Hustle and Gig

by Alexandrea J Ravenelle

  As much as Randall stressed that these experiences are “great” or that he didn’t care, the fact that they came up so readily in our conversation suggests that perhaps a part of him did care. In the United States, very-high-income employers tend to utilize “an American version of the ‘upstairs, downstairs’ segregation of master and servant” that involves a level of distance.24 Yet Randall is a professional, not a servant, and his sense of uncertainty about the rules of secrecy and familiarity came up when he discussed how the clients “probably think” their behavior warranted confidentiality owing to the cooking relationship.

  It should be noted that not all of the sexually uncomfortable interactions involved the workers directly. Randall explained that sometimes his services were combined with Airbnb and used for the seduction of others:

  RANDALL:

  Usually the younger guys, they’ll get an Airbnb of a loft down here in SoHo. Pawn it off as their place. Have me come in as their chef and cook . . . to get the girl. But see, I’m always against it, because that’s not the long-term thing.

  INTERVIEWER:

  How often does that happen?

  RANDALL:

  A lot. A good amount of time.

  INTERVIEWER:

  And they tell you what’s going on?

  RANDALL:

  No, I figure it out within a few minutes. First of all, it’s an Airbnb, because there’s nothing there. And you can tell no one’s lived there—there’s no pictures or nothing. And he comes in, and he’s probably a second-year on Wall Street or some finance guy. And then she comes in, and he’s like, “This is my place, blah, blah, blah.” And my favorite is when she’s not into him, or she’s into him because “I just applied to the country club down in Delaware or down east. I just came back from Washington on Amtrak” or some bullshit. And as soon as he goes to the bathroom, she’s calling her girlfriends. “Uhh, yeah . . .” I love it. . . .

  INTERVIEWER:

  So when do you leave?

  RANDALL:

  I’m usually like, “Is there anything else I can get for you?” [And the guy says,] “Uh, no.” Sometimes I know, too, that I need to get her out of there. . . . Because it’s not going to go any further. And sometimes a girl needs an escape hatch. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” She’s like, “Oh, yeah, I have to go too.”

  INTERVIEWER:

  And does she talk to you on the way out?

  RANDALL:

  I’m like, “How did that go?” And she’s like, “Oh my God.” [Laughing.] I’m thinking he probably paid five hundred dollars for the Airbnb. He paid me five hundred dollars, so he’s into this a thousand dollars and you ran out. There are times when it works. But 80 percent [of the time] it doesn’t.

  Randall’s calculation of the funds spent on the date without a sexual return on investment, may sound callous, but it’s actually a fairly common perspective. As Marina Adshade notes in her book Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love, research by psychologists Susan Basow and Alexandra Minieri suggests that while female participants in the study did not feel that paying for an expensive dinner entitled a man to sex, they did feel that his entitlement increased with the price of the date. And men felt more strongly than women that an expensive date increased the obligation to have sex.25

  Finally, sometimes workers find that they’re involved in tasks where the task itself is sexually uncomfortable. When I asked Cody, a twenty-two-year-old black male, if he’d had any weird deliveries in his work for UberRUSH (Uber’s delivery service) and Postmates, he told me about accepting a 10 p.m. pickup that needed to be brought to midtown Manhattan, about forty blocks’ distance. He expected that the run would take him less than twenty minutes, even if he went slowly, so he quickly accepted the gig. As with many tasks offered by Postmates, UberRUSH, and TaskRabbit, time is truly of the essence, and workers who hesitate and read the whole description of a task before accepting often find that someone accepts it before they get the chance. “I had to go to a dildo store,” Cody told me. “I’m not against nobody’s sex or nothing. I’m just like, when I got it: ‘The way I see it, it’s a store.” So I’m like, ‘Okay. That’s an easy run.” So I went to the store. I didn’t even read the bottom line [of the request]. The only thing it said: ‘Long black dildo.’ So I look at it; I’m like, ‘Did I read what I read?’ There’s ‘long black dildo.’”

