by Robin Roseau
Suger Baby
Robin Roseau
Credits
I would like to thank my beta readers, Janeen, Laurie, and Martha. They help me deliver better books to you.
And, as always, I want to thank you, my readers. Without your continued support, I couldn’t continue to produce these books.
Author's Note
Morality isn't always black and white even while we humans often try to make it so. I've recently been having questions of morality stuck in my head, and it's been showing in my stories. My Soul to Play and the Selected series are prime examples of what I mean.
This story is another example.
I don't know how I feel about the basic premise. In some ways, it's grey. In some ways, it's quite black and white. In all ways, it's a condemning statement against our society that it comes to this.
I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions.
Robin Roseau
July 2018
Beginnings
When I decided to write my story, I wasn't quite sure where I should begin. Should I begin when I realized I was gay? Should I begin when I first hid that from my parents? Should I begin when I was accepted to Glendale College in the heart of St. Paul?
Perhaps I should begin at Christmas during my freshman year at Glendale.
No, maybe not. I'm going to skip ahead just a little bit. I don't really want to talk about my parents' reaction when I admitted I was gay. Thanks, Cousin Susan, for outing me over Christmas dinner. I'll remember you kindly, I'm sure.
No, I don't want to write about any of that. Let me just fast forward over all of that, over the slammed doors and the hateful words and the understanding that from this point forward, I was on my own. As I write these words, it is years later, and I haven't talked to anyone from my family since.
No. Let's skip those details and jump ahead just a few weeks. It is now winter term in my freshman year at Glendale. Yes, I think that is where my story begins.
Introduction
I should introduce myself, I suppose. My name is Astrid Ann Ahlstrom. In high school, some of my friends referred to me as Triple-A, which was kind of cool. At the start of my story I was eighteen but would turn nineteen in a few weeks -- my birthday is February 14 -- Valentine's Day. Isn't that just disgustingly sweet? With my Scandinavian name, you can probably guess my appearance: blond hair and blue eyes. I wore my hair long and straight. I was short -- five-three -- and oftentimes referred to as cute or pretty. I thought my nose was a smidge too big. But all modesty aside, I thought I was cute in a girl next door sort of way. I was just fine with that.
I was smart. I had that going for me. And I was willing to work hard. I had that going for me, too.
But the full cost of attending Glendale wasn't cheap, and how was an eighteen-year-old supposed to earn that kind of money? I'd already been to the financial aid office, and they were clear. Being estranged from my family wasn't going to get me a full ride. I didn't know what I was going to do.
If it weren't for Jimmy Johnson, chances are I would have dropped out of school at the end of my freshman year. I imagine I would get a job waitressing somewhere. Maybe I would have attended community college and eventually gotten a degree somewhere. But it wouldn't have been a degree from Glendale, and it wouldn't have been earned on the four-year program.
It was over dinner that all this came up. My roommate freshman year was a girl named Honey Hansen. Honey was just as blond-haired and blue-eyed as I was. Hell, half of Minnesota was, it seemed. We went to dinner most nights with several other freshmen from our floor. Honey and I were in 419. Next door to us in 421 were Laura and Penny. Across the hall in 418 were Steph and Maggie. And next to Steph and Maggie in 420 were Jimmy and Davis. It was clear that Jimmy thought his chances of getting lucky were pretty high, what with having dinner with six girls most nights. It was also clear Davis couldn't care less about the dating opportunities the six of us represented and was far more interested in the dating opportunity represented by Jimmy. Jimmy was clueless to that fact, and I wasn't entirely sure even Davis realized his feelings.
Poor Jimmy. I was gay. So that left five girls, not six. Steph was a complete fitness nut, and Jimmy wasn't going to impress her, shall we say. Four girls. Laura was exceedingly bookish and had declared herself to be "focused on my studies". By that she meant she wasn't interested in boys. She was in complete denial as to what she really found attractive, but it wouldn't be until senior year that she would cave in to her yearnings. Three girls. Honey met a guy named Gideon, if you can believe it, during freshman orientation. They got married shortly after graduation and now have two kids and live in Hawaii. Two girls. Maggie was what is euphemistically called plus sized, and she impressed Jimmy about as much as Jimmy impressed Steph. Poor Maggie. One girl.
