Be aggressive. Be patient. Set your expectations high, but not too high. It was December 2015. I was twenty-four years old, sitting in the dressing room of Penthouse, one of Denver’s top strip clubs, while scrolling through “luxury dating” blogs on seekingarrangments.com. A site where sugar daddies (rich men) and sugar babies (beautiful, willing women) could meet in a transparent space. This was the site’s advice for how an aspiring baby could make her online profile stand out from the crowd. Just learning about the process was exhausting. How many emails did these “income-cleared” daddies click through before picking a girl? How many messages did these women have to send to snag one (compensated) date? How was a baby supposed to stand out with just a few photos and a tight word limit? 

Thankfully, I wasn’t on the site to make a profile. I was searching for insider answers to what sex with a sugar daddy might actually be like. That, or a listicle of how to disassociate during the sex. I had gone to Reddit first, and skimmed through vague responses to the question, What’s it like to sleep with your SD? One person wrote, Your body is his wonderland! Another said, You are someone he can explore his fantasies with. This made me queasy. “Please God,” I said to my little screen. “Let John’s fantasies be vanilla—with sprinkles at most.”

John was a man that I’d met six weeks earlier, while dancing here at Penthouse. He had arrived on a Wednesday with the dinner crowd, and I’d caught him noticing me topless on stage. After my set, I approached his table—an electric candle and beer before him—and took a seat. There was something immediately different about John: more human, or perhaps just less misogynistic than other patrons, but it was a nice surprise when he didn’t ask me a single question about my pussy. Instead, we contemplated who we might be in an alternative universe. “I’m a writer with health insurance,” I told him. “I’m someone cooler,” John said, hiding his face behind his hands. I found the honesty of it disarming. An unnoticed hour or so passed. But eventually, John looked at his watch and said, “Oh, it’s late. I should probably get out of here.”

I had been too engaged in our conversation to try and lure John into the lap dance room, but as he slipped his arms into his jacket sleeves, I made a last-minute attempt at earning some cash. “Would you be interested in some private time before you leave?” 

 “I think I’d rather be surprised,” he said. Then, in one swift movement, he whipped his business card and four hundred dollars—the price of twelve lap dances—from his wallet, leaving it all on the table. “Text me if you want to have dinner.” He paused, looked at me gamely, and added, “I’ll compensate you for your time.” 

Admittedly, the whole “I’d rather be surprised” comment was a little concerning, but still I texted. Hoping that if John would pay me $400 to talk for an hour at Penthouse, he might pay me more to chat over a meal. And a week later he did. $500 cash, plus the fanciest pasta I’d ever eaten. For dessert, John even let me order my own chocolate lava cake. When we said goodbye at the valet, I expected John to lean in for a kiss, but he gave me a brisk hug, and sent me on my way with an offer for dinner next week. “Just dinner?” I asked. “Just dinner,” he said. And just dinner it was. 

Each time I’d met with John over the following month, I’d been on high alert for signs that a sexual request was coming, but he was very prudish. For example: one evening, while sweeping shreds of pita through a saucer of hummus, our knuckles accidentally grazed. John’s hand jolted back like I’d electrocuted him, yelling, “Oops! Sorry!” The following week, John chauffeured me to REI to buy me extravagant new snow boots, and when I asked if he enjoyed hiking, he said, “I don’t do much other than work.” I studied him at the cash register. John radiated zero sexual energy. I even positioned my hand near John’s on the checkout counter, as a test, and he left it there unbothered. Looking back, his remark at the strip club—the one implying he wanted to be surprised (presumably when he saw my vagina?)—felt like something he’d said on a whim, in a burst of uncharacteristic courage. I thought I might’ve actually found myself a sugar daddy in dire need of friendship.

But alas, after my fifth lucrative and sexless meal with John things changed.

It was a Tuesday night, and I had arrived home to my mom’s two-bedroom apartment, where I lived with my sister and my eight-year-old nephew, with paper carryout bags dangling from my fingers. This was a perk of our meetings: John suggesting that I order to-go meals for my family. Two entrees and two desserts. “As a thank you,” he’d said, never clarifying for what. My family had been dispersed across the apartment’s eight hundred square feet, but after they’d heard my keys jingling in the door, they ran to greet me in the kitchen. “What’d you get us?” they yelled over one another. “What’d you get us?” 

My mom scooched behind me to shuffle through our utensil drawer, which contained a sea of cellophane-wrapped plasticware. She divvied out forks for the entrees and sporks for dessert. Each dish was packaged in thick-bottomed black plastic and secured with clear lids, which we would upcycle as Tupperware for the next several years. 

“Roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy,” I announced.

A hand tugged it out of my grip. Before it even hit the counter, the lid was off and all three forks ravaged the meat.

“What else, what else?” my sister, Christina, said with a full mouth. 

My hand plunged into the bag and reappeared with another container. I felt like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat. My family’s admiring oohs and ahhs added to the effect. 

“Chicken strips and french fries. I had to order this off the kid’s menu because they didn’t have an adult version,” I said. “They also didn’t include any ketchup.”

“That’s okay. We have some,” my nephew, Carlos, said, skipping to the living room/my bedroom where McDonald’s sauce packets were strewn across the coffee table. “Mommy took me after school.” He motioned towards the greasy bag that, five hours later, still hadn’t made its way into the trash can. 

