On What You Pay Me

Men are strange about the money. A man will spend an hour telling me precisely what he wants and then go quiet at the point where he has to say a number, as though the whole thing has been slightly spoiled by turning out to be an arrangement.

It has not been spoiled. It is the cleanest part of it.

What you pay me buys my attention, deliberately, for a stated length of time. It does not buy my affection, which is not for sale. It does not buy my agreement, which I have written about elsewhere. It buys the fact that at the hour we agreed I am here, thinking about you and about nothing else, having put the rest of the day away in another room.

That is worth paying for, and you know it is, or you would not have come.

Some men want the money to mean more than that. They want it to be a wound, or a proof, or a way of being taken from. For a few of them it genuinely is, and I will work with that, because it is honest. But it has to be said out loud beforehand and not smuggled in and hoped for.

Others want it to mean less. They would prefer to pretend this is simply two people who happened upon one another. That one I will not do. Pretending changes what I owe you, and I would far rather owe you something exact.

Pay me on time and we need never discuss it again. That is not a threat. It is the appeal. The men who settle it promptly are the ones who get to forget about it entirely, which is rather the whole point.