If I Wanted A Sugar Daddy

Thanks to a run of spectacularly bad luck and ill-fated circumstances that left me in a state of financial ruin, forcing me to kill my ego and appeal to strangers for support, I've been informed by men on the internet that this must all be an elaborate scheme to land a sugar daddy.

Let me be clear:
If I wanted a sugar daddy,
I’d have one.

If I wanted to suck dick for rent money, I could open my DMs, secure a stipend, and be out of town by this weekend. But the assumption that I want that—that me being honest about my financial struggles must mean I'm trying to turn a crisis into a financial arrangement— enrages me.

I know how I come across. I know I look like someone who grew up with money because I did. I didn’t know it until I was older, when my peers noticed my father’s Porsche or found out I “lived above 19th street.” I didn’t know it because my parents made me work for everything I wanted. I don’t remember a time in my life I wasn’t doing dishes, and if it wasn’t Christmas, my birthday, or back to school shopping to replace my busted Converse, I had better done enough chores to buy that shit myself.

I wasn’t handed a life. I was handed rules and expectations; rules I could never follow and expectations I could never meet because they changed without warning along with my parents’ moods. Dad had a bad round of golf? The kitchen counter had to be fucking flawless otherwise I was “lazy and good for nothing but bad grades” (I got a D in math once). Mom had a bad… day? I guess? I don’t really know but I do know I was regularly grounded for not folding the laundry correctly. (I eventually started hiding piles of towels in my closet because I didn’t want to fold them… you can imagine how well that worked out.)

Money had to be earned.
And love had to be earned.
Both could be revoked at any time.
And were.

My parents eventually lost the money.
And never figured out how to love.

So while I didn’t come from nothing,
I did move to Los Angeles with nothing.

And I didn’t ask for help.
From anyone.
Ever.

Asking for help in my house was a sign of weakness, and all forms of “support” came with an unspoken IOU that would be inevitably pulled out of fucking thin air and thrown in your face, with interest. Like the time my father mailed me a birthday card in my late-twenties saying his gift was “forgiving” me for the money he paid to have my car fixed when I was a teenager.

When you grow up like that,
you don’t ask for help.
You survive at all costs.

Until you can’t. Until there is no choice but to put aside ego and pride. To face your fears and push beyond learned behaviors. To surrender the image you built the world to see, and reconcile the mirage you’ve continuously painted in your mind with reality.

Then, you finally ask for help.

And god damn does it suck:
being humbled by
the pistil & mortar of life,
left with nothing
but your granulated soul,
which thankfully,
is all you really need.

So, yeah, when… people*
have tried to frame
my recent vulnerability as a tactic
to try to “secure a sugar daddy,”
I’m deeply fucking offended.

(*men, duh, it’s always men)

It tells me they don't see the years behind me. They don't see the weight I've carried. They don't respect my work, or the fact that I'm still fucking here. Still showing up. Still trying. When it would be so much easier to give up—and give over.

Because uhhh, I’d love a sugar daddy. Who wouldn’t love someone to slide into their life with soft hands and a Black Card, saying, “Don’t worry babe, I’ve got you”? Y’all. No one can act like they don’t want to relax right now. In this economy?!!! Imagine just making sure the dogs got back from their afternoon walk then $600 worth of Erewhon arrives at the door and your main concern is, “OMG how am I gonna get all these groceries put away when the hairdresser that comes to the fucking house to spruce up my layers every five weeks got here early?!”

I don’t have to imagine because that happened to me. I’ve lived that kind of ridiculous comfort. And it was not transactional; it was rooted in real love (at least it was, at some point). I never expected $20 carrot cake slices or stacks of Chanel bags when I met this man. They wouldn’t have mattered. I fell for him because he was smart, charismatic, insanely talented. Because we could talk niche Exotica music, mid-century modern architects, classic films. Because we’d laugh together until our stomachs hurt. Because when he held me, it was the only time I had ever felt held. Because he pretended to understand all the NBA memes I’d send him even though he had no idea what I was talking about.

All of that, even out of love, came at a cost. Not in what was explicitly asked of me—I was already running the house, the staff, the schedule, the emotional temperature— but in what I stopped expecting of myself. I became so consumed by managing someone else’s life that I slowly abandoned my own.

And eventually, he remembered the version of me he got a crush on from Instagram: the bright, funny, bottle-chugging girl who didn’t need anything that had somehow achieved so much. He never saw what it took to be the WAG because I made sure he didn’t.

Suddenly,
all the work I made invisible,
made me invisible too.

I’ve lived that dream.
And the dream eventually ends,
whether you want it to or not.

So if there’s a dream
I’m going to believe in,
it’s me and this next life
I’m going to build for myself.

No rich man required.
(Applications still accepted.)

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All collages © Marissa A. Ross. Hand-cut, original compositions. Please do not reproduce without permission.