its fees, Marcus won't be left with much. Still a better salary and perks than he would get if he was stealing panties out of the locker room as the janitor of an all-girls' Catholic high school.
  • Inexperience: Marcus himself says that he isn't very sexually experienced aside from a couple of porn scenes he did a month ago, and alludes to some strange condition where he wasn't touched enough as a child. If women want to have lousy sex with a man, they can stay home and do that with their husbands—for free.
  • The Merchandise: Marcus isn't much to look at. We haven't seen his body, but we assume it's no great shakes. Add to the lackluster appearance his inexperience and that is a deadly cocktail. We're not saying he has to be an Adonis, but selling sex is all about selling a fantasy, and most women's fantasies don't look remotely like Marcus.
  • No Gay-For-Pay: Marcus says his "sphincter is not for sale." That is too bad, because the gays are really into prostitution. Well, it's not that they're into it, per se, but it is a bit more accepted among the free-thinking homosexuals than it is in uptight mainstream society. Gay men are still men and therefore more willing to pay for sex. Even leaving his sphincter off the market, Marcus could make a tidy sum from generous gentlemen with other acts. But, then again, he would have the problem of the merchandise. Gays sure are shallow when it comes to their trade.