‘He gave me £1.5k a month just for looking pretty’: we spoke to a sugar baby at KCL

"God, I need a sugar daddy." The throw-away quip that comes out of student mouths around the end of the semester, when our bank balances look less like phone numbers and more like antarctic temperatures.

For the majority of us it's just a dream, we would never actually solicit men that could have been at school with our fathers. One King's student, however, does have the guts to do just that – and she's not just playing the game, she's indisputably winning it.

In an exclusive interview, this intelligent, confident 20-year-old has given us an exclusive insight into the exploits of her life as a student sugar baby. Brace yourself, it's going to get juicy.

When did you decide that you wanted to become a sugar baby?

I dreamed of being a sugar baby since the age of 14, but I knew then that I obviously had to wait until I was older. So I downloaded an app when I was 17 and newly single. I was messaged by a significantly older man, offering to buy me a pair of shoes. That awakened that notion in me that had been laying dormant since I was 14.

We struck up conversation together, went on dates and he eventually ended up giving me his bank card to spend on whatever I liked. We’re still in contact but he’s beginning to enter a more vanilla lifestyle, and I’m not ready to settle down like that quite yet!

Was that your first date, then?

Not quite, my first time time properly meeting a guy (I call my sugar daddies “my guys”) was on a date in the Shard on my King’s College induction day. I was 15-20 minutes late because I was so new to London, but I finally got there. I was very nervous in my casual clothes, surrounded by smartly dressed people in suits. We had some drinks and I loosened up, and we got to talking about what we both wanted from the arrangement.

I learned that he was actually a very lonely guy, trapped in a marriage that wasn’t working for him. This guy wanted to meet me for drinks after work every now and again, to have an escape before having to go home to his mundane life. That ended when he started being inappropriate, making suggestions that we engage in things that I wasn’t comfortable with. I’m very firm in regards to that – I simply said, “It’s not going to happen.”

Unfortunately I had to block him to get rid of him. That’s a word of advice: if you’re going to do this then you have to really trust these people, because even if you think you know them, you probably don’t.

Everybody seems to want a sugar daddy for the financial perks. What do your sugar daddies give you?

From the last sugar daddy I was with I would get a quite hefty allowance, baring in mind that this was for a platonic relationship. I would get £750.00 a month, plus a shit-tonne of gifts, anything I wanted. All my make-up, my clothes — we used to go to Selfridges and Liberty and he would just hand me a basket! I’m still in touch with this guy, he has his uses. Another guy used to give me £1.5k a month, just for looking pretty!

And how many of these sugar daddies do you have on the go at any given time?

I always have one or two. I aim for two because you never know if the first one will let you down, and I need to have that security. You should never trust that being a sugar baby is a stable source of income or treat it as a genuine job, because these men can drop you for the next model that walks by. You’ve got to keep grinding!

Does the length of relationship with each guy vary?

Yes, it varies depending on what they want from the situation. There’s one guy that’s been in my life for a good year and a bit now, but he’s kind of fallen in love with me which is a bit disappointing because it puts a lot of pressure on me. I’ve had another arrangement that was eight months, but some others are really temporary.

The more attractive they are, the more seriously I’ll take them, as shallow as that sounds! If an attractive man offered me money to go for a nice dinner with him, then I’d be swayed. Nowadays I would anyway — back when I started I would’ve been more reluctant, but now my piety has lessened and I have nothing to lose.

Does a sugar baby have to have sex with their sugar daddies?

Do they have to? Well, nowadays sex is expected so much because the guys are thinking, “Hey, what am I paying for!?” I’ve been in situations where I’ve weaselled my way out of it, saying that I’ll do it eventually when I know full well that I’ll never be comfortable.

If it gets to the end of a night and they expect you to come home with them, you can just use an excuse to get out of there. You have to be cunning; this lifestyle isn’t for someone that is easily bullied. You have to be almost psychopathic, or at least have some kind of disconnection, which a lot of people find very difficult to do.

Has a sugar daddy ever gotten angry when you’ve refused to sleep with them?

Oh, yes. There was this one crazy 34-year-old guy. He was very good looking, charismatic and intelligent, so I started hanging out with him a lot. He gave me pocket money and gifts like Tiffany bracelets. He seemed like everything I wanted from that kind of relationship. But then he wanted to drop the arrangements and just date me, but that wasn’t something that I wanted.

One evening, I brought him out for drinks as a plus-one with my friends. When it came time to go home, I asked him politely if he’d specify that the Uber drop my friends and me off at my place and then him carry on home to his place. I thought he had, but when we got to mine he refused to go home and forced his way into my student accommodation with me. I told him, “OK…you can stay for a short while but not the night, and you can’t have any more alcohol.”

He ended up getting very angry with me because I wouldn’t sleep with him, even though I’d said that I wouldn’t. He then tried to attack me in my student accommodation. I managed to escape him and I ran to my friend’s room. I told the guy that he either had to peacefully leave now or I would call security. He left that flat but then rang me saying, “I’m outside your flat, if you don’t let me in then I’m going to knock this door down.” He proceeded to hammer on the door so hard that my apartment was shaking. Thankfully, he eventually he calmed himself down and left.

What are the most bizarre requests you’ve had from sugar daddies?

