The Fantasy He Paid For

I was planning to write a rather romantic story today—one that led me to a few important realizations. But after publishing my previous article on Wednesday, something happened that I simply cannot stay silent about.

I am furious. The anger has cooled slightly over the past week, but I still need to say what I intended to say. Otherwise, all those unspoken words will keep eating away at me from the inside. I can't say any of this directly to the person involved, so I'll say it here, in my blog, where nobody gets to tell me what I can and cannot talk about, and where nobody can shut me up.

So prepare yourselves. This article is going to be harsh. I've been pushed to my breaking point, and what you're about to read is the explosion that comes after.

Last Wednesday, I was at work in the club when one of my regular customers walked in. He looked awful. Like a homeless man, honestly. I could tell immediately that he was in a terrible mood. His face looked empty, defeated. He walked up to me and said, “I read your article.”

“Okay,” I replied. “And? It’s just a story.”

Then, without warning, he started screaming—loud enough to overpower the music blasting through the club.

“You dumped me! And now you're going on dates and having sex with people! As if those videos weren't enough, you prostitute! I don't want to see you anymore! I don't want you in my life!”

And then he turned around and left before I had a chance to say a single word.

I wasn't scared. But my hands were shaking. My voice was shaking too when I walked over to security and told them I didn't want that lunatic anywhere near me. The audacity of this man still amazes me. How do you come to my workplace and tell me that you don't want to see me? You don't want to see me? Then don't come to the club. It's really that simple.

But let me start from the beginning.

Back at the end of 2024, a man first came into our club. Let's call him M. The moment I saw him, I knew something wasn't right. I couldn't have explained exactly what it was at the time, but it was obvious that something was seriously off. Some kind of psychological disorder, some disconnect from reality.

He started coming to the club almost every day. Not just to see me, but other dancers as well. To this day—almost two years later—he still treats the strip club like a full-time job. Nearly every day he walks through those doors and spends thousands of dollars.

What I'm about to tell you is my personal view of M. Some of it I know for a fact. Some of it is my own interpretation. Either way, this is how I see him.

He's from Michigan. He ran away to California to get away from his family. When he arrived here, he was already in the middle of a divorce from his wife—a divorce that, as far as I know, still isn't finalized. That's what he does. He runs. He ran away from his family. He ran away from responsibility. And just like he ran out of the club after screaming insults at me.

Shortly after arriving in California, he attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric facility. Personally, I don't believe it was a genuine suicide attempt. I believe it was an attempt to attract attention.

M. has money. Family-business money. As far as I understand, he owns a share of the business and has never actually worked for a living. Not now. Not ever. I honestly don't think he's worked a single day in his life. He has no concept of what money is worth.

He lives in hotels. He doesn't even have a home. For almost the entire time I've known him, he's bounced from one hotel to another. There was only one period when he rented an apartment. He didn't even stay for the duration of the lease. He left for Michigan, and when he came back, they wouldn't let him return. Not surprising. He once showed me photographs of the apartment. He had literally covered the walls with drawings and writings.

Eventually he became one of my regulars. Typically he would book VIP for several hours at a time. We'd talk. Sometimes he'd sleep. Sometimes he'd ask for a massage.

Every single visit came with the same thing: hours of negativity. Stories about how miserable his life was. How lonely he was. How he had nothing to live for. How he wanted to kill himself. How everyone wished him harm. How everyone deserved to die. And on and on and on.

Every time, I tried to redirect him toward something positive. I listened. I encouraged him. I tried to help.

At first, M. used to come to the club with feet that smelled so bad everyone noticed. It wasn't just me. Whenever he took his shoes off in a VIP room, the smell would fill the space and make everyone around him miserable. Thankfully, after a few comments, that particular problem eventually stopped.

But lately things got even worse. He started showing up reeking of sweat, as if he hadn't showered in weeks and had never heard of deodorant. Then he'd hug me. It was disgusting. Genuinely nauseating. The kind of smell that makes you want to throw up. And yet I never said anything because I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

Not that he appreciated any of it. He didn't care. The only reason I tolerated any of this was because it was money. Nobody comes to a strip club that often. Nobody spends that much. His tips were usually terrible, aside from a handful of exceptions, but at least he booked hours of VIP time.

And now we get to the most interesting part: his diagnosis. This isn't speculation. I know this for a fact because I saw the documents myself.

M. has schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, and generalized anxiety disorder.

From the very first day we met, M. believed that he and I were in a relationship. At the same time, he also believed he was in relationships with several other dancers at the club. He would tell me elaborate stories about our future together. According to him, one day he, I, and another dancer would all live together under the same roof. Some kind of polygamous fantasy. And that was only one of countless absurd things I heard from him.

The thing is, there was no point arguing. The man lived in his own reality. If you told him something wasn't true, he wouldn't stop and reconsider. He would laugh, dismiss whatever you said, and continue believing exactly what he wanted to believe. He was convinced that one of our managers was actually his biological mother. Not metaphorically. Literally. He genuinely believed she had given birth to him. At one point, he even asked her for permission to marry me. Yes, he proposed to me. And during the period when I was looking for a house to move into, he was telling her that we were house hunting together and that we would soon be living together.

I also witnessed what appeared to be auditory hallucinations on numerous occasions, along with paranoid delusions about people watching him, following him, and conspiring against him. Over time, I heard so many bizarre stories that they all began to blur together. Very often, while he was talking, my brain simply checked out. I would sit there nodding, pretending to listen, making the appropriate sounds at the appropriate moments, while my thoughts drifted somewhere far away. It was the only way I could protect myself from the endless stream of negativity he constantly poured onto me.

