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Sunny is the sex worker Holden hires through Maurice at the hotel. Although Holden initially agrees to Maurice’s offer of a sex worker with the thought of losing his virginity, Sunny’s business-like approach terrifies him, further complicating his already troubled relationship with sex, sexuality, and growing up. From the minute she walks in the room, Sunny is impersonal and straightforward. Although she doesn’t believe that Holden is really twenty-two, she’s unwilling to expend enough effort and care to figure out his true age. Instead of initiating foreplay, she begins undressing almost immediately. Her brusque manner frightens Holden because it lacks the intimacy he craves. In fact, when Holden refuses sex with her, she leaves immediately, unwilling to engage in emotional intimacy even for pay because it is outside her normal job description. Her impersonal attitude toward her work also extends to when she and Maurice return for the remaining five dollars they believe Holden owes them. While Maurice goes to attack Holden, angry at him for not paying, Sunny goes immediately to Holden’s wallet, focused on resolving the issue. She has no desire to be violent toward a kid like Holden and only wants the money she’s owed.
Like everyone he encounters in the novel, Holden doesn’t consider Sunny’s perspective of events but instead how her behavior makes him feel. Everything about Sunny’s blasé attitude toward sex is terrifying to Holden because it brings together his anxieties around adulthood. Sunny is someone who does something Holden believes should be intimate and emotional for money, which to Holden is the height of phoniness. He even calls his brother D.B. a “prostitute” for choosing Hollywood over more personal literary writing. We can see through Holden’s attitudes toward both Sunny and D.B. that money is central to Holden’s definition of phoniness. Sunny signifies to Holden that any part of adulthood, even sex, can be phony or emotionally hollow because adulthood requires money.
