Essayist. Memoirist.
Parker Campbell was a Peace Corps Volunteer, a Fulbright Fellow, a sugar babe, an African safari camp manager, a public school teacher, a hired hand at wineries in France and Argentina, and the kind of waiter who won’t screw up your order.
Parker has visited half of the countries in the world, Tindering her way across South America. Through love, loss and a lot of sex, she’s learned that the bravery most people envied in her solo travels fails her in the real challenge of emotional intimacy.
Essayist. Memoirist.
parker305campbell@gmail.com
French Quarter.
New Orleans.
Next Best Lay
Next Best Lay is a feisty, emotionally-aware debut memoir by a Fulbright fellow who finds herself navigating the sugar daddy world of Miami Beach when she would rather be falling in love. Returned from a one-year, solo adventure–overland from Colombia to Patagonia–her bank account is empty; her travel feet are itchy. Skimming a popular sugar daddy website, she stumbles on a profile from an older man.
In their early dates, he details how he’s freely given tens of thousands of dollars to his current sugar babe, a former stripper with pet monkeys. He speaks of her with genuine affection. It’s obvious she wouldn’t lift a finger to text him, if she weren’t on the clock. He is getting the girlfriend experience. And Parker wants her job.
As he speaks, Parker notes where the current sugar babe falls short. She is vegan; Parker casually mentions she’s craving steak. She was born for this. A sales job with high commission and extravagant gifts. She is selling both her companionship and an experience he says he wants. The sugar daddy, Parker learns, was an only child sent away to boarding school in Europe. Cash is the only currency of love he knows. They develop a genuine friendship, devoid of sexual intimacy.
Maintaining an unhealthy sugar babe persona, Parker begins to look inward and face the hurt she buried deep below her sexual empowerment. Her loving parents were the last to learn the danger their oldest daughter posed to Parker’s childhood. At age 10, sexual conversations leave scars. Her sister also bequeathed to her an unnatural obsession with her body, putting her on prescription diet pills and encouraging her to skip meals as a 7th grader. Parker’s interactions with her older sister read like an ABC Saturday Morning Special gone wrong.
Parker works to narrow the gap between how she presents to the world and the quiet monologue of her heart. While involved with the sugar daddy, Parker leaps into love with other men: a scuba diving instructor in the Cayman Islands and the bestie of a 90s boyband member. She blames her bizarre sugar babe secret life for her broken heart, still discovering the extent of her sister’s toxic influence. Her emotional intelligence increases, thanks largely to shifts in pop culture and her willful determination to stop pretending heart ache is only a sexual loss. Emotional intimacy might be the only path to an international adventure for two.