Sympathy for the Devil

Lately, I have spent too much time thinking about paying women for intimacy.

Like I could, unironically, join an incel group.

Like I may actually be the only female victim of the male loneliness epidemic.

Like this is a slippery slope you couldn't see coming.

Only two or three years ago, I fantasized about what felt like a reasonable, attainable future.

At first, it was women I knew. I imagined that after years of easy acquaintance, we might awaken to sweet, passionate, romantic feelings. But always there was the creeping fear—because I know this path. It only leads to losing a friend and never gaining a lover.

Eventually, my thoughts smoldered down to something smaller: the idea that maybe, someday, in some far-off future, I might find a woman, a stranger, who liked me as much as I liked her.

That it would click—comfortably. Easily.

But that feels increasingly unlikely. How many rejections would I face until that mythic, unicorn woman appeared?

And now I find myself turning over thoughts of how to simply hire someone.

God, it would make everything so much easier!

Like hiring a masseuse, or a personal trainer, or a private chef.

The cleanness of the transaction. I’m so fucked in the head.

The waitress always takes your order. The maid always cleans your kitchen.

Easy. Comfortable. It clicks. That’s what I want.

It’s professional. It’s simple.

After all, haven’t I always preferred the easy, simple way—something that stays neatly within professional boundaries? Predictable professionalism.

Yes, a best friend will defend you. But a lawyer will also fight your case as long as the retainer is paid.

Probably even better than a friend would. Without hesitation.

With no chance of a “no.” 

No no's. A world without no's. I've longed for that for a long time.

I’m slipping into logic—such logical logic that it’s frightening.

Ideas like paying someone to never say no. 

Logic like fearing rejection so much that I might ignore a no.

It's terri-fucking-fying to sympathize with men this much.

But also, take a few moments, think about how much it would take per hour, for you to let me hold you. 

Brush your hair. Maybe make out. Sleep next to me in bed. How much per "I love you," slipping out of your mouth? I'm just taking estimates right now. 

No pressure.

How much would it cost for you to not say no to this?

Just something to think about.

Money Well Spent

“So… um… I’m sorry. This is my first time doing anything like this. What do I do?”

John expected to feel pathetic. He expected the woman—who looked far more average than he had imagined an escort would—to meet him with pity. Instead, she seemed genuinely understanding, even compassionate. She spoke the way a kindergarten teacher does when helping a child clean up: calm, patient, reassuring. It didn’t feel like he was paying her, or like she did this regularly—though both were true.

She glanced around the hotel room, then took his hand. “We can just sit on the couch for a bit. Talk. Figure out what you’d like.”

“Okay.” The word sounded foreign coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d said anything at all.

On the couch, she easily—comfortably—kept holding his hand, stroking his knee with the other.

“It’s normal to feel nervous your first time, John.”

“Look, I… uh… I’ve had sex before. But…” He shifted slightly away from her and stared at the carpet, which seemed overly bright for a hotel room—orange with navy blue waves in some vintage 1960s throwback pattern. “I don’t want sex. If that’s, like, a thing you do.”

She gently guided his chin until he was looking at her again.

“What do you want, then, John?”

She keeps using my name. Was that protocol? Probably taught on day one of Escort 101: make it personal. Jesus. A john named John. Fucking cliché.

For months—no, years—he had needed this. He had explored every possible way to get it and failed. He couldn’t handle another rejection. His lungs would burst if he heard “no” one more time. His eyes would shrivel if he had to watch this through another brightly lit screen again. He needed the closest thing to the real deal he could get. Paying for it was the only way.

Some men went golfing. Some men went on cruises. Some men got massages. I am going to pay a woman to pretend to love me for a few hours. It is no different, he told himself.

“Aren’t these lights really bright?” was all he managed.

“We can dim them. Or turn them off. Would you feel more comfortable in the dark?”

“Um…” 

What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck do I want? 

“Maybe not dark. Just not so bright.”

“Jasmine”—almost certainly not her real name—turned on a small, round, orb-shaped lamp on the bedside table, then crossed the room to switch off the overhead light. “Is that better?”

It was. Not just better—almost romantic.

She returned to the loveseat, sat on her knees, and began lightly rubbing his shoulders. “Is this okay?”

He closed his eyes. 

I have to tell her what I want. I have to be bold for once in my life. I am here. I have already paid. What am I waiting for—her to read my mind like some psychic succubus?

