"Sure. Bye, Kay." They hung up and Kay turned back to the window, numb.
Time to face facts. Kay thought about herself, and she thought about men. Men who wanted her as soon as they saw her. Men who would do anything to be with her, except care about her, respect her, trust her. She was amused by that old line men liked to say about women, which fit so well when turned on its head. "Men! Can't live with them. Can't live without them."
Kay didn't hate men, at least not all men. And she enjoyed having sex. She got this carefree attitude from her parents, two classic hippies who still held onto their 60's values. They had raised Kay and her younger brother in a world filled with arts and humanities and sciences, with sex and drugs and nudist colonies, with spirituality and holistic medicine and meditation. Open and honest-a pretty damned good childhood, if she did say so herself.
Kay and her parents agreed that she could date boys in high school, but that she would wait until college to have sex. It meant that she had to fight off a continuous stream of high school boys. But it also meant that she was free to indulge herself as much as she liked, guilt free, when she got to college.
Once in college, Kay availed herself of the long line of boys who eagerly offered themselves to her. She soon learned something that her parents had not taught her: being beautiful was not always a good thing. Men found it difficult to be themselves when she was around. They changed, acted weird. Some became swaggering tough guys, unable to focus on anything but sex. Others became timid babbling boys, unable to focus on anything at all. Some were cool and could handle her, but only for a while. Any relationship that lasted more than a month would collapse from the pressure of jealousy-she had yet to meet a man secure enough to endure the nonstop stream of attention that her looks elicited from other men. It made relationships difficult and love impossible.
Of course, Dan was no different than any other man. He not only saw her as a sex object, but he wanted to make it a part of her work! Where was the line between this and prostitution?
Then again, Kay had to admit that Dan was right about one thing: she understood very well the power she had over men and had become good at wielding it. Over the years, she had mastered many more skills than her early high school game of tripping men in malls. Dan wanted her to be a seductive con artist. The concept wasn't new to her, only the scale. In the past, she had used her appeal for small gains. Now she could grab thousands of dollars with a single wiggle of her hips.