So this guy from Tinder offered me 7k a month to be his sugar baby. He said he envisioned a partnership of about 3-4 years. I thought about it and decided that it was a good deal. For one thing, he’s freaking cute. For another, it would save me the trouble of finding a guy to play with. Not only will he sleep with me regularly, he will also pay me!
The three people in my life who knew about his proposition were nonplussed. Ms Martyr helped me weigh the pros and cons and decided that it sounds safe enough. Ms Irreverent didn’t even bat an eye – apparently this isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve done and she has ceased to be surprised by anything I do anymore, which I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Lil Sis is just excited about how she will get to spend the extra income, certain that she’s the one getting paid while I did all the work.
I had no qualms about our arrangement from any moral standpoint; I’m single, he’s a divorcé, and if he has two other sugar babies besides, he’s completely open about it. All parties involved are adults, consenting, and we’re not hurting anyone. I was way more worried about the practical (i.e. physical health) side of things, but he and his harem get tested regularly, and all his ladies have implanon. Once we finalised our arrangment, he would pay for mine as well.
What a funny thing the idea of self is. Before him, it never occurred to me that I could be playing the sugar game. Cause, you know, the way I look, the way I talk, the way I see things, just, my entire everything. In short, I don’t fit the quintessential sugar baby profile. When he approached me, although he admitted that he was approaching ladies on Tinder randomly, what a confidence boost it was. That I could be a career woman and a pampered sugar baby.
For all that he was so very enticing, I still approached him with caution. After all, he made it plenty clear that if I joined his harem, he expects me to not only join in foursomes with him the fellow sugar babies, but that once in a while he wants me to be the main course in threesomes with a good buddy, with whom he will occassionally swap sugar babies. This means that to be safe, I’ll need to see blood test results of his entire harem and his buddy’s, too.
Was I okay with such a proposition? Well, it’s a little shocking, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit excited by it. Two cute men to play with and 84k a year. My head was definitely turned. In the middle of everything I sent my car for a scheduled service and they told me I should think about replacing the car’s suspension system. It would cost around 4k. I just went, when he gives me money for the first month, I’ll have money to pay for that and 3k besides. Yes it is a seductive lifestyle and I was thoroughly seduced. Which is, I don’t know if shocking would be the right word for it, but I just mean – even I, snug little miss who never wanted for anything, was a complete goner, can you imagine how such a proposition would feel to a girl in desperate need of money?
Because he was never going to control me with money. Oh, based on our texts, you could see that he has a little bit of a controlling streak. Like, a spoiled brat who’s used to getting his way, you know. Which is understandable – that’s probably why he keeps sugar babies instead of having more conventional relationships with egalitarian power structures. Anyway, I don’t need his money. In fact it was some source of concern. Like, wouldn’t income tax find it suspicious if I suddenly have this influx in my monthly income? I even asked him how the other ladies managed their money, but he said he had no idea. In the end I rationalised that there isn’t an actual law barring your rich boyfriend from giving you money if he feels like it, right? So if I ever get audited, that’s what I was going to tell them.
Anyway, if it’s not for the money, then what did I want with him? Good question, that. And I did think about it. Because what I actually want is romance. The good, old, lifelong kind. The commitment kind. The being silly and crazy together but each other’s steady rock and safe haven when it comes to big life questions kind. I’m never going to get that with him. He is expressly paying girls to avoid any emotional entanglements. I did ask if he would indulge me once in a while when I want cuddles and to wake up next to him, and he said he had no objections to that. Thinking back, however, that was very early on and he would have humoured any request I had.
Since I was aware of this, why am I still signing up to this arrangement? Well, for one thing, this guy who’s suppose to embark on that romance with me, I don’t know where the hell he is. I don’t even know if he’s out there. Mr Sugar Daddy, on the other hand, is here. Now. And he sounds reasonable enough, and fun enough, and he looks like that, for God’s sake. And anyway it’s not like I’m getting married to him. If he’s free to break our arrangement at any time, well, so am I. If Mr Romance stumbles into my life, I’ll just break it off with Mr Sugar Daddy, no biggie. And for another, perhaps this is just my fancy, but I imagine that sugar babies have such glamorous lifestyles. I wanna know what that feels like, strolling into some high-end place on the arms of a rich, powerful man. So what if everyone knows that you’re on his arms because you’re screwing him? In fact, wouldn’t that be so very thrilling?