If we’re going to be explicit, the funniest messages I’ve had are probably just, “I want to fuck you hard and then you leave silently”. People use you to fulfil their fantasies. One guy offered to pay me to kick him in the balls! I took him up on the request, that was funny. I met him in a relatively empty park and spent half an hour booting him in the nuts.

He thanked my after every kick and gave me £100 at the end! Another guy wanted to take me to Covent Garden, buy me some lingerie and take pictures in it. I could keep the lingerie and he could keep the pictures. You meet some interesting characters on these websites.

Are there any other particularly interesting stories you have?

I certainly have a few! I was seeing a really attractive 52-year-old guy that lived in Chelsea. He said that he’d be really interested in meeting another girl and that he’d pay for her company too. I have this bi-curious friend who does the same thing as me, and so I suggested that she come for a casual drink with me and the guy. We ended up getting very drunk and having the weirdest threesome of my life. It was fucking hot.

They aren’t all positive though. Another time, my friend and I went out for drinks with this guy, but we decided half way through the night that he wasn’t worth it because he just wanted sex from us. I blocked him after that date, but my friend didn’t. He messaged her a couple of weeks afterwards saying that he had a middle eastern client that was interested in being entertained by a young blonde girl for a few days.

He also said that as the middle man, or the ‘pimp’, that he deserved a 40 per cent cut of what I would be paid. My friend flew off the handle and said, “how dare you try and take a student’s money, as someone who already wants for nothing”. Some of these men think that you’re naive and need the money, but they don’t realise that we see them as just one of millions of men out there just like them.

One other night, I went out with a guy for dinner. I had gone forward with him saying that something sexual might happen in the future when I was comfortable. After dinner he tried to get me to come back to his hotel room and I said that I couldn’t because I had to go out for Freshers' Week. He said that he thought that we were going to progress in our relationship and spend some "quality time" together. I said no, sorry, and because I already had the money agreed from him then I got my bags and left. I went to Tiger Tiger with £500 in my pocket.

What are the biggest drawbacks of being a sugar baby?

Oh my lord, the emotional stress for starters. Although I try to see it a job, it verges more into your personal life too and sucks up a lot of your time. You can feel really drained all the time because at times you really have to pretend that you want to be in their company, because it’s your money that’s on the line.

Also, you can be subject to blackmail a fair bit if they start to think that what’s going on between the two of you is genuine. Relationships between sugar babies and daddies are to an extent, but not completely. They can start laying it on, saying “If you really cared about me you’d do this, this, this…for the money.” You just end up thinking, “give me a day off!” because they’re far more invested in it than you are.

Have you had a lot of criticism, personally?

I personally haven’t received a lot of really negative criticism. I think views like that often come from older generations because they refuse to distinguish between the different types of services people offer nowadays. I am aware that, in a basic sense, being a sugar baby is a form of escort service. But I think some critics are just jealous because they want to do it but don’t have the looks or the balls to!

What advice do you have for someone who is thinking of becoming a sugar baby?

First of all, you have to consider the type of person you are. Do you get easily offended by people’s comments? Would you be worried if strangers think your dress is too short? You can’t be too self-conscious. You need self-confidence and to be happy in yourself, in order to come across as though you don’t have any emotional baggage. These men want an escape, so they want to be with someone charismatic, not nervous. You don’t want to come across as though you’re there just to be paid and then scoot at the end of the night.

Also, you must research, research, research before you go into it. I was very informed about it when I started so I kind of had my game plan ready by the time I was 18. You have to ask yourself if you’ll be able to spend whole day or longer with these people — I’ve been on holiday with a sugar daddy! Some other advice would be to go for people that you find at least slightly attractive, whether they be good looking or friendly. That’ll make it easier to get the job done — if you want to make good money, you have to be prepared to treat it like a job.

How does it make you feel, knowing that some of these men are in relationships or have families?

It’s not my business, I’m super desensitised to that. Although, sometimes I do reflect on myself and think, "I am seeing married men, I am that bitch". But it’s not that deep for me, because at the end of the day it’s his problem.

It has put a lot of doubt in my mind about marriage, though. I’m very skeptical of rich, successful men because I know what a lot of them are doing! You have to be very careful because you can potentially ruin lives. When I went to Ascot, my guy got very drunk and left my sunglasses in his jacket pocket. When he got home he absent-mindedly left them on his kitchen table and his wife saw them and asked him whose they were. He had to make up an excuse. There’s strands of my blonde hair all over his car, and he doesn’t hoover it. Sometimes I think there’s a part of these guys that wants to be found out.

Some of my friends don’t agree with my viewpoint, and my one very small moral bone tells me I shouldn’t do it but I don’t heed it.

For how long do you see yourself doing this?

I plan do be a sugar baby until I’ve got at least £20k in cash, on top of my purchases. I keep all my cash safely stored away and I keep my books properly so I know what money is passing in and out of my accounts. I’m not an irresponsible spender, but I don’t deny myself small things like buying coffees everyday, drinks here and there, and going out for dinner.

If I need something then I just buy it because I know that I can. Or when I’m on a day out with a guy and we go shopping, he’ll usually be in such a good mood that he’ll usually put his card in the machine to pay before I try to. In regards to how long I’ll do this for, it’s really an open-ended story for me. I could see myself eventually married to someone double my age and I’m pretty content with that idea. I’ve got my mind set in material happiness right now, I’m not looking for love.