Sook-Yin Lee was Chester Brown’s last girlfriend. For those not in the know: Lee is a multi-talented artist, working in music, film, broadcast and more. Brown is a renowned Canadian cartoonist. In 2011, Brown released a memoir in comics, Paying for It, about his time—post-relationship with Lee—paying for sex. Last year, Lee adapted the book into a feature film by the same name, which is now in theatres after enjoying a successful festival run.
The film begins with “Sonny” and Brown living in a house in Toronto’s Kensington Market. They love one another, but they are not having sex anymore. And Sonny is finding herself interested in another man. Much to the chagrin of his loyal circle of comic artist friends, Brown is unfazed by this—he doesn’t own Sonny, he attests, and thinks she should go for it.
As things progress, and the romantic relationship continues to deteriorate, Brown’s character decides he isn’t interested in typical romantic love or the things that come with it. He is still interested in sex, though, and pursues another avenue to accessing it: sex workers. When Paying for It was first published, memoirs by sex workers themselves were gaining popularity, but it was rare (and for good reason, given the criminalization of sex work and paying for sex) for anyone to speak in the first person about being a john. Like any business, sex work needs clients to happen, and when I read the comics upon their release, I remember thinking was nice to see someone discussing the trade from that perspective.
While the book itself was quite didactic, the film manages not to be. While Brown’s friends accuse him of “cheating” or “cutting in line” to access sex faster than them, he points out that offering sex for money is no different than offering illustrations for money. (His friend, at that point, exclaims that he hates illustrating for income—a very apt “all work sucks” sentiment.)
We see Sonny—a VJ at “MaxMusic” (Lee worked at MuchMusic for years) pursue romantic love, dating a series of men that include some familiar Canadian talent—characters played by Ehren Kassam (Degrassi: Next Class) and Ishan Davé (Kim’s Convenience) among them, while Brown makes his way through various outcall services. He’s studious in his approach, scouring the back sections of the alt weeklies, interviewing women over the phone before booking (because, at the time, photos did not run with escort ads) and discovering the world of online review boards, which were popular in the early 2000s in Toronto. He’s portrayed as the nerd he writes himself as too—notably riding his bicycle out looking for street workers the first time he takes action looking to pay for sex. (A nice moment for those paying attention: the real-life Brown has a cameo in the film, as a john exiting the first brothel his character visits.)
Toronto itself is basically a character in the film, featuring locations such as Sneaky Dee’s, a well-known dive bar, live music venue and spot for late-night nachos, and Buddha’s, a long-standing vegan Chinese spot. Shout-out to Lee for getting the era right too: that cub music video hit the spot. And casting (which Lee wrote about for CBC Arts) was on point—to those familiar with the Toronto burlesque scene, regulars Dainty Smith and Tanya Cheex are amongst the cast playing sex workers.
The book Paying for It has Brown harping on the disasters of romantic love, how much work it is, how painful and disappointing it is, how entitled people feel about it, far more than the film. In the film, instead, Brown’s transactional relationship to women and sex is contrasted against Sonny’s dating life, ripe with big feelings and major letdowns.
Unlike last year’s film adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s popular 2007 graphic novel Shortcomings, Paying for It is less a frame-by-frame translation to adaptation and cuts and adds throughout, offering more of Sonny’s life and more vivid depictions of the sex worker characters than the book (something Lee has said is intentional, though Brown has written that his initial fairly two-dimensional depictions of sex workers was to respect privacy).
I did have a moment of wondering if a visibly trans sex worker was meant as a joke or jump scare when she answers the door, but I want to give Lee the benefit of the doubt here. I do think the timing of when she appears could have been more carefully done. The character doesn’t wind up being substantial to the narrative beyond this brief encounter, so it’s hard to know how she’s intended.
Ultimately, though their romantic relationship ends, Brown and Sonny remain close friends. Brown’s inner circle of friends contend with his decisions and their own thinking on the matter, never abandoning him. And Brown is happy with the path he decides to follow. Paying for It makes viewers question their understanding of sex and love, the romantic and the platonic, and the “relationship escalator” models of doing things in line with societal expectations—and what is possible if we let all of that go.
Paying for It screens at select Canadian theatres starting Jan. 31, 2025.
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