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Submit profile?
I tapped yes.
Great news, Leah! Your profile’s been approved, and potential platinum-level sponsors are already looking at it. You’ll be getting private messages soon, we promise—in the meantime, why not check out the official Selecta Arrangements forums to see what other girls are saying about the program, and what tips they have to offer for making that perfect arrangement?
I tapped that button, too.Official forum, scrubbed of anything negative, obviously,I thought as the message boards came up on my screen. There had to be unofficial forums, too—just like for the New Modesty. Despite myself, I started to feel the tug of curiosity.
Here was another system to game: I had gotten two weeks of free living out of Harristown. Surely LA would treat me at least as well.
“Leah Rundin?” a woman’s voice asked from the doorway. I looked up to see a bus driver who had just entered the lobby. She had already crossed half the distance to me, the only person there, her attention on the luggage that had probably already informed her of my being the passenger she sought.
“That’s me,” I said, putting my phone away and rising to grab my bags.
“I’ll get those for you,” the woman said. “Platinum-level thing. You can go ahead and get on the bus.”
I could get used to this, I thought as I walked out to the bus with the vivid red, whooshySelecta Lines Deluxelogo on the side. A private jet would have suited me better, I decided, but a luxury bus would make a good start anyway.
As the smooth-riding vehicle made its way from the flatlands of the Midwest up and through the Rockies, I alternated my time between gawking at the scenery from my plush seat and scrolling through page after page of posts from girls in the program I quickly learned to abbreviate SA. I started with the official forums.
Keep it positive, girls!
That post, the top pinned one on theGeneral Discussionforum, had thousands of replies from associate members. It took me a moment to remember that girls like me were onlyassociate membersof SA. The real members of the program were the sponsors: the men who paid Selecta for the privilege of messaging the young women whose profiles must, I saw, number similarly in the thousands.
If that thought hadn’t already made my heart sink a little despite the gorgeous mountain scenery, the posts in theKeep it positive, girls!thread would definitely have done the trick.
The original post didn’t do that; it was the replies that gave me pause as to whether I’d just made a terrible decision. The original post, if it were real, came from an associate member whose story alternately scared, fascinated, and encouraged me—and finally, I had to admit, moved me a little bit too.
I don’t want to gloat or anything, a girl called AZHotty had written a little more than a year ago,but I do want to help y’all stay positive even when this SA thing doesn’t seem to be working out. When I first got into the program, I had like four or five dates a week with economy and moderate guys.
Those terms puzzled me: I had to go to the FAQ section of the SA app to learn that sponsors came in ‘flavors’ as the app called them—economic rankings, more like, I quickly realized, depending on how much a guy said he intended to spend on his ‘Selecta Arrangements lifestyle.’Economy, Moderate, Comfort,andLuxury.
I also learned that as an associate member, if I found a sponsor he would give me a monthly allowance, in line with the financial flavor he had chosen. That made me blush, but at the same time it helped me understand the appeal to both sides of the equation, struggling young woman and wealthy man.
True, according to the standards I had learned, growing up in a more-or-less traditional family, girls shouldn’t even think about taking money on such terms. But how did it differ, really, from the New Modesty—or even from traditional dating, where the guy paid for dinner and expected to get ‘intimacy’ to use the term all the associate members used on the forums?
AZHotty went on,I didn’t ever even get a PM from a comfort-level sponsor, let alone a luxury guy. But I kept it positive, you know? And I found a moderate sponsor, and even though I kind of thought I would just take a month’s allowance and jet, it didn’t turn out that way.
So the story’s a little weird, and a lot of you probably won’t believe me, but I feel, like, an obligation to share it anyway. There’s a lot of debate even here on the official forums—and a lot more in other places—about the submission thing. Some girls claim they’ve never met a potential sponsor who expects them to submit to his loving guidance. Some girls claim they’ve never met one who DOESN’T expect it.
My lips parted, as if I wanted to object to AZHotty’s words, despite her having written them long ago, and there being no one to hear me—unless of course my phone was in fact listening. I closed them and swallowed hard.
Loving guidance.What did it even mean?
Well, when ‘Steve’ (I’ll just call him that, not his real name obvi) told me on our first date that he expected to ‘take the lead’ and that he wanted to ‘help me grow,’ I really did think I would take him for a month’s allowance and, you know, rinse him away. Unlike the other guys who I’d gone out with, he actually said he’d pay my allowance before intimacy.
I swallowed hard again. If most potential sponsors expected to have thosemore intimate momentsbefore they decided on giving you an allowance… The heat that had receded from my cheeks as I read the post came rushing back.
You’re thinking, did she even read the fine print?
The what? My eyes went wide. For a moment my heart quailed at the thought that I might have to read through all of those thousands of words I had so carelessly agreed to. AZHotty saved me the trouble, though very much to my distress, as the burning in my cheeks became a bonfire.
Yes, I did. I knew I could get my ass beat.
My brain immediately tried to dismiss the words as a figure of speech. AZHotty must mean that she knew she could lose, somehow, in that situation.
And, surprise, surprise, Steve spanked me on our first date after I had accepted his offer.
Nope. I shook my head, sitting there looking out at the mountains.