Although pricier, I suspected the food I was supplying from my dates was not much healthier than Mickey D’s, so I made a small suggestion over the sounds of their feast: “Hey! Let’s treat my dinners with John like an indulgence for all of us, once a week! What do you say?”

My sister rolled her eyes. “We don’t all wanna be skinny like you, bitch.” 

My mom, a Type-2 diabetic, snapped her fingers appreciatively, slam-poetry style, then asked, “What’d you bring for dessert?” 

“Tiramisu and gingerbread toffee cake.”

“Nasty,” my sister said. 

I scowled. “Maybe you should get your own sugar daddy and have him buy us desserts.”

“Damn, relax. I’m just saying, there were probably better options on the menu.”

“How would you know? You’ve never been to a five-star restaurant in your life.”

“I’ll have some of both,” my nephew said, shoving in. Tirami-what? Toffee who? If sugar was the primary ingredient, it was a yes for him. Carlos sampled the first bite of the cake from his fingertips. “Yum!”

I raised an eyebrow at my sister.  

After they’d finished, I told them to thank John. This was our ritual. I demanded that my family show gratitude, so the Universe knew that we wanted the takeout to continue. 

“Thank you, John!” my mom and sister said.

“Extra big thank you, John!” my nephew said, a whipped cream mustache on his upper lip. “For the best cake I’ve ever tasted.”

I slipped back into my mom’s room and uncovered my cash safe, which I hid on her closet shelf in case of intruders. I’d purchased the case at Wal-Mart for my tips when I was hired at Penthouse a few months earlier. Technically, I could deposit petty sums of cash into my bank account without ringing any alarm bells, but I had relished the ceremony of flattening out crumpled singles and watching the pile grow. Now I relished slipping in five crisp one hundred-dollar bills—the amount John paid me per dinner—into the allocated slot. Plus, by keeping my money here, my mom, terminally broke, was free to take a bill whenever she needed. We were reliant on the honesty policy. Thus far she’d been modest, a twenty here, a five there. Always a promise to repay. I’d shake my head and tell her to forget it. My cash flow was consistent now. It felt good to help in even micro ways. I unfolded the white envelope John gave me and arranged the bills into their designated tray. I closed the lid, then fished a sugary crumble from between my back molars. It tasted expensive. Then I sent John a message. My family is eating dinner now. They love it. <3

He texted back: I’m so glad I can make you and your loved ones happy. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. You’re so much fun! 🙂

Thank you for hanging out! I had a great time! I wrote, which was a bit of an overstatement. I had an alright time, would’ve been more apt.

My phone pinged again a few minutes later.

I really, really love spending time with you <3 If you are having a nice time and want to continue hanging out with me (I hope you do) then I would like something in return from you…

There was no imaginative way to describe it: my heart sank. 

It would’ve been dishonest to say I hadn’t known, or at least greatly suspected, that John was seeking sex, but after five weeks without so much as a peck, sharing embarrassing facts about my life just to make him laugh, and him even once asking if I “considered us friends,” a part of me, microscopic and stupid, but like a plankton in charge of all the gears, believed that this request might never come. In a final bid that I was wrong, that John was not this typical, I wrote: What would you like from me in return?

John’s next text was written in innuendos: I would like to get to first base, second base, and third base, but the more often we do home runs, the more gifts you will get.

The decisive moment had finally arrived: Did I want to be John’s sugar baby?

 No, “want” was the wrong word. Did I want to sleep with John? No. But could I tolerate sex in exchange for money, which was to say the mundane things that make life remarkably better, like: faithfully knowing I could fill my gas tank, or afford stitches if I sliced a finger, or book a dental appointment, which was growing increasingly urgent? Probably. There was also the fact that this opportunity had arrived at my doorstep like a stork-delivered daddy. So, did I want to be John’s sugar baby? No. But it feel like the thing I was meant to do. Absolutely. 

As much as I wanted to hide this from the rest of the world—lest I be shamed into un-dateable, not to be confused with un-fuckable, exile—I didn’t want to be alone in it. I had to tell my family. 

In the living room, my mom and Christina had planted themselves on the couch, each scrolling a thumb up their cell screens. My mom was sharing motivational memes on Facebook, while my sister was taking a Buzzfeed quiz about what kind of pizza she was (Cheese—classic). My nephew was belly-down on the floor, next to an array of colored pencils, sketching a jaguar. 

“Go to the back bedroom,” I told Carlos.

“Why?” he asked. 

“I need to have an adults-only conversation.”

His expression soured, but he collected his loose sheets of “art paper” that my mom snatched from her work printer. 

“Thank you,” I said, and patted his head as he tottered by. 

When the bedroom door shut, I turned to my mom and sister and said, “John won’t pay me to eat high-dollar noodles with him anymore. If I want to keep seeing him, I’ve got to…” I paused to pull out my phone and read directly from the screen. 

“Gifts is sugar lingo for money,” I told my mom. I didn’t need to explain the baseball references. 

A second message arrived, which I also read aloud: 

If you agree, you can quit Penthouse altogether. I’d pay you per meeting, and I’d be happy to still include nice dinners, just as long as we can cap the night off with a pleasure session. I shuddered, but persevered. I can match your weekly average from Penthouse 🙂 Just let me know the price. 

