Kir O'Hanlon
Author of the debut novel Paying For It, sexual assault counselor, human trafficking advocate and activist.
True North Award Nominee, 2025
Kir O'Hanlon
Read Selections from
Paying For It
In four years time, I will be dead. Or at least, I’ll be convinced this is true. So much so that my google search history will be full of questions like: how do you know if you’re not alive, and, what to do to get out of purgatory. Homeless and drug addicted, paranoid and hallucinating, I will have no other logical explanation. My organs will continue to function, and my life will continue to devolve into an anguished chaos so severe, I cannot classify it with existing language. Time will move forward; my body will cling to it, trudging, against my will, into one
year after another. But the girl I used to be will be completely absent. Gone. She will have died
in her own living body. This is an elegy for a lost girl, or perhaps, one last attempt to find her.
In this moment, I think this is the best job I've ever had. Free booze, and a man who, already, after just
two dates, looks at me like I matter, who thinks I'm smart and laughs at my jokes, and in the morning, I'll leave with cash that would have taken me two weeks to make at my last job. Why, I wonder, didn't I think of this sooner? I could have been so productive. Could have written so much, taken extra classes, gone on longer runs, stayed for another drink with friends, all these years I've wasted scooping ice cream and bagging groceries. I am giddy, high on the thrill of the moment. When he pulls back to catch his breath, I wait a second and then lean in to kiss him again.
“Wow,” he whispers into my ear. “How did I get so blessed?”
I knew when I signed up for Seeking Arrangement what it was. But I was still clinging to something. We had never said the words. Scotty had never said, I will pay you this much, and in return you will have sex with me. At the time, it felt like a courtesy. It felt more human, and less like my body was being purchased. But more than that, it allowed me to preserve just enough doubt about the whole thing actually happening, that I didn't really believe it would. He said he wanted me to sleep over. Sure, eventually, I figured we'd have sex, but the night had so closely resembled romance that I wasn't sure on our first sleepover if it was expected, or if he'd even try. Even as he led me up the stairs to “continue the tour of the house”, it only registered to me as a possibility, not a probability, not an expectation.
But as I turned my body to face the rest of the long, narrow hallway, Scotty came up behind me, I felt him breathing on my neck, felt his hands resting on my hips. A green rug paved the way to a bathroom, a bedroom, a room filled with antiques. When I remember it, I want to feel the walls closing in on me, I want to feel trapped. But I am overwhelmed by the memory of openness. The empty space that surrounded me. The doors, all open, and the windows too. I could have easily made a run for it if I'd really wanted to. But as I looked at the pictures plastered to the walls, I didn't move, not my limbs anyway. I felt my stomach lurch, my throat tighten.
There’s a creek behind the house I grew up in. It used to overflow when it rained. We’d take the raft out from the shed and run down, barefoot, feet squishing in the muddy grass, out of breath by the time we got to the water. My dad would pick me up and put me in, and I’d grip it tight, knuckles white around the plastic handle. Then he’d send me off with a push, and I’d laugh wildly, floating down the stream, feeling the current propelling me forward, the rain hitting my face, hearing the water splash around my ears. My dad would run the length of the creek, through the long grass and stand, waiting in front of the dark, rusty tunnel, covered in brush by the time I got there; he’d pull me out from the stream every time, just at the right moment, before the branches whacked me in the face. 'Daddy’s little girl', he’d say, wiping water and dirt from my cheek. He was strong then, his arms thick, and his stance steady. I’d kiss him on the cheek.
Sometimes, when my dad went inside, I’d push the leaves and branches from the opening of the tunnel. It went beneath the road, connecting my backyard to my best friend Anthony’s. Too young to cross the street alone, sometimes I’d go in when my parents weren’t watching, step my foot in the murky water, feel it, cold and thick against my skin. I’d run quickly across, pulse racing at the sound of my own step, until I found myself in another yard.
If memory was a place, I think it’d be that tunnel. The long stretch of darkness, fleeting hints of light, each drop of water a moment, visible only for a second before it disappears into everything else. The air cool and heavy, thick. A space that was only mine. I caught moss between my toes as I ran through. On the other side, everything came to light. My senses were mine again. All I had of the tunnel were pieces, bits of mud and plant around my feet that I carried across.
I lose myself in pieces. First at six, starting with string. Anthony tied one end to the doorknob and handed me the other. “I don’t think I can do this,” I told him. “Sure you can,” he smiled, showing off the gap where there used to be teeth. He’d lost three already, his front two coming out days apart. I looked into the mirror while I fumbled with the string in my mouth. My cheeks were covered with freckles, my hair the color of sun. The tooth wiggled when I touched it. Not much, but I wanted it gone, so I stood as far back as I could, planted my feet into the cold, wooden floor, and braced myself. “Ready?” he asked.
I gave him a thumbs up, and he slammed the door shut. I remember the sound, a thud that echoed between the walls, loud and important. I reached into my mouth, expecting to feel empty space. But when I touched it, my finger ran across the jagged end of my tooth. We tried again. He slammed harder. I stood farther back. I was ready to give up, content to spend a few more days with my tooth. But Anthony couldn’t wait. He walked towards me with that big, toothless grin and shoved his hand right into my mouth, gripping my tooth between two fingers.
I could smell the creek water on his skin. He yanked his hand without warning, pulling my tooth with it, leaving behind the taste of pennies, blood. When I showed my dad, he got his camera out, snapped a picture. “You’re my big girl now, aren’t you?” Then a flash of light.
