Love in LA: Sugar Daddy Boasting and Bored Housewives, Part I
When I moved to California in 2016, I was reeling from family trauma and (therefore?) determined to satisfy a latent, dark curiosity by observing grotesqueness in a bid to discern the aura of sordid depravity that seemed to define sunny Los Angeles. I was especially fascinated by the rich coterie who can and do buy and sell others, somehow without the icky connotations of human trafficking. The impoverished and middle-class manipulators and narcissists I had already encountered during my life were more predictable in a way, all financially thwarted in their quest for believable grandiosity. They yanked on whatever levers of power their fingers could grasp, sure, but it was never enough to produce a truly absurd spectacle. I thought of it like Broadway versus community theatre: the smaller shows I'd seen often had more heart, while big-budget productions were well-designed to wow with no expense spared. Additionally, my studies of history had illuminated for me the incredible heights of sadism and degeneracy among humanity's richest: Caligula, Genghis Khan, the literal Marquis de Sade ("No Ordinary Love" here), Vlad the Impaler; the list goes on... and on... and on. I knew—also from experience—that people sporting sizable wealth and egos often fixated on verbally lionizing themselves before an audience of any size, so they might paradoxically be willing to tell me things more down-to-earth and sensible folk would not. However, I wasn't clear on how to follow hints of strange, leering overfamiliarity in pursuit of a good story without leaping into the proverbial lion's den.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, I had networked my way into a few writing and editing gigs, and one of these surprisingly produced a referral to an entertainment exec, Bill, who was looking for a rising editor to help him develop a nonfiction manuscript. I was 22 and had years of reading backstopping my ability to use the tool of language with some precision, but my professional experience at that point was sparse: internships and obscurely published poems while in school. I was eager to expand my portfolio and/or enjoy a zany distraction or two by dipping my toes in LA's suspicious yet seductive swimming pool.
Samantha and Martin, 2016 by Hannah Marshall @uncertainnoise
Bill and I spoke briefly on the phone, and I immediately noted a reedy, tremulous quality to his voice that made me wonder if he was getting over a cold. He suggested lunch at Roku in West Hollywood, and I asked if I could bring a tape recorder; he seemed charmed by my nostalgic technophilia, but I quickly clarified that I meant recording on my phone. He laughed nervously and confirmed our reservation time.
During the ride up Sunset from Brentwood through Beverly Flats, I glimpsed spindly leaning palm trees and flashes of a patchwork of grand homes while the summer of '16 anthem whose entire musical structure disturbed every atom in my body ("Closer" by the Chainsmokers) blared from the Chevy Volt's blessedly anemic sound system. I felt a flash of hipsterish panic at the vulgar vagaries of "mainstream culture" that was followed by the curiously warm and fuzzy embrace of apathy. I got out of my Uber a block away from the buzzy spot and walked over in my sensible outfit: a plaid bateau dress with corduroy blazer, tights and low-heeled boots. I gave Bill's name at the front desk and the hostess said something like "Right this way"; I felt a small adrenaline rush of anticipation and tried to mentally bet with myself on how bizarre this guy would be. If anything, that rush was what I'd been looking for anyway, so turning on my heel and leaving would still leave me satisfied. However, I wanted to know what Bill looked like and what made him think he needed an editor. When we reached the table, I was surprised to see a late-middle-aged man who was wiry, stooped and frail, with a bald spot and big, thick '80s glasses. He used his cane to laboriously unfurl his body, stand up and shake my hand; his magnified eyes gleamed.
"Samantha." He seemed to taste my name and smiled weakly. "It's so nice to..." He trailed off but I filled in the rest. Wow, this dude even needs a ghostwriter for basic pleasantries, I thought, taking his quaking hand in mine. "I'm Bill Apel," he said in a slightly deeper and stronger voice. "You've never heard of me, but you've seen my work." He told me a few movies he'd executive-produced, and I was genuinely impressed. I knew then that he would be a perfect case study of one of the many elements of LA considered disagreeable by many: producers.