“What’s your weekly average?” my sister asked. 

“It fluctuates.” The best shift I’d ever had at Penthouse was when I met a guy who claimed to be Britney Spears’ ex-bodyguard, and I’d walked away with $900. The least I ever made was zero—though, taking house fees into consideration, this actually meant negative $60. “A good stripper makes something like $500 a shift,” I said. “Even more on a weekend.” 

“How much do you think John is willing to spend?” my mom asked. 

When I was eight years old, my dad announced to our family that he was sick of our life in Virginia, and wanted to move back to his home state, Colorado. Sounded great for him, but I knew this was a terrible mistake for the rest of us, as my mother’s family (my grandparents, her five siblings, and my sixteen cousins) all lived within a ten-mile radius of one another. I’d tried to talk some sense into her, “Mom, you need to divorce dad. Then we can stay here while he goes off to Denver,” My mother would hear none of it. She agreed to leave our life behind and move out to Colorado. I was a very intense child, and I chalked the decision up to weakness—completely ignoring the likelihood she had done it to be a good, selfless mother. Naïve and even cruel of me, the move concreted my conviction that my mom would never be in a position to parent me, as she hadn’t done what (I believed) was best for herself. Any time she’d tried to intervene in my bad behaviors—a questionable lover, poor school attendance, or my brief affair with shoplifting—I ignored her scolding. “I’ll figure it out,” I would say, and I always did. I never stayed in anything bad for too long, always came out the other side wiser, and, thus far, hadn’t ruined my life. We both understood that I was not asking her what I should do now, as much as I was telling her what I was going to do. So, when my mother said, “Start high and let John talk you down if it’s too much,” she was doing as much as I would have ever allowed her. 

I didn’t want to be too greedy so I texted him: Wow, you’re so generous! Well, I usually work three shifts a week, and on average, I’d walk with $1,200. 🙂 

When I looked up, my nephew’s forehead was peeking from around the corner. 

“Not sneaky,” I said. 

Carlos sighed and revealed himself, nude except for green briefs. He’d cut the elastic waistband at either hip, his own innovation to address the too-tight fit.

“Can I come out yet?”

“No,” I said. “Go back into the bedroom and put your headphones on. We’ll come get you when it’s clear.” 

“Why does everybody keep secrets from me?” Carlos asked, slinging his arms around.

“We’re not keeping secrets! We’re preserving your innocence!” I said. 

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!” 

“EXACTLY!” 

He crossed his arms and frowned at me. 

I shot him a look of defeat, “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” 

I understood his frustration. Back when I was Carlos’ age, I needed to know The Who, The What, and The How on the spot. But I’d learned the hard way that sometimes having the information was worse than going without. Once in elementary school, while hanging out at the Pizza Hut my mom worked at after school, I saw her 16-year-old coworker crying in the back. Later (after I repeatedly probed), my mom told me the girl had been crying because she was pregnant. I remember being horrified that the girl had had sex. Not just because she was 16, but because I was still impressionable and believed the social whispers: sex was meant for marriage. I felt afraid of her, like she’d committed a heinous crime, and for weeks after, I wouldn’t let her touch me. She’d ask to braid my hair or for a hug and I’d cower away. I imagined Carlos not wanting me near him if he knew what we were talking about, and felt gravely sad. “I’m sorry,” I said to Carlos, but he did not understand what I was apologizing for. 

“It’s fine,” Carlos said, then spun around on his heels.

Once Carlos was out of earshot, I eyed my mom and sister, saying, “Can you imagine if John says yes to $1,200? Earning consistent money without the risk of a shitty night?” 

“Oh, he’ll say yes,” my sister said. My mom bobbed her head in agreement. 

My phone buzzed. I read the message aloud: $1,200 sounds fair to me. 🙂 

Even as I felt myself barreling towards an exchange I didn’t want—John’s body colliding with mine—the text message contract felt like a golden rope being tossed into the pit of my existence. I imagined climbing my way into a parallel life. Financially secure. A reliable car. Debt free. Everything superior to the life I lived now. I felt relieved, but also queasy.

John texted once more. We can start slow for your comfort. Perhaps our next dinner can end with a first kiss? <3

So here I was—alone in the Penthouse dressing room on seekingarragnments.com. 

I read on. The website claimed that the average sugar baby was twenty-five years old and received $2,800 per month, which was a tad more than I’d pull dancing ten nights. For approximately two seconds I considered continuing to work at Penthouse and with John, but, unfortunately, being paid to gobble down chocolate lava cakes had killed any enthusiasm I had for stripping. I hadn’t sold a lap dance in weeks. 

The dressing room swing door flew open with a gust of 80s rock. My legs, propped up on the long makeup counter, went prickly from the bass. In the mirror, Portia’s reflection bobbed in sync with her high heel clicks until she plopped down a chair away from me, nodded and lit a Camel. Her exhale smelled half of cigarette smoke and half Victoria’s Secret body spray. It was intoxicating, sort of. 

It was meaningful to me that of all the girls that were on shift this night, Portia was the one beside me. 

A few weeks back, after a particularly lousy set, I barreled into the dressing room, and toddled to this very mirror, where two dancers, Kimmy and Quinn, were sat in plastic patio chairs, fixing their faces while considering how much money they’d need to bang a customer. 

