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When I told Peter about my adventure with his comp lit professor, he gave me a quizzical look -- I sometimes wonder if it made him realize what a child I was for boasting about something so private, and dangerous to the reputation of an adult. Peter was beyond petty moral judgments -- it would never occur to him to say unkind things about it. I couldn't have asked for a more accepting lover -- but I was too young to understand how unusual he was.

After that, something happened that made me more conscious of our age difference. At the end of summer, I was back in high school and Peter was studying under professor Andrews. When Kathleen, his college girlfriend, returned from her summer in Saskatoon, Peter told me they were sleeping together. I was devastated.

"But you've never hidden J----- Andrews," he said, utterly confounded. "I'm just being honest with you."

"What I do with J-----" -- I was now on a first name basis with prof Andrews, despite having addressed him more formally as a small child -- "is different! He paid me," I protested. "Don't you see?"

"Well, no -- I don't. I would never ask you not to see him," he pointed out, as gently as possible. "Kathleen has been my lover for two years, you've always known."

"But I didn't know she was coming back!"

"How could you not know?" he asked. "She's got another year of grad school left --"

I began to realize that, while having sex for money came naturally to me, relationships were another matter. How could Peter equate his lover with my customer? I instinctively understood the difference between a customer and a boyfriend -- professor Andrews was an object, someone I could (and should) control. But I was still too young to realize that a boyfriend also had to be managed -- and could be -- by a woman's sense of discretion. I discovered that Kathleen and Peter lived in a world of their own that was less honest in some ways but more realistic and more permanent than the world he entered when he was with me.

Friday, Sept. 3

My business phone just rang and then hung up. Then my personal line did the same thing. It gave me such a fright that I called Jasmine in a total panic.

"I think you're right -- about that IRS guy," I said, "He's checking up on me again! But what does he want? He called and hung up -- "

"Just now? That was me!" she exclaimed. "Tom W's passed the stage of making crank calls. I just found out -- Eileen has already been down to his office! She said he read a list of girls' names to her and asked her a lot of nosy questions about her clients. When she played dumb, he threatened to ask her sister and her dad the same questions! When I asked her what she told them, she got pissy and hung up on me ..." There was a thoughtful pause, as she waited for me to digest this. In a calm, even voice, she said, "Do you think she's the type to roll over under pressure?"
salon.com | Oct. 21, 1999

Episode 31 To work and to love

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