Sex Workers As Virtual Boyfriends

Rating:
Summary: A Boyfriend of a Different Sort!
Review: A fascinating, informative, and valuable in depth study about the interactions between a sex worker (formerly called Hustler) and a client that establishes the rules & requirements necessary to become "virtual boyfriends", and the positive results you can expect from this different sort of boyfriend relationship. This book is an indispensable aid for anyone seeking the services of a sex worker. Additionally, it is a valuable resource for sex workers who want to have a more meaningful and closer relationship with their clients. Joseph Itiel has amassed over four decades of experience with sex workers, and he relates his mostly positive experiences with a refreshing openness & honesty. Joseph believes meaningful relationships between a sex worker and client can be possible with considerable effort and that love need not be involved in the relationship. The personal stories he tells of his own and others' experiences with many sex workers are truly captivating reading.

In Chapter Two he explains the differences between hiring someone from an agency and on the internet, and the advantages & disadvantages of advance bookings. Chapter Six deals with sex plus relationships and how the relationship between client and sex worker can be more than an exchange of money for sex. It can be an intellectual pursuit, a spiritual practice, and a time of shared social activities. It may even become a nonsexual friendship beneficial to both parties. I thought Chapter 13 was extremely useful and important with it's seven guidelines to make the working relationship with a sex worker a more friendly, emotional and positive experience. All of the chapters are filled with constructive information that you can use. This book is complete with an appendix of sex worker's web sites to help you get started.

I guarantee you will not be able to put this book down once you start it, so plan ahead and keep a few hours open. This book is perfect for anyone considering a virtual relationship with a sex worker or as a helpful guide for an experienced client. Be sure and read Joseph Itiel's first book "A Consumer's Guide to Male Hustlers", another ground-breaking study and a primer for this book. Either book can be read independently, but make sure you read both for the complete picture. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: a sex worker's point of view
Review: As a former sex worker, I want to praise the author of "Sex Workers as Virtual Boyfriends" for his insightfulness into hustlers' lives. For two difficult years I put myself through college as a parking valet. The work was hard, the pay miserable, and I breathed in a lot of polluted air. Then I started escorting. The job was easy for the most part, the pay excellent, and my health was not in jeopardy. Like the author says, a few clients did also become good friends. ... Of course, it is older dudes paying for the services of the younger guys. They get paid *because* they are younger and nobody is being exploited. We, young escorts know exactly what we are doing, and the older clients spend their money to fulfill their needs. I highly recommend the book to anyone who wants to understand the life of sex workers.

Rating:
Summary: Not a how-to
Review: Given the back of the book, it is easy to assume this a how-to book, another guide for the customer from Itiel. But this is really more of an autobiographical account of his own lifestyle choice to focus on the use of hustlers or male prostitutes. A solid definition of "virtual boyfriend" isn't even offered and the "how-to" parts are very few and far between. If you read his first book and thought he was an interesting man, you might like this. If you want to know how to get a virtual boyfriend, you mostly need to figure that out for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: a sex worker's point of view
Review: It is astonishing to me that this book was published at all. Much less by a scholarly small press. In Mr Itiel's defence it must be acknowledged that his writings will be of some value as source material for students of gay men and class dynamics. What makes this volume as revealing as it is disturbing are the insights offered unwittingly. Mr Itiel exhibits boundless pride in confiding his expert technique for scoring more sex for less dollars. In one memorable entry he shares tips on how best to train boys not to expect gifts - blithefully unconscious of any parallel to guidebooks on training spaniels. Almost in the same breath he asks we take special note that some of his rent boys grow into friends of a sort - even `virtual boyfriends'. He urges us to follow his example.

So fevered is the author's earnestness some readers may not consider that his voiceless young men friends might have very different `insights' to offer. In the seemingly improbable event any of them will ever be afforded opportunity to author how-to books.

Mr Itiel candidly portrays himself as a financially successful middle-aged white man with a preference for dark-skinned youths typically from lower income backgrounds (but always of `legal' age, he carefully emphasizes - rather conveniently ignoring the fact that his books endorse activities which are illegal in his native California and are harshly punished in every state in the US). Some would see his sexual predilection as inherently exploitive. That is not my viewpoint. What does alarm me is that Mr Itiel appears so far beyond even contemplating the ethics of older men of means bartering with boys from the barrio for pleasures of the flesh.