“Portia made $10,000 in VIP,” Kimmy said. She had one falsie stuck to her eyelid and the other pinched between her fingertips like a birdwing. White glue lined the rim.

A lump sum of $10,000 sounded like the kind of exorbitant figure reserved for TV game shows. Too big to be true.

“No way. Off one dude?” Quinn asked. 

“Yeah, he was a Bronco or something.” Kimmy repeated it slowly, “ten thousand dollars. She had to carry the money out in a shoebox.”

I pictured Portia—skinny with fake tits and a pretty face—descending the VIP stairs while balancing a shoebox full of money. I could’ve toppled over with envy. “I’d sleep with anyone for ten thousand dollars,” I said, joining the conversation. 

“I’d let them film it for that much cash,” Kimmy said. Kimmy was tall and brunette. I watched her reflection in the mirror as she smoothed the second falsie, then blinked repeatedly to check that they were secure. 

“Bob told me he fucked a girl in VIP twenty years ago,” Quinn said. Bob was a regular. He came to the club a minimum of three days a week, and had apparently done so for the last two decades. I had hated him since I’d failed to sell him a double-girl dance with Quinn. Bob, white-haired, red-cheeked and round enough that he could’ve convinced any adult that he was Santa Claus, bought Quinn off the list, but told me that he’d “have to pass,” because he saw my thighs jiggling on stage.

After the dig, I’d carried myself into the back, tearful. Kimmy, who had been listening to a molecular biology lecture while getting ready for the night, paused the recording to run her acrylics over my bare shoulders. “Fuck these assholes,” Kimmy said, petting my hair. Given the context of the club, I couldn’t be too sure whether she was just being nice or if she truly cared about me—which was one reason Penthouse men could be duped broke. Reminded of the labor it took to pause, to read someone’s need, to fulfill that need, to fulfill that need when you don’t give a shit, I fought the urge to tip her. 

Now, I closed the Seeking Arrangements website on my phone and turned towards Portia. I wanted to ask her what sleeping with someone for money was like. She was the only real-life person I knew who ever (allegedly) had. My mind was pregnant with questions—What was the $10,000 sex like? Was it awful? Did you feel different afterwards? Were you sad? If so, how sad? Did you tell anyone about it? Do your friends still like you? Do you think anyone would ever date you again if they knew?—but I decided against it, not wanting Portia to know she’d been the subject of locker room gossip. I unlocked my phone and resumed scrolling.

Portia ashed her cigarette into the glass tray between us. Three butts—one yellow and two white—had been crushed in a bed of filmy debris. Each filter wrapped in a lipstick print. Portia inhaled. Her cigarette cherry crackled red, then dimmed again. 

“I will make six hundred dollars tonight,” Portia murmured to herself, the smoke still in her lungs. Her eyes were closed. Her eyelids sparkled with glitter. “I will make six hundred dollars tonight.” 

  I closed my eyes and tried to tap into her prayer with her. Portia made $600 dollars tonight. A yellow light appeared in my mind’s eye, and I believed that she would. 

I first began manifesting when I was seventeen years old myself. A friend introduced me to the concept after reading The Secret. “It’s called the Law of Attraction,” she told me. “You have to speak of what you want like you already have it. I’ll show you how. Let’s go to the mall.” I didn’t have a clue where she was going with it, but I wanted to feel the power, so once inside the mall, I followed her to a candy claw machine. My friend nodded her head, fished a few quarters from her purse, and said, “Tell the Universe the amount of candy you want, but say it like it’s already yours.” I’d played the machine before, and knew anyone could get five or six chocolates. “I have nineteen candy bars,” I said. 

“Close your eyes and envision it,” she said.

I stood there, joystick in my hand and pictured the claw grasping the candy.

“Do you see it?” she asked. 

“Yes,” I said. (I could.)

“Do you believe it is true?”

“Yes,” I said. (I wanted to.)

She pushed four quarters through the coin slot. The machine counted down from ten. It was all very dramatic.

I circled the claw around the tank, it plunged, clutched at the sea of sugar, and finally released its grip. We dropped to our knees, and counted the fun-sized Snickers and Twix one by one as I pulled them from the chute below. Nine-fucking-teen.

The DJ’s voice came over the PA system out in the main room of Penthouse. “Did he say Leyla or Lola?” I asked, finally opening my eyes.

Portia shrugged. “It sounds like he’s talking into a mitten. They oughta put a speaker back here.”

I stood in case they’d said my stage name, Lola. But before I left, I looked down at Portia. “You are going to make 600 dollars tonight.” And then I told myself that I would never see her again because I was going to kiss John and change my life. “Goodbye, Portia. This is my last night at Penthouse.” 

She smiled at me with the left side of her mouth, flattening her fingers in a lazy half-wave, as she ashed her cigarette onto the floor. “Thanks, Leyla. Goodbye. Good luck.”

◆

The night of the first kiss, I held an emergency meeting with my mom and sister in our living room. I considered looping my dad in on speakerphone, but my mom objected. “What good will your dad be?” she asked. “He’s probably a worse kisser than John.” 

I hadn’t called this meeting to discuss kissing techniques, but my mother took digs at my dad whenever she could. Twelve years after I’d first suggested it, my mother finally filed for divorce. It had taken my dad introducing Carlos to his mistress at Orange Julius. Afterward, Carlos paraded through the house, waving his smoothie in the air, screaming, “Grandma! Grandpa has a girlfriend!” He was four. I was twenty. Four years later, and my mom was still not over it. 

