Exclusive | I quit my job as a kindergarten teacher to live a luxe lifestyle as a high-end male escort — here’s what I regret

As a New York City kindergarten teacher, riding in style for Sharay Hayes once meant scoring a clean-ish, empty seat on his train ride home to Harlem after a long day in the classroom.

But after ditching his low-paying gig with the kids to become one of the boroughs’ most in-demand male escorts — sexually servicing millionaires, mobsters and megastars alike — Hayes, 53, went from straphanger to Mercedes-Benz hoarder, amassing a fleet of $150,000 luxury cars to go with his 41-foot yacht and South Florida mansion.

The sumptuous indulgences are just a few of the goodies that came with the Manhattanite’s banging career move.

According to the pro, lusty rendezvous with the city’s female elite are all part of the daily grind for rent-a-Romeos like himself and Gregg Starr, the towheaded escort accused of scamming Roblox widow Marianne Flippo out of $6 million in an explosive lawsuit. 

“I’d say 99% of the time, male escorts are having sex with clients,” revealed Hayes, neither accusing any specific entity nor person of prostitution. “Even if there’s an ‘Only for companionship’ stipulation, it’s a front.”

The world of gigolos has been thrust into the spotlight again thanks to the unseemly court battle playing out between Flippo and Starr, with the former claiming that she didn’t realize she was hiring an escort for a trip to Italy — and Starr’s team claiming that what may have started as transactional quickly became a real loving relationship.

Now, Hayes is lifting the lid on what, from his experiences, New York’s elite clients really expect from their companions.

“The idea that we’re being hired to accompany women on red carpets and date nights is all part of the cover,” he insisted, claiming the men in his field often make out like bandits, in more ways than financially.

“Being a male escort is the biggest ego stroke that a man could ever want. How many men in this world can actually say, ‘Women pay to be with me?,’” boasted the chiseled, 6-foot-2 stud, known to some of his clients but his other alter ego, the leather-donning dominator, “The Punisher.”

“You get those bragging rights,” said Hayes, who, in the past, has pocketed upwards of $200,000 from one long-term client alone. “You’re getting money, cars, vacations, shopping sprees. You’re that guy.”

But beyond the glitz of gifts and trips lurked a darker side.

He became one of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s regular “freak-off” participants, and testified in graphic detail about his experiences.

Hayes also confessed that three decades of transactional dating and love-making harmed his personal life and left him with depression-induced erectile dysfunction. 

Also, testifying in Diddy’s 2025 racketeering and sex trafficking trial was the first time some family and friends were aware of his profession that he had taken pains to hide — and it compounded his struggles.

“Nobody knew,” Hayes told The Post of having to detail his raunchy deeds on a global platform. “Being exposed like that, in front of the entire world, took a mental toll.”

For Starr, 38, now at legal odds with Flippo, 49, the strife comes via the hefty claim she filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court last week. 

The 18-page complaint, fraught with accusations of betrayal and treachery, paints Starr, a NYC escort under the Cowboys4Angels agency (which also allegedly provided services for Diddy’s freak-offs), as a silver fox with “Svengali-like” powers, who allegedly coerced Flippo into buying out his $10 million contract with the company. 

Starr, however, alleged to The Post that he was subjected to “abuse” and “mistreatment” throughout their “wild f- -king ride” of a relationship. 

Hayes has had his share of wild rides during his three decades on the job, too. 

At the age of 24 in the early 2000s, after being dumped by his high school sweetheart, who’d begun working as a lady stripper, offering customers a little more than an innocent lap dance, Hayes ditched his job as a kindergarten teacher to savor the spoils of sex work. 

“I came home one day and told my mom, ‘I’m quitting my job and becoming a stripper,’”  laughed Hayes, recalling his now-late mother’s less-than-amused reaction to the vocational swing. “I loved working with the kids. But after that bad breakup, I needed an ego boost.”

“Stripping was my gateway into escorting,”he revealed. “Once you begin selling sexuality, you’re gonna get propositioned for sex. Stripping gets you in front of clients.”

By age 27, the hottie-for-hire was “tripling” his former teacher’s salary, raking in six figures, annually. 

But the fruits of his lewd labors weren’t always so sweet. 

“Once I was butt naked with a woman and her husband, who didn’t know she’d hired me, walked into the room,” Hayes remembered with a chuckle. “He was much smaller than me. He wasn’t an intimidating guy. But he was so angry.”

“He came charging at me like a WWF wrestler, but he couldn’t grab a hold of me because I was covered in baby oil,” Hayes howled. “We were tussling, but he kept slipping off. The guy finally got so disgusted, yelled, ‘Just get out of here!.’ So I left.”

But several of Hayes’ more uncomfortable experiences were no laughing matter. 

“I strictly escort for women, but I’ve had a lot of men hire me to have sex with their wives or girlfriends,” he said, noting a recent boom in “cuckolding” fetishes — men watching their partners have sex with another guy — over the past 10 years. 

“Men have tried to partake in the action, get involved [sexually] while I’m with their partners. But I’m not comfortable with that,” said Hayes.

“I’ve had to be careful about declining a request or interaction that crosses my boundaries.”

Hayes tells The Post that Diddy, 56 — who frequently paid him for tawdry trysts with former girlfriend Cassie Ventura, 40, from 2012 through 2015 — was not one of the gents who got too close for comfort. 

But the repeat offenses from other fellas, coupled with the pangs of having to forfeit his lifelong dreams, such as pursuing a career in basketball, educating underprivileged youth and fathering a family of his own, began to weigh on Hayes. 

“I remember waking up and, not necessarily thinking of myself as a piece of meat, but really considering all the things I’d sacrificed for this line of work,” he said.

The internal crisis intensified upon learning that — in echoes of the Starr case — his then-girlfriend, a client who ultimately divorced her husband to become his paramour, had cheated on him with another male escort. 

It was a blow that sent Hayes spiraling into despair, triggering a series of mental health issues, as well as his inability to perform sexually.   

“It hit me so hard,” he groaned. “I was done.”

In 2021, Hayes turned to a specialist, whom he hails the “Michael Jordan of penis implants in New York City,” to insert the pricey device that’s since restored his manhood to factory-fresh functioning. 

Hayes even lauds his new and improved member as “immaculate” on Instagram, likening it to a posh Porsche 911.  

The escort, now an author and mental health advocate, prides himself on helping other men in the industry navigate the twists and turns of professional sex work. 

“Helping men find the tools needed in escorting, the bedroom or just life in general, really makes me feel good,” said Hayes, founder of Hard Reset, a platform aimed at building “complete, confident and capable men.”

“Giving back in this way makes me feel like everything I’ve experienced as an escort, all the things I’ve had to overcome and sacrifice, was all worth it,” Hayes said. “It was all for a greater purpose.”