“I just want to lie in the bed and have you hold me.”

“Held like a child or a lover?”

His chest tightened. His voice cracked, his eyes welled. 

Fuck. I need to get a grip.

“Like a childhood friend.”

“Slumber party vibes?" Her face seemed to light up with genuine excitement. "We can do that.”

Smiling, she moved to the bed, and lay on her side, patting the comforter—another aggressively vintage hotel choice, trying a little too hard to feel nostalgic for what John imagined was a hipster clientele, not a sad, lonely, middle-aged man. Not for men like him.

He paused, took slow, intentional breaths, hands braced on his knees. 

Get up, John. Do what you came here to do. 

Somehow he willed his body to stand and walk to the bed.

He lay down with his back to her. She wrapped one arm around his waist and smoothed his hair with the other. Her breath was warm and controlled against his neck. His shoulders loosened as her smaller frame spooned him from behind. The sheets smelled faintly of bleach—hotel-clean—but underneath it all was the soft scent of oranges. The combination was deeply comforting.

He couldn’t tell if ten minutes passed or an hour. Her steady strokes, the weight of her arm, the warmth and sound of her breathing behind him blurred time completely.

“It’s okay to cry,” she said softly. “Let it out, John.”

He became aware that his face—and the pillow beneath it—were soaked. He didn’t know when he’d started crying. She didn’t make a big deal of it. She only held him tighter, wiped his tears, stroked his cheek, murmured "It's okay" a few more times.

He had known, deep down, that this, the crying, would happen. But now that it was happening, he wanted to hear her voice again. Hear her say his name in meaningless sentences—empty pleasantries, conversations that went nowhere and meant nothing. Conversations with no pressure, where he didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing. 

“Is your perfume citrus?”

Jesus, John. Her job was probably a parade of confidence and heat, of practiced desire and performance. Any other guy would have her gargling spunk in her mouth before swallowing with a wink. But I am crying and asking what perfume she is wearing. Pathetic.

“I’m actually not wearing any,” she said. “A lot of guys don’t like it. You know…” She hesitated, like she was about to reveal something too personal.

“What?”

She sighed, smiling into his shoulder. “A lot of guys don’t like to go back to their wives with perfume on them.”

Of course. She didn’t want to ruin the illusion—that this wasn’t just a job. But this was just a job for her. Most guys, most clients, had someone waiting for them at home. John hadn't considered this because he was going home to nothing. 

“Oh. That makes sense, Jasmine." He paused before added the pseudonym as an after thought.

At least the brief conversation distracted him long enough for the tears to stop.

“It does smell kind of… fruity in here, though, right?”

What the fuck, man. 

She hugged him tightly, then sat up. “I can’t get anything past you, John!” With a sweet pat on his arm, she added, “I have a couple oranges in my bag. Let me peel one for us.”

“Okay.”

Of course my escort experience has turned into snack time. Something she will laugh about later. $400 to peel an orange! Easy money!

He rolled over to watch her pull an orange from her tote bag. With her polished thumbnail, she peeled it in one long spiral and dropped the rind into the trash. The bright, sharp scent filled the room. John scooted to the edge of the bed, feet planted on the carpet, which now seemed almost pleasant. 

Jasmine—still probably not her real name—sat beside him, hip to hip, elbow to elbow. Her bare feet dangled above the floor. He hadn’t noticed when she’d taken off her shoes, but it felt like permission to kick off his own. She handed him a segment. He ate it as she took one for herself. Back and forth, they finished the orange in silence.

The sweetness felt hopeful. When was the last time he’d eaten an orange like this? Not since childhood, probably.

“John…” She paused, touched his hand with her sticky fingers. “I’m really enjoying being with you. This is nice. A nice change for me.”

Maybe she said that to everyone. Still, he nodded. It felt true. 

“Do you… usually feed clients an orange?”

She smiled. “Are you asking if you’re special?”

“No—no, no, no—”

“Well,” she said gently, “you’re different. This is different.”

Was this real or an act? John didn’t know and didn’t care anymore.

She lay back down and patted the space beside her. This time, he faced her. They stared at each other, his hands clutching hers against his chest, like she might float away if he didn’t keep her tethered.

Some men went golfing. Some men went on cruises. Some men got massages. He paid a woman to love him for a few hours. 