She couldn’t forgive my dad’s affair after she’d uprooted her whole life for him—something I was still holding against her. In self-help lingo, my mom was refusing responsibility for her own happiness. And hadn’t I been on the sidelines coaching her toward emancipation from the marriage? But every time I used the phrase, “victim mentality,” my mother crossed her arms and said, “I’d just like you to be on my side.”

I rolled my eyes. Not today. After a full day of brooding, I told them, I’d managed to convince myself that John might kill me—albeit accidentally, but still. Anyone willing to spend $1,200 on a smooch had to be starved for affection. I imagined John’s desperate aggression—like a Saint Bernard hurtling toward its owner, back from vacation. The shift in my mind was immediate. The second John asked for sex, he morphed from a lonely, innocent man into a threat. 

“What if,” I asked my mom and sister, “John doesn’t realize how hard he’s pressing into my face and suffocates me?”

“That won’t happen,” my mom assured me, squeezing my hand. 

“You’d faint before you died,” my sister added. “He’d notice that.” 

My mom walked me to the door and said, “When you kiss him, think of the money, and if you do faint, tell him to wave a stack of hundreds in front of your nose.” She laughed before she delivered the punchline. “The smell should wake you up.”

◆

As I drove away from the apartment, I watched the sun I’d known for twenty-four years set on my world, just as a new, menacing moon was dawning. If I had any sense, I would have talked to one of those counseling interns who worked on a sliding pay scale. A shrink could’ve diagnosed my death by kissing thoughts as anxiety, signed a script for Xanax, and given me a safe space to unload, but I didn’t trust even a professional secret keeper. Instead, I resolved to buy a few vodka shooters on my way to The Cheesecake Factory. 

John requested that our date take place at the downtown location. Though I’d never been to a Cheesecake Factory myself, I knew a girl who’d worked in the restaurant’s bakery five years before, and I had agonized for days about running into her on the date. Did Cheesecake Factory have high employee turnover? Maybe I could avoid the bakery altogether or—better yet—I could scope it out to see if she was on shift. If she was, I’d say hello and tell her I was meeting a business associate, which, technically, was the truth. 

When I arrived, I told the host that my party had already been seated. I sauntered over to the bakery and pretended to eye the cheesecakes. “That turtle looks yum!” I said to no one in particular. No one responded. All the employees were strangers. 

I retreated to a bathroom stall and dug around in my bag for the shooters. I was on a Deep Eddy kick, grapefruit for the time being, as the peach ones were too sweet and hurt my teeth. I shot one. Then another. I almost left after two, but, considering the carb-heavy meal I was about to consume, opened the third. It wasn’t until I left the restroom that I realized my mistake. Suddenly, I was a toddler, barely able to walk straight. The carpet was plush beneath my shoes. I felt as if I was treading water. I thought of a YouTube meditation video I liked, and fought to bring the awareness back into my body, but quickly became too aware of myself. My rings felt tight around my puffy-drunk fingers. My lips were numb. I recalled having a tongue, but where had it gone? Ah, there it was, hovering behind my decaying teeth. 

“Hi, sweetie.” The voice came from behind. I spun around to find John at a table for two. He stood to great me. My drunk brain whispered: He is dressed like a Google image search result for Bill Gates.

“Hi, there,” I said, then hugged him with a full body, locker room aggression.

John pressed his lips to my cheek, inhaled twice, and coughed. “So. How was your day?” he asked through clenched teeth. His words had the slightest undertone of: At what point did you decide to get absolutely tanked?

Unable to tell John that I’d needed liquid padding to soften our first kiss, I begged the Universe for a plausible day-drinking excuse. The plotline of a Bob’s Burgers episode, “Crawl Space” (where Bob gets stuck in his restaurant wall while repairing a leaky roof), was all that came to mind. “It’s been good. My friend, Bob—Bobby, was…stuck in his wall for a few days and just got out,” I said. 

 “Wow.”

“I know! Unbelievable, right? We had a drink to celebrate. I haven’t eaten much today, so it hit me hard.”

“Did you drive here?” John asked me.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t drunk when I got here.” 

He raised his eyebrows. 

“Because…” I stretched the uhhh for a few seconds. “I knew we were having dinner here, so I met up with him early to have our drink…here.” Bobby had already left, I said, so no, I could not introduce them. John stopped a passing waiter and asked her to bring bread, pronto. 

We took our seats. John looked like he was solving a Rubik’s Cube in his mind, trying to decide which question to ask first. How does someone get stuck in a wall? Was this man injured? Instead, he asked, “Is your friend Bobby someone I should be worried about?”  

“No,” I said, jarred by his question. This was not a real date. We were not exclusive. This was not romance! Spending time with John was now officially my job, contracted by text message, and sealed with payment. I supposed the work could include insincere reassurance. “Bobby has a wife,” I said. “Be…linda, and three kids. They’re all hilarious.”

John relaxed a little. He crossed his legs and leaned back. For the first time since we met, I thought: I do not like you. It was, in part, my lack of inhibition thanks to the vodka, but mostly it was the certainty of how the dinner would end. That those five weeks of generosity—the cash, the boots, the to-go orders for my family—were his ways of saying, I am a nice guy! I do good things! I don’t want anything from you except companionship! Which was, of course, a ruse. 