  Embarrassed to say the words, he tried showing the request to the staff member.

  I’m like, “Can I get this?” The guy was like, “Oh, so I see you want a long black dildo.” I’m like, “No! I have one. I don’t need an extra one.” So he gave it to me. He wrapped it and put it in a bag. And the other one, at the bottom, was: “I need an eating . . .” It was some eating thing. Some sexual eating . . . I don’t . . . I’m sorry about what I’m gonna say. You put it on the vagina of the girl. And you eat.

  So, I was like, are you serious? Like, this is the weirdest delivery I had. And I got this? Surprise and surprise. It’s a girl. And she looked at me. She was like, “Are you Cody?” I’m like, “Yes.” She looked left, looked right. “Do you have my stuff?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Can I . . .” I give it to her. I’m leaving.

  She was like, “You don’t wanna come and see what’s gonna happen?” I’m like, “I’m not . . . I’m not going in there.” It was a sex party. . . . I’m like, “Excuse me, I’m out.” That was the weirdest thing I ever did.

  Like other sharing economy workers who have found themselves in sexually uncomfortable situations, Cody is careful to be polite, saying “excuse me” as he declines the offer of sexual activity and leaves the client’s home.

  SEXUALLY CHARGED EXPERIENCES FOR WORKERS

  As with many aspects of the sharing economy, there is not just one side to the story. Even though many of these experiences suggest an awkward encounter for the worker, there are also times when the sharing economy seems to provide a sexual buffet to the worker, as illustrated by the experience of Yosef, twenty-seven, an Airbnb host and self-described hotelier.

  Most Airbnb hosts that I interviewed were hesitant to tell me about where they lived. Our interviews were usually conducted at various coffee shops in the East Village, and mentions of their apartments were often somewhat vague—they lived in a building on Tenth Street or “around the corner” from our chosen coffee shop. Sometimes these descriptions were accompanied by a vague wave in one direction. No one ever told me their specific address or apartment number.

  So when Yosef responded to my interview request by suggesting that we meet in his West Village apartment, promising me a tour of his Airbnb rental, I was surprised and more than a bit concerned. Meeting a stranger in the privacy of his home seemed like a bad idea. I was also confused about his mention of a West Village apartment—I’d deliberately focused my recruitment efforts on the East Village, which has one of the highest numbers of Airbnb rentals in Manhattan.26

  I dug around online and learned that Yosef had been actively and publicly involved in Airbnb’s public relations efforts in New York. With that reassurance, I told my husband where I was going to be and gave him strict instructions on how and when to check in—and what to do if I didn’t respond promptly.

  When I arrived at the apartment several minutes early, Yosef wasn’t home, but he soon rounded the corner with a bag of juice and cookies for our interview. Upstairs, he gave me a short tour of his apartment, noting that the two-bedroom rent-stabilized walk-up was his home and his first Airbnb listing—he was responsible for up to twenty-five Airbnb guests per evening. With plans to one day become a professional hotelier, he wasn’t letting his age or lack of degree deter him in the meantime. With assistance from his family, he rented two three-bedroom apartments in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood that he listed for thirty-night stints as quasi-hostels, with up to two people per bedroom. He also managed ten listings owned by associates.

  Since it was one of my last Airbnb interviews, I thought I’d already reached the
oretical saturation—until I asked my standard last question: “Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think I should ask you?”

  Yosef’s response came quickly: “You didn’t ask me about any, maybe, romantic stories that happened through Airbnb.”

  “Have you had romantic stories?” I asked.

  He had. The first story was the tamest: Yosef told me about “clicking” with a young female guest whom he spent time with for three weeks—they cooked meals together, she met his friends, and they even visited his parents for a Shabbat dinner and attended an Airbnb conference. “And the romantic side was the fact that we slept together, cuddled. But I still saw her as my baby sister, because she was twenty, and my sister is—she’s two years younger than me, but I see her as nineteen. And, yeah, I felt, definitely, affection, and a very tense vibe in the air. But in a way, I saw her as my guest and someone that I’m supposed to take care of, that she was like a baby sister.”