It was no different.

It was money well spent.

He would do it again.

Are you hurt?
Not in a way I didn't want.

It’s okay to wake up angry and hate what you loved just yesterday. Write about it and then move on.

She has accepted that she probably needs to be on an antidepressant—at least for a little while. Not because there’s some chemical imbalance in her body, but because her life, as it stands, is depressing.

She doesn’t know what’s sadder: that her life is so painfully lonely, or that she knows it could be better and is unwilling to change. There’s a mountain on the other side. It isn’t insurmountable—it’s just not worth it. Would be at least a year till the dust settled. Maybe longer. Not worth the price. The effort. The time. The destruction. Not for her, when she made all the choices to be here and everyone else would pay for her to get out.

She has grown to hate marriage more than anything else in this world. She’s been married fifteen years to two men, so at this point she knows a little something about marriage—at least about hers. It is the closest thing she knows to a vampire draining the blood from your body until you die, then letting you come to. What’s worse is that you welcome it. You still worry if he’s happy, if he has enough, if dinner is right. Whatever you want, dear. Even as it drains you of your life force, exploiting every drop of love and compassion you carry, you only think of ways to give more.

Everything marriage claims to provide, it failed to provide for her. She was lonelier in marriage. She had less help and less support. Less touch, less compassion, less love. Even boyfriends—much as she loathed them—were willing to hold her, pat her head, hug her, kiss her… even if it was just in hopes of nutting. It was a means to an end for them, but the end was a worthwhile price for her to get the means.

Making out for an hour could do more for her than 6 months of therapy and 50 mg of whatever the doctor would prescribe. But it was a moot point when it wouldn't happen. Couldn't happen even if she begged.

Something about being legally and financially bound to her makes her repulsive. Why did they even propose to begin with? She fucking hates them for ever asking. She hates herself more for saying yes, for believing they would make good on the bullshit promises that babbled out of their lying mouths. That she had ever hoped she would somehow make this work.

It feels like divorce should be the answer, but then it feels like admitting she wasted a decade in this marriage. And she put in those ten years because she knew he was old and would die. He is still old. He will still die. And, selfishly, she wants to be legally bound to him when it happens, because she doesn’t want to struggle financially ever again. Not like before him. Surely she could pack her stupid need and want for passion and romance into a steel, soundproof box for a few more years—if only to be financially stable enough not to worry about money.

It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs twisted through a funhouse mirror. You have to fulfill the base needs first: the security of food, water, shelter, warmth—not just yesterday and today, but for a lifetime. Never holding your breath with worry as you swipe a debit card. Buying the five-dollar bread you like. Never waiting for payday. Never living in constant struggle. Not like her mother.

Yes, even Maslow says to take care of physiological needs before stupid fucking love-and-belonging needs. She tells herself she’s making the right choice.

It just hurts like a motherfucker right now.

Perhaps she just needs to take a warm bath.

Take a pill—something to smooth the edges, to correct what life itself won’t.

Drink a tea.

Read her horoscope.

It’s just the planets aligning weirdly, amplifying the depression today. Next week will be better. It’s written in the stars.

It's just one bad day.

It’s okay to wake up angry and hate what you loved just yesterday. Write about it and then move on.

Good Faith, Good Wife

“We can simplify life from this moment forth. There is only one path to walk, one decision to make in every instance, and all our burdens will be lifted, all our anxieties released. We can decide to act in good faith. We can be silent for a moment with ourselves and let our inner guide direct our behavior, our words, our thoughts.” 

    I am exactly one day older than Hilary Duff, whose new album came out today. It’s a little easier to be successful when your parents start your career before you even hit puberty. She has also been married twice. We are both remarried divorcees. Celebrities—they’re just like us! I suppose we can’t be successful at everything, even with a team of publicists and a stylist whose job is to make everything you do look intentional.

    Yesterday at work, during a phone call, I apologized for how long a task was taking. It wasn’t my delay. It was approvals. Endless, ceremonial approvals. I’ve worked for over a decade in universities—a Kafkaesque hellscape—and I have never seen more bureaucratic red tape, slower queues, or more ornamental back-and-forth than here.

    The accented woman’s voice on the line said, calmly, “I’m not surprised. You’ll have to manage your expectations. It’s very slow here. It won’t be like any other place you’ve worked before.”