Penny. Ah, Penny, bless her heart. Penny was what even I thought was a rabid feminist. Oh, don't get me wrong. I was definitely a feminist. Wasn't everyone? But Penny was the sort of feminist who could take anything the wrong way, if it was said by a guy. And Jimmy had been taught manners by his grandmother. Lets just say the two of them got off on the wrong foot -- also during freshman orientation -- when Jimmy stepped ahead of Penny to open a door for her. Poor Jimmy. She eviscerated him for it.
So, while Jimmy didn't really know it, no girls. Poor Jimmy, to have his hopes of love dashed so early in his college experience.
Ironically, however, things changed for Jimmy. I wasn't there to see it, but I heard about it. It was two years later, and someone -- I was never quite sure who -- said something incredibly sexist, and it was Jimmy who laid into him for it. Penny saw the whole thing.
Later, when they were married, he took her last name.
But that was two years later and irrelevant for the telling of my story. And Jimmy and Penny and all the rest would be irrelevant, too, except for the conversation we held that one night over dinner.
It was initially Honey's fault, and I could have killed her for it. In hindsight, I should really kiss her, but she probably wouldn't have appreciated it.
For what it's worth, I should say one more thing about myself. I don't ping anyone's gaydar. Face it. Long-haired femmes don't "look gay" in the first place. But I've attended pride rallies and had people try to sell me "STR8 Against H8" tee-shirts. I once stepped into a lesbian bar and had two dykes ask me if I was in the right place. I've had lesbian friends -- who knew I was a lesbian -- ask me for the "straight perspective".
I didn't get it. But whatever.
* * * *
I'd been staying quiet. Honey had been talking about Gideon and how much her family had enjoyed meeting him over the winter break. That turned the conversation for the entire table towards family, and everyone was comparing notes, good and bad. I heard about how smart Laura's parents were and how Maggie's were divorced. Davis said only, "My folks have always been pretty cool." Maggie said it sucked her folks' divorce was so acrimonious, and how much she hated being stuck in the middle.
And then it came.
"It could be worse," Honey said. "You could have Astrid's family."
No, no, no. I'd told her all that in confidence. In confidence! Didn't she know that meant ixnay on the arents-pay?
"Why?" asked Penny. "What about Astrid's family?"
"Nothing," I said, staring into my food.
But it was Penny, and she wasn't going to be put off that easily. I imagine none of them would be put off that easily. But Penny said, "Yeah, bullshit. What did they do?"
"They disowned her," Honey said. "She's going to have to drop out of school if she doesn't find a scholarship or something."
I looked up and glared at Honey, but she wasn't even looking at me.
Of course, everyone wanted to know what I had done.
&nbs
p; "I didn't do anything," I said. I gave Honey another glare, which she ignored. "I don't want to talk about it."
"She's gay," Honey said. "They disowned her because she's gay."
"She's not," Jimmy started to say. "She's not gay."
"Yes, she is," Honey said. "And her entire family is a bunch of bigoted holy rollers. Because that's what Jesus was here to teach us all: how to hate."
"But," said Jimmy, "She can't be gay. She doesn't look gay."
Penny rounded on him for that. "Not everyone who is gay looks gay, Jimmy. God. You're so damned ignorant." She turned back to me. "They disowned you because they found out you were gay?"
"I don't want to talk about it," I said softly, staring at my food. I suddenly wasn't hungry.
"They totally did," Honey said. "And the school isn't doing a thing to help her with tuition."
That wasn't entirely true, but the school wasn't going to do enough.
