We all know what it’s like; six weeks until student loan day, the last £70 in our overdrafts, a fourty-day countdown of desperation with regards to drinking (who needs food?)…and we still need tickets home for Easter. We need money. And not just any money; fast and relatively easy money! *Cue an advert for Seeking Arrangement; a popular Sugar Daddy/Baby site. Bringing people together for “Mutually beneficial relationships”*. I’ve heard about this; casually date an older rich man and he showers you in gifts and money… Real money! Apparently, this place is a haven for men that want to casually meet up, take you shopping and then take you for dinner. And he’ll pay you £500 for the pleasure of it. But before you all start swearing in to becoming Sugar Babies and resigning yourself to a new kind of “Daddy”, I did a little digging to see if it’s as easy (money) as it seems.
So I signed up, logged in, and immediately noticed that the number of older men on here is significantly more than your average 20-30 something Joe. I had a look around and noticed a few phrases that seem to be commonplace: “mutually beneficial”, “naughty times”, “hotel meets”, “intimate times” and “sexually adventurous” to name a few… Now I’m not being funny, but it’s starting to sound like there is more to do on the “Baby” end of the deal than suspected. I needed to actually chat with a Sugar Daddy though, so I found a picture that was reasonable and messaged him. Let’s call him Dave. He wanted to meet once a month for dates with a negotiable budget offered. Dave got back to me and was straight to the point; he wanted to meet once a month for a couple of hours at the Hotel du Vin and that I was to turn up looking hot in a dress and expensive lingerie and we would… You get it. He would give me £500 for each meeting. He happened to be in the hotel now, and if I popped round and gave him head he’d give me £300. I politely declined and continued on my quest. During this time three men had viewed my profile and messaged me.
We’ll call the next Daddy Jeremy. Jeremy is a lecturer in Oxford and wanted to pay my train ticket to Oxford once a week for me to go and have lunch with him in his marital home and… You guessed it. “Intimate times”. Jeremy was 64 and he didn’t waste time, nor did he require us to ‘get to know each other’. Regardless of his fair offer of £1500 a month, I again declined. The next guy had no picture and no information on his profile other than “high budget.” The message read: “I like to live on the edge. I don’t do messaging back and forth, but I will be…” Then followed the address of a Bristol hotel and room number. “Come over at 2 and we can see where this goes.” Needless to say, I didn’t. The third person to view my profile had the username “Bootlicker.” Let’s just leave it there.
Over the next few days I chatted with a few men just to get a feel for the process, but I didn’t get very far. They are very up front about arrangements and once they realised that they weren’t getting sex from me, communications ended. I suppose I found out what we already knew; this is about sex. No one is giving out free money without getting some McLuvin in return, which of course makes the money not free money, but technically prostiution. So, please, no matter how broke you are, or how badly you need Bestival tickets or how big your phone bill is; you do not need to do this. No one should have to resort to selling their bodies in order to make money.
Photo sources: