Taylor Morgan cashed in on her heartbreak by unloading her ex-boyfriend’s stuff on eBay, using steamy photos of herself to attract some heavy-breathing bidders. Here’s how she got revenge — and made a few thousand bucks.
Bidding Adieu
Throughout most of her five-year relationship, 27-year-old “Taylor Morgan” (no, that’s not her real name) willingly played sugar mama to her habitually underemployed boyfriend. “He was kind of entrepreneurial, which can be another word for ‘unemployed,’” Taylor says. “But he was good to me in a lot of other ways, so I tried to look past that. And he was very creative, so I just kept believing in him, thinking one day he was going to turn it around.”
Then, just before Christmas last year, Taylor was out of town on a business trip. While she was gone, a friend called to say she’d seen Taylor’s boyfriend dancing with another girl at a club. Taylor gave him the benefit of the doubt — until a neighbor called to say she’d seen a woman leaving the house the following morning.
“That was the icing on the cake, the nail in the coffin,” Taylor says. She kicked him out and told him to take his things — but, she says, he only wanted his laptop. Taylor was left with a closet full of his clothes, plus the digital camera and iPad she’d already bought him for Christmas. (Let this be a lesson to the cheaters: Keep it in your pants until after you unwrap your holiday loot!)
At that point, revenge wasn’t the first thing on her mind. “I was heartbroken, let’s be real here,” she says. “It was five years that I’d emotionally invested into the relationship. And I loved him.” But just before Valentine’s Day, Taylor was sharing a bottle of wine with a friend who asked what she planned to do with her ex’s stuff. When Taylor said she was just going to dump it or donate it, her friend suggested posting everything on eBay. She set up an account for Taylor that night using the name “myexboyfriendscloset.”
Luckily for the hordes of horny men trolling eBay, the girls came up with a way to make Taylor’s auctions stand out — by posing provocatively with the unwanted clothes. In one photo, Taylor is wearing her ex’s Kenneth Cole hoodie and nothing else; in another, a New Balance sneaker is strategically covering her bare breasts. Not only did the sexy pics draw attention to the auctions, but they pissed off her ex, who liked her to dress conservatively. “That was an extra fire in the belly,” Taylor says. “Like, ‘Here’s what you’re missing. And, you know, eff you.’”
Word got back to him pretty quickly — because the auctions went viral. A cheesy XXL buttondown from Hollister sold for more than $200. The aforementioned hoodie went for $122. A pair of gym shorts raked in more than $300 after Taylor posed in them while doing a split. And along with the bids, Taylor received an outpouring of support — and indecent proposals — from bidders and lurkers alike. Some offered to fly her to Europe, while others just wanted to knock her ex’s taste in clothing. When Taylor posted an Ed Hardy shirt, a few online supporters commented, “Wow, he definitely was a douche bag if that’s his shirt!”
But Taylor says her ex has actually been “kind of cool” about the whole thing. While she suspects that he’s flagged a few auctions for indecent content, he hasn’t asked about getting his goods back. (“Isn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?” Taylor rationalizes.) And he’s been enough of a gentleman to keep her true identity a secret: The ex and Taylor’s friend with the camera are the only ones who know she’s the girl behind the racy listings. She carefully hides her face in every photo, although she swears, “I’m very cute! It’s a good package all around.”
So far, her sexy photos have helped her net more than $5,000 from her auctions — not a bad take for used mall-store threads that would typically sell for a few bucks each. She donated about 20 percent of her sales to tsunami relief in Japan, and plans to spend the rest on a wardrobe upgrade. “I might buy some sexy clothes — have fun with some of that gravy,” she says. And with loads of inventory still left in her closet (seriously, how many Hollister shirts does one man need?), Taylor isn’t worried about the well drying up anytime soon. For now, her only worry is keeping the poses fresh — like incorporating yoga stretches to spice things up, or signing “Taylor Morgan sat here” on the necklines of white T-shirts.
While the venture hasn’t exactly taken Taylor’s mind off her breakup — being a scorned woman is basically her side job now — it’s helped her move on. “It’s kind of like therapy for the twenty-first century,” she says. “I went from being upset and heartbroken to angry, and then it turned into having fun.” And it’s helped her morph from a buttoned-up, tied-down businesswoman into a single-and-avenging-it sex symbol. “I never in my wildest dreams thought about doing anything quite like this before,” she says. Maybe not — but on behalf of eBay members everywhere, we hope she keeps her stripped-down enterprise going.
