#005 FLY ME OUT

This entry requires a strict disclaimer:

This blog is not meant to be an advisory source of any kind, nor do I wish to act as an authority on any front of which I speak. Therefore, I do not recommend anyone to attempt anything I am about to detail below. I simply wish to impart my own experience so as to illuminate a range of possibilities as to what can be achieved through a belief that may border on irrational, an attitude of using every resource available to oneself in new and exciting ways. 

~

r/SugarBabyLifestyle says that, with reasonable certainty, if I go through with this, I will surely be trafficked and/or killed and/or put in grave danger of some other, unspecified nature. 

And they’re right, I suppose. In the numerous forum posts I read from girls in a (somewhat) comparable position, the advice is clear. It seems common sense that a young woman should not board a flight to a new city if it is paid for by a man she has never met, or even spoken on the phone with. 

“Your friend is lucky to be alive,” one user responds to a poster asking if she should follow in the footsteps of a girlfriend in attempting a trip offered by a man from a dating app. 

“They should always come to you first,” other experienced sugar babies urge. 

And if you are flying to meet a man, I read that the general etiquette is that he should send the money so that you can be in charge of the reservations and ensure that they are secure, The last thing you want is to be stranded in an unfamiliar city, state, country, and at the behest of the man who booked your accommodations – he could easily cancel your return flight if he’s unsatisfied with you. Further, I am told that you should always, always remember that they are expecting sex. No exceptions. 

As I write to you now, the plane I'm on is preparing to land. I consider this advice. I recognize it, validate its importance. I can’t help but feel utterly perplexed as to why I have none of the urgency, none of the self-preservational anxiety that I should, by all accounts, be feeling.

Perhaps even the seasoned sugar babies posting on Reddit have failed to consider the circumstances that led me here – or maybe I’m just really stupid. 

But what else is a young female filmmaker meant to do when there is an important film festival to attend, but no way of getting there? 

With that, we have just been instructed to stow our tray tables for landing. I’ll explain everything when – if – I return to LA. 

Welcome to Seattle, Washington.

If you’ve made it this far, yes I’m alive in Los Angeles, and god, how good it feels.

~

On the Friday morning of my departure, as we’re pulling up to my terminal at LAX after a completely silent ride, my Uber driver decides to tell me that I’m going to be kidnapped and sent to Thailand to be a “worker.” I have no idea what this means, but it feels like an omen. I had told him nothing of my trip or anything about me prior to this. Maybe he could just sense a woman on the verge of self-destruction. 

I aim to prove him wrong with each of my next actions, all of which feel like accomplishments. I make it off of my Alaska Airlines flight in the afternoon, landing in the Seattle Tacoma airport. I walk through the terminal quickly and don’t linger – my head is on a constant swivel, hoping I don’t run into the 45 year old balding man who paid for my flight. It’s a short walk to the train station. I board with no problem. 

On the train ride into the city of nearly an hour, I have plenty of time to reflect on my decisions. I feel no discernable emotion – I stare out the window and am having trouble placing myself in this new environment as the dense layer of trees blends into a dark brown haze. 

For context: My presence was requested in Seattle for a film festival, where my best friend’s senior thesis is screening. Admittedly, I played a fairly small role in the production, but the festival paid for a hotel room for my bestie, so she suggested that I come along. I’ve never been to Seattle, and I was urged that there will be plenty of opportunities to network at whatever open-bar afterparties are taking place. I had tried to the best of my ability to find a deal on a flight, but I just couldn’t swing it on my own. 

One night, as I had just about resigned myself to staying behind, I decided to open up The App. I switched the location on my best friend and I’s shared profile to Seattle and began swiping. Remarkably quickly I found myself chatting to a former engineer and bar owner who seems eager to know when and why we’re traveling to the area. I explain that there’s an “arts program” I got accepted to but am still figuring out how to get there and how sad I would be if I missed it, etc. Within two or three messages he’s offering to help me out with my flight in exchange for a hangout or two. I warn him that I’m going to be very busy but, yes of course we’ll have dinner with him. I also tell him that we “don’t do anything physical on the first date” so as to gauge whether or not he might be the angry type. At this point, we agree that we’re fully planning on attending a dinner so as to get free food and also ensure that my return flight isn’t cancelled. Dinner would be easy work; Project 2026 thus far has prepared me well. 

When I arrive at the hotel I am greeted by my best friend, who quickly escorts me to a beer tasting networking event at the theater where the festival is being held. On an empty stomach, I’m suddenly double fisting drinks.

The next two days follow suit: I watch lots of films, daydrink, meet people, repeat. That same Friday I arrived, I had bought tickets to a rave at one of Seattle’s many gay clubs. My best friend was originally going to come with me, but by 11pm I was fully dressed and ready to leave, only to find her passed out on the bed. The day of socializing had worn her to pieces, which I could understand, but I’ll be damned if I pass up the opportunity to party in a new city. So I venture out on my own.