    She said it the way my doctor suggests watching what I eat. Ma’am, I assure you, I see everything I eat. I have working eyes.

    Manage my expectations. I’ve heard that before—usually right before something deeply disappointing happens. I’m not sure how to manage my expectations any more than I already do. I expect nothing. I expect never to get what I want. I expect just barely enough to survive. I expect the future to be no better than today, but with more emails.

    I hold on to facts like there are women out there being beaten to death and at least that’s not me. Small facts. Administrative facts. Proof of life in the absence of hope. I cling to them like a string tied to a helium balloon.  I cling to them with the belief that if I grip tightly enough, double knot, they won’t slip away. I am white-knuckled.

    But maybe they’re right. Maybe I expect too much out of life. Maybe my expectations are wildly unrealistic—like hoping a committee will reach a decision before my uterus shrivels up and I am too old to achieve an orgasm.

    Apparently, I thrive in this environment. I spent years constructing routines, structure, guidelines, boundaries. I don’t regret it. I needed the bumpers. Without them, I bowled gutter ball after gutter ball. Chaos makes me dizzy and sick. When my grip loosens even a little, I spiral.

    But now my comfort zone has tightened into a straitjacket. There is no room to move forward, backward, left, or right. Fill out a form about it. Don’t worry—you’ll receive an automated email once it finishes review:

“Someday, you could be loved in a way you’ve never been loved before. But it’s a process. Please manage your expectations and have good faith it might happen before you die."

    You can’t remove it all in one night, tempting as that may be. There is no dramatic escape montage. No backpack, no train hopping, no jaunty folk song. Change happens centimeter by centimeter, hour by hour. The next right thing is baby steps—each one documented and filed.

    Running away with a little hobo sack tied to the end of a pole is a child’s dream. A cartoon solution. There’s no running away from yourself. Anywhere I’d go, I’d already be there—building another prison I’d learn to hate in a few years, complete with color-coded calendars, strong opinions about fonts, and aggressively important Post-it notes.

    Ultimately, it’s not my expectations that betray me, but the patterns I’ve repeated my whole life: the hope that some singular, external thing might arrive and fix everything at once. When really, it’s a slow, internal, multi-step process. Like waiting on twenty approvers so one small task can move forward. I apologize for the delay. Please bear with me another moment.

    Even Hilary Duff sings sad fucking songs and gets divorced.

    There’s no easy way out. No escaping humanity. Just micro-adjustments. Acting in good faith toward something better—whatever better turns out to be. Probably managed expectations. Possibly even less. Ideally, silence.

Be buried with an epitaph like, Beloved Wife.

Though Hilary Duff and I both know that would only apply to the second marriage.

Lunar New Year

Today, 2/17/2026, marks the start of a Fire Horse Year. I only know this because for the past three months, every phone call with my white-bread friend has included some variation of, “Did you know we are entering a Fire Horse year?” Then, about two weeks ago, social media decided I needed a full-on Fire Horse brainwashing. Honestly, aside from knowing I was born in a Rabbit year and that my mom might be a Rat, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the Chinese lunar calendar that I didn’t read on a red-ink-on-white-paper Chinese buffet placemat. Why so many buffets use the same placemat is clearly some sociological phenomenon—probably a combination of “culturally relevant” and “cheap enough to order in bulk.”

And yet, here we are. A new moon in Aquarius. Lunar new year ushering in a Fire Horse Year. An eclipse. Astrologically, shouldn’t today be… fireworks? Maybe a parade? A small miracle? Nope. Beginnings usually look like making soup, going to work, folding laundry, washing your face, then reading before bed. Beginnings look like absolutely nothing dramatic at all. At least that's what my day looks like today.

Do you ever hear voices in your head? I do. Not the creepy ones from psychological thriller movies—just the ones that read your thoughts aloud like a tiny audiobook narrator. Today, as I read a short story I wrote, the voice said, “I could be a writer.” For about three seconds, I thought, “Wow, that’s a bold claim for February 17th.” Then I laughed. Of course I could be a writer—I literally just read something I wrote. I’m already a writer. 

Beginnings sneak up on you like that. Like a friend clinging to the lunar new year to drag herself out of depression. Like the infinite parade of social media prophets insisting that today—this exact calendar day—everything will be different. But really… we already had it in us. Fire Horse Year or no Fire Horse Year. Beginnings aren’t beginnings. They’re just the same old soup, reheated, with a side of cosmic sweet and sour sauce.

