Relationships

The Refund

At 70, I started paying for sex. A strange night with an escort changed everything.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by KatarzynaBialasiewicz /Getty Images Plus and JohnnyGreig /Getty Images Plus.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Approaching my 70 th birthday, I felt a creeping terror. I feared I might disappear into the land of the elderly, my voice silenced, my body discarded like an old coat. I wasn’t ready for mothballs or easing into a warm pond where I could float for whatever time I had remaining. I needed something more like a defibrillator, the kind that shocks a heart and body back to life. I needed to scare myself alive.

My initial thought was a parachute jump, but for a woman with osteopenia, the possibility of broken bones was deterring. One night over dinner, a colleague suggested I hire an escort. He had a client in her 50s who’d had some very successful encounters.…