But apparently when I said, "I don't want to talk about it," that didn't mean anything. And talk about it they did. It went around and around the table, some of them telling me about how "the gays" had it rough -- I didn't comment. I heard stories about how this or that mythical person made enough money to pay her way through school. I heard suggestions on how I could convince my parents they were wrong. I heard all this, and I didn't say a word. I stared at my plate, no longer eating.
But it was Jimmy, "ignorant" Jimmy Johnson who said, "You should be a sugar baby."
"What?" Penny asked. "You want her to be a hooker?"
"It's legal!" Jimmy said. "There was an article a couple of years ago in Cosmo."
"You read Cosmo?" Maggie asked.
"My mom buys it," he said. "It gets left in the bathroom. The article was about women putting themselves through school that way."
"Prostitution isn't legal in Minnesota," Laura said.
"It's not prostitution," Jimmy said.
"You want her to sell her body," Penny said. She went on a several-minute tirade. We were used to her tirades. Jimmy sat, almost as quietly as I did, until she wound down.
"All I'm saying," Jimmy said, "is that it was in Cosmo. There are web sites. That's all I'm saying." Then he looked up and stared at Penny. "I don't hear any better ideas from you. You're good at tearing everyone around you down, but if you're so smart, why don't you tell her what you would do?"
"Ooh," everyone said. "Fighting words," Steph added. "He's got a point though, Penny. What would you do in Astrid's shoes?"
Well, apparently Penny didn't have a solution and ceded the field of battle, surprising all of us.
* * * *
I was embarrassed over dinner, but by the time Honey got back to the dorm later that night, I was fuming. I was at my desk, trying to study when she walked in, on cloud nine from having seen Gideon. She froze, a deer in the headlights of my glare of doom.
"Um. How you doing, Astrid?"
"Peachy," I said with as much frost as I could muster. "I told you that in confidence. Do you even know what that means?"
She closed the door slowly then leaned her back against it. "I'm sorry," she said. "It just sort of slipped. It's just..."
"What? It's just what?"
"Maggie."
"What about Maggie?"
"She blames everything on her parents' divorce," Honey said. "She refuses to take responsibility for her own choices. She's depressed because of her parents' divorce. She got B's sophomore year in high school because of her parents' divorce. She's fat because of her parents' divorce. Well, I've met her mom, and her mom seemed pretty cool to me. But she's an adult now, and she's never going to get over any of her shit if she keeps blaming her parents for it."
"And what does that have to do with me? Are you telling me I shouldn't blame my parents?"
"No. I was trying to tell her to shut the fuck up about her parents and their divorce. It was four years ago. Get over it. There are people who have it worse."
"Gee, thanks for using me as the example."
She sighed. "You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. I'm really sorry, Astrid."
"You outed me," I said.
We stared at each other for a while. "It's no big deal," she said finally. "No one cares."
I cared. I decided to let it drop, but I would be very careful what I'd share with her in the future. I nodded, dissatisfied, and put my nose back into my textbook.
* * * *
But Jimmy had planted a seed. It would take time for that seed to grow, but less time than one might have expected. The thing is, the seed didn't find fertile soil in my pot, so to speak.
It was in Maggie's.
* * * *
Honey and I had taken to keeping our door open if we didn't want privacy. It was, oh, perhaps two weeks later when there was a knock against the metal doorframe, and when I looked up, Maggie was standing there holding a small stack of paper. She looked at me uncertainly. "Is Honey here?"
"She's on a date with Gideon," I said. "You could leave a message." I gestured to the door. Everyone had a message board for that very purpose.
She didn't leave a message. Instead, she stepped into the room and closed the door. I eyed her in puzzlement, which grew when she said, "I'm not here to talk to Honey. I wanted to talk to you, but in private."
"Oh," I said. "Um. Sure."
She stepped forward, grabbed Honey's desk chair, and pulled it over to my desk. She sat primly for a moment, the stack of papers on her knees, her hands atop the stack. "I've been thinking."
"Okay," I said. "About?"
"Your situation."
