Flavor of the Week: Hey, He's Just a Hooker

We met while working at one of those All-American retail stores on our summer breaks from college my sophomore year. Somewhere between folding clothes and cashing out customers, Scott and I struck up a conversation, which led to us finding out we had a lot in common; similar siblings, upbringings and a mutual abhorrence for our time spent selling skinny jeans were all similarities revealed during our retail time together. It wasn’t long before I found myself thinking of Scott’s name and the idea of a summer fling in the same sentence.

I’d ended my first serious relationship just before summer began and had never navigated the casual sex scene before. Because of this, I let summer pass almost completely without making a pass at Scott. It wasn’t until a co-worker’s end-of-summer party that Scott, whose ivory smile I’d become more than a little infatuated with, seemed to usher me in a now-or-never way out onto the balcony.

Carrying cold beers and a newly found backbone, I slipped out onto the balcony where our conversation came as easily as ever. I’d just begun unbuttoning Scott’s shirt in my imagination when something he said snapped me out of my soft-core reverie.

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone before?” he asked.

That you too fantasize about balcony sex?

I thought to myself before deciding now was not the time for such an overshare. “Sure,” I said instead.

“What would you say if I told you people pay me to have sex with them?” All the Natural Light in the world could not have prepared me for Scott’s question, but I figured beer was about my only sanctuary at the moment, so I took another swig, considered making a joke about leaving my wallet in the car and ultimately cleared my throat before saying “Okaaay.”

“I’m a prostitute,” he clarified, just in case my understanding of the definition of sex for money was imprecise. Call me curious, but I hadn’t come across many 22-year-old college students who sold themselves, so I gave him the green light to continue—or more or less gave him a nod to go on while I regained my composure. Unbeknownst to me, I’d opened up Scott’s Pandora’s Box of prostitution.

“I mainly sleep with older women,” he said, seemingly excited to get it off his chest.

“Mainly?” I replied, understanding this to mean I was free from solicitation.

“And men sometimes, but I just let them go down on me, so I’m not gay or anything.”

Thanks for the clarification, I thought, because the prostitute part didn’t poohpooh my plans or anything.

“That’s who I’ve just been texting,” he explained with the kind of manic laugh that is often the result of one-too-many rounds at the beer-pong table. “One of my regulars. He promised me a plasma TV if I let him suck me off later.”

Scott said it so matter-of-factly that I found myself with a sudden case of Stockholm Syndrome, nodding my head as if his confessions over the last five minutes were of the typical kind you hear in any collegiate conversation, and not the unexpected confessions of the guy who went from the summer crush I’d planned on getting it on with to a part-time prostitute in the period of an hour.

In terms of part-time jobs, prostitution was never one I remembered seeing on the list available at the student union. Turns out Scott got turned on to sex work while cruising local gay bars and letting guys buy him drinks. He realized the same ingenuity he applied in the classroom translated well to turning tricks, and, as they say, the rest is history.

As quickly as he confessed his secret life, our conversation was over. Scott stood up and returned to the party, and I remained planted in my plastic lawn chair. I never saw Scott again. Like summer flings, summer confessions come without strings attached, it seems, and summer was over. We both went back to our respective studies the following week.

I’d kept Scott’s secret until now. Not that he asked me to, or even seemed scared about it getting out.

With stories about prostitutes permeating pop culture at present, it reminded me of Scott. If we can have a former madam run for governor and homophobes hiring rentboys, why should Scott be any different? He was running for president of his fraternity that fall, after all.