Editor’s note: This personal essay discusses substance use, transactional relationships, and early recovery.
For this writer, choosing sobriety meant more than giving up drugs and alcohol. It meant walking away from the people who paid her bills, accepting a low-wage job, and learning how to build a life she could live honestly.
Choosing Sobriety When Money Felt Impossible
When I first got sober, I had two sugar daddies.
I had quit my job at a law school, where I spent most of my time in the bathroom. I would sit on the toilet and crush lines on top of a bar review book.
My solution to finding another job was to post a headless picture of myself on Craigslist. In the photo, I wore heels and red garters.
“Sugar Daddy Wanted.”
I met two men: Omar, who was Iranian, and Harry, who was an Orthodox Jew.
Two weeks after my first AA meeting, Harry and I had our sixth date downtown at The Georgian. He wore a crisp white shirt and black pleated pants.
He sat on the bed and untied his polished black shoes.
“You’re all I’ve been thinking about,” he said.
All I could think about was how I would be with him without getting high or drinking. I had never been sober with him before.
I turned my back and unzipped my skirt. He undressed. His stomach hung over his waist, and patches of gray and black hair covered his body. Red and blue veins ran across his thighs.
He walked toward me, breathing heavily. He smelled like spearmint and baby powder.
I just wanted it to be over.
He kissed me with his big, too-warm lips. Soon, we were on the bed, with me on top of him. He held my hips and moved them. Then he groaned, and it was over.
Harry showered and brought his clothes into the bathroom with him. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
When he came out, he put on his yarmulke, handed me an envelope, and left.
I had made a thousand dollars.
Harry or Sobriety
I knew that if I kept seeing Harry, I would drink. Still, I was scared.
How would I pay my bills without him?
I didn’t have another job. Harry and Omar were my jobs.
By then, I had attended enough meetings to hear people talk about becoming self-supporting through their own contributions. I didn’t believe that was possible for me.
How would I ever support myself?
At the same time, I was desperate to get sober. I was thirty-eight, and something inside me knew I had reached the end.
I didn’t know how I would survive without Harry’s help. However, I knew it had come down to a choice.
It was either Harry or sobriety.
I chose sobriety.
Why Omar Was Different
Omar was different.
The only time we had sex was on our third date. He played Sade, cooked me an Iranian dinner, and poured plenty of red wine.
After that night, he never pushed for sex. Instead, it felt as though he was courting me.
I didn’t understand why he was so patient or why he wanted to take care of me.
He would drive from Sherman Oaks in his polished black Audi and take me to Trader Joe’s. He filled the cart with coffee, dish soap, and tomatoes on the vine, not the cheap Roma tomatoes I usually bought.
Afterward, he helped carry the groceries inside. Then he left half a month’s rent on the table and kissed me goodbye on the cheek.
He also bought me things I never wore unless I was seeing him.
I wanted to tell him that what I really needed was money for the phone bill. Or something practical, such as a new hot plate for my makeshift kitchen. But I didn’t feel right asking.
Once a week, we went for sushi on Larchmont.
One evening, the hostess took our picture. The next time we returned, it was hanging on the wall.
In the photo, Omar had his arm around me. We were both smiling, with the sushi chef’s hat visible in the background.
Underneath it, someone had written in black ink:
“Happy couple share fresh squid.”
When the Arrangement Became Personal
As time passed, I realized that Omar genuinely cared about me. I liked him too. I liked the way he smelled, our conversations, and our weekly dinners.
But I didn’t love him romantically.
Being with him had become more complicated than posting an advertisement and entering an arrangement with a sugar daddy. Now that I was sober, it was harder to keep seeing him.
I felt as though I was using him.
And I was.
Even so, I was too afraid to give up his help.
When I had about three months sober, I finally talked about Omar at a women’s meeting.
“I can’t keep taking money from him,” I said. “I’ve got to get a job, but I don’t know what to do. I can’t be shut in an office for eight hours, and I’m a terrible waitress.”
“Honey,” one woman said, “what you need is a simple sober job. A job where you don’t have to think. You just show up and learn to be on time, honest, and accountable.”
“And make ten dollars an hour?” I asked.
“I asked the same thing when I was new,” she said. “But I promise, as long as you stay sober, it will all work out.”
It didn’t feel as though anything would work out.
However, I knew I couldn’t continue living the way I had been living.
A Simple Sober Job
I started working at my friend’s pet food and supply store, Tailwaggers on Fairfax.