I order my ride to Capitol Hill, a short drive away from the hotel (which is walking distance from the film festival). I arrive at the bar, which is planted on a quiet corner right next to a set of apartment buildings, and enter with the lowest of expectations. 

What unfolds is a night of queer ecstacy. The crowd is sparse at first (I need to order another drink to tolerate the early stages), but soon enough the dance floor fills out and I loosen up a bit. I feel a pair of hands behind me – a beautiful woman wants to dance. This would be one of many beautiful women I danced with that night. Another girl was at the rave with her boyfriend, who she, at one point, instructed to go dance with a leather pup mask clad gay man. The pup and this girl’s boyfriend grinded on each other fiercely, a sight which genuinely brought joy to my heart. His girlfriend wanted to dance with me, and I was down. I did a spontaneous dance performance with another (gay) man, who blew me a kiss after our improvised routine and said how wonderful it was to dance with me, darling. By the end of the night I had gotten to know every character on the dance floor, not through conversation, but by an exchange of the body, pure expression. 

A group of college students asks me out for a smoke. I talk to them a bit and find their company to be extremely welcoming. We swap Instagrams and they invite me out with them the next night, promising to show me the most lit spots on Cap Hill. It’s almost tortuous to peel myself out of the three level club and make my way back to the hotel. I want this night to last forever. 

The next day we have more events to attend at the festival, daytime activities that keep us occupied. At this point I had been intermittently texting the man from App, to keep his hopes up about our dinner, but I’m quickly realizing that we will definitely not have time to fit it into the trip. Over midday drinks at a nearby pub, I explain the situation to a group of filmmakers we just met less than an hour ago. They are very confused but support us in going out to dinner with him. 

Later, we attend an open bar mixer at around 8 P.M. I bounce from conversation to conversation, squeezing every last ounce of charisma out of my being to make the most of this experience. I run into one of the filmmakers we met earlier – she invites me out to a lesbian bar and says that the group is leaving in a few minutes. I gather my best friend and a couple of other girls I just met shortly before, and off we go. 

We arrive at the Wildrose, one of the last few lesbian bars in the country. Our group slowly files in, except for two girls who attempt to enter with non-US passports. For some reason, the bouncer refuses to recognize their identification, which upsets me greatly. We attempt to argue but the bouncer never concedes. The two girls say that they’ll try a bar down the street, which leaves me feeling really guilty. The rest of us stay at the Wildrose for at most 15 minutes, and quickly decide it’s not for us. 

Herein lies the only crack in my perfect queer fantasy: throughout the night, I am consistently approached and asked if I’m straight. Every time it happens I ask the person if I look straight, and every time they say yes. This completely perplexes me, as I never have this problem in LA. I didn’t get a septum piercing because I wanted to look straight. But I start to realize that things are a bit different in Seattle. The wokeness on Capitol Hill is far more advanced than anything going on back in LA. 

We leave and join our friends to find a bar that is immigrant friendly, and end up at Pony, a gay bar that was recommended to us by another festival-goer. It’s much smaller and more lowkey than Wildrose, but we settle for it on account of wanting to talk to each other and not be drowned out by accusations of being straight. Or so I thought. 

Yet another girl walks up to me, at the GAY bar, and asks if I “swing for the ladies.” I say, well yes, we’re both at a gay bar right now, and she just responds with “well you never know.”

I guess you really don’t. 

We drink and talk until the bar closes, and then continue talking on the sidewalk outside. Once again, it’s difficult to pull myself away from this night. It was a magical pocket of bliss we had constructed in that space, and it had been awhile since I felt really queer. All this scamming and finessing men had made me forget that I actually could care less about straight men generally, that my real community was made up by gay people who truly see me for who I am. 

We slept well on that Saturday night. 

Sunday is my last afternoon in Seattle – my flight leaves at 8:00 P.M., which leaves me with a few hours to spare. My best friend and I debate asking the man to take us to brunch, but we both agree that we’d rather spend the day together. So we risk it – I leave his last message in the app unanswered, which is a desperate plea from the night before for us to hammer out dinner plans. 

We have breakfast, shop around, and I realize that, despite having my entire flight paid for, I am still nearly flat broke by the end of this trip. Such is life. 

I barely make it to the gate as my flight starts boarding, fully expecting my ticket to be void or for the man to make a dramatic appearance at the airport. Nothing of the sort happens. 

I arrive back in Los Angeles safely, and tuck myself into bed for my 8 A.M. class the next day. 

A minor ripple in the typical routine – exactly what Project 2026 is about. I’m slowly recalibrating as I learn to carry out our mission independently. I slipped out into another temporality for just a moment, enough to feel some sense of meaning in getting a little bit lost, but always finding my way back home. 

The man has not contacted me since I arrived back. God Bless Online Dating. 

~

Tune in next time! Just do it!

And tell me, would you get flown out?