on patronage

Does paying men for their time, insight, or bodies allow you to be truly unfiltered and selfish?

Derek is the first proper therapist I’ve ever met with. My last encounter with a mental health “professional” was with an unlicensed life coach who masqueraded as a therapist. She left me so traumatized it took me most of the last decade to get back on the couch again. Derek and I have been working together for a few months. When we first met, I was ready to shop around like everyone tells you to do—especially because he was a white man and I was sure I wanted my therapist to be more demographically aligned with me in some way; queer, some kind of ambitious woman, melanated. However, after three sessions, I realized I appreciated how little we had in common.

The gap between mine and Derek’s lived experiences was useful. I wasn’t able to lean on the assumption he could relate to aspects of my life in the way I might have if he was queer or a woman of color. The gap forced me to explain everything in my life plainly and explicitly—no shorthand. 

At first, I honestly just liked the feeling of paying a man $30 every week to let me be as insane and unhinged as possible, letting loose every unfiltered thought about myself, my week, and my relationships. I was revealing to him the part of me I’m embarrassed to show anywhere else—the parts that are anxious, unhealed, obsessive, even cruel. I liked that I could let loose this uglier me, and he didn’t flinch or recede. Instead, he asked questions, took notes, and challenged me without judgment. When we related to each other, when he understood me, it felt affirming, that those parts of me, the desires that feel juvenile and immature, the parts that feel wounded by loved ones, were real, human.

For the first couple of sessions, I mostly talked to Derek about my relatively shallow week-to-week drama. I liked being honest with Derek, but I still felt too embarrassed to say sentences that started with phrases such as, “I feel like it’s been this way my whole life…” Even if not wanting to dig into my past meant I was wasting my money, I didn’t really care. I liked the dynamic we were building. I like spending my money on other people. 

When I still lived in Las Vegas, I once told a friend I had subscribed to an OnlyFans creator. She was aghast and confused...