“You don’t mind being friends with people who have kids? Because I, uh,” John paused. “I have a couple kiddies.”

“That’s cool,” I said, pressing my fingernails into my palms. I found it odd that John had waited so long to tell me this, especially when I talked about my family all the time. Annoyed, I looked down at the table. A battery power candle flicked between us. From the right angle the flame looked real. I should buy some, I thought, then I remembered the money and perked up. “Do you have any pictures? Tell me more!”

John presented his leather wallet and showed me a professional photo of two boys and one girl, all of whom looked like replicas of him. When I told John this, he said, “That’s not good news for my kids.” 

“How old are they?” 

“Luke is thirteen, Stephen is fifteen. The girl, Elisa, is sixteen-and-a-half.”

I smiled and nodded myself into the spins while he told me about Elisa learning to drive and each child’s favorite hobby: golf, playing the harp, and ice hockey. I sipped water to give my liver a leg up as John told me that each child wanted to be a doctor or engineer. “They all like money,” he said. “They take after me.”

“Money is a good thing to like,” I said, spotting an opportunity to pry. Before I kissed John and quit Penthouse, I needed to follow the Reddit advice and confirm that he could afford an arrangement. “Do you make all your money from your job, or do you, like, gamble?” 

“No gambling,” he said. “I’m too careful with my money for that. The most I do is invest a little in high-risk stocks.” This set John off on an unintelligible ramble about investment strategies, but I’d gotten the information I needed. Not only did John have an impressive salary, but he also raked in cash from the stock market and flipping houses. 

Our waiter arrived with the basket of bread, and I nearly knocked it from her hand reaching for a roll. Had I been more mentally present, I would have been cautious of resembling a hot-dog-eating competitor, but as I was trying to avoid blacking out, I stuffed the whole thing into my mouth. “Thank you,” I said. 

The waiter smiled, tightly. “I’ll give you another minute to look at the menus.”

 “Back to your family,” I said, when she was out of earshot. “What about your kids’ mom? Why’d you get divorced?” Though, as soon as I asked, I realized John had never outright said this. “You are divorced, right?” 

“Oh, yes!” he said, nodding. “I’ve been divorced for ten years.”

“Do the kids live with you or their mom?”

“We split custody,” he explained. His ex-wife, Tricia, lived a three-minute drive from his house. The kids spent more time at John’s because it was more spacious and he was more likely to order takeout for dinner, but they saw their mother a few nights each week. 

When I asked why they divorced, John said, “I’m embarrassed to say,” while plucking at the corner of his cloth napkin. “I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole who only cares about one thing.”

My stomach dropped. Where had the man who was too scared to touch my hand at REI disappeared to? Had John been faking his shyness? Was he actually a pervert? A serial killer? Even Ted Bundy who was said to be charming. I once saw a clip of Bundy’s former coworker calling him a thoughtful man. Whenever he’d pour coffee for himself, she said, he’d often pour one for her too. I looked at John. Here was a man who would serve his coworkers coffee! “Sex?” 

“Cliché,” John said. “I know. It was a pretty major point of tension between us. She never, ever wanted to make love. I think she’s asexual.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening, then he whispered, “She doesn’t even masturbate.” 

“Tough,” I said, wishing I found the whole situation—a sexless marriage, and now a paid arrangement—pathetic, but I understood John’s pain. My most recent ex-girlfriend and I hadn’t slept together for months before our breakup. I would rise with stiff fingers from our bed each morning, a result of gripping onto the corner of the mattress—a sleeping position that prevented me rolling over and grazing her, such was her disinterest in my body. It’d left me feeling profoundly undesirable. Though, not down enough to pay $1,200 for a kiss. I considered sharing this with John, until it dawned on me that my long-awaited return to sex—after such a fraught sabbatical—would be with him. For cash. I worried my body might go into shock from reintroducing sex in such a way. Because there was a zero percent chance my body would be turned on, and a one hundred percent chance my body would feel violated. Worse yet, I hadn’t even slept with a cis-man since I was nineteen years old. The idea of penis-penetration pooled anxiety into my belly like wet concrete. I worried the sex would hurt. I worried the pain would make this deal ten times worse. I had an urge to scan the restaurant for a pretty face with a spark, a raised eyebrow, a smirk, to pull her from her table and beg her to fuck me in the bathroom, sure that any lick of chemistry would feel better than selling so much as a kiss to John. One girl caught my eye. She had brown hair past her shoulders. She was laughing with a group of friends. Drinking—by the looks of the miniature umbrella—some kind of “tropical” cocktail. The girl met my gaze, paused her laughing, then titled her head when I did not turn away. Please, I begged telepathically. Please. She narrowed her eyes meanly. 

“That was all a long time ago,” John said, waving his hand. “My ex-wife and I are great friends and great co-parents now. Whenever my whole family is out together, people always comment on how happy we are. We’re always laughing. I feel lucky the kids get along so well.”

“That’s how my family is too,” I told John. 

“Are your parents still married?” he asked.