That night, I went to bed with a piece of myself tucked beneath my pillow, woke up with it gone, a five dollar bill left in exchange.
I always remember the money first. The way it looks, the way it feels. The way it sounds when I rub it together.
It starts with a small man with hollow eyes. I am unpracticed then, unfamiliar with the art of taking. So I look into them while he extends the money towards me, feel him sucking me in to fill the emptiness. He looks into my eyes, offers half a smile. I give him one back. We are like mirror images in that moment, reaching towards each other and pulling back in the same way and the exact opposite. Dropping my hand, I feel his skin and the money at the same time. The bills feel cool against his warm palm. For a moment, I let my hand linger, then jerk it away,
pulling three hundred dollars with it.
I take a deep breath and lean over to get my wallet, opening it to put the money away. But I can’t do it. Instead, I throw my wallet to the passenger seat and place the money on my lap, straightening it against my leg. The air in my car feels thick, like smoke. The road looks longer than I remembered. I only make it a couple miles before I pull off into a parking lot and vomit, heaving into the concrete until I empty my stomach. Even then, I lean out the door and continue to gag. “Fuck,” I say, banging my head against my seat.
When I can compose myself, I pick up the money and flip through each bill one at a time, running my fingers over every corner. Ben Franklin’s printed face stares at me, his pursed lips and his searching green eyes. “Don’t look at me like that,” I say. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Just stares and stares. I think about dropping the money there, leaving it with that morning’s breakfast to be picked up by the wind, to belong to somebody else.
He’s wrong about that; by then, I am already gone, watching the body from somewhere else. I’m back on the couch, watching through a screen. I was a girl, lying naked, exposed. Just like all the others. One more for the collection. The body could have belonged to anyone, how it stayed motionless, limp. He slaps my face. The ticking is fast, loud. It won’t stop. He’s smiling, laughing. “I’m stronger than you,” he says. “I can do anything I want, and you can’t stop me. Right?”
“Please,” my voice isn’t even a whisper, just air passing through my throat. “Please don’t.” I try to be somewhere happy, to go back to a memory from before. The creek, catching frogs, feeling their skin beneath my fingertips. Anthony smiling, sunlight catching in his hair. But I can’t see it, can’t feel it. I reach for the tree, my first kiss. But the memory isn’t mine. It isn’t mine. Only hers. His.
“Say it,” he says. “Say I’m stronger.”
“You’re stronger.”
“Because I’m a man, and you’re just a woman. A weak, weak woman. Say women are weak.”
“Women are weak.” I don’t try to fight him off. I don’t try to make him stop. I’m not strong like I thought I’d be. I give in. Give up. The pillow is white. The sheets are white. The walls are blue. They are blue. Because he painted them blue, because my favorite color wasn’t pink anymore. I go to sleep with my tooth tucked beneath my pillow, and when I wake up a piece of me is gone. I don’t see it all together. Only in parts. His hand in a fist, clenched tight into itself. The covers in a pile at the bottom of the bed. Something like mint. Cologne. The way the smell of it felt in my nose. His finger to his lips, to my pants—pink cotton pulled below my knees. Daddy loves you. Don’t cry. Daddy loves you. Daddy’s little girl. You’re daddy’s little girl. A feeling in a part of me I don’t understand. His face, mouth open, twitching. Twitching. I think he’s hurt. A five-dollar bill, crinkled and limp beneath my pillow. I always remember the money first.
My tooth is in his fist when he leaves me. The room is dark. So dark it could have been a dream. It could have been a dream.
Years have passed, and I still see it clearly. The yellow siding, chipped and stained with dirt. The cement porch spilling around the blue wooden door. The square glass window at its center, and the man standing on the other side. His eyes, I dream of them. Heavy, unblinking eyes, how they stared at me from the other side of that tiny square of glass and never looked away. I think of this moment: my last chance to turn around. I imagine a girl both stronger and wiser, how she never would have walked through the door. But I can still see my hand balled
into a fist, my knuckles cracking against the wood. And I imagine his, wrapped around the dull silver knob on the other side, both of us groping at the last thing that stood between us.
Years later, I can still hear the hypnotic tick of the pacemaker clicking in his chest. Metronomes. Analog clocks. No matter how far I’ve gone, they bring me back. The heavy whistle of his labored breathing. I can feel his arms, meaty, and damp with sweat, wrapping tight around me. Leave it out here, he tells me, snatching my phone. I can’t risk you recording this. By the time he moves us to his bedroom, locking the door behind him, I already know what comes next. This had happened to me before. But this time, I feel certain: there’s no way
forward that gets me out of here intact.
I travel back. Rewind out of the bedroom and the empty wooden floors. In the fantasy, my fist flies back from the door, down to my side, and I walk backwards towards my car, where the door flies open, and I hop back in. The car drives down the road in reverse, returning to where it had been before. It approaches a dead deer, a car engine smoking and crumpled on the side of the road, and as it does, the buck's body resurrects; the blood on the road pools into the walls of the chest, the skin sews itself together. I watch the car crash in reverse. The buck's body flying back from the window. The glass piecing itself, once again, into a solid sheet. The car driving backwards to the end of the road, and the buck, leaping, hind legs first, into the trees, where he is hidden, safe. All the way back to the beginning, when everything was alive.
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