What an interesting thread!
The focus of my sexuality has moved through pick-ups and relationships for the first years of my out life to the highly erotic club scene and "circuit" to strip clubs and now to m4m massage (porn has always had some role in my sex life). I haven't really moved on to escorts yet, but I hope to explore that experience someday. Each stage has been deeply rewarding but also complicated. I'm pretty Freudian about this: after the liquid perfection of life in the womb, humans are on a search for a return to that complete, safe, satisfying experience of merging with another person. It's not fully achievable, of course (my mother wouldn't have it! (plus I've grown a bit)), but all those different phases gave me intense moments of connection with another man and of blissful release from the "vale of sorrows" of ours.
All of these phases had their expenses--love DEFINITELY ain't free--so I have to use the same economic calculations about massage that I used in my other sexual pursuits. And even the emotional dimensions: it's easy to say that transactional sexual encounters like with strippers, escorts, or erotic masseurs aren't "real," but tricks and even boyfriends/husbands aren't simple emotionally either. We should all attend to our purses and our hearts.
The bottom line for me is that life is not easy; there is no solution to horniness or loneliness; rich emotional and sexual experiences are to be found in all kinds of places and all kinds of conditions. Right now for me "massage is life."