“Oh no,” I said. Even before my dad’s new girlfriend showed up, my parents’ marriage had been full of holes. As eight-year-old Michelle had expected, the move to Colorado didn’t suit my mom. In Virginia, her life had been filled with family and friends and social events, but in the isolation of Aurora, she had only three things: my dad, us children, and fast food. That list dwindled even more as my dad skedaddled and I resisted my mom’s growing codependence, leaving my sister to take full advantage of it. As for the fast food, it didn’t take long for Sonic, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut to drive my mom deeper into debt. For years, she paid only the minimum payments, and the interest grew unruly. She managed to hide her spending from my dad by only purchasing edible items, but one day he stumbled upon a panty drawer full of her Target card statements. Her credit card debt was one reason my parents claimed irreconcilable differences. In spite of all this, I told John, my parents were still good friends. Seventy-five percent of the time.

“And the other twenty-five?” he asked.

“Their fighting is like the emotional equivalent of WWE wrestling. Stupid, but entertaining.”

◆

Halfway through a plate of fettuccine alfredo, I was able to make eye contact with John without seeing double. He took a bite of his herb-crusted salmon. I pronged a piece of steamed broccoli. It was still crisp when I sank my teeth into it. The stalk tasted of soil. 

“Growing up, we only ever ate canned vegetables,” I told John. “Our cabinets looked post-apocalyptic.” I went on, describing how, aside from a handful of Green Giant tins, we kept only four spices on deck: salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. Not even paprika! The freezer was usually livelier, as my family’s concept of cooking started with 1-inch slits in plastic film covers and ended with pushing start on the microwave. “I didn’t even know what asparagus was until I was twenty.”

“Does your family eat healthy now, too?” 

“They’re, um, still figuring it out.”

In the summer of 2014, when I turned 23, I converted to vegetarianism, and then forced my family to watch every health documentary on Netflix. During inspiring scenes of personal transformation—30-day vegans comparing their before-and-after cholesterol levels then vowing to exchange prescription meds for fruits and nuts—I asked if anyone was interested in swapping chicken tenders for tofu. The answer was a unanimous no. 

But last week, while rummaging through the kitchen, trying to piece together a decent breakfast from four types of sugar, an idea popped into my head: If I bought the groceries, my family had to eat healthier. That afternoon, I spent an unprecedented $200 at Sprouts. I unbagged a bundle of carrots with the green tops still attached—the first our household had ever seen—and added ‘nutritionist’ to the mental list of roles I played in my family. When my mom and nephew arrived home later, I told them I had a surprise. I covered my nephew’s eyes with my hands and guided him into the kitchen, but on the way, playfully bumped him into the wall. “You’re so dumb,” he said.

“You’re dumb,” I said. “You’re the one who ran into a wall.”

“Because you made me!” 

“Oh my God, Michelle. You’re arguing with a seven-year-old,” my mom said, opening the fridge before I could create suspense with a countdown.

“Ta-da!” I said.

“What are these?” my nephew asked, holding up a bag of brussels sprouts.

“They’re brussels sprouts.”

“Ew,” my mom said. They laughed like vegetables were a big, stupid joke.

 “I find your story inspiring,” John said. He told me this often. Usually when telling me how impressive it was that I had worked full-time while in college. Something he had never had to do, because his father paid for his degree and living expenses. Now, however, it was inspiring that I ate broccoli. 

“Thank you,” I said, slowly. I shoveled a forkful of pasta into my mouth. “Sometimes I can’t believe that my seventeen-year-old self, a kid who’d never tasted a fresh vegetable, had the wherewithal to figure out a FAFSA.” 

“You must have always been really smart,” John said.

“More like desperate,” I said. Everything I knew about responsible spending I’d learned from a fifth-grade lesson on balancing checkbooks and the many pages of “loan counseling” that FAFSA required me to click through before accepting the maximum offer of subsidized and unsubsidized awards. My student loan debt was currently near $35,000. “Of my whole family—mom’s and dad’s sides—I have thirteen aunts and uncles and about one hundred cousins, and only two ever made it to college,” I told John. “And both enrolled through the G.I. Bill. My whole family tree is clueless about this kind of stuff.”

“Sounds like you’ve never really felt taken care of.” John rubbed my arm with his forefinger, completely ignoring, or perhaps misunderstanding, my use of the term “clueless.” It wasn’t like my family wanted to be poor or uneducated, but upward mobility required a lot of resources we never had. “I’m so glad I can help you.” 

While I’d grown accustomed to the men at Penthouse treating me like a charity case, as if they were doing me the favor by watching my sets, and my grinding on their laps should have been tax deductible—it felt worse from John. I was no longer Lola, a dancer who could take these men’s cash and disappear into the night, shaking off their savior complex. I was Michelle, who had to sit before John and thank him over and over again for his generosity, and feed into his ego. Yes, you are helping me! Yes, you are doing something good! No, you are not self-involved! It took real effort to bite my lip and not snap at John’s condescension. You’re getting paid, I told myself. Be agreeable. I smiled, but I held the truth in my heart like a dagger, and finished his sentence for myself—“I’m so glad I can help you, now that you’ve agreed to fuck me.” 

◆

After dinner, John and I walked to a parking garage two blocks up. The air was frigid. I exhaled hard just to watch my hot breath disperse before me. A car honked, then honked again. I couldn’t figure out what they were tooting at. I watched my footsteps to discern whether or not I could walk in a straight line and determined that I could definitely pass a roadside test. John linked my fingers with his. We were each carrying brown paper bags for my family in our free hands. 