The Student Body

    Within thirty minutes of talking to Jaymie, I knew more about her than she knew about herself. I had met many women like her over the years, most often in a bar just like this one—ground floor of a mid-level hotel, the kind where men wore button-up shirts and chinos but no one wore a suit.  Jaymie described herself and her life in terms of absence: what she hadn’t had, hadn’t experienced, hadn’t done. She had never been outside this city, never had a passport, never held a job other than secretary at her father’s car dealership, never married.

    I had slept with many women like that, and it was comforting to know I could give them an exciting night—something they could keep, revisit, turn over in their minds for years. For me, it was routine: meet someone attractive in a city I was visiting for work. For them, it was once in a lifetime.

Her wide, curious eyes moved over my face, then dropped to my drink.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A martini. Haven’t you had one?”
She shook her head, smiling. “No.”

    Of course not. When would she have? While stapling sales reports for her father? Drinking with the same friends she’d had since high school, all of them circling the same few zip codes? I doubted she’d ever seen a palm tree in person. Probably never been on a plane. I wondered if she could even drive—certainly not a stick shift. She wouldn’t know what to do with my Porsche back home, parked beside my wife’s practical SUV, the one used to shuttle kids from soccer to ballet to school and back again.

    There was something irresistible about that kind of woman—sheltered, impressed by the smallest details, eager to be shown things. She didn’t have to be beautiful. What mattered was she wouldn’t question me. I could tell her anything. I could say martinis originated in Rome, subsidized by the Vatican in the seventeenth century, and she would believe it. She might repeat it someday, recounting the most exciting night of her life: meeting a man in a hotel bar and ending up in his penthouse suite. She would carry the lie without ever suspecting it was one.

“Do you know how martinis were invented?” I asked.
Her face lit up. “No. How?”

_____________________________________________________

    Jessica waited until the man beside her fell asleep. What had he said his name was? Jason? Jeremy? It didn’t matter. It probably wasn’t real. Jaymie wasn’t her name, after all.

    Once he started snoring, she slipped out of bed and gathered her clothes. She glanced around the room and smiled. He was so full of shit—from calling this deluxe room a penthouse to fabricating the history of martinis. He truly seemed to believe she’d never had one before. They were in Milwaukee, not some isolated farming commune.  

    She had certainly preferred other cities, but this year’s International Research Psychology Conference was held here. At least it wasn’t snowing.

    She’d attended just enough sessions to be seen, to shake hands, to ensure her colleagues knew she’d shown up—without getting trapped in Dr. Molorov’s presentation on adolescent vaping typologies or the panel on alcohol and intimate partner violence. The abstracts alone were exhausting. Years of funding, decades of expertise, all circling truths anyone with eyes already knew.

    Conferences looked good on her CV, but they had little to do with the bulk of her work: teaching six sections of Psych 101. Freshmen who didn’t want to be there and business majors who thought one psychology class would turn them into master manipulators. No, Jeremy—it just meant you might vaguely remember that someone once trained pigeons to play ping pong. Oh. That was his name. Jeremy.

    As the elevator descended, she felt a flicker of satisfaction. The sex hadn’t been good, but that wasn’t the point. What she enjoyed was the ease of it—how readily he accepted the version of her he wanted. The act always revealed the same thing: how many men assumed women were sheltered, waiting to be instructed. With a little more time, she probably could have convinced him she couldn’t drive, boil an egg, or open a PDF. He wanted to believe her lies.

    Back in her own room, she showered and dressed. She took the wedding ring from her purse and slid it back onto her finger. She should text her husband.

Long day at the conference, babe. Lots of networking. Think I found a potential collaborator for my next project. Love you. Headed to bed.

He replied immediately: a thumbs-up, a heart.

    She lay down, already dreading the flight home, but ready to be back home in Miami. Before sleeping, she answered a few emails—most earned a copied response directing students to the syllabus. In the morning, she would present her own research, which, if she were honest, mattered no more than most of what surrounded it. Years of studies, grants, students cycled through the lab, all to move understanding forward by the smallest degree.

She turned off the light.
Tomorrow, she would stand, unsure, at a podium, but speak with authority.
Tonight, she had played dumb—and it had worked exactly as expected.