reflections on a thirst trap
I saw Keira on my X feed yesterday.
Freshman year of college, ten years ago, I started noticing her around campus because of her striking, unusual beauty: tilted hazel eyes, high cheekbones, straight dark hair with auburn glimmers.
The collection of places I ran into Keira was also unusual: transhumanist club, right-wing student newspaper, math seminar. We sat next to each other sometimes, but we wouldn’t talk much; we were both very awkward. She was even shorter than me and wore the same plain tshirt and jeans every day. For such an unassuming person, though, she had quite an intensity and determinedness about her. She was a complicated form of vegetarian (something about calculating animal suffering per calorie?) before it was cool. She’d post these earnest Facebook statuses about running self-improvement experiments to rewire her anxiety.
One day she told me she’d been going down into these underground tunnels to practice singing (the acoustics there were really nice), and invited me to come along. I followed her down a long dark passageway, crouching slightly, phone flashlight out, and we did a sort of breathing-singing exercise together. It should’ve been an intimate bonding experience, but I could kinda tell that she wasn’t as eager to befriend me as I was her. It was probably clear to us both that, at eighteen, Keira had already thought through a lot of her beliefs and arrived at clear principles, while I still dangled in an exploratory limbo.
Shortly after our singing session, she dropped out of school and I started dating her ex-boyfriend Jon.
My first conversation with Jon was at a student group retreat. We were all drunk and I was voicing some half-formed philosophical thought, and Jon looked at me and said I reminded him of Keira. I couldn’t tell if this was a red flag or a compliment.
As our relationship progressed, it became clear to me that Keira had had a great intellectual influence on Jon. He was always quoting this or that thought experiment or theory she’d brought up. She’d broken up with him, rather suddenly, to explore polyamory; it was his first heartbreak and I knew he wasn’t totally over it. This all made me a bit insecure about her, and reinforced my view of her as a more openminded, more self-actualized version of me.
Four years later, I ran into Keira at a party. I asked what she was up to. She replied that she was a prostitute. I laughed instinctively, thinking she was joking, but she didn’t blink and I realized she was serious. Embarrassed, I put our conversation out of my mind and didn’t think of her again for several more years.
Until yesterday, when she came up on my social media feed. Those same striking eyes I remembered from college, now framed with thick mascara and lacy lingerie.
She’s grown a large social media following by posting a combination of thoughtful content and creative thirst traps. It’s like a cross between an intellectual blog and a personal art page, that happens to also be sexy—and seems to attract a good number of wealthy, highly-educated clients.
It’s been ten years now since I really talked to Keira. I don’t know what she’s actually like now, or whether she’s happy. But, looking at her content, what I noticed at eighteen still seems true: she’s remarkably openminded, reflective, and idiosyncratic.
Most of all, she appears to still be very growth-oriented. You can tell sometimes when socialization is not someone’s native language: there’s a chronic stiltedness about them, even when they’re saying and doing the right things. I can see it in Keira’s content still (and in myself, too). But a lot of her charisma lies precisely in the fact that she’s so earnestly overcome her natural barriers to share the vibrant person she is with the world.
And by choosing to post sexy content, she seems to have fast-tracked her way into a creative, independent, and lucrative life… exactly what many of our old classmates and I want, but are unwilling to make the sacrifices to attain.
A decade ago, we sat side by side—two awkward, intense girls in a classroom. Keira followed her logical conclusions, wherever they took her. I chose things that felt reasonable and comparatively safe. I don’t know that her way is definitively better, but it is bolder and more clear-eyed, and I admire that.
Thanks for reading! All names in this post are obviously pseudonyms, and I’ve tweaked the details to try to make Keira unidentifiable. (Also, Jon and I are no longer together - we broke up 10 years ago lol)
—Amy
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beautifully written! i think this captures a lot of relatable feelings: of looking up to someone, feeling insecure about a partner's ex, and questioning one's choices, all through the character of keira. i feel like your admiration of her intellect, free-spiritedness, boldness, sense of ethics, and ambition says as much about you as her. i like how the story builds the characters! i think her lack of what you call native socialization, her enigma, and her pursuit of a scandalous career make me not sure how to feel about her. is she cool or is she weird? it creates a kind of complexity where i want to be like her, and respect her independent-mindedness, but not exactly where those ideals take her. i wonder how happy she is with these choices, and whether this a manifestation of her ideology, or whether she also made some sacrifices that you can't see from a distance. i increasingly very much appreciate when writing explores personal and moral complexity and respects nuance, and i think this was a great example of that.
Preying on teen boys with porno and thirst traps is incredibly lucrative. Keira is a predator. That’s the incentive structure we’ve built. What a nightmare. Liberating women from all sexual stigma wrecked boys and men psychologically. We’re all supposed to be happy for them which is just insane and contrary to most men’s natures. I’m sure open-minded feminist men applaud these empowering choices. But men who are conservative by personality are embittered by al. These young women turning themselves out. Our culture sucks imo.