  There was something about his story that suggested he wanted to tell me more. I asked if he had slept with any of his other guests. He told me there were two incidents.

  The first woman was a few years older and had broken up with her boyfriend of seven years shortly before renting Yosef’s spare bedroom. Not realizing that he had a chance with the woman, he had taken two different women to bed during the course of her stay.

  And on her last night here, we went to a lounge or dance bar, and she told me, “You’re very active,” and she said what she found in the trash [condoms], and I told her, “Yeah, I’m sorry.” And she said, “No, that’s nice.”

  And we came back home, and she—yeah, fuck it—so I put a condom on in like ten seconds, and then she said, “Whoa.” Because, I mean, we already started, and I’m a very giving person. And once we were ready, I guess I just put it on too quick, and that was just what scared her. So she said, “Okay, wait, wait.” And then I fell asleep.

  Woke up in my bed by myself, I’m like, “Oh my God, this is bad. This is really bad. What is she thinking?” And she said it was a fine sleep with me. And I had to ask her if we had sex, because I didn’t know what happened.

  As I was getting ready to leave, Yosef asked if I had time for another story, what he described as one of his “craziest experiences.”

  YOSEF:

  A couple booked—actually, I saw only the guy’s profile. And I thought, okay, it’s a couple, cool. And they came in. He’s in his forties, she’s in her twenties. Attractive, kind of avant-garde kind of girl. You know, blue highlights, piercing, some tattoos. I’m like, well, cool, lucky guy; he’s hanging with a young, attractive chick. After five days, she tells me, “Oh, we’re not together. He just wanted to go to New York, and he offered to pay for my ticket, so I came with him.” I’m like, “But you’re sleeping in the same bed,” and she’s like, “Yeah, but he’s disgusting, ew, you think I’m—” I’m like, “Oh, so you’re not a couple.”

  And then I’m like, oh, so she’s not those kinds of girls that hang out with older guys that came with them or sleep with. So it always happens on the last night. I had work at 7 in the morning, but I stayed up until 4 a.m. They had a huge fight. She was mixing beer with Monster, the energy drink. I was just drinking some random Coke, and every time he went to smoke a cigarette upstairs, we made out. And I’m like, this—I just said, “This guy is going to kick the shit out of me if he knew what’s going on.”

  Eventually, he picked up on it, and he just told her, “That’s the kind of girl you are: you just screw around.” And I just stood up, and I’m like, “I’m really sorry. She just said you guys are not together, so . . .” I just told him, like, “I’m sorry, I don’t want this to be a part of, whatever.” He’s like, “No, no, that’s fine,” and he went to sleep. And then once he went to sleep, love, love, love. And it was fine.

  INTERVIEWER:

  How were the reviews from that couple?

  YOSEF:

  [Laughter.] [The first woman] gave me great reviews. She’s like, “Yosef is the best host you can get.” I wish she had written, “He gives good head,” but she didn’t. And, damn, what’s her name . . . A—, A— or E—. I think they left an okay review, they didn’t write any bad thing. They either didn’t leave a review, or left an okay review. If it was a bad review, I’d remember.

  Yosef’s Airbnb sexual exploits aren’t just about being a young man in a large city. He dreams of writing a book called Sixty-Nine that will detail his adventures. “So, like, I wanted to ask women that I’ve been with to write about our experience. Kind of like a review about me, but in a story method,” he explained. “And then compile it to one book that is going to show the same guy from just sixty-nine different perspectives.”

  “The perspectives of sixty-nine women who’ve all slept with you?” I clarified.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Yosef was likely an outlier. He was the only Airbnb host I met who volunteered that he had consummated his host-guest relationship. There may have been more hosts who had become involved with their guests, but if so, they didn’t volunteer that information. Although all of my Airbnb host respondents rented their domestic space to strangers—often banking on a combination of intuition, online stalking skills, Airbnb insurance, and social network verification—most Airbnb interviewees were absent when a guest rented their home. Yosef was more open than most to sharing his space regularly.

