The Cost of a Mysterious Source of Income
Spiritual Bimbofication
When you’re freshly twenty-one, hot , and possess a niche internet clout that acts as a low-grade magnetic field, the world feels like your oyster. Specifically the kind that might give you food poisoning, but you eat it anyway because the plate is beautiful.
I was flying back home on a high. I specifically saved Lana Del Rey’s ‘California’ for the descent. I wanted the exact moment the cabin pressure shifted and my stomach started dropping to coincide with my relation to these lyrics.
“Oh, I’ll pick you up, If you come back to America, just hit me up”
Two people came to mind during that verse: both international, ex-adjacent lovers I was seventy percent certain I’d never see again. I imagined them standing in an airport somewhere, holding a sign with my name on it.
This was my first time back in the States in over a year. California air embraces you like an old friend who never talked shit about you in the group chat you were specifically excluded from. As you exit LAX, your spine elongates, your breasts achieve a certain cinematic bounce, and you begin to crave a glass of crisp Pinot before 5:00 p.m.—with ice in it. God, how I missed the ice. In Rome, ice was a suspicious luxury; in Los Angeles, it says: I am thirsty, I am bored, and I want to be numb as fast as possible.
It was an immediate bimbofication—a shedding of the “introspective me” in favor of the “this is me bronzed and with a gym membership.” I never showed up anywhere with a plan. I just had to drop my bags home, run to the beach, and finally start the Eve Babitz novel that had been tossed around in my luggage for the last year.
But that’s the thing about being a hyper-exposed girl on the internet: the plans find you.
I had recently returned from a ceremonial LSD retreat in the Italian countryside. At the time, I could barely pronounce buongiorno, so I didn’t bother remembering the phonetically impossible names of a region I’d likely never return to. You try saying Montefiascone while tripping balls.
On that side quest, I befriended a Polish model—slightly older, with significantly more Instagram clout. We exchanged numbers before returning to our respective corners of the world. A month later, as I sat in the neverending San Diego traffic, a text arrived from ‘Anastazja.’
“I’ll be at the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel tomorrow. Join me! – xoxo Ana”
The Tiger and the Bunny
A Beverly Hills Hotel. An opportunity like that without answering the borderline-prostitution solicitations that rot in my DMs seemed too good to be true. The ones where men ask if I want to “travel the world” for free and conveniently forget to mention that what I lacked in capital would be paid with my body.
I accepted her invitation. I spent the afternoon strategically planning my outfits, shaving my legs, and making a salon appointment to go blonder.
Highlights that say: I don’t have a job and I don’t need one.
Walking out the door, I made eye contact with the ten-foot shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She looked back with her solemn, painted eyes. I had spent decades kneeling before her, reciting Rosaries like a captive. Instinctively, I made the sign of the cross. And repeated the hollow apology for the “no good” I was about to embark upon:
“O my Jesus, forgive us our sins…”
Anastazja told me to meet her at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel. I handed over the keys to the valet and watched as he parallel-parked my Honda CRV between a blacked-out G-Wagon and a bright orange Lamborghini. I thought about how if I had magically won the lottery and been offered any car on the lot, I still would’ve driven away with my Honda. I couldn’t justify that large of a carbon footprint just to drive a blacked out box to and from the grocery store and the gaudiness of any neon super car just screams “Babe, but I’m only fiscally conservative!”
I walked past reception, into an elevator, and reapplied a lip gloss that gives the appearance of fresh injections. The terrace was intimidating and repulsive in the way only excess wealth can be. My family wasn’t poor, but they had that first-generation scarcity mindset despite forty years living in the States. I had inherited that anxiety. Ana waved from a table. She gave me a European kiss and announced she had ordered one of everything off the appetizer list in a thick ambiguous accent. “And an Aperol Spritz, in honor of our meeting in
Italy!” A bolt of panic hit me. One of everything? A cocktail here costs as much as a Ryanair flight.
We started talking about what we should do tonight. I offered to introduce her to a few friends at an event. We discussed Carl Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which she had just read and I sat there pretending to have. She finally asked if I was still seeing the Italian guy we had slept with from the retreat.
“I’ve been avoiding his texts,” I said, taking another sip from the glass. “What’s the point of dragging it out? He lives there and I’m here.”
I took another big sip from the crystal glassware.
“Smart girl,” she purred when I told her I was ghosting him.
“I was going to offer to buy you a drink, but I see you ladies already have that covered… Hi, I’m Steve.”
I looked up at the man speaking down to us and strained my eyes to make out his face. The sun was glaring even through the Chanel sunglasses. He looked at us like we were fresh meat in a very expensive butcher shop. Anastazja blushed. “Hi Steve.” she cooed.
“You ladies are beautiful.” replied Steve. Fuck, why is she welcoming this conversation? I normally shut these types of advances off the bat by saying “I have a boyfriend”. Saying things like “I’m not into men” or “I’m not interested”- I’ve found has only provoked them more. They tend to view women as sub-human, only backing off at the threat of retaliation from one of their own. My refusal to introduce myself was the intended introduction.
“I like your tattoo.” Steve said, now looking directly at me.
“Thanks” I replied in the most dry, unavailable tone I could manage.
