“Don’t you think it’s weird that the neighbors haven’t robbed us yet?”

I cracked up as I stretched out along the couch, looking past my laptop on my stomach at Adam. I was waiting for my new photos to upload on my profile, so I kept the laptop turned away from him and he didn’t look too closely. He knew better by now.

“Really?”

“Really!” It wasn’t the Pabst talking, either. He was sincere in the way he waved his beer can at me. It made a change from him making fun of my career, at least. “I mean, your clothes are always… well, nice.”

“Not always,” I disagreed with a snort. “Just most of the time.” I wanted to be able to take a short-notice out-call appointment if I was out and about, and I didn’t want to scare away any repeat clients I happened to bump into. Living in New York—or, to be precise, Brooklyn—made that less likely, but not impossible.

Plus, dressing well was a perk of the job. I’d never gotten to wear nice stuff before. I was hooked now.

“And then there’s the wash-and-press. Not that I’m complaining,” Adam added, holding out one open palm and his beer can. He knew which side his bread was buttered, and he enjoyed having his boxers pressed and folded.

“I’m not trusting these,” I waved up and down myself, even though I was wearing my slobby old t-shirt and ripped jeans, “to any old laundromat’s high-rev torture machine. And if they wanna break in, fine. I’ve got insurance, and I can handle a shotgun.” I was a Tennessee boy still and it snuck through, as much as I toned it down for my big city clients.

“If only we had one,” Adam lamented. I knew he missed Tennessee sometimes, but he only let it sneak out in half-jokes like that. After all the shit he’d been through with his parents, no wonder he had mixed feelings.

I grabbed my crotch. “Who says I don’t?”

“Ew,” Adam laughed and flipped me off.

“Such a prude,” I teased him, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I sipped tea from one of my favorite cups—it had elaborate rose designs and a real pretty gold rim. I’d picked it up at my favorite thrift store last week, bringing my collection to… seven? Eight? I wasn’t sure now.

Adam choked on his beer and nearly sprayed it across the chair. He clapped his hand over his mouth just in time to manage to keep it down, although he was coughing. “As if!”

For a guy who’d barely hooked up so far as I could tell in the four months we’d lived together before we relocated here, he’d sure as hell hit the ground running. At least my own work often kept me out of the house overnight.

We had our own code for the situation: watermelon. That meant I planned to stay out for the night with a client. He could do whatever he wanted, as long as I could stroll in sometime after dawn and not be greeted with any scarring sights. If he sent it to me, it meant he wanted some space, and we’d negotiate a time.

My own dating life was pretty nonexistent. Not because nobody wanted to date a hooker, but because I hadn’t met anyone I thought was good enough for me.

It sounded egotistical, but it was also true. The guys who wanted me just because of my line of work… well, what if I saved up, went to school, and became an accountant? That wasn’t love, that was lust. And the guys who claimed not to care what I did for work? Jealousy would creep in sooner or later. Easier to avoid the whole mess.

Besides, I was young, single, and carefree, living in New York City. In my shoes, who the hell wanted to get tied down?

Not me.

“You done charging your phones?” Adam wiggled his own phone, indicating that he needed to top off.

“I dunno. The work phone, probably. You can check,” I shrugged. I had two, with different ring tones, but I tended to keep them in the same pocket. They were both usually kept on silent, except when I was free and able to text with prospective clients without interrupting anything with a current date.

Adam made a face. “I might see… things.”

“Ignore the sexts. I probably will, too,” I advised him, biting back my grin. He could be so overdramatic. He’d settled down a lot since we’d met, right after he’d done something really stupid and nearly paid for it.

We’d met on a ranch in Tennessee, and he’d been employed there until he’d gotten lazy and stopped showing up for work. They’d fired him and he’d tried some kind of stupid retaliation stunt.

In the end, the owners had hired both him and me, gave us a cabin to live in, and taught us a lot of valuable life skills. We could never pay Josh and Evan back for everything. I’d learned a lot about how to handle people who wanted to start a fight—kill ‘em with kindness. Although Adam could still be hot-headed, he’d grown up since that incident.

Aww. I was so proud of him, like a hen with her chick… even though we were both pretty much the same age, and both parent-free. Me more so—he kept in touch with his occasionally, but they didn’t seem to want to know much about him or his new life.

“You’re good.” He tossed my phone and I caught it, then cussed him out. Last thing I needed was to replace a goddamn iPhone X. “I’m not made of money, you know.”

Adam smirked. “Sorry.” That much was genuine, even if he acted like it wasn’t—I knew him well enough now to tell.

