When I was in college, I spent one summer tending bar at a Toronto strip club. I didn’t realize it was a jiggle joint when I applied, but unemployment was high in Canada, and it was the only work I could find. My male friends assumed I had landed a dream gig, but it easily ranked among the worst jobs I ever had — second only to working at the Detroit News after Gannett took over.
At the bar, I quickly grew embarrassed for the gullibility of the male species when libido took control. All day long, guys would belly up and ask how much I had to pay to work at a strip club — then brag about the “special relationship” they’d forged with one of the dancers. The telltale sign? She confided her “real name,” which supposedly meant he was different, special, and should keep paying for lap dances.
Every man believed the fantasy that these women were “girl-next-door types” working their way through medical or law school. As for the “real names”? Just more lies. It was pathetic.
Apparently, gay men are no wiser than their straight brethren when it comes to matters below the belt. The Wall Street Journal just chronicled music impresario David Geffen’s messy divorce from one Donavan Michaels — known to his family as David Armstrong. Geffen is 82, worth about $9 billion, and a half century older than his ex.
Age Gap
The age gap alone should have given Geffen pause. So should the way they met. Michaels was introduced to him through SeekingArrangements.com, and according to a court filing, Geffen allegedly paid $10,000 for their first encounter. The Journal reports that Geffen was so smitten he married Michaels without a prenuptial agreement.
It’s easy to ridicule Geffen for thinking with a body part other than his brain. But reading the story, I found myself pitying him. It underscored the oldest of adages: money can’t buy love — or happiness.
Despite his fortune, his 454-foot superyacht, and his famous circle of friends that includes Tom Hanks and Barack Obama, Geffen must have been profoundly lonely to resort to paying so dearly for companionship. Given his prominence, there was also recklessness in trawling a site where opportunists were bound to circle, and honor was unlikely to be part of the deal.
The Illusion of Purchased Love
That’s the illusion of purchased love. You can rent affection, you can buy attention, you can even stage a wedding — but you can’t shortcut deep-rooted loneliness. For all his wealth and power, David Geffen was chasing the same fantasy as the guys at the Toronto strip joint. The only difference was the price tag.
Hollywood has long romanced prostitution, most famously with Pretty Woman. Julia Roberts’ Vivian Ward was portrayed as a warm and caring hooker rescued by a corporate raider played by Richard Gere with a heart of gold. It was a box office smash, but also a cultural lie.
A more realistic depiction would have been Roberts lifting Gere’s wallet on her way out. Wall Street corporate raiders are typically soulless bastards lacking empathy for most people, let alone prostitutes. Yet Hollywood sold the fantasy because America loves a redemption tale where money sanitizes the sordid.
While it’s undeniable that many sex workers suffer violence at the hands of pimps and customers, it’s also true that prostitutes themselves sometimes commit crimes. It’s especially true in Las Vegas, where many men mistakenly believe prostitution is legal; in fact, it’s only legal in ten Nevada counties, and Las Vegas isn’t in one of them. The accompanying video by another former strip joint bartender provides all the details.
The media has followed Hollywood’s lead, frequently portraying prostitutes as misunderstood victims with tragic childhoods. That narrative is easy to digest — people like stories about second chances. But lots of people endure abusive homes and poverty without turning to sex work, drugs, or crime. Some go to community college, take two jobs, or claw their way into legitimate success. Romanticizing prostitution as an inevitable outcome of a tough upbringing is insulting to those who rose above similar circumstances without victimizing themselves or others.
The pattern is clear: when it comes to prostitution, Hollywood and the press are comfortable selling fables about resilience and misunderstood angels, but they shy away from uncomfortable truths — that the trade thrives on exploitation, desperation, and occasionally violence going both ways. David Geffen’s saga isn’t the story of an ingénue rescued from a cruel world. It’s the story of a powerful man who deluded himself into thinking a transactional relationship would ultimately result in genuine love.
Fits the Narrative
The Journal reports that Michaels was born into a troubled home in Port Huron, Michigan – as I’ve previously noted, all major stories invariably have a Michigan angle – a forlorn city on the other side of the Blue Water Bridge from Canada’s Sarnia. As a youth, Michaels was moved to an adoptive home in a small town 36 miles away called Imlay City.
Around the time Michaels left Imlay City, he boasted online of the new life he planned for himself.
“Crazy thing is most people can’t even fathom that where I know I’m gonna be is even possible, but then again they’re not about that lifestyle either,” he wrote in a Facebook post in October 2014. Six days later, he posted again: “Millionaire at 25.”
Michaels found his way to Florida, where he worked in “nightlife,” then moved to New York, where he picked up sporadic modeling jobs, including a 2016 BuzzFeed spread pairing adoptable dogs with “hot guys.” He also moonlighted under another name, Brandon Foster, in a handful of adult films released in 2014 and 2015.
Geffen and Michaels married in 2023 at a small ceremony in California – six years after their first encounter. The couple quietly separated in February, according to Geffen’s divorce filing, a week after Valentine’s Day. Geffen filed for divorce in May. Michaels, in turn, sued Geffen in July after rejecting a financial offer. His lawsuit alleged personal details that Geffen’s allies have interpreted as an attempt to extract a bigger payout.
Conflicting Tales
Geffen’s and Michaels’s respective filings painted very different stories. In Geffen’s version, Michaels lived lavishly, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on clothes, cosmetics, and trips with friends. The couple allegedly never spent a night in the same bed, let alone the same room. Geffen’s complaint also cited drugs discovered in Michaels’s bedroom, exorbitant spending on online subscriptions and escorts, and “extensive relationships with numerous other people.”
Michaels’s complaint alleged that Geffen used him as a prop in a “theater of virtue” that traded on his poor upbringing as karmic currency. Behind closed doors, Geffen allegedly insisted on an intense sex life in which he “gained satisfaction from causing pain,” and demanded control over Michaels’s appearance down to cosmetic procedures and grooming standards.
Michaels has some high-powered legal representation. According to Variety, he is represented by Samantha Spector, among Hollywood’s leading go-to family law lawyers, as is Laura Wasser, who is representing Geffen. Variety also reported that litigator Bryan Freedman, another prominent California attorney, filed Michaels’s complaint.
It’s all very sordid, and it’s not the first Geffen relationship to have soured in dramatic fashion. In 2014, Jamie Kuntz, one of Geffen’s former lovers, was arrested after allegedly following, harassing, and making a “credible threat” against the Hollywood mogul. Two years earlier, Kuntz made headlines when he was kicked off his college football team after being seen kissing another male in a press box.
For decades, Geffen has been dogged by gossip that he surrounded himself with a rotating cast of “Geffen Babies” — young men recruited under the guise of modeling gigs, then rewarded with gifts, cash, and sometimes career opportunities. In Hollywood, it was said that proximity to Geffen’s orbit could come with perks — if you were willing to play the role.
For all his wealth and fame, Geffen strikes me as a very tragic figure. Given his longstanding reputation as an a-hole, many might say it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. But that doesn’t make his emptiness any less real.