Derek is the first proper therapist I’ve ever met with. My last encounter with a mental health “professional” was with an unlicensed life coach who masqueraded as a therapist. She left me so traumatized it took me most of the last decade to get back on the couch again. Derek and I have been working together for a few months. When we first met, I was ready to shop around like everyone tells you to do—especially because he was a white man and I was sure I wanted my therapist to be more demographically aligned with me in some way; queer, some kind of ambitious woman, melanated. However, after three sessions, I realized I appreciated how little we had in common.

The gap between mine and Derek’s lived experiences was useful. I wasn’t able to lean on the assumption he could relate to aspects of my life in the way I might have if he was queer or a woman of color. The gap forced me to explain everything in my life plainly and explicitly—no shorthand. 

At first, I honestly just liked the feeling of paying a man $30 every week to let me be as insane and unhinged as possible, letting loose every unfiltered thought about myself, my week, and my relationships. I was revealing to him the part of me I’m embarrassed to show anywhere else—the parts that are anxious, unhealed, obsessive, even cruel. I liked that I could let loose this uglier me, and he didn’t flinch or recede. Instead, he asked questions, took notes, and challenged me without judgment. When we related to each other, when he understood me, it felt affirming, that those parts of me, the desires that feel juvenile and immature, the parts that feel wounded by loved ones, were real, human.

For the first couple of sessions, I mostly talked to Derek about my relatively shallow week-to-week drama. I liked being honest with Derek, but I still felt too embarrassed to say sentences that started with phrases such as, “I feel like it’s been this way my whole life…” Even if not wanting to dig into my past meant I was wasting my money, I didn’t really care. I liked the dynamic we were building. I like spending my money on other people. 

When I still lived in Las Vegas, I once told a friend I had subscribed to an OnlyFans creator. She was aghast and confused. She didn’t understand why I would pay someone for nudes? My friend was a sexy young blonde woman who, like many women my age in Las Vegas, me included, relied on sex work for extra income. She didn’t understand why I would pay for OnlyFans content when I could just use my charisma and beauty to get what I wanted, like she did. If I wanted nudes to jerk off to or get someone to fuck me, I didn’t need to pay for it (the implied parenthetical in her shock was: unlike the losers who pay me for nudes, who pay me for a fuck). 

At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure why I didn’t just go out and get this for free either, but I knew I liked the feeling of patronizing someone, the warm glow of sending someone a couple dollars a month. I liked being let inside a secret place most of the public could not see. I liked that my access to this space didn’t rely on my character, my effort, or on trying to create some sort of rapport with someone. Maybe I liked that I didn’t need to go out and earn this connection with pure gumption and charm. I liked that I could robotically sling shawarma at Halal Guys in a schlubby uniform and a dead face and later spend my customers’ obligatory tip money on some hot guy on my phone who would dance for me.

I’ve continued patronizing adult content creators over the years in a myriad of ways –on different fansites, through digital tip jars, whatever the internet would let you get away with at that current moment. About a year ago, I became obsessed with a nobody who got very little screen time on a cheap reality dating show full of other nobodies. Justin was tall, he had dark hair, olive skin, green eyes, and a sardonic sense of humor. He was often shirtless and had gorgeous abs. After the show ended, I followed him on Instagram, desperate for more of his beauty. He leveraged the attention he got from the show, attention that would be inaccurate to call “fame,” into a couple of small pieces of sponsored content—one for sparkling water, another for cotton basics. Justin moved to LA after the show and attended influencer parties, recorded comedic takes on TikTok—and started an OnlyFans account. 

I was one of Justin’s first subscribers.

A few weeks into his OnlyFans career, he started doing livestreams. The livestreams were formatted as a kind of horny question-and-answer game. He would answer questions from his followers: Have you ever fucked someone in public? When did you lose your virginity? Sometimes, he’d get a chaste question, which I found endearing, something like what’s your favorite movie? Then, he’d get increasingly naked depending on what stretch goals were met. I missed his first few shows. But one week, he scheduled a livestream on a Thursday night where I wasn’t really doing anything and decided to join because I was hungry to see him in a more intimate and immediate setting.

I entered early and felt embarrassed by how few people were in the livestream. There were just six of us watching. It felt painfully awkward, like arriving at a party before anyone gets there. I asked a couple of questions I can’t really remember, some sexy lowballs that I might use at a dinner with strangers when I feel awkward. 

What have you been reading lately? When was the last time you had sex? 

I threw a couple of digital dollars at him, inspiring a couple of other viewers to send in small donations, which he responded to with excitement and energy. After 15 minutes, the audience had grown to 60. Most of those people were silent lurkers with anonymous names, but at least ten of us were active participants that he would shout out by name. “Thanks BB, you’re the best” he said at least twice after I tipped him, and I was glad to have randomly picked a pseudonym that also sounded like a cutesy nickname for a lover. I liked hearing him call me baby.

He had set a stretch goal: he would strip all the way down to his tiny white briefs and get in the shower while he talked to us if we donated some large cumulative sum. I can’t remember the exact goal but it might have been somewhere around $1,000. Halfway through the hour-long show, the stretch goal still seemed far away. Personally, I think seeing sexy people get wet is incredibly hot and hoped we’d accomplish it together, wishing some rich fuck in the audience would cough it up for the rest of us. Regardless of the tips, the livestream would end at the hour mark, so the longer we took to get there, the less time he would spend in the shower.

Time was ticking down, and he warned us, half-tauntingly and half-begging, that he would have to go soon, but he reassured us he was excited to get in the shower. He egged some of us on by username, the people who’d already tipped $20, $30, or $50 dollars to the cause.

