Page 57 of Misadventures of a Biker

“Yeah.”

“What’s it worth? Like what should a prostitute charge?”

“Someone in a massage parlor,” he replied. “How much extra should it cost for a hand job? On top of the massage price. This was our topic of discussion last week.”

“What’s a massage cost?” I asked.

“Hundred bucks.” He shrugged. “Give or take.”

I’d given a plethora of hand jobs in my days, but I wouldn’t jack off a random guy for any amount of money. If a massage therapist’s menu included hand jobs, I suspected they’d be priced affordably and within reach of his or her clientele.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Two hundred bucks?”

“Two hundred bucks?” He looked at me up and down. “For a hand job?”

I’d lived a somewhat sheltered life. Feeling foolish for my response, I scrunched my nose in dramatic fashion. “Is that too much?”

“I’m guessing for two hundred bucks you could have sex with half the staff.”

“Really?”

“It can’t cost more than a hundred for sex,” he replied. “I’m not speaking from experience. That’s just a guess. I bet it’s accurate, though.”

I couldn’t claim that I’d never had meaningless sex. I could, however, state that I’d never had sex for money. I saw the two as being completely different. Being a prostitute required a woman to have sex with anyone who could afford to pay for it. Having meaningless sex with a random barfly allowed the woman to choose her partner.

“That’s gross,” I said.

He chuckled. “Which part of it?”

“That someone would have sex for a hundred bucks.”

“What if they charged a thousand?” he asked. “Does that make it classy?”

“No,” I replied. “It’s still gross.”

“What about the hand job? Is that gross, too?”

In high school, I viewed sex as a sacred act. Consequently, I doled out hand jobs to my male classmates like ammunition to a deployed brigade of US Marines.

“Jacking someone off is different,” I replied. “It’s not sex.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s a hand job.”

He laughed. “You act like you’re experienced.”

“I’ve given a few,” I said.

“Define a few.”

We’d agreed to be transparent with one another. As much as I hated to admit the truth, I felt I had to. With some reluctance, I responded in a less than definitive manner.

“In high school, I didn’t have sex. With anyone. So, I gave hand jobs.”

He laughed. “Two-hundred-dollar hand jobs?”

“What?” I blurted. “No.”