We sat down and he waved his cane to summon the waiter, which made me anxious as it was a step closer to the cringe-inducing douchebaggery of impatient finger-snapping. He asked for only water while I, perhaps unwisely, ordered a cocktail with the faint thought of writing off the meal and booze. When the waiter disappeared, I studied Bill for a moment. His Hermes silk tie was navy blue with rows of tiny white origami horses. His face had been handsome and now conveyed a plaintive, lost expression at rest. On his ring finger, he wore a class ring, chunky gold with a blue stone. Yale? I thought absently.
"It's wonderful to meet a young person who wants to take a look at it." He folded his spindly hands in front of him. "At what I wrote."
"I'm really glad to get the opportunity to meet you," I said truthfully. "So, what's your story?"
Samantha in Los Angeles, 2016 by Hannah Marshall @uncertainnoise
Bemused at directness in a young woman, Bill launched into a dissection of his success as a Hollywood suit. I listened intently, then jumped, remembered I wasn't recording and pulled out my phone. My phone case had a photo of my dog and me, which prompted more boring tales of family life that I inferred to be compensatory. As a messy person, I was intrigued about the state of Bill's marriage (which I presumed to be abysmal). Bill seemed to come alive at the mention of his unsatisfying relationship, and told me with pride that HE was the one who had been interviewed for a Vice story about LA "sugar daddies"—older men in age-gap sexual relationships naughtily replete with many trappings of parent-child rituals, from allowances to fatherly advice and even "discipline." As an aspiring underbelly observer, I had actually read said interview and was shocked that this nebbish, enfeebled and somehow endearing man was the profiled guy who boasted callously about models and their keeping, crowing about the huge monthly allowances he paid to access a wonderland of women who to him functioned more like interchangeable living toys than even the most casual of girlfriends.
I was floored and immediately more transfixed by this than his general Hollywood sleaze. While May/December relationships are tales as old as time, such erotic subversion of familial roles and norms has more recently emerged from the shadows and into the mainstream, manifested in phenomena from the fauxcest porn trend to brazen "sugar dating" website billboards, media portrayals and frank online discussions. Bill was exactly the kind of odd creature I expected to find in a world city with a cartoonishly large, borderline Third World wealth gap. I couldn't believe my luck at finding someone who would shamelessly put their own private life on blast so readily. I tried not to appear too excited (or like I wanted to be one of his concubines—my curiosity fortunately had a limit). He was surprisingly meek and taciturn given his success in entertainment; I suspected the illness or circumstance that sapped his body also had had a hand in plucking his pluck. Given that the 2017 #MeToo reckoning was still a year away at this point, the unsexed harmlessness I sensed was reassuring.
We made a date to meet at his home in Beverly Hills, a single-story modern affair at the base of a tree-lined road that meandered miles upward to culminate in Bel-Air's rarified air. The interaction was to be a liminal no-man's-land between getting to know each other for some indefinable reason and me actually editing his A-for-effort manuscript, a tell-all by a relatively banal big shot (I presumed he saved the more explicit tales for pseudonymous material). At that time, I was Ubering often due to unpredictable intoxication. As the Uber pulled up to Bill's house, I felt a warm excitement. I sensed at lunch that he was not all that sexually interested in 5'3" me, which made sense given his fixation on gazelle-like models. I wasn't discernibly attracted to him either, but I think Bill and I both sensed that we shared an implied affinity for using bouts of frantic and ultimately affected hypersexuality to assuage some internal pining, a gnawing lack. After I rang the doorbell, I heard him hobbling to the door, luxe soles lightly tapping against a hard floor. Some part of me couldn't believe what I was doing, and I felt glad I had let a friend know where I would be (even though she was 3,000 miles away... close enough).
Bill stood in the doorway, his half-smiling face wan but inviting. He stuck his hand out and I took it gingerly. Behind him was the white vastness of a gleaming floor. The home was all glossy light-colored stone, with de-rigeur recessed lighting softly illuminating marble, travertine and onyx surfaces.
"Thanks for coming. I'm really glad you could make it. Come in," he motioned. "My housekeeper's here, just so you know."
