Thank You, John

Michelle Gurule

Sex sells, but what can it buy?

Thank You, John is Best American Essays Notable Michelle Gurule’s debut memoir: a heartfelt, laugh-out-loud tragi-comedy of errors based on her time spent as an inexperienced sugarbaby in 2010s Denver.

Michelle, a queer, wanna-be writer exasperated by student loans, bad teeth, and the poor decisions of her loveable sitcom-worthy family, believes a sugar daddy is written in her density as firmly as she believes her idol, Alanis Morissette, holds the musical blueprint to the life she desires most.

With a salt-of-the-earth Chicano father who's convinced aliens will eventually rule the world, a white mother who maxes out her credit cards on fast food, and a sugar-hyped 7-year-old nephew, Michelle diagnoses herself as self-parentified with a core mistrust in the world’s unreliability. Left to her own devices and barely making ends meet, she turns to the world of stripping until her chance for financial freedom arrives in the form of John, a lonely older man who offers her a weekly pile of cash for lively conversation and sex. She will keep her family, and only her family, availed of all the gritty details.

Grateful and convinced by the immediate improvement money makes in her life, sugaring takes the role of any other exploitative job in America– the physical wear and tear, competition between colleagues, the crossed personal boundaries, dangerous power imbalances, and the reliance on hierarchy to keep only the rich and powerful rich and powerful—it’s just a lot more intimate. A worthy sacrifice, right?

Looking back at her time as a 24-year-old stripper and sugarbaby, struggling to pull herself–and her entire family–out of poverty, Gurule grins and bears it all in a tragi-comedy of errors: heartbreak, complete social isolation and self-denial, glares at The Cheesecake Factory, cringey sex, and scheme after scheme for a better life with everything money can buy.

Praise for Thank You, John

"Thank You, John is a compelling, darkly funny memoir about class, power, and sex work, and how all these subjects intertwine. Gurule is a captivating, charming narrator who has a quirkily lovable family open to both her queerness and her sex work. Your teeth will ache as you read this book, both with pain and with pleasure.” —Celia Laskey, author of Under the Rainbow and So Happy for You

“Blown away. I haven’t been able to shake it.” —T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Love Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, on Gurule's "Exit Route" (excerpted from Thank You, John) winner of StoryQuarterly's Nonfiction Contest

“A stunning debut, full of heart, desperately funny. When Gurule pulls back the curtain on sex work, she reveals the gnawing class anxiety that fuels our get-ahead economy. She’ll make you laugh when you think you shouldn’t.” —Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money

“Michelle Gurule's Thank You, John is an exquisitely-rendered portrait of a relationship on the other side of ethics. This book asks: are love, sex, and money ever separate? What happens when we choose something we haven't consented to? Who do we become when we no longer recognize ourselves? In Gurule's world, every character—no matter their flaws—is fully human, and every moment is harrowing in its acuity. Read it now and you won't ever think about work, or sex for work, in the same way.” —Cyrus Dunham, author of A Year Without A Name