After seeing the slut card in Andrea's hand, I began to pay more attention to the news about this new payment system.
Law school had, of course, familiarized me with some of the new legal reforms related to the card. I don't want to bore you with obscure legal