A man from Chicago walked into a London strip club and spent £20,000 in one night.
Abby B was watching, and she’d just lost her job in finance.
Abby had been working as a data analyst when two things fell apart at once.
Her company started dissolving. Her relationship ended, and her ex worked in the same office.
“I was breaking up with my ex and he was working in the same company,” she said on the Option One Podcast.
“I just needed to get out.”
So she went out in London with friends. One of them suggested a strip club. She’d never been to one.
Then the man from Chicago arrived.
“I didn’t know you earned that much money,” she said.
“One guy from Chicago came in and spent £20,000. I was like, ‘Wait, that doesn’t sound real.'”
From spreadsheets to Babestation
The timing did most of the work.
No job, no relationship, and a sudden idea of what people in the room were earning.
On her way out, she left her number with the club.
“I left work, I didn’t have a job anymore and I wasn’t with my ex,” she said.
“I left my number with the club and that’s how I got in.”
The money came fast. Abby says she earned between £2,000 and £3,000 a week, and once took a single tip of £30,000.
Her family took it differently.
The cost that doesn’t show up in the bank account
“My whole glamour industry job that I do, they’re not happy with, obviously because of the stigma,” the 25-year-old said.
“Society and religion play a part in that.”
Then there are the men who pay to watch her, then call to ask why she does it.
“Some of the guys ring you up and ask why you’re doing this,” she said.
“And I’m like, ‘Why have you been watching me all night?'”
The therapist on the other end of the line
Abby now works as a webcam model on Babestation, one of the biggest platforms of its kind, and has more than 73,600 followers on Instagram.
She’s also doing a master’s in mental health therapy.
The two jobs have started to blur.
Most of her calls, she says, aren’t about sex at all.
“Most of the lonely older guys ring me up,” she said.
“It’s not always sexual. They talk about their wife and their day-to-day life.”
“I feel like I’m a therapist sometimes and that helps because I’m doing a masters in mental health therapy.”
She knows the loneliness because she’s lived it. When her family cut her off, she had nobody.
“One point in my life I was so lonely,” she said.
“My family disowned me and it was horrible. I just wanted someone to talk to me or I just wanted a friend.”
Why It Matters
Abby’s story sits at the odd place the adult industry keeps ending up. On paper the product is sex.
What a lot of people are paying for is attention and company.
Creators across OnlyFans and webcam platforms have said the same thing for years: the messages that keep subscribers paying are the ones where someone feels heard.
Abby is just studying the clinical version of what she already does for a living.
Loneliness has quietly become one of the creator economy’s most reliable products.
Subscription platforms run on parasocial closeness, and the people paying are often paying for the feeling of being known by someone who is technically working.
For now, Abby is finishing her degree while taking the calls.
Whether the men ringing her realise they’ve found a future therapist is another matter.
READ MORE: I had sex with my pilot boyfriend in the cockpit mid-flight – the plane was flying ITSELF
