Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babes

Dolly, age 34, is tall and has long limbs, bleach-blond hair, and an unavoidable bosom. Her lips are big, her ever-mascaraed eyelashes long. Up close, there is something tough about her; she looks at once like Barbie and someone who could tear Barbie apart, limb from limb, and enjoy it. Her laugh — loud, harsh, and uninhibited — is that of someone who has laughed her way through a lifetime of troubles.

Dolly grew up poor in a rough part of North Miami. "I was a little hoodlum!" she says. She got pregnant at age 16, married the father shortly thereafter, and then gave birth again a year later. From the beginning, her husband was abusive. After he tried to strangle her, she says, she left him. At age 19, she shacked up in a hotel room with two children she could barely afford to take care of. "So I danced," she explains.

She became a stripper, working at a club (which she declines to name) in Broward County. ("I would never do stripping anywhere near my home," she emphasizes. "That's something you can't explain to kids.") She didn't like the work, but it paid $400 to $500 a night and, she learned, came with other benefits. One day an older Venezuelan customer offered to pay for her divorce. She accepted. From that point on, Dolly lived her life as a sugar baby.

Since then, she has gone out with any number of men, most of them rich. "One guy gave me $20,000 for a three-day visit. He actually wanted somebody to stomp on him and all those things," she says, giggling. "But I'm not going to do that. I'm not stupid; I know I don't have to do that." When she was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, her current sugar daddy — a screenwriter and gynecologist — offered to pay her medical bills. Then, while she was recovering at his mansion, he flew into a rage and tried to kick her out of the house. "He's crazy, absolutely crazy," she says, laughing wickedly.

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Easy Rider was married once. He was young, still in law school, and it didn't work out. "I was probably too selfish for marriage. Marriage requires a lot of give and take," he explains. He and his wife divorced after only a year.

Law school, however, turned out to be a more successful endeavor. Rider embarked on a career in international banking, which took him around the world. He has lived in New York and London, and owns a house on an island in East Asia ("A small plane takes you there," he explains). He had a Thai girlfriend as well. The two of them lived together for almost four years. She talked about getting married, but the idea never appealed to him.

When his mother fell ill, Rider returned to his hometown, Palm Beach, to take care of her. He involved himself in civic life, charities, and local politics. There was only one thing missing.

Three months in, Easy Rider is learning the subtleties of his newfound sugar daddyhood. "I think there's a certain etiquette," he explains. "Let's say you're communicating with someone early on. Normally, if you say something that's not quite right, you get a second chance. But online, the women I talk to, they get hit on a lot. If there's anything I write that she doesn't like — bang! — she's gone."

So far, he reckons he has gone out with about a dozen women. "Almost without exception they've been younger than 30 ... and articulate enough." The majority of those dates were low-key affairs — dinner and, perhaps, a little shopping. He won't disclose the more successful of his outings — "A gentleman never discusses such things," he says disdainfully — but he's unequivocally happy about how things are going: "Mister Pasternack probably has all the money he needs. But I'll tell you, I'm happy to pay him."

Not that it's all blooming flowers and morning dew. "Here's where it gets touchy," Rider says. "Some of them were really a business arrangement; they wanted money up front, and I'm not really into that. It didn't hurt my feelings; I'm an adult ... but a couple of girls I met, there was nothing spoken about money.

"There's this girl I've been seeing, she's quite special, almost doesn't want anything," he says. As if imparting a secret, he adds, "She drinks cranberry juice."

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Aphrodite was only 15 years old when, by accident, she became a sugar baby. A precocious 17 now — she says she's "thirtysomething in my head" — Aphrodite was 14 when she had her first relationship, with a 23-year-old.