What Makes Us Girls

G O L D

My father liked gold. He owned an awful lot of it, too. Liked to wear a thick gold ring on his right hand and a gold and ruby signet ring directly next to it. Then there was his gold necklaces, with ivory tusks and ancient coins. He liked gold. I liked gold, too, but I was always more attracted to the sparkling allure of a high-quality, clean-cut diamond. Father raised me to know that diamonds were worthless, not rare, and the market was manipulated. But gold? Gold was valuable, rare -- a status symbol.

After mother died, father had to have me in his care. They'd been divorced, and I was dropped on his lap at nine years old. I don't think he was prepared. At least, I know he wasn't prepared: he was in Thailand when he heard the news. He'd sold the family house and spent close to a million in the space of six months travelling, and when I came to him? The wealth he'd acquired had mostly been gambled away, or probably spent on hookers in Vegas bars.

In all that time, he'd never lost his gold, and he was still investing in it. He was certain that gold was the only thing holding the family's wealth together, and I think he was correct in saying so.

Flash forward eight years, and we'd lost it all. Living in a rented three-bedroom house, and my father's gold stash had become much smaller. Both still fixated with luxury that we once had, we both did what we could. He'd nag and whine, telling me to get a job, but not just any job -- he wanted me to become self-employed. I had other ideas.

Looking up at the rich and famous, I realised we could never get back to that. We'd thrown our silver spoon out of our laps and into the trash. No matter. I had a foolproof idea. I'd heard of sugarbabying, stripping, and escorting. Sugarbabying, or, exchanging your time and company for money, seemed the best idea anyone could've had. After all, I was slim, pretty, blonde, and educated; I knew even then that I could find a sugar daddy in no time.

I'd stumbled blindly into 'sugaring', without knowing a thing. Following the other hopeful sugar baby in a group chat I was in, I added "no sex" to my profile. After a handful of agonizingly rude messages, I caved in. My moral values were already pretty low, and I'd cheated on my boyfriend more than once. Knowing that sex meant so little to me, and that I'd given it away for free before, getting paid to do something like that didn't seem out of the question.

"You're gorgeous, want to go for dinner?"

I'd been messaged, and I was eager to reply. It wasn't the first offer I'd gotten. In fact, I'd been given a rather lucrative deal of travelling the world, with free flights and accommadation, and $4,000 a month. It was incredible. It would've been the money I had, once upon a time. It was that night I met my first daddy -- Ryan.