“I think the tiger is really fitting.” I looked up to see if Steve was still talking to me. Then back at Anastazja to search for a tiger tattoo I might’ve missed on her skin.
Every woman is a cat, dog, deer, or bunny according to the latest internet trend. “You, my friend, are the epitome of a bunny. But don’t take it the wrong way. Ana de Armas is a bunny!” exclaimed my longtime-hometown best friend. I’d often attest this and she always replied back without even looking up from her phone,
“Bunny!”
I liked being perceived as someone who did the hunting versus being the hunted. Anastazja, on the other hand, was a cat. She was long limbed and slender with striking features and distractingly blue eyes. At first glance you could tell she bites back, if she didn’t already strike first.
I hated Steve, but I liked the compliment. So, I asked what he did for work—the only question men in Beverly Hills having Tuesday lunch at a luxury hotel want to be asked.
“I’m a plastic surgeon. I actually live in Miami but I’m just here for a work convention.” He looked proud of his answer and stood up a little straighter.
“Look girls let me cut to the chase, if you want to have a good time, here’s my card. Something mutually beneficial.” He laid two contact cards atop my overheating iPhone and slid away.
“Ew,” I laughed once he left. “He thinks we’re escorts.” I said laughing and crumpled up the business card from Steve, Miami Plastic Surgeon. Anastazja took the other card and quietly put it in her Dior saddle bag.
The server arrived with the bill, I mentally prepared myself for the chastising I would later receive from my father about overspending on the credit card.
“Charge it to my room,” Ana said smoothly. She signed it with the practiced ease of someone who had done this a million times.
“Can I pay you back?” I asked. She grabbed my hand and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Darling, do you think I paid for this?”
How to Buckle a Heel While Discussing the Cartel
The whole way back to the room, I couldn’t stop thinking about who was paying. I knew she was a successful model, but not “Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel master suite” successful. I sat on the bed while she ordered a bottle of champagne and orange juice from room service.
“I have to go to a dinner. I shouldn’t be too long, but in case I stay out, here is a key!” she said, her fingers dancing over the delicate, silver strap of a heel. “I’m actually here with this guy I met on vacation a couple years ago. Apparently, he’s a weapons dealer for the cartel, but also works in entertainment.”
She said it flatly, never breaking focus from the intricate business of buckling her stilettos. She didn’t look like a girl in danger; she looked like a girl who had simply accepted that the price of a Master Suite was occasionally having to pretend that “logistics for the Sinaloa” was a personality quirk.
“I see. So you guys are kind of dating then?” I was genuinely curious how a weapons dealer, a man whose professional life would presumably involve international warrants and heavy artillery, found the time to maintain a “vacation friend” at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“No, not like that either. He’s paying for the room, the lunch, everything. In return I go out with him when he asks.” She popped up, the buckle finally secured, and smoothed the silk over her hips. She looked like a million dollars, or perhaps worth several thousand rounds of ammunition. “Do I look fuckable?”
There was a knock at the door. Room service with the mimosas. I wondered if the champagne cost an undisclosed amount of handjobs or a one-night stand. Was this what responding to my DMs would bring me? I thought about the women with millions of followers and wondered if their private jets and Four Seasons stays were funded by “men from vacation” as well.
It wasn’t my business, and I was certainly in no position to play the morality police. We had, after all, met while melting our brains on hallucinogens at a retreat, and I had done my own fair share of Snapchat sugar-babying. But as the cold, orange-tinted liquid hit my throat, it tasted bittersweet.
I guess this is just the cost of having a mysterious source of income.
Reflections from Rome
I think about the Eve Babitz novel that sat untouched in my luggage. It would be read years later over and over. Babitz wrote: “There are three basic personality factors in cats: The kind who run up when you say hello and rub against you in cheap romance; the kind who run away certain that you mean to ravish them; and the kind who just look back and don’t move a muscle. I love all three kinds.”
Looking back now, I realize Anastazja was the third kind. The kind that just looks back and doesn’t move a muscle, watching the world scramble to offer her everything just to see if she’ll blink. She was terrifyingly clear-eyed about the value of her own presence. She wasn’t the one being fooled.
The real delusion belonged to the Steves of the world, or the “men from vacation” who believe they are buying romance or status. In reality, they are just paying a premium to live in a curated dream where a beautiful woman never says “no.”
That day, I poured a glass and stepped out onto the balcony, looking out into Beverly Hills. It was beautiful in the way a sunset is beautiful right before the dark sets in. I realize now that the cost of a mysterious source of income isn’t just sex, compromised morals, or a series of “mutually beneficial” evenings.
It is the permanent loss of the ability to see a gift as just a gift.
I am writing this from my home in Rome, Italy. Watching a different sun set over a different city – with the understanding that you can never truly be a genuine “old friend” to a place like California. And once you know the price of the mimosas, the hills never look the same.
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Gigi Trabacchi is a writer, mother, and fluent in digital discourse. An essayist blending personal narrative with cultural critique. Exploring how identity, desire, and self-perception shape the way we move through the world. Her confessions are raw and provocative, each one a fragment of her lived experience as she shapes a voice that is distinctly her own.