Five times a week, I stocked cans of Working Dog Stew and Grammy’s Pot Pie. I mopped the floors and arranged dog collars decorated with Swarovski crystals.
The man I worked with had eight months sober from meth.
As we stocked shelves, we traded stories about going to Rite Aid at four in the morning and staring at thumbtacks for hours. We talked about hanging out with dealers named Kasper and Turtle, taking apart doorknobs, and how difficult it was to exist in the world while sober.
The whole time, we kept stacking cans and trying to stay clean for one more day.
I had been working at Tailwaggers for a few months when Omar took me to a one-woman show about Janis Joplin. It was a show I had wanted to see.
We walked hand in hand into a theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, across from Dragonfly and 7-Eleven.
Outside, streetwalkers moved back and forth in front of Donut Stop. They wore high heels and carried backpacks.
I felt my shoulders tighten.
Inside, we sat in faded velvet seats. Omar placed his small arm around me, but it felt heavy on my shoulder.
I wanted to scratch my nose, yet my hands and arms felt frozen beside him.
This man knew I lived in a kitchenless room with a hot plate. He knew I sold cans of Working Dog Stew and Grammy’s Pot Pie for a living.
He knew I had posted an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a sugar daddy. He probably assumed there were other men.
But there weren’t.
Despite the dog food, the lack of sex, and the hot plate, Omar was still there.
The Life Omar Offered
After the play, we went for sushi on Larchmont. We ordered octopus and rainbow rolls.
Omar placed his warm hand on top of mine.
“You like where I live?” he asked.
“I do,” I said.
But I didn’t.
I imagined myself lying beside Omar on a treeless street in Sherman Oaks. I pictured his two-bedroom apartment with white carpets, a white leather couch, too many white cabinets, steel-gray blinds, and low ceilings.
“You could go back to school,” he said. “I could get you a new car.”
At the time, I drove a 1987 Ford Taurus wagon. The back end was smashed in so badly that it looked like half a car.
My neighbor had once left a note on the windshield.
“Don’t park your jalopy in front of my house.”
I had been in an accident months earlier, but the car still ran well enough. It was too expensive to repair, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask Omar for the money.
Whenever I went to the gym, I parked a block away so no one would see it.
Nobody in Los Angeles drives half a car.
The Future I Could Have Had
For a moment, I thought about what kind of car I might get. Maybe a white Mini Cooper with a stripe. Maybe a black truck.
I thought about school too. I could earn an MFA, leave the dog store, get my nails done every week, and buy new running shoes and stacks of clean white socks.
“You are a special woman,” Omar said as he held my hand. “We have grown close. I am in love with you.”
I looked at the picture of us still pinned to the wall among photographs of other couples.
“Happy couple.”
My jaw tightened. Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry.
That night, Omar dropped me off at home. Then he drove back to Sherman Oaks alone.
The next day, I stocked dog food and told him that I cared about him, but I couldn’t continue seeing him.
Learning to Support Myself in Sobriety
Without Omar’s help, I worried more and more about paying my rent.
Every couple of weeks, he sent me a text.
“I hope you are doing okay. Please let me know if you need anything, any help at all.”
“Thank you so much,” I replied. “All is well on my end.”
But all was not well.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure I could make it through each month. Many times, I considered giving in and seeing him again.
Sometimes, I even thought about Harry.
The Moment I Nearly Went Back
About two months after I last saw Omar, I was working behind the register at Tailwaggers. I wore the store’s red T-shirt, with a dog paw printed over my heart.
A man with brown, spiky hair walked in with his bulldog on a black studded leash.
The dog lifted its back leg and urinated beside a carpeted cat tower. Then the man and his dog left.
I grabbed a wad of paper towels and a bottle of natural disinfectant spray. As I cleaned the floor, I thought about the eleven dollars an hour I earned.
By the end of my shift, I would have made sixty dollars.
I went into the bathroom and broke down crying.
I wanted to use. I wanted to drink. More than anything, I wanted to stop dealing with everything.
My mind went to Harry and how easily I could make another thousand dollars.
Then I thought about Omar.
I could go back to school. Rent would no longer consume me. There could even be a new car.
But I knew I couldn’t live with a man I didn’t love, in Sherman Oaks, on a street without trees, inside an apartment with low ceilings.
Ultimately, I knew that if I chose that life, I would not stay sober.
So I returned to the shelves.
I stocked one can of dog stew at a time until the entire rack was neatly arranged.
Then I went home, plugged in my hot plate, and warmed some almond milk with a little cinnamon.
I went to bed sober.
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