I was just like any other girl chasing my dreams in New York City—except I was on a bus to a sex castle in the Hamptons with a bunch of sex workers. A 22-year-old aspiring actress who’d found herself swept up in the whirlwind world of sugar dating, I was en route to a house in the Hamptons, remodeled to look like a castle and notorious for its crazy swingers parties, in search of a new sugar daddy who wanted to help with the bills while I worked to establish my acting career.
I’d stumbled into sex work while studying acting in New York City after answering an ad for a “modeling” job on Craigslist—a gig that, of course, ended up being a front for an underground strip club. It was pitched to me as hot girls selling the “girlfriend experience” to an invite-only, high-end clientele. In practice, this just meant we had to pretend to not be strippers to make these men feel better about being at a strip club. We weren’t allowed to wear stripper attire. We wore cocktail dresses and regular heels and it was held at this fancy bar, so when you walked in it looked like a normal, upscale place—assuming you didn’t know to look behind the curtains in the back and enter the secret lap-dance section where we were paid to validate these men’s delusions. To me, it was the ultimate, high-paying acting role. In the beginning, the club was my stage, the men were my scene partners, and I was the star. My first night I left with around $600 and thought, “Wow I’m really good at acting.”
Then I started auditioning at actual strip clubs, finding sugar daddies, and doing OnlyFans. Sex work was neither my dream nor my plan, but it quickly proved far more lucrative and far less grueling than the other side hustles I’d previously worked to support my real dream. I would get home from working nine hours at my retail job with barely enough money to pay rent and sob on the subway because I knew I was nowhere closer to making it. I was struggling and miserable until sex work came along. And yet, here I was, thriving in my unexpected new career path but still lying about being a bartender every time someone asked me what I did for work.
As much as I liked it, I mostly kept sex work a secret. In part because of the societal shame and stigma that comes with the territory. But, as much as I hate to admit it, I was also guilty of buying into that shame and stigma. I secretly believed I was “above” the work I was actively engaging with and profiting from. Even worse, I believed I was above all the other girls doing it. “But they don’t have an end goal like me,” I’d think to myself. Or, “I’ll be a successful actor soon and no one will have to know the extremes I went to to get here.” The judgment poured out of me, but the truth was I felt ashamed for feeling empowered. I thought something was wrong with me for actually enjoying the job. Only a fucked up person could do this kind of work, right? I didn’t talk to any of the other girls in the club. Every day, I went to work, made my money, and left. It wasn’t until one day, when I boarded a Mercedes bus on the corner of Lexington and 50th, that my view on not only sex work, but life, completely changed forever.
My boss at the underground strip club invited a group of girls to the Hamptons every summer. I got the email, saw the castle and thought, “Fuck it, that sounds cool.” What I didn’t know was that the “castle” was the location of one of the biggest sex parties in the Hamptons and my boss was clearly taking us to appear as if he had some sort of harem.
I boarded the bus on Lexington and 50th and met a woman, Mel*, who I would soon call a soulmate. Mel was just like me—she was an aspiring writer and used sex work to fund her life and chase her dreams. On the bus, I asked her what she did for a living outside of the club. “I’m a writer,” she replied. “But let’s be honest, I’m a sugar baby.”
I hadn’t told anyone about having a sugar daddy. Not only did I think people in my real life would judge me for it, but I feared my fellow strippers would too. But Mel said it so confidently, like she was proud of herself for finding a way to make her dreams work. It made me feel seen for the first time. We both shared that we’d blindly accepted the Hamptons trip without question or concern and were ready for the adventure. Once we got to the castle, however, we realized the mistake we had made.
We walked through the garage-turned-sex-dungeon and were forced to exchange our clothes for syrongs and lock up our cell phones. We realized at that point that it was us against the horny men and we needed to have each other's backs. A half naked “house man” escorted us to our rooms and Mel and I giggled at how cheesy everything in the castle was. Once we reached our Egyptian-themed bedroom, we were called down via an intercom for dinner. I got nervous thinking about how I wasn’t paid to be here and how I didn’t want to feel forced to do anything just because I was an idiot who blindly agreed to a sex party. I expressed my nervousness to Mel.
“Fuck no,” she replied. “We’re not doing anything without being paid.”
She said the things I wanted to say with such confidence and such a strong sense of boundaries, something I hadn’t quite mastered in the world of sex work. It’s hard to be your own boss without anyone telling you the rules or showing you the ropes. I would often find myself doing more than I needed to and expecting more money in return, but that wasn’t always the case. Mel was the first person who taught me how to treat the job as a job even if it was just a side hustle with an end goal.
We went down to dinner and were quickly surrounded by couples pouring in to mingle and flirt. Mel and I knew the only way out was to make everyone think we were the least sexy people there. We stood in a corner eating desserts that no one else was touching. We made friends with the chef, Bobby, and asked for unsexy comfort foods like mac n’ cheese and french fries. When giggling and stuffing our faces wasn’t enough to deflect unwanted male attention, we unintentionally locked ourselves in the massive walk-in fridge and didn’t get saved until someone heard our loud cackles about how we felt like Mr. Krabs from Spongebob. We successfully had the least sexy swingers party experience possible while everyone around us was hooking up.
The next day, Mel and I swam in the infinity pool and sipped champagne on top of swan floats while we talked about our futures and career goals.
“I’m just doing this till I book a role and actually get paid to act,” I said.
Mel proceeded to tell me that sex work was something she wanted to write about in the future because she felt like it was a part of her identity. I looked at her, confused, thinking—as I thought about things back then—that she was “so much more” than a sex worker.
“I think people want to escape this world because they don’t know how to use it to their advantage,” she continued. “You need a good head on your shoulders to do this job. But goddamn, is it one of the most empowering jobs I’ve ever had. I mean, last week I got paid for a guy to massage my feet. Hell yeah, I’m gonna tell all these bitches at their desk jobs about it!”
Her natural instinct to express herself through sex work and not try to hide it was so refreshing. Everything she said was the opposite of both society’s and my own preconceived notions about this world. I felt silly for ever feeling lesser than for doing this work. For the first time, I wanted to tell the world about my job.
Later on, Mel would introduce me to three other girls just like us, all doing sex work to pursue our passions. I suddenly felt proud of the choice I’d made, not just because it gave me the means to shoot a pilot, get headshots, and attend college for acting, but because it led me to four women who helped me see the beauty in myself.
It’s a common misconception that sex work is one of the most isolating jobs in the world; most of the time, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The friendships I made in sex work are unmatched by any I’ve experienced outside of the industry. What others saw as something broken in me, these friends saw as a reason to love and accept me.
*Name has been changed.
