Page 34 of Let's Kiss and Tell

“I would literally just go to dinner with these guys. Most ofthem were older men, maybe in their fifties to seventies. We’d go to a nice restaurant, I’d talk to them. Sometimes I’d go back to their house or their hotel. We’d just talk some more or watch a movie. One time I did a whole two-thousand-piece puzzle with a guy until two in the morning.”

“Was it always men?” I follow up.

“As a sugar baby, yes.” Christina takes a sip of her drink. “As an escort, I’ve been with men and women.”

“Did you find that being a sugar baby was enough to pay your bills?”

“Oh, yeah,” Christina laughs. “What other job do you know pays a minimum five hundred dollars an hour to just hang out?”

“And what do you charge as an escort?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars an hour.”

I do my best to maintain my poker face. “And you have no problem finding clients willing to pay that much an hour?”

“You’d be surprised what people do to feel loved.”

“Is that what you’d call what you do?” I ask. “Making people feel…loved?”

Christina smiles. “Idon’t call it anything. I have services: oral, cosplay, dirty talk, just going to dinner. I’ll even sit there and read a book to you naked if you want. I do whatever someone wants me to, and however it makesthemfeel is on them.”

“I see.” I adjust my glasses. “Do you ever have any repeat clients?”

“Oh, tons.” Christina waves a hand. “Repeat clients are my main source of income. Some of them even see me as their life partner.”

I lean in. “How so?”

“Well, I mean think about it. If you’re an eighty-year-old man, chances are you’re not going to find a new girlfriend at the senior home. So, I visit once a week, spend time with them, and eventhough I’m out living my life after that afternoon is over, that’s the highlight of their week. To them, I’m all they have.”

This brings me to my next question in her story.

“And some of those people have left you their inheritance,” I say like a statement instead of a question.

“Yes.”

I pull up a file in my mind from memory. “Instead of their own family members in some cases?”

“Correct.”

“And you don’t feel any…guilt when that happens?”

“Not at all.” Christina says this like the insinuation is absurd. “Some of the men I’m with…their children never visit them. They stuff them in a home so they never have to deal with them. They’re likeobjects,used goods…property.I’mthe one that listens to their stories day in and day out. I make them laugh, I sometimes suck their wrinkly-ass balls. I thinkI’mthe most entitled to whatever they have left.”

Maybe Christina has a point. But it’s not my decision to dictate whether her actions are valid or not.

“Some people may call that being taken advantage of,” I say in the most non-accusatory tone possible.

“Well, they can go fuck themselves.”

“Objectively,” I start, “do you see this line of work as exploitative?”

Christina takes another sip of her drink and sets it on the table.

“What people don’t understand is that I don’t seek my clients out, they seekmeout. These are people who already know what I do and they know what they’re doing. I don’t have clients who are mentally unstable and every client I have signs a contract. It’s a mutual agreement. That’s why most of my clients’ familiescan’tsue me. Because everyone knew what they were getting themselves into.”

My gaze falls to my notepad and words that I scribbled the other day stare back at me.

How do I feel?