The home flowed smoothly through the almost mausoleum-like interior to a turfed, lush poolscape (no view, though). One could see the entire backyard from almost anywhere in the house through the home's all-glass rear wall. My gaze was drawn to a heavy marble table upon which was an out-of-place patch of scattered papers. They were among the only signs of life in the house, and I sat down in a chair next to them. Bill followed my eyes. "My son's homework," he said almost sheepishly. I sensed that he was nervous to sit down in the chair across from me lest he lose his balance and faceplant in front of an honored guest. Surely the Vice portrayal of Bill as a pillar of virility was embellished; it also occurred to me that he could've been lying about being the man in the article, but even if true, that would be almost more bizarre than the situation as I understood it. Regardless of its veracity, the very claim had cemented in my mind that he was the kind of person who was casually proud and indiscreet about paying for companionship, and I wanted to know more.
"Where does he go to school?" I asked, standing up myself and being nearly at eye level with Bill. (He must have had sex at least once to have a kid, I mused, before it dawned that not only was I myself the product of artificial insemination, but IVF also was and is ubiquitous. Hmmm...)
"Oh! Harvard-Westlake," Bill said with a small, warm smile. "He started... He's really doing well. Lately."
"Do you like helping with his homework?" Maybe this wannabe rake was more wholesome than I'd thought.
His eyes brightened and their corners crinkled. "You know, I used to want to be a college professor," he croaked with an air of pride. "Until I got a taste of the real world, that is." He was silent for a moment, then: "I try to sit with him every day, to be with him. The divorce wasn't... didn't help with school. Really." My brows knitted until I recalled that his current wife was his son's stepmother. He eyed me and seemed to compulsively continue. "When I sold my company, I, you know, I had all this time..." He wavered, seeming to forget what he had hired me for. My innate yearning and curiosity seemed to gently tease confessions out of him, like a magician pulling a concealed strand of silk scarves out of his sleeve. I expected him to say something about a meet-cute with the current bearer of his last name, but instead: "That's when I sort of found the sugar world."
I raised an eyebrow. They should call it “Seeking Estrangement.” I felt a little bad for thinking it.
Communion, 2018 SRP
"Well, there were girlfriends before. But after a while I became obsessed with variety, and I found multiple sugar babies satisfied that... need to have a rotating cast of beautiful women. Blonde, brunette, Black, Asian." Bill blurted this out and it seemed to relieve and energize him. He shrugged a little.
"Like scanning the menu at Spago, I'm sure," I said affably while cringing internally at the matter-of-fact objectification and commodification. This man's hobby and his sugar partners' trade was both the oldest profession (well, one of them, anyway) and a living artifact of a strain of avowed feminism that somehow caters to men’s' interests in an over-the-top, "Mad-Men"-meets-bimbofication expression of the exaggerated gender roles many feminists have worked to make optional. The subset of online "female empowerment" content that framed sex work as getting one over on men, "getting the bag," always seemed a little sad to me. To the extent it brings positive feelings to those who have embraced it, I support it, but I also empathize with the individuals who feel social pressure to change who they are to match others' expectations after internalizing the notion that doing so leads to happiness. I have seen individual posters online who question whether hookup culture/sex work is universally empowering—without stooping to vilify sex workers or participants in hookup culture—called out as anti-feminist in the comments. It's a nuanced and fraught topic of discourse that I personally find equally harrowing and captivating to engage with.
Bill cracked a smile. "You're a good listener," he told me with admiration. "I'm not looking right now, but... otherwise..." He trailed off and looked away.
My eyes widened a bit, but I smiled. "Well, this is enough for me. Oh, not to say... I'm sure your—sugar... babies get the royal treatment, though." I shuddered momentarily at the way the word "babies" seemed so out of place, like a lost child in the supermarket. After an awkward pause that felt like it was 15 minutes long, I asked bluntly, "So, how's your marriage? I mean... how does that fit into this, uh, pursuit?"
"Well, that's not really the yardstick I use to measure how I'm feeling anymore. It kind of loses its meaning." His eyes darted a bit as he tried to make what he was saying as vague as possible. He seemed to have been brought to a peak of alertness by his inherent discomfort.
"How'd you meet?" I started picking at the charcuterie plate his housekeeper had brought over.