But all these were just lovely fantasy. After about two weeks of talking, we decided to meet last night. He would bring his harem’s blood test results and the money, and if I was happy with everything, I’d follow him home. So I excitedly packed because it would be a smarter option to just spend the night, and off I went to the rendezvous point. I had asked to meet somewhere neutral first instead of heading directly to his place, just in case, you know. Throughout all this, I couldn’t wait until everything is finalised so I could tell Mr Atheist that I had bagged myself a sugar daddy. (This point needs unpacking, but this post is not the time nor place. I just noted it because I don’t want to forget.)
Thank God I managed to bite my tongue and not say anything until things were properly decided. Because, in the end, Mr Sugar Daddy, he was a no-show. I waited for more than an hour just in case he was stuck in traffic somewhere, or what if he had got in a car accident (you can blame Love O2O for this level of husnuzon), or something. I did have his number so I gave him a couple of rings. The calls would not connect. But he had read my texts, but he didn’t respond to any of it.
It certainly did not feel good to be stood up by a prospective sugar daddy and having that feeling creep up slowly that you had been duped by a catfish. Thinking back, I had asked to video call once because he asked for a sexy picture but I was not comfortable sending it. I mean, no matter how stupid I get I’m still aware that if my nudes leaked I would get in a lot of trouble so that’s always where I draw the line. In fact I would tell matches that I might sleep with them but I would never send them nudes. Anyway, the point was he declined to have a video call because he had no voice due to covid. In retrospect, why would he need his voice if he wanted to see the proportions of a potential sugar baby, right?
Prior to that, I had once asked him for his Instagram and he said that it was hacked a year ago and he had not bothered to make a new one. In the wake of everything now, I’m thinking, the guy in the picture is the poor guy whose Instagram got hacked, and the hacker is the one posing as this prospective sugar daddy who had been texting me for about two weeks now. Poor Instagram guy. And poor me for falling for his sweet good looks.
In the future I will need to watch out for these red flags. No video call is one thing. No Instagram, two red flags ignored. But I also asked him for his payslip because I did wonder how much he was making if he could easily spend 21k a month on three sugar babies (and he has ambitions for a fourth, too, even going so far as to ask me if I had anyone to recommend), but he said “u dtg umah i tgk duit i je la” because “mcm i nk beli umah u buat” to which I responded, “You nak beli i. I nak decide i patut jual ke tidak. Lagi berharga dari rumah.” I’m actually proud of the wit of the response, but I’m not proud that I let the issue go. I should have insisted. A real sugar daddy would be eager to show off his wealth anyway.
Perhaps what should have really alerted me, a language teacher, was his speech. There are no two ways about it. His speech was so rempit that sometimes I had no idea what he was trying to say. Since he claims to be an MCKK boy, a UM graduate, and a Petronas geomatic specialist, it should have raised an eyebrow that his speech was so lowbrow. And yet, he seems to understand my English perfectly well, even if I couldn’t bring myself to repeat the words he would use in his response. So that’s really my bad. As I told Ms Martyr, I wouldn’t have tolerated his speech were he anyone else, but 7k a month would buy you some privileges. Apparently the mere promise is enough to purchase my gullibility as well.
The most mortifying thing about the whole incident is the walk of shame last night. When I slept with my two misters previously, I never had a walk of shame. I was proud of my choices (even if they all were stupid in their own ways). Last night, I had a very long walk of shame, from the long drive home to the literal long walk from the car park to my front door. I mean, there was no one to witness the walk, and even if they did none of them would be aware of what had transpired, but I did. I, who fancy myself level-headed, fell for the seductive promises of a catfish.
I know that in order to move on, we don’t need to know people’s reasons for doing things to us. But still, I’m morbidly curious about his objectives. What did he get out of catfishing me like that? For me to waste a few gallons of gas? Perhaps he gets a kick when he thinks about me waiting there stupidly for him? He never asked for any money from me. He never even asked for my phone number or e-mail address. All he did get out of me were a few pictures (which I do shudder about when I think about what he would do with them), but all of them are innocent enough that they wouldn’t cause any irreparable damage. So I’m just really, really puzzled.
So there it is, my brief, 11-day career as a potential sugar baby. Did I enjoy the journey? I really did. It’s really quite something else to walk in a crowd thinking how no one suspects that this nonchalant-looking person is just so very naughty actually. It made work a little more exciting too, thinking that I would have it all – work, my hiking world, and this secret existence as a kept woman – and wouldn’t my life be just so very hectic but all the more exciting? But yeah, that’s one bubble burst and I’m back to my ordinary life. For now at least.
OtakMonyet 