Diego

People look down on me.

I know they do.

And it's not just because I'm only 5'7" tall.

It's because they all think that I'm not making much of my life - and I never will.

"You'll never amount to anything" were my father's words - as though he'd achieved much himself!

But, in spite of what everybody thinks and some people actually say out loud, I more than get by.

Even when I was a young kid I'd do all sorts of odd jobs for people - washing cars, cleaning houses, tending gardens.

And, as I got older, the fact that I got better looking too certainly didn't seem to drive the customers away.

I soon came to recognise a few significant signs.

Gradually a bigger and bigger proportion of my customers were older men. Often they were guys living on their own who told me that they needed help to keep their big, old houses in shape.

I soon realised how to keep my customers happy - and to make sure that they recommended me to all their friends too.

Don't get me wrong: I wasn't hopping into bed with these guys and giving them my ass.

No, just a few little things - like taking my shirt off as I got on with the work - would almost always get me a good tip at the end of the day.

Like I say, I can turn my hand to almost any sort of odd job. But what I especially enjoy - because it's outdoors in the warm sunshine, not too hard to do and, above all, regular work - is cleaning pools.

(Of course, I also like pool work because, if a guy's got a pool in the first place, it generally means he's got money too!)

I clean the pool for quite a few guys now and more work keeps coming in all the time.

I don't think that's because I clean the pools better than anyone else.

So I guess it must be because of the "extras" my customers get from me.

Let's get this straight one more time. Even though I'm older now - I was 18 last February - I'm not a whore.

I do not sleep with these guys.

They don't even get to touch me (the last one to try ended up in the pool).

And I certainly don't touch them.

After that I get into the pool.

But I make sure that I'm always well within sight of the house. After all, at the end of the day I want that tip - and I'm only gonna get that if I put on a good show.

The main job's to clean down the water line. That's pretty exhausting, especially when you're treading water for half an hour in the deep end, so when I'm done I just lie back for a few minutes and relax.

But with one big difference.

I don't hide it.

I flaunt it.

In fact I make damn sure that the pool owner gets a good look at it.

And if he hasn't already caught sight of it in the water, he sure does when I climb out onto the poolside.

After that I like to stretch out in the sun.

You'd think that the guys would get angry and send me packing - after all, they're paying me to work, not relax.

But, funnily enough, no-one ever does.

And I know they're still watching from behind the drapes - which are usually twitching even more vigorously by now!

Like I said, it's a funny thing that I hardly ever lose a customer.

Although, now I think of it, there was that old guy on Santa Rosa Boulevard last year.

But he didn't dismiss me from the job.

It was just that when I went to collect my pay after an afternoon at his pool, I found him dead.

I read later in the papers that, for some reason that day, he'd had a major - and fatal - coronary.