“I actually hated that, but it wasn’t my place to tell you what you should be doing. When I found out you’d actually been breaking the law though, then it became my business.”
“It’s not really about me breaking the law. If you’d found out I’d shoplifted something or committed vandalism—which are both Class A misdemeanors like prostitution—you wouldn’t have shown up seething with anger in some public place and ordered me to leave with you,” I said. “You would have been mad and disappointed in me, sure, but you wouldn’t have been furious and clearly judgmental.”
“How do you know those are all Class A misdemeanors?”
“I did some research on the internet last night. I wanted to know what would have happened to me if I’d actually gotten arrested.”
“You could have gone to jail for up to a year.”
“Yeah, that’s what I found out.” I looked away, and after a moment I said, “Thanks for telling me about the sting. I know doing that could have gotten you into trouble.”
“You’re welcome.” After a pause, he asked, “Can you make me understand why you thought this was okay? I’m not trying to be snarky. I just want to understand.”
“Look, I get why prostitution is illegal. I know in some cases, women are being exploited. I also know human trafficking is very real and truly awful. Those things both factor into the big picture. But think about what I was doing objectively for a minute. It was an agreement between two consenting adults. No one was being taken advantage of or getting hurt.”
“But how could you have so little respect for yourself?”
I shut the laptop and shifted around so I was facing him. “That right there is an assumption that what I was doing was wrong, demeaning, or immoral. It wasn’t any of those things. It was just sex.”
“With someone else paying you and calling the shots.”
“Yes, they were paying me, but I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. Take that guy at dinner last night. It took me less than two minutes to realize he was a douchebag, so I decided not to sleep with him, no matter how much he offered me.”
“Well, thank god for that, because he seemed horrible,” Eden muttered. “But even so, shouldn’t sex mean more than just some sort of transaction?”
“That’s all it’s ever been to me, Eden—just two people getting what they need from each other. I’m not talking about the last six months, I’m talking about my entire adult life.”
“I don’t understand.”
I asked, “Haven’t you ever had sex just for fun, maybe with some stranger you picked up in a bar? I’ve never been in a relationship. You know that. So, sex has always been fairly meaningless to me.”
He thought about that before saying, “I’m the exact opposite. I’ve only had sex with people I truly care about, and it was anything but meaningless.”
“How many people have you slept with?”
“Two.”
“You mean Naya and Sarah, the two women you were in relationships with? That’s it?” He nodded, and I asked, “Did you have sex with either of them before you became a couple?”
“No. I couldn’t go through with it until we’d built a connection.”
“Oh wow,” I murmured. “This is really eye-opening. I had no idea you were demisexual.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what you just said. It’s someone who can only feel sexual attraction to another person if they have a strong bond or connection with them.” It also sometimes meant they were attracted to individuals regardless of gender, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up with that one.
He looked surprised. “There’s actually a word for it? I always thought it was just me.”
“You should read up on it.”
“I will. I’d heard the term, but I had no idea that’s what it meant.”
“Yeah. So, if there was an opposite to being demisexual, that would be me. I’ve never cared about any of my sex partners.”
I’d said that lightly, but he seemed surprised all over again. “How is that possible?”
I was drifting into dangerous territory. The answer was that I’d been in love with him forever, so I couldn’t possibly care about any of them. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I muttered, “Well, because I’ve never been in a relationship.”
“I’m starting to see why you and I have such a hard time seeing eye-to-eye with your choice to become a sex worker,” he said. “We view sex very differently.”
“Yeah. I guess we do.”
After a few moments, he admitted, “I did judge you, and I’m sorry. I’m realizing I’ve been carrying around a lot of assumptions and biases when it comes to prostitution, and I’m going to work on that.”
“Thanks for apologizing. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”
I didn’t quite know where to go from there, so I was glad when Eden decided to lighten things up again. He glanced at me and grinned as he asked, “Can we go back to the movie? We haven’t gotten to my favorite part yet.”