I Am a 29-Year-Old Woman Who Sold My Panties for Cash

I didn't just wake up one day at 29 years old and decide to sell my used underwear for cash.

It all started innocently enough. Some girlfriends and I were hanging out for a day of tubing and day drinking on a local creek. After the float, we took a picture in our bikinis. The photo was posted on Facebook -- and several shares later, a gentleman with a fetish for wearing female panties got in touch to see if he could buy ours.

Yes, it seemed totally creepy. But it was hilarious too; and it wasn't long before my friends and I were turning over a bunch of questions: is this legal? Which style of panties does this gentleman want? Clean or dirty? If he wanted them dirty, how dirty? How much was he willing to pay? And last but not least, what exactly was he going to do with them? He admitted that he wanted our dirties so he could wear them -- and that he preferred boy shorts or bikini briefs.

Yup, we did it. At $30 a pop. What can I say? Times were hard. Cash was tight. And so began a system of regularly scheduled drop-offs of our dirty underwear, sealed up tight in Ziploc bags.

panties underwear sold for cash
Christina_summer/Shutterstock

A fetish not unlike any other

The used-panties trade is a booming business that saw a serious spike following Orange Is the New Black's Season 3 premiere. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to buying and selling varying levels of used undergarments starting at $10 and going up to around $300. And I'm sure many of you have heard the rumors about used-panties vending machines in Japan.

I can't say I was entirely surprised. Once upon a time, an old boyfriend of mine -- who was a total freak in bed, and also my best lover -- admitted that he liked to put my dirty underwear on his face when he jerked off. Another time, a girlfriend told me a story about her boyfriend finding her dirty underwear and being fascinated by a wet spot he found on them.

And who am I to judge what turns someone else on? If some guy wants to wear my dirty panties while he goes to work at his high-profile job, so be it. There are fetishes for just about everything, anyway -- so why not cash in on the phenomenon?

Operation panty drop

The panty drops were a regularly scheduled event, as the customer wanted them fresh. I actually would wear mine up until the end of the workday, seal them in a Ziploc, and send them on their way for a 5pm pick-up. It was fun. I felt rebellious; empowered. What can I say? Maybe it's just the aftereffects of a Catholic-school upbringing.

To come up with the $30 price tag, I conducted some market research and found this is the most common going rate for dirty panties. You can make some more cash-per-pair if you post pictures of yourself in them or call the gentleman and talk dirty to him while he is enjoying your undergarment. In my case, my panties were strictly just worn for one day. No period panties, no anal leakage panties (yes, there are lots of requests for those): just sweet, gently used panties.

And actually, it was a great way to have money to buy myself new lingerie whenever my supply ran low.

The end of my panty-selling racket

So, all was going well. Our customer would send pictures of himself in our panties and always asked for feedback on how he looked. He wanted us to call him the "panty bitch," and degrade him when he received his deliveries. Meanwhile, he was going home to his wife in the evening and living a normal life.

I considered going big with this. Many women on the internet involved in the used-panty trade can make $700 or more every month. I figured I could go online, get connected with other panty-sniffing guys, and make a bunch of extra money.

But then, my client sent me a photo that changed everything.

It was an image of him with my red lace dirties, crotch-down, in his mouth. His note said he'd also jerked off into them prior to chewing on them -- and asked that the next time I had sex, I have my male companion blow his load inside of me... then for me to put on my panties right away.

I never sold another pair.

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Zoe Bexley is a freelance writer for Thrillist. Zoe wears lace cheeky panties on the regular and guarantees that at this very moment she is wearing a fresh and clean pair that will be washed and placed in her underwear drawer instead of into a gentleman's mouth. Follow her on Twitter: @zoebexley.