My Journey with a Sugar Daddy: Exploring the World in Luxury

When I was in college, all I ever wanted to do was study abroad. It didn’t matter if I’d have to share a room with three other girls or scrub dishes for my host family. I just wanted to see another country and eat different food and speak in another language. And, because I was a boy-crazy 19-year-old, of course, I had fantasies about meeting some amazingly good-looking local who would show me around on his moped and help me with my pronunciation (but in a sweet, not annoying way, you know?)

But unfortunately, that wasn’t an option for me. In fact, finishing college wasn’t an option for me. And it’s not like I didn’t have a good excuse. My mom got sick—she’s okay now, thank goodness—and my dad needed someone to be with her during the day because we couldn’t afford a nurse. And for a while, I tried to make it work by taking night classes but it was just exhausting and I barely made it two more semesters.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a pretty determined person. So, just because my dreams for studying abroad were dashed didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to get myself on a plane one way or another. Actually, the nice thing about moving back in with my parents was that I was able to spend the next three years saving up money and actually putting together a better plan than simply: study abroad, meet cute boy.

And, like any typical early 20-something, I decided to backpack through Europe. And like any typical parent who has seen the movie Taken, my parents were not pleased, but they couldn’t really say much. They gave me as generous an amount of cash as they could, made me promise to wear said cash in a travel money belt, and drove me to the airport. They then revealed that they had managed to upgrade my flight to first-class (my mom’s got friends in the airline) because they said that I deserved a little bit of comfort before being distinctly uncomfortable for the next 6 weeks. Tears were shed, hugs were hugged, and then I hobbled through the front doors of the airport with my unwieldy backpack.

I expected that everyone in first class was going to be old and rich and stuck-up, but it turns out, my seat-mate was a girl my age. She raised her champagne glass to me even though I must have looked sorely out of place. But my new bestie didn’t bat an eye (or should I say, didn’t bat a perfectly glued-on eyelash. She was wearing full glam make-up.)

Sparkling wine in hand, we got to chatting, and soon, I had her whole life story. She was a sugar baby going to visit her sugar daddy in Paris. He flew her out about twice a year and the rest of the time, they chatted on the phone. She had other guys in her life who would fly her to New York, sometimes Cabo or Toronto.

And, she didn’t sugarcoat things, either. She told me that some of the guys were awful, and she even had to hound one of them for months because he had left her with a hotel bill. But, for every bad experience, she had multiple great ones. And at the end of the day, she had more stamps in her passport than anyone her age she knew.

I, of course, asked her how I could get started. And she said she might be able to hook me up immediately. Her sugar daddy in Paris had asked her if she would be willing to attend an event with one of his colleagues and she had gotten furious with him (“I’m not a call girl that you can pass around to your buddies,” she had told him.) But she had actually met this colleague and he was nice and respectful. It would be one event just so that I could test the waters.

“The only thing,” she told me, “Is that you can’t dress like a backpacker. If you didn’t bring anything nice, we can figure something out.”

We got off the plane and a part of me thought I’d never see her again and this would be just one crazy story of many I was likely to have on this trip. But she sent me a message over Instagram that night, asking if I was still interested. I said I was; we made a plan to meet up and go shopping, “My sugar daddy is paying, he still feels bad for suggesting I go with his colleague.”

And while we were shopping, my sugar baby-in-shining-armor told me everything I needed to know about a first date. What would be expected, what I should absolutely not tolerate and how to end the night when I was ready to go home.

It turns out, she didn’t need to give me any advice because as soon as I met (we’ll call him) John, I felt instantly at ease. The event that he ended up taking me to was a coworker’s wedding. And while it was awkward at first, by the end of the night, we had retired into a quiet corner of the reception hall with a bottle of champagne on ice. I was telling him all about my travel plans and the hostels that I had booked and the places I wanted to see. He had obviously already been to all of those places when he himself had backpacked through Europe at my age.

At the end of the night, he drove me back to my hostel and there was a moment when I didn’t know if I should kiss him or say goodbye forever or what we were supposed to do next.

“Listen,” he said. “I want you to have your backpacking experience. I think it’s something that you’re going to look back on fondly for the rest of your life so I don’t want to take that from you. But I’m going to propose something. In 6 weeks, don’t fly home. Come back to Paris. And let's do another 6 weeks, or 3 weeks, or 1 week! But, let’s do my version. You don’t have to answer right now, and if you need anything over the next 6 weeks, you have my number.”

And that’s exactly what I did. I had my dirty, exhausting, amazing backpacking trip and then I went back to Paris and John gave me another 6 weeks of the most blissful, relaxing luxury vacation I had ever dreamed of. We went to luxury resorts in Greece and Spain and Portugal—all of the places that I couldn’t actually afford on my own trip. It was an insane change of pace that made me question my reality every day that I work up to soft sheets and breakfast in bed instead of leaky hostel ceilings and the noise of 20-year-olds coming back from partying.

This all happened 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve flown first class many times, had to renew my passport because it ran out of pages, and even scheduled a solo trip with my mom, paid for by John. And hey, I always make sure to sign up for local language classes when I know I’m going to be in Paris for a few weeks at a time, which counts as studying abroad, right?