My profile was updated. With a lot of the major sites closing, it was harder and harder to find work without working the street corners again. If need be, I could go back to hustling in bars. It would be a lot less safe, and I’d probably make less money, but I knew what bars my target clients frequented. I wouldn’t be able to gauge whether they could listen to me or follow instructions ahead of time nearly as easily, but… everyone did what they had to in order to survive.

And at least I was on PrEP—a pill a day to stay HIV-negative. This way, if anyone didn’t take no for an answer, I wasn’t at risk of HIV. Other STIs could put me out of work for a few weeks, but they’d be treatable with antibiotics.

HIV was no longer a death sentence as long as it was detected and treated early, but it required expensive meds. Sure, they were the kind New York City covered, but being positive would also mean a lifetime of testing. And like I needed more risk of being jailed, being charged with a crime if I didn’t disclose my status to someone I slept with and they later found out—even if my blood levels made the virus intransmissible to other people.

Law hadn’t caught up with the modern world. Hell, most people hadn’t, either.

“If they rob us because I look too fancy, I’ll replace your shit,” I offered, which was magnanimous of me since I paid for the renter’s insurance myself. He hadn’t seen the need and he wanted a couple extra beers a month.

He rolled his eyes and flipped me off, but I ignored him as I opened Grindr.

“Goddamn it.”

“What?” Adam mumbled, paying more attention to his own phone.

I shook my head as I quit the app and deleted it. A reinstall, another email address, and I’d be back in business. “Nothing.”

Technically, solicitation wasn’t allowed on Grindr. But where the hell else was I gonna find work these days? The one site meant for us was pretty damn expensive to use, though I got a bit of work from them.

“I keep telling you, get a real job.” Adam’s casual insistence on not calling my job real grated on me, as it had for months.

I shook my head, refusing to get into it right now with him. “I happen to love mine. I’ll find a way to make it work.”

The idea of selling my body to a retail store for minimum wage, then having to smile and mentally chant the customer is always right when some asshole decided they were having a bad day and took it out on me? Gross. At least in my line of work, I got to choose what I did, which clients I’d accept, and what I charged.

Or, at least, I had. Things were different now that the law had changed. FOSTA/SESTA meant that I was walking a fine line. The laws protected some people; but for me, my relatively safe options for finding work were now gone. I was left with a few choices: I could try to sneak onto apps that weren’t made for my line of work, like Grindr, and deal with having my profile shut down and potentially reported, and keep reopening new profiles. Or I could work street corners and bars, which was much more dangerous and didn’t give me the chance to vet clients and see if they were planning to kill me beforehand.

I did a combination of the above, and I kind of got by. I wanted something more stable and less likely to get me arrested, so I was still thinking about going back to school.

That meant banking away enough to cover rent and expenses while I started studying something that would make me a profit quickly. Massage was the obvious choice, since I could segue from my existing line of work into offering the kind without happy endings, so it was my current goal.

I’d picked up a little of everything at my last job. If massage didn’t work out, I could try accounting or something boring like that. Apparently, I had more of a head for numbers than I’d given myself credit for.

None of that changed the fact that I needed work now, though. I sighed and created a new email address as the silence between us stretched out. From there, I registered on Grindr again and started uploading my new photos.

Eventually, Adam stretched and yawned. “I guess you’ll be out again tonight?”

“Yep,” I answered, keeping half my attention on him as I copied and pasted my profile from my phone notes into Grindr and set my vital stats. “Unless there’s a better offer.”

I didn’t have any bookings, but I planned to hit up a bar and see what happened. Best case scenario, someone would find me, pass my screening test, and I’d have a short-notice out-call. Worst case, I’d find a hot guy of my own for off-the-clock action. I was far enough ahead this month that I could afford a few freebies.

“I was just gonna crash early,” Adam told me, and I glanced up at him. He was looking awfully tired lately. Those “real jobs” he praised did so much to drain him—especially going back and forth between them all part-time. But I bit my tongue, just as he normally refrained from criticizing my job, and frowned sympathetically. I couldn’t help him change if he wasn’t ready.

“Yeah, you look like crap.”

Adam snorted and flipped me off. “Thanks, dude.”

“Welcome.” I winked and saved my profile, then pocketed my phone to feel any incoming notifications. Laundry day was the most exciting evening to go out, because I could get the most creative with my outfits. Not that I had anyone to show them off to.

Friends were lacking in my life. I knew a few other guys in my business, but we didn’t tend to socialize much. We shared info about bad clients, but weren’t hired to work together as often as female sex workers, I’d gathered.

Maybe that was what I needed to feel unstuck: friends. But how the hell could I meet them in this crazy, star-studded, boom-and-bust city of dreams?