'Hung's' Middle-Aged Male Escort Straddles Fact, Fiction

July 24, 2009 — -- Posters promoting "Hung," HBO's new series about a burgeoning escort service, show a down-and-out middle-aged man and woman, she with a smirk and a "Pimp" plastered underneath her mug, he with a furrowed brow and a "Ho" below.

It's a nice reversal of the norm, the "Pretty Woman" model turned on its head, the gender that played the prostitute for centuries finally getting to call the shots.

It's also a complete fantasy.

While "Hung's" plot is rooted in real life dilemmas -- its "ho," Ray (Thomas Jane), finds he can't pay back his adjustable rate mortgage with his salary as a high school basketball coach and turns to Tanya (Jane Adams), a former hook-up, to help market his supposedly massive manhood -- the premise of women paying for a romp in the sack strikes some in the industry as ludicrous.

"I don't see women reaching out to male prostitutes; it's not financially viable," said George Flint, director of the Nevada Brothel Owners' Association. "The concept of male prostitutes marketing to female clients makes about as much sense as selling sand to Waikiki. I think it makes a nice story, but I don't see it being reality."

Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss seemed to figure that out earlier this year when she abandoned her plan to open and run Heidi's Stud Farm, a brothel aimed at female clients, outside Las Vegas.

But what "Hung" has right, according to former and current sex workers, is the more-common-than-talked-about trend of good looking guys exploring side gigs as escorts during tough economic times America's currently enduring.

"Sex work is always an option when other options run out," said Craig Seymour, author of "All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C." "If you're a cute guy, you can always find a way to make money based on your looks, probably more from gay men than you can from straight women. In real life, Ray would probably be turning to gay men instead of straight women."

That doesn't necessarily mean Ray would be gay.

"There are a lot of straight guys that sell their sexual services to gay men for money," Seymour said. "Many of my friends who do that might be high school drop-outs, maybe they work in construction; in general, they have temporary jobs. When those dry up in a bad economy, the one thing they rely on is stripping for men or escorting for men."