Readers with a conscience should take note of several earlier books by Mr Itiel. PHILIPPINE DIARY : A GAY GUIDE TO THE PHILIPPINES offers tips on how to win over the parents of an island `call boy'. As for PURA VIDA! : GAY AND LESBIAN COSTA RICA the two reader reviews posted here on Amazon.com are a character reference which the publisher of this book should have heeded.

Rating:
Summary: Unpleasant at best
Review: It is astonishing to me that this book was published at all. Much less by a scholarly small press. In Mr Itiel's defence it must be acknowledged that his writings will be of some value as source material for students of gay men and class dynamics. What makes this volume as revealing as it is disturbing are the insights offered unwittingly. Mr Itiel exhibits boundless pride in confiding his expert technique for scoring more sex for less dollars. In one memorable entry he shares tips on how best to train boys not to expect gifts - blithefully unconscious of any parallel to guidebooks on training spaniels. Almost in the same breath he asks we take special note that some of his rent boys grow into friends of a sort - even 'virtual boyfriends'. He urges us to follow his example.

So fevered is the author's earnestness some readers may not consider that his voiceless young men friends might have very different 'insights' to offer. In the seemingly improbable event any of them will ever be afforded opportunity to author how-to books.

Mr Itiel candidly portrays himself as a financially successful middle-aged white man with a preference for dark-skinned youths typically from lower income backgrounds (but always of 'legal' age, he carefully emphasizes - rather conveniently ignoring the fact that his books endorse activities which are illegal in his native California and are harshly punished in every state in the US). Some would see his sexual predilection as inherently exploitive. That is not my viewpoint. What does alarm me is that Mr Itiel appears so far beyond even contemplating the ethics of older men of means bartering with boys from the barrio for pleasures of the flesh.

Readers with a conscience should take note of several earlier books by Mr Itiel. PHILIPPINE DIARY : A GAY GUIDE TO THE PHILIPPINES offers tips on how to win over the parents of an island 'call boy'. As for PURA VIDA! : GAY AND LESBIAN COSTA RICA the two reader reviews posted here on Amazon.com are a character reference which the publisher of this book should have heeded.

Rating:
Summary: Finally! Someone Got It Right!
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book!!! And definitely a must read for clients as well as sex workers. I myself am a sex worker in San Francisco and I really applaud Mr. Itiel for writing this book. The very title is what caught my eye to begin with. As a sex worker, I have always strived to create the same type of "sex plus" relationships with my clients that Mr. itiel has created with his sex workers. So I am delighted to finally see a book that emphasizes what the client/sex worker relationship is really all about - a mutual respect for one another as well as a caring friendship, besides the obvious good fun! The book contains many interesting stories about Mr. Itiel's experiences over the years with various sex workers. I really only found 1 area in which I strongly disagreed with Mr. Itiel - he feels that, in general, sex workers charge too much for their services. While I feel that what a responsible sex worker can offer to his client certainly justifies the cost, I can also understand that, as the client, Mr. Itiel would like to be able to find sex workers as inexpensively as possible. And he has managed to do this quite successfully, proving there is a market for all of us.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a greater understanding of the dynamics behind the sex worker/client relationship. I think both sex workers and clients will benefit from reading this book - and both will benefit from enhancing their relationships with one another.

Rating:
Summary: Finally! Someone Got It Right!
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book!!! And definitely a must read for clients as well as sex workers. I myself am a sex worker in San Francisco and I really applaud Mr. Itiel for writing this book. The very title is what caught my eye to begin with. As a sex worker, I have always strived to create the same type of "sex plus" relationships with my clients that Mr. itiel has created with his sex workers. So I am delighted to finally see a book that emphasizes what the client/sex worker relationship is really all about - a mutual respect for one another as well as a caring friendship, besides the obvious good fun! The book contains many interesting stories about Mr. Itiel's experiences over the years with various sex workers. I really only found 1 area in which I strongly disagreed with Mr. Itiel - he feels that, in general, sex workers charge too much for their services. While I feel that what a responsible sex worker can offer to his client certainly justifies the cost, I can also understand that, as the client, Mr. Itiel would like to be able to find sex workers as inexpensively as possible. And he has managed to do this quite successfully, proving there is a market for all of us.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a greater understanding of the dynamics behind the sex worker/client relationship. I think both sex workers and clients will benefit from reading this book - and both will benefit from enhancing their relationships with one another.