Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babes

A year later, the same year she graduated from high school, she was seduced online by a man named Ned. The two exchanged e-mails for months. He sent flowers and then money — lots of it. When they finally met (she lied to her parents about where she was going that night), she was "not pleasantly surprised; he wasn't ugly, but ..." She trails off. Ned bought dinner. During the meal, he kissed her, and she kissed back. "I almost felt obligated," she explains. "At this point he had sent me $2000 or $3000. To a 15-year-old, that's a lot of money."

From there her story is like a fairy tale gone bad. Ned eventually convinced Aphrodite to move to Georgia, where he lived, paying for her to study interior design (thereby providing her with an excuse for leaving her parents' home), putting her up in a second house he owned, and buying her a car. Aphrodite convinced a friend to go with her: "I was like, 'Hey, it's a free apartment, and there's a free car there.'"

Over the course of about eight months, she figures, Ned gave her more than $60,000 in cash. "Everything I could possibly want.... I got a $1400 dog because I thought it was cute.... I was not a cheap hooker — I used to say that."

The only problem was Ned. "He was very controlling: 'You wear what I want you to wear, we have sex when I want to have sex.' God forbid it should be entertaining for me.... As soon as they think they're losing you, it's Abusive 101. 'Don't wear your hair like that, don't wear this, don't wear that.' You're a walking accessory, a walking Barbie doll."

"They" were Ned and his friends, who, Aphrodite says, had sugar babies of their own. "All his friends had girls just like me. None of the girls really talked to each other. [The men] are so insecure when you're with them, they're so paranoid; secretly they know that you're only with them because of the money. God forbid you're secretly plotting. So none of the girls talk."

Eventually Aphrodite broke things off with Ned and moved back to her family. She figures she has stashed away about $30,000 from the experience (and donated $9000 to a children's charity). Aphrodite, who spent time on the beauty pageant circuit, says that behind the scenes, similar stories are playing out all the time. "Beauty queens, actresses, models ... that's the lifestyle a lot of these girls live. And they live it in secrecy."

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Before he discovered the Internet, Easy Rider had to look for sugar babies the old-fashioned way: by leaving the house. Most of the usual pick-up spots in South Beach were no good for an older man. "In those places, you have to be very careful if you approach a young girl, or she'll get the wrong idea ... and there are so many other people there." Instead Rider frequented places where an older man looking for a young woman might get a warmer reception. There was always one standby: hotel bars.

With its moonlit couches, shimmering pools, and the ever-present rumble of the ocean nearby, the Shore Club is a place where the old and the young, the rich and the beautiful, can mingle freely in an environment safely hostile to anyone without money to burn.

Beatriz, who sells cigars and cigarettes from a wooden box that hangs from her neck, sees plenty from her post in the hotel courtyard. "Muchísimas," she says, smiling, "everybody knows about it. The cocktail waitress," she says, waving her hand toward the hotel's darkened interior, "she gets offers from tons of men, all the time. Me too!" One night a man from Denmark walked up to her to buy a cigar and, while he was at it, offered to take her to Hawaii on a cruise, she says. She declined. He asked how much money she made. "$500 a week," she answered. "He said, 'I'll give you $2500 to come with me,'" says Beatriz. "Five times 500."

"Oh yeah, you see 'em, old guys with young girls," the bartender pipes in, pausing for a moment from wiping a glass to wave a vague hand toward Collins Avenue. "We had a barmaid who went off with a millionaire. He brought her to Switzerland, bought her her own beauty salon."

The bartender advises me to seek out a friend of his, Travis, a few doors down at the Delano hotel. "He's got this woman, she's in her forties, who buys him all kinds of shit."

I find Travis standing in front of the Delano, looking like the Secret Service — walkie-talkie in hand, a coil rising from inside his jacket to his ear, his face a stern mask as he watches the guests piling out of limos and hired cars. The expression breaks when I ask about his sugar mama.