My Sugar Daddy was a Predator

Trigger Warning: Child Abuse

A few years ago, I was in a bad place in several different areas of my life. I was living with an extremely emotionally abusive partner, my day job was not giving the overtime that was previously promised, and I was coping by drinking an asinine amount of alcohol. As you can imagine, not getting the hours I wanted meant that my finances were in turmoil, and I needed to act fast. So, I came out of retirement from exotic dancing from a year hiatus.

I was welcomed back to my club and began a four shift a week schedule on the night shift. I made very good money, especially because new clientele that didn't meet me prior to my hiatus thought I was new, and thusly, exciting. Also my prior regulars were happy to see me return. Oh and the best part? My new hobby, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, was paid for by the patrons. I was pretty happy with my new/sort of old business venture.

One night while working, it was pretty dead. I had gone outside to smoke a cigarette and as I walked toward the entrance I noticed a man, about 5'9, bald and relatively large framed, sitting at the bar. He had apparently come in when I was de-strippering myself to go outside. My manager was bartending that night and seemed to be friendly with the man. When I walked outside, she followed soon after to smoke a cigarette herself.

"Did you see that guy that's sitting at the bar?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll go talk to him when I go back in," I said.

"Trust me, you'll want to. He is a very good spender. He will take care of you."

So I walked back in, wearing a coat and a Rick and Morty t-shirt, not the most attractive of getups to convince a man to part ways with his money, but you'd be surprised. I said hello to him and we started a conversation about the show. He noticed I still had on my coat and, well, clothes and told me he'd be there when I got back if I wanted to change. I changed my clothes in the locker room and came out to sit with him. He didn't try to get my number, or ask me to dinner, or anything I was used to by guys that came into the club. We actually had quite a lively conversation and bonus in my book, he liked to drink as much as I did. But I couldn't understand what my manager meant by "take care of me". The guy hadn't tipped me at all the entire time I was sitting with him. Not only that, he commented on the bar not being busy, and there not being a whole lot of dancers on my shift. That was to become a recurring theme in our interactions together.

But, it was dead in the club and I was enjoying myself, so I stuck around. Then came closing time. We sat at the bar and finished our drinks, when he put his arm around my back. We had probably been sitting together about an hour and a half. He tucked something in my thong strap, told me to have a good night, then left. When I looked after he had left the club, I was shocked. It was $300.

This was a recurring theme whenever he came to see me. We would drink together and he would pay me extremely well just to keep him company. After we had known each other for about a month, he asked for my pay app information and I gave it to him. Even on nights he didn't come in, he would send me money. And that's when I looked him up on my state's case listings. No name there, no open cases, no past cases. However, being the always cautious dancer I made sure not to let anyone know where I lived or gave out too much information. I also changed routes home, and stopped on the way home at grocery stores to make sure I wasn't being followed.

He and I had a nice arrangement for a while. But some things didn't add up. Why was this man paying to have dancers just sit with him (pretty common really, but something seemed off about it with this guy), and also paying to have dancers, who to be fair he had already seen pretty close to nude, send him photos?

I had a weird feeling about this guy, but he wasn't listed on the court case website, so I just assumed he just had a fetish of some kind. He always came in toward the end of the night, and the more he came in, the more I saw him in varying states of drunkenness. If I was doing dances with another patron when he came in, he would behave like a child and very loudly accuse me of doing sexual favors in the back with said patron. He got possessive and started sending me weird texts while I was at my day job that were sexual in nature while he was hammered drunk during the day. That was very odd, as he didn't previously do this. I always made it very clear with patrons that I am a service provider and it goes no further than that. But this boundary pushing was becoming a daily occurrence. I had just about had it with his antics. At that point in my life, I had just had it with about everyone to be fair.

I quit dancing and moved 200 miles away, but I still kept in touch with him via text occasionally. I felt oddly obligated due to him giving me as much money as he had, even though he was quite a pain to deal with on a weekly basis. I had a weird gut feeling (trust your gut friends) and looked him up on Family Watch Dog one day. There he was, staring me in the face. It had turned out he didn't come up in cases because the court had used the shortened version of his name, not his full legal name. He had not one, not two, not even five, but ten counts of being in possession of digital illicit child content. He had only received one year of probation.

I felt nauseated. Now it all made sense. He paid as much money as he did more than likely because he could no longer legally access adult sites, depending on the specifications of his release. Also, more than likely to groom women to be docile in reaction to his past because he probably believed that if you pay enough, people will accept anything. I immediately blocked his number and any social media where he could contact me. I haven't heard from him since.