"Oh. Don't take this the wrong way, Maggie, but I really don't want to talk about it."
"I know. I saw the look you gave Honey. That's why I made sure she wasn't here. After she outed you, I didn't think you'd want her to overhear what I found."
"What you found? Maggie-"
"Just wait," she said. "Three minutes. Then I'll go, and we never have to talk about it again."
"Fine," I said with a huff. "Three minutes."
She looked down into her lap, my gaze following hers. The papers she had were stapled together. She lifted the top several sheets. "Cosmo." She set it on my desk. "Vanity Fair." The next. "Huffington Post. Fox News. Seventeen. New York Times. Newsweek." She had printouts of articles from each news source, and she arrayed them on my desk in front of me. "According to these articles, thousands of women across the country are signing up to be sugar babies, just to pay for college. You have to be careful, but it's completely legal."
I stared at the array of papers, even picking up one and skimming it, then the next. Then I turned to Maggie. "You're not seriously suggesting..."
She looked me up and down. "You're cute. Okay, you're not like, a model or anything, but you're cute." She paged through the papers and pulled out one of the articles. "This one said the sugar daddies like smart girls. You're smart."
"Maggie-"
"You make an arrangement," she said. "A relationship. Sometimes with one guy. Sometimes with a few guys. They pay you something each week or each month or each time you go on a date."
"You mean each time we have sex."
"Not necessarily," she said. She found another article. "This one is about a guy whose daughter died, and he looked for someone like her to take care of instead."
"That's just morbid," I said.
"A little," she agreed. "Still. Do you have a better plan?"
I didn't have an answer to that. "Maggie, thank you for-"
"Do you?" she asked, interrupting. "Do you have a better plan?"
I sighed. "No. But you did hear the part where Honey outed me as gay, right? I'm not after, a... What is it called?"
"Sugar daddy," she said. "I know. No one cares you're gay."
"Jimmy does."
She laughed. "Yeah, I suppose Jimmy does. Astrid, there are sugar daddies. But there are also sugar mamas."
"Sugar mamas."
"Right. You know, older women looking for the same things a guy
might be looking for."
"I'm sure they're looking for hot guys."
"Some of them. Some of them even specifically say they're looking for hot gay guys."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"I don't understand it, either, but that’s what they say. But Astrid, some sugar mamas are looking for sugar babies. Girls. Um. Women." She looked me up and down again. "And you're cute. If I were going to be a sugar mama, I'd pick you."
"Maggie-"
"Do you want to drop out?"
I stared into her eyes. "No. But this..." I gestured.
"It's not prostitution. It's... an arrangement," she said, repeating that word. "They get some of your time. You get to stay in school. Besides. Some of them are kind of attractive."
"Some of whom?"
"Some of the sugar mamas."
"And you know this, how?"
She had one more piece of paper. She set it on top of the others. "There are web sites. I checked them out. Some of them are pretty skeezy. But these two," and she pointed to the top of the list. "They do background checks. It's free to sign up as a sugar baby, but the sugar daddies and mamas have to pay a registration fee, and if they want a background check on you, they have to pay for that, too. I. Um. Browsed for a while."
Then she leaned past me and grabbed my laptop, pulling it so we could both see it. Before I could stop her, she began typing, and then I stared, somewhat dumbfounded, when a web site loaded. The main page had several photos of attractive, well-dressed older men with attractive, young women, most of them appearing to be college age.
Maggie entered some basic information. She told the site she was a potential sugar baby, female, 18 years old, looking for a sugar mama. A moment later we were presented with a list of women. There were ten on the page, each with a photo and brief information. We got their handle, age, and location.
The locations were all over the country, and none of them in Minnesota.
"I don't think a woman from New York City is going to find it convenient to come to Minnesota, Maggie."
"You have to sign up to get more directed information," she said. "But look. Okay, I don't know about her. She's really, really old." She pointed to someone who claimed to be 62 but I was sure was an octogenarian. "But they're kind of attractive, I guess."