  One considerable difference may also be that Yosef is a Success Story who actively shares his space in addition to managing multiple other “entire apartment” listings. He is financially comfortable and can pick and choose his guests. Airbnb hosts generally prefer to rent their entire apartment because they can command a premium price for doing so, and they can avoid the inconvenience of interacting face-to-face with strangers in their space. For Success Stories and Strivers, renting an entire apartment on Airbnb is a way to finance a vacation, or the apartment serves as an investment property (as I discuss in chapter 7).

  But for Strugglers and some Strivers, sharing their space is often a response to a lack of funds. For instance, Gabriele, twenty-seven, a Struggler and an international graduate student, generally preferred to rent her Crown Heights apartment when she traveled outside the city with her young son. “I don’t usually do it, because I don’t feel comfortable being in the same apartment with other people. But my apartment is big—I have three rooms, and it’s just me and my son who live there. So sometimes when huge day-care bills come in and I can’t handle them, I rent out a room. But I’ve just done that twice, I think. I have one room that I can completely shut off that I rent out.” For Gabriele, sharing her space with a stranger was done only when financially necessary. Describing herself as “not superattached” to the apartment, she considers it to be a “valuable asset” that can be tapped to help pay bills or provide extra money for vacations.

  Although some users spoke about renting out their apartments as shared rentals in order to meet people and be social, for most, doing a shared rental was simply necessary in order to stay in an apartment that they loved or considered a good deal. For instance, Rachel, thirty-eight, rented out her second bedroom on Airbnb after her longtime boyfriend moved out soon after renewing the lease. Likewise, Matthew, thirty-six, started renting his apartment on Airbnb as a way to get himself out of a financial bind. Falling into a depression after a restaurant he planned to open fell through, he was soon so broke that he found himself eating at the local street-meat cart on credit.27

  Finally, one last characteristic that distinguishes Yosef from other Airbnb hosts is that he is single. Nearly all of my Airbnb respondents were in relationships, and the majority of those couples lived together. However, being single was not always a requirement for “hooking up” in the sharing economy. Muhammad, thirty-three, an Uber driver, had a young daughter and a pregnant wife. When I asked if he had any issues with passengers’ behavior, he started talking about his late-night female passengers. “You’re going to have some females come out of the c
lub, by themselves, and they might be a little tipsy—meaning a little drunk—but they still control themselves and move around and talk normally. They will try to get you upstairs with them. They will talk to you,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I had a good time, but I didn’t find nobody.’ A lot of females are horny.”

  I asked if he ever accepted any of the offers to go upstairs.

  “You can just log out, and you’re not working. After you finish the trip, you just log off, and you’re not working anymore. You’re free,” he said. “You do whatever you want. . . . I mean, I look at it, it’s okay. You’re satisfying yourself, I mean, any person, after work.”

  Sleeping with a passenger is a violation of Uber rules, but the freedom to do so highlights the flexibility of the app. A driver who rents a yellow taxicab for a shift has a limited amount of time to earn back that cost. The driver of a black car has a dispatcher to contend with and a preset shift. But as the Uber advertisements remind potential workers, when one drives with Uber, this means: “No shifts, no boss, no limits.” As a result, drivers can log out of the platform, and then log back in a few minutes or hours later. The flexibility of the app makes sleeping with passengers much more possible than a traditional car service does.

  How often do app-based drivers have sex with their passengers? It’s hard to say, and it’s doubtful that Uber or Lyft will be researching or publicizing such statistics anytime soon. Officials with the Whisper website, an anonymous social media site that allows users to post secrets and confessions, say that they’ve “vetted accounts of several people who said they have had sex with an Uber or Lyft driver, and of drivers who said they had sex with customers. And based on things such as geo-location of the posts and direct inquiries, they said they have no reason to believe the posts are bogus.”28 When the former CEO of Uber calls the service “boob-er” because it improves his chances with the ladies, perhaps no one should be surprised when drivers or passengers treat a ride as more than a way home.29