My sister's single!

ONE MAN'S CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH A MATCHMAKING BROTHER.

Prostitution has always held a certain lurid fascination for me. From the nuts-and-bolts (Do they use lubricant? What kind of birth control? Does it cost more or less for doggy-style?) to the theoretical (What do you tell your mom? How do you have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend afterwards? Do you ever have an orgasm?), the subject of sex for money has always drawn me strangely. Over the years I'd spent a good amount of time musing over these issues with just about anyone who would listen.

Maybe that's why a friend told me to call up a mutual acquaintance of ours named Matt. "Something just happened to him that supports a theory of yours on this subject -- and I'm sure he'll be happy to talk to you about it!"

Intrigued, I spent the better part of the next three days trying to get hold of him. When I finally reached him, however, he was a little nervous. Despite what our mutual friend had said, he clearly had some reservations about talking to me.

Matt told me that he had been running along the Marina Green in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge when he had passed a guy he recognized, Larry. Larry had been on the cross-country team with Matt in high school some 15 years ago. Matt hadn't liked him very much: Larry had been one of those wise-ass kids -- wheeling and dealing, goofing off but never getting caught by the coach. Ducking his head, Matt pretended not to see him.

The day was windy and cold; he was glad he hadn't stopped. But on the loop back, there was Larry again, running in the opposite direction. This time there was no way to avoid him, so Matt slowed to a jog as he approached. "Hey dude," said Larry, obviously surprised, grinning at him in that same oily way that Matt remembered. "How's it goin'?"

"So, we just bullshitted as we ran, joked back and forth," Matt went on. I didn't know Matt and he didn't know me, but he seemed afraid that I might be judging him. He worked at the same firm as a lawyer friend of mine, and I wondered if this was going to be some tiresome sexual harassment story. I'd had just about enough of that lately.

"Yes, go on," I said to him politely, feeling as if I were coaxing my cat out from under the couch.

"Well, at one point, he asked if I was married," he continued shyly. "'No, no,' I said, 'not anywhere near that.' He said he was surprised."

"Uh-huh," I commented. So far this was all so mundane it had to be good.

They were bantering about track and field as they rounded the red brick corner of Fort Point when Larry suddenly said, as if it had just occurred to him, "Hey, you should call my sister, man. She lives in San Jose, just moved here, doesn't know anybody. She's really cute."

"I didn't remember that he had a sister," Matt said to me. "But, whatever. I just kind of mumbled something noncommittal. When we got back to the parking lot, he whipped a pen out of his windbreaker and jotted her number down on a grocery store receipt. 'Call Katie, dude,' he said. 'You'll really like her.'"

Two weeks went by, and late one night -- "I guess I was feeling, I don't know, lonely or daring or something" -- he fished the receipt out of a pile of papers on his dresser and found himself dialing Katie's number. She picked up the phone right away and seemed delighted that he'd called. No, Larry hadn't mentioned anything to her. No, she didn't remember Matt either, but then again she was a lot younger than Matt or Larry.

"But I'm so glad you called!" she said enthusiastically. She'd just moved to Silicon Valley from Southern California to go back to school. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do yet, she told Matt, but when he mentioned he was a lawyer, she cooed and bubbled. "That's what I want to be!" she exclaimed.

"She was very friendly," Matt said. "Very interested in what I did and was just sort of excitable in general, which I thought was a little strange, considering she was talking to a complete stranger, after all. Everything was 'Really? Oooohhh!' That sort of thing."

After 10 minutes of chitchat, Matt said to Katie, "Well, maybe we should get together sometime."

"OK," Katie responded quickly. "I can come over tonight and we can fuck, or I can come over tomorrow afternoon and we can fuck."

N E X T+P A G E +| A pregnant pause