Another user said it was “up to us”—the donors Justin named—to get to the goal. Someone dropped $100 all at once and dared the rest of us to match. I could see that Justin was visibly excited, his tone of voice more riled up and fiery. Someone else donated $150. Another donated $75. I could see that the attention and the money had an effect on him. I wondered if he hadn’t expected to make this much, if this was some perfunctory livestream as part of the contract he made with his management company, and if he had accidentally stumbled onto something real, just like I had. 

I watched the minutes click down, and the other users sending other excited messages pop up below his green eyes and tan skin. He smiled at us, he pulled his briefs down to show us more of his muscly lower abdomen and his dark shock of pubic hair. I’d already sent $50 in tips and felt a stomach lurching feeling that I couldn’t afford to spend money on some digital lap dance like this – or at the very least, it wouldn’t be financially wise. But, I wanted to see him, the dark intellectual from the reality dating show get in the shower and thank me by name – or at least by my pseudonym. 

The other users were aroused and angry, wanting the rest of the audience to chip in for the private show. I gave in to the pressure and paid enough to reach the goal, another $125. I felt sick, excited, and aroused. My apartment had grown dark, the only light emanated from my screen, this window into his cheap, millennial gray bathroom. It was like tunnel vision in reverse, a halo effect. 

After Justin ended the show, I laid on my floor, aglow with euphoria and the thrill of participating in something taboo. I checked my bank account to stare at the numbers and feel the negative space between my balance and the money I sent Justin. I felt I had lost something—yes the money, but also that the game with Justin was over. When the bland messages I guessed some ghost writer crafted for him started to fill my inbox again, the illusion of our connection was shattered and I felt we had reverted back into our parasocial dynamic — a connection that never felt particularly strong. My obsession with Justin faded. I suppose I finally got what I wanted from him this whole time. He had given me access to a part of him that felt like it was hidden on the Netflix show and on his Instagram. He’d given me some kind of real connection I wish I could have had with the sketch of a person I saw on TV.

When I was younger, I wondered what it felt like to have money. To me, it always seemed like having money meant having freedom, agency. As I got older, even when I was barely making it with minimum-wage food service jobs and shitty content marketing office gigs, I liked spending my pocket money, using it to get what I wanted. It used to be cheap $20 dresses, which felt expensive to me at the time, or $50 meals, scraping out the bottom of my checking account until it would dip below zero. The small price of living an unshackled life.

Now, I have marginally more money. I’m not just exercising my freedom through buying dirty clothes from the thrift store or a nice-ish dinner at a restaurant. I can afford the services of sex workers and medical professionals, too..

With Justin, the money got me closer to what previously felt completely unavailable to me; I got to see a more awkward, vulnerable, naked side of him. With my therapist, giving him my money and insurance in exchange for his time, sensitivity, and professional insight into my neuroses feels delicious. There’s a concrete equity in these relationships that is refreshingly clear-cut. I like that the only thing I have to bring to my relationships with my therapist and these amateur pornstars is money and a desire for that money to create some sort of connection between us. 

In real life, I value effort and work in every aspect of my relationships—I like putting out the best version of myself, well-dressed, made up, eager to help or entertain. I like being of service to the people I love. But maybe, the desperate part at the center of me only believes that I’ve convinced people to stay in friendships and relationships with me through this effort, through this sustained performance. That if they knew what I was really like, they wouldn’t want to stick around. With Derek and Justin, with the tap of my debit card, our scales are balanced and I feel liberated. Because of this monetary exchange, I feel I can be truly unfiltered and selfish in these connections without guilt. 

My sessions with Derek happen very early in the morning, too early to swap my glasses for contacts or to change out of my comfy house clothes. I sit on my shag carpet and speak into my laptop, confessing my anxiety spirals about an authoritarian government kidnapping me, about petty grievances that I feel guilty for feeling, and worries that the people I love don’t love me back. When I first enter our sessions, my webcam feeds my reflection back to me, dull and grubby, before I turn off Self-View. Just because I allow him to see how ugly I am, every layer of strata from skin to spirit, doesn’t mean I have the ability to take it in all at once. 

When I watch Justin talk, semi-nude into his phone, I’m not even on camera. I’m sitting in the dark, masturbating on my bedroom floor. I send cringey, horny messages about my desire to see him naked. I hang onto his every word, no matter how shallow or boring they are—letting an unfiltered horniness guide my conversation with him. 

The distance, the partition of our screen protects me from having to be a perfect version of myself. It’s like a mask, or a veil – one I’m wearing to hide from my own gaze. There was one week where Derek seemed distant during our session, less present than usual. A co-dependent urge in me to worry about him rose up, I wanted to ask if he was okay. Instead, I blabbered on about my week and problems. Which, I guess, is what I paid for. The money makes me feel like I don’t have to bring anything else to these relationships. I’ve put my weight in and these men provide services for me to rebalance the scales. Tit for tat and I’m free. 

Recently I was talking to a friend who suggested something else had happened in these stories: that I, too, was performing a role. Regardless of whether that $200 I sent to Justin was a lot of money in the grand scheme of things — I had money and I used it to compel someone into doing something for me. The same goes for Derek and the co-pay I send in every week. I’ve been paying two white or white-ish men, sons of the Empire, to heal me or to entertain me. I’m playing a masculine role with my money and my requests for servitude. Maybe, my friend suggested, I’m getting off on this inverse power dynamic where, one in which the transexual Filipina is in control—because she has the money. 

But, I don’t think I was looking to role-play or enact some reparative calibration to tip the grand scale of justice towards women or colonized people or whatever. It’s like I said earlier, what attracts me to these relationships is the simplicity of our dynamic: I pay a therapist to fix me, a pornstar to get me off, and they give me what I want.

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