The Sugar Bowl

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My first association with the phrase ‘sugar baby’ was the storytime-style videos on YouTube of girls discussing their experiences with the Seeking Arrangements app, finding a sugar daddy, and how to dress to look expensive. Imagining a life like that was a pretty engaging thought experiment. Beyond a brief foray to download the Seeking Arrangements app and start a conversation with a random man, only to uninstall it the same evening, I didn't come across the term again more than a few times for the next several years. 

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When I first met with a client outside of the strip club years later, it was a one-off event and I didn't plan to repeat it. There is more context as to why I took him up on his offer to meet at a hotel after my shift, but it can be summarized by the fact that his discovery of his wife's recent infidelity and subsequent divorce was due to his now ex-wife cheating on him with a close friend of mine, who was 13 years younger than her. We had spoken only virtually, he lived out of town, he had just gotten a new job and was moving to another state, and he had come to the strip club essentially to meet and say goodbye. With the help of a not insignificant dose of benzodiazepines, I felt like I was in a bubble, floating in a dream as I approached the hotel later that night. I didn't feel like I was actually there, or rather like I was watching myself from somewhere behind me. He was very kind, easygoing, and not unattractive. He paid for a half hour of lap dances, for the same rate as in the club, and then after chatting for a while, I departed. When I think back on the experience, I remember most how dream-like it felt to be meeting him there under those circumstances. Despite this, it felt surprisingly natural. 

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About a year later, during my daytime shifts at the club, a well-dressed man in his early 40s would stop by once every few weeks to get a few lap dances and chat for about ten minutes before leaving. He started coming more frequently in the next several months, and gradually this became weekly lap dances, and then weekly half-hour champagne rooms and lots of talking at the club. Eventually, he asked me to go to dinner with him. I agreed, and late that spring, we met on a weekday evening and talked over Russian appetizers and earl-grey-infused vodka. After dinner, we walked back to his car, sat on the sidewalk and chatted as I smoked a joint, he felt me up, paid me $600, and we talked of making plans again soon. I had never been paid for a date like that. 

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Months later, it had become customary for us to meet for lunch or coffee about once a week, and he communicated that he hoped to contract me for lap dances outside of the club. He offered the same rate as in the club plus a generous tip, and thereafter, our lunch dates sometimes had the addition of lap dances. He always paid me for my time regardless of what we did that day. The agenda was based mostly on the whims of the day. Through the hours he had gotten to know me very well, and vice versa. There were weeks when the payments I received from him for meeting for lunch, or in his office, surpassed my in-club earnings. 

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There were deeper implications to what I was doing; my client was married and created a Google Voice account to hide our messages. He was allowed to go to the strip club, but only with friends. I pondered the morality of this frequently, and in general from a monogamous standpoint it worried me. After months of meeting at restaurants, his office, and the park near his office, he asked me to meet him at a hotel. In between moments of feeling like I was doing something wrong, I felt moments of euphoria. I did not feel like I was putting on a character but rather that I was just hanging out. 

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When we would meet at hotels, he would pay me a flat fee which was just over 70% of my rent. After some time of accepting these dates, it was clear that my income from these extracurricular activities exceeded my strip club earnings. I had found the ‘sugar bowl’ and was swimming in it. When we were together it felt easy and natural, but there was frequent discussion of the end of 

things and my inability to provide that which he desired, which was full-service work. He once left his phone in the bushes, to be retrieved at a later time, so that if his wife checked the location-tracking app enabled on their phones, it wouldn't show where we had gone. I began to wonder how long it would last. 

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It's late summer now, and I sit in the passenger seat as he drives us from the park to a bookstore I wanted to go to; my playlist on the speakers; moon roof open; big, green leaves blowing softly; promises of a beautiful autumn to come. I've seen the hotel rooms and spontaneous shoe purchases and fancy plates at restaurants and stacks of hundred dollar bills promised by those girls' videos. When I scroll the twitter account of a dancer-turned-escort in New York City, I wonder what it might be like to acquiesce to my client’s demands. I have trouble imagining this in any other iteration. Maybe it feels like a dream because I am hanging on by the tips of my fingernails to something ephemeral. I wish it would last forever.