A western Texas fracker starring in a podcast about how his attempted moonlighting as a handyman turned into lucrative sex work largely solicited by distracted oil industry professionals’ housewives says he believes his region’s repressive sexual attitudes gave his side gig an opening to flourish.
“There’s an inherent kind of self-denial,” the subject of The Handyman of West Texas, identified only as Mickey, said in a recent interview. “We all have these thoughts. But we lie to ourselves and try to conform to … how you’re supposed to be repressing your own pleasure.”
Mickey said he arrived at that observation in part from the post-coital talks he has held with many of the adult women in his sliver of the Permian Basin’s Midland area, who collectively compensated him in the mid-six figures during his five-year run escorting amid communities depicted on television shows such as Landman and Friday Night Lights.
As Mickey put it on the documentary podcast and separately to the Guardian, his path to escorting was circuitous. He had just gotten divorced from a woman to whom he had been married to for two decades. He wanted to keep himself occupied as well as earn a little money during his resting periods between his fracking work, which typically involve 15-hour daily shifts, two weeks at a time.
Powderhorn
beehaw.org
Powderhorn@beehaw.org