“Thanks for tonight,” I said, when we arrived at my 1992 Honda Accord. Paint was flaking off the trunk, so I picked at what I thought was a small chip, but which turned into a long strip that peeled off like a snake shed. Absolutely mortifying. 

“You should think about the upgrade I offered,” John said, referencing a time last week, post dinner, when he’d watched me top off the motor oil before heading home. “I could buy you a car like mine,” he said.

I had declined the car right away, not sure what clauses were attached, but when I got home, I googled the price of his 2015 BMW. $35,000—equal to my student loan debt. I did have a slight moment when, coated in the blue light of my phone while laying on my mother’s couch, I wondered if I should let John buy me the car, then sell it immediately and give the whole sum to Sallie Mae. “Really?” I asked now.  

“Really. We can discuss what would be a fair contract,” he said. “See me for at least two years, and the car is yours.” 

This ‘contract’ made me wonder if I, in fact, had the upper hand in this dynamic. Only a very lonely person would indenture someone into spending time with him for a set amount of years. I looked at John, chewed on the offer, and then—what I can only blame on my conditioned response to disappointing someone—felt overwhelming guilt. 

The night I looked up his BMW, I decided that I would not know John in two years. I would not know him as soon as I had enough money to forget him, which I’d calculated to be about a year from now. In the past, I’d survived on a fourteen-thousand-dollar salary. In order to have a similar budget, pay my remaining university fees, and crawl out of student loan debt, I would need $70,000. If I could go through with the sex, then I could change the trajectory of my life in exchange for sixty nights. And not even full nights, but hours. With the interest rates what they were, it would’ve taken me decades to pay off my debt working a degree-required career. Decades and insurmountable interest. “No, thanks,” I said, inevitably, trying to feign lightness. “I’m attached to my car.”

“When it breaks down, we’ll revisit this conversation,” John said definitively.

Motors roared through the garage. Tires squealed on pavement. Someone was showing off their speakers, but all I heard was bass. I thought of Penthouse and missed it. 

“I really enjoyed our romantic evening,” John said. I tensed at the sentiment. It was too suggestive that there wasn’t compensation involved. And wasn’t that an odd thing to do within the walls of our arrangement? I had sputtered plenty of white lies to keep John a secret as it was (why I was missing shifts at Penthouse, or where I’d gotten a new jacket from, etc.). It seemed like overkill to skirt around the truth with one another. Our liaison, as seeking arrangements put it, was based on transparency. I kept quiet. Reasoning that a part of sugaring was maintaining a fantasy that John understood was fraudulent. I smiled, then John asked, “Can I kiss you?” 

Alas, I’d arrived. 

I had the feeling of fastening into a roller coaster. The corporeal sensations of dread as the cart inches up and up, until there is nothing but air below, the view beyond, and the thought, Let me off the ride. I do not want to do this.

It wasn’t necessarily John that was the problem, but what this job meant for my relationship with myself. I lived in a world that saw my body, sex with my body specifically, as bartering gold. As much as I complained about dismantling patriarchal ideals, I sure did oblige when they benefitted me. I thought of Roxane Gay’s book, Bad Feminist, and, generously, likened myself to her.

John moved closer. I had to either back away now and return to the world I’d come from, or fall forward and hope that, on the other side of this small self-betrayal, I would land on greener pastures. I closed my eyes, leaned in, and puckered up. 

Three tense pecks. I felt the stubble of his shaven face. I had forgotten this feeling. It pricked my skin.

I waited for John to slip his tongue into my mouth, but it did not come. He released me from his arms and smiled. “That was so nice. You have such soft lips.” 

The kisses were so noninvasive that for the first time that night I felt hopeful, like I could do it. Like it’d be easy. John’s hand sank into his coat and reemerged with a bank envelope that contained $1,200. When he offered it to me, I tucked it into my own pocket. Full of resolve, I draped my arms around John’s neck and kissed him again. Still not with tongue, but with less rigidity. There were no fireworks, no butterflies. It was not special. It felt like planting my foot on the first rung of a ladder.

◆

By the time I arrived home, John had texted me. The kiss was so wonderful!! Thank you. Maybe next time we could have a homerun? I can’t help it. I’m not a horn dog, you’re just so sexy <3 

Let me off the ride, I thought. I do not want to do this. In a practiced technique to self-soothe, I spoke aloud to myself. “This isn’t sex I’m saying yes to, but an opportunity to pay off my student loan debt. This isn’t sex that I’m agreeing to, but enough cash to take care of my car. It isn’t sex that awaits me in the future, but an ability to help my mom.” 

A better life is ahead. That’s all I could think. I replied, sure. 

John responded immediately. He would rent a room at the Marriott after Christmas shopping. You can buy anything you’d like, he wrote. I’m feeling generous. 

I dragged myself up the apartment building steps to the second floor, trying to process what I’d just agreed to, but it was lost on me. 

When I opened the front door, my family clamored around me, grabbing the bags of take out, fighting over the Chicken Bellagio and Red Velvet Cheesecake. My mom and Christina wanted to know about the kiss, but they would ask later. During the slow lull of digestion. 

“Eh,” I would tell them with a shrug. “It was fine.”