I could tell he hadn't thought about it for quite some time.
"Do you want a drink?" Bill levered himself to his feet and shuffled across the room to a credenza that evidently had a wine fridge nested inside because he pulled out a frost-kissed bottle of Pascal Cotat and began to open it with a practiced dexterity that contrasted with his feeble fuselage of flesh. He beckoned me to come over and produced two Waterford Lismore goblets, icy themselves with dramatic crystal facets evoking snowflakes. I saw the wine's vintage (1998) and quickly made assumptions about the structural integrity of the cork, but it slid effortlessly from the neck of the bottle and emerged with a muted pop.
"Cheers," I said lightly, and raised my glass.
Bill raised a bony hand. "Don't clink."
I rolled my eyes playfully. "Do you honestly think I was raised in a barn?" I tittered and took a sip.
"You'd really be surprised. I had a girl here, really smart, USC law student, everything. Just so beautiful..." He smiled but then got back on track. "She clinked, and it really did break. Just a little up the side, but... I was OK with it, I mean, a 400-dollar glass, but really, if a sugar daddy's so worried about that, he should stick to Match.com and dates at Red Lobster," he deadpanned. "But my wife wasn't all right with it." His eyes flicked over to mine, then back down at his glass, and he continued. "She couldn't believe there were only seven left in a set of eight." He looked worried for a second and then scoffed, playing it off.
"Maybe it was more than a glass," I said, making eye contact and raising my eyebrows.
"We did get them for our wedding," he admitted, to which I nodded knowingly. I felt revulsion and fascination—two of my favorite sensations—as I contemplated Bill's interpretation and expression of love and relationships, detached as it seemed from the worried, emotionally fraught approach I was used to. I longed to emulate the ability to slip into denial as though it were a bubbling hot tub that could soothe away the tightness of obligation and guilt.
Bill turned on his heel and wandered out of the gap in the wall of windows, looking behind to see that I was following.
When we got outside, I clapped a hand over my mouth upon seeing something that seemed eager to shatter my conception of the world and what I thought were the borderlines between sanity and chaos, order and entropy, faith and disbelief.
The long dining table outside, which had escaped my hungry eyes while we were indoors, had every inch of its surface covered by artificial turf with blades at least an inch high. It looked like this but rectangular and bigger. I felt uneasy about perching the goblet on the unstable-at-best surface, but I thought Bill would give me some sort of coaster or charger if he had reason to think my glass would tip. I set it down carefully and it promptly toppled, soaking the fake grass with cold delicious wine; luckily, the uncannily lush green carpet stopped the glass from rolling. We both stared down at it, nestled and glinting in the expansive ersatz grass.
"Oh God, I'm sorry," Bill whined before speed-limping over to the travertine outdoor kitchen and back with a plush white towel in hand. "It's my wife's job. Well, business." The distress behind his eyes clashed with his warm smile; I thought he was hiding irritation about the spilled wine. "She had the idea, and... made it happen," he said with plain uncertainty. The dubious objet d'art, astonishingly atrocious and economically unviable, stood defiant as a monument to all that grows in a garden tended by someone with neither financial pressure/incentive nor any sense of practicality. Ultimately, despite the spilled Sancerre, I was more drawn in than repelled by the object's frivolity; like an architectural folly or an ancient emperor's excesses, its existence was a testament to human whimsy that must be the product of removal from a natural world of kill-or-be-killed necessity. It evoked a memory of hearing tidbits about Marie Antoinette's alleged peasant roleplaying on her Versailles hobby farm, the accuracy of which is disputed. Taken at face value, a ruler imitating a worker, peasant or other so-called commoner could prove upsetting to the reader or observer, who might interpret the behavior as mocking cruelty or, at best, a callous waste of time and resources that seem better used to help the many people actually living in non-pantomimed poverty. I have written on this *gestures broadly* a bit before, and the sociological causes and effects of human behavior with regard to power (to include wealth) continue to be what I think about when I can't sleep at 2 a.m. My Roman Empire, if you will (a meme I have never accepted and is in fact not real and cannot hurt me).
Stay tuned for Part II, in which I make a sudden splash and become a spiritual healer.