There was another story that perfectly captures how disconnected from reality some of his thinking could be. Twice, he told me that his car had been stolen and then mysteriously returned. The first time, he claimed his elderly aunt had taken it. The second time, he was convinced it was the police. Because apparently they have nothing better to do than steal someone's car, drive it around, and then politely put it back where they found it. My conclusion was much simpler: he had forgotten where he parked it.

Over a year ago, when we first met, I told him that I had worked in the adult industry. To this day, he still watches those videos. And not long ago, while we were still speaking, he said something to me that perfectly illustrates the way his mind works.

"You refuse to let me support you financially, but then you go put on a wig and shoot porn. You're a prostitute."

I was speechless.

I asked him to show me the video he was talking about. It was an old video from years ago—so old that I hadn't even had my breast augmentation yet. According to the fantasy playing inside his head, I put on a wig, take my boobs off, and secretly film porn on the side. The entire thing was detached from reality.

But situations like that were constant. Absolutely constant. Some new fantasy would appear in his head, and suddenly I would have to deal with it. The most insulting part wasn't even what he said. It was the fact that he never apologized. Not once.

I explained the difference between a porn actress and a prostitute—a distinction that should be obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of the world. Yet he neither had the intelligence nor the courage to say the two simplest words imaginable: I'm sorry.

In the end, I let it go. Not because I accepted it. Not because it didn't bother me. But because I knew he was mentally ill.

The truth is, I had fallen into a comfort zone. In some ways, I had become dependent on him—especially after I started working daytime shifts. Financially, most of my income was coming from him. But over time, he pushed me to my limit. He always wanted something. Always needed something. Always demanded something. There was constant pressure, constant emotional labor, constant uncertainty about what new obsession, accusation, fantasy, or crisis would emerge from his mind tomorrow.

Maybe he'd show up. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd spend money. Maybe he'd disappear. My entire financial stability felt tied to the unpredictable whims of a mentally unstable man, and that reality became suffocating. I hated him. I hated the situation. I hated the fact that my own life no longer felt like it belonged to me.

At some point, I finally decided I'd had enough. I told him I was returning to the night shift. If he wanted to see me, he could come at night. If not, that was his choice. Either way, I didn't care anymore.

And somehow, in his mind, that meant I had abandoned him.

Meanwhile, for the first time in a long time, I felt free. I got my life back. As long as my income depended on whether or not he decided to walk into that club, I couldn't even write honestly in my own blog. I couldn't publish stories like my previous article because I was constantly calculating the consequences.

Even after all of that, he still kept coming to see me. At least until he read my previous article.

But after screaming at me, insulting me, and humiliating himself in public, he unknowingly gave me the freedom to write this one too.

Because somebody needs to tell the truth.

The truth is that if M. didn't have money, nobody would talk to him. Nobody. Not me. Not the dancers. Not the people in the club. Certainly not outside of it. And he never had relationships with any of us. People were polite to him. Friendly to him. Patient with him. Warm to him. Because that's how they earned money. What exactly did he expect? It's a strip club. Everything here is fake.

After screaming at me and storming out of the club, he had the nerve to come back the very next night. At that point, he was told not to approach me, not to speak to me, and not to be anywhere near me. In fact, he was instructed that whenever he saw me, he was to go to the other side of the club and stay there.

I have no respect for this man, and I don't consider him much of a man, either. Yes, he's mentally ill, but that is not an excuse. He has not been declared legally incompetent. He is still responsible for his actions, his words, and the way he treats other people. I sincerely hope I never see him again for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, I don't think he has enough courage to stop showing up at the club where I work. Just as he doesn't have enough courage to apologize or admit he was wrong. Then again, that would require him to believe he did something wrong in the first place—and I'm certain he doesn't.

After all the time I've spent dealing with him, I've learned one thing with absolute certainty: there is no winning against his schizophrenia. I tried. I lied. I manipulated situations. I worked around his delusions in ways I normally never would. I did things completely out of character for me, hoping to make things easier, hoping to keep the peace, hoping to reach him somehow. None of it mattered. Because in the end, he doesn't care. He's selfish. He's cold-hearted. He's dishonest. He lives inside a reality of his own creation, and nothing anyone says can pull him out of it.

Do you know what the biggest lie he ever told me was?

"I love you."

He said it constantly. I never took it seriously. Not for a second. And honestly, that kind of dishonesty disgusts me. I hate when people throw those words around carelessly. Love isn't obsession. Love isn't possession. Love isn't trying to make another person responsible for your happiness.

Whenever I asked him what he wanted from life—what goals he had, what dreams he was pursuing—his answer was always essentially the same. He wanted a wife. That was it. Nothing else seemed to interest him. No ambitions. No purpose. No passions. No direction. Just a person who would be with him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Of course he denies it, but that's exactly what I see. And the truth is, nobody is going to be with him twenty-four hours a day—not even for money.

So what is my conclusion from all of this?

Oddly enough, this entire situation did me a favor. It shoved me out of my comfort zone so hard that I finally had to take an honest look at where my life was headed. It forced me to admit that I've been stuck. Stuck in a situation that no longer serves me. Stuck in a club that increasingly feels like a swamp I need to climb out of. And it made me realize that it's time to move forward.

I'm not talking about leaving the industry entirely. At least not yet. For now, it remains the most realistic option available to me. But the first signs of change are already there. And for the first time in a long time, I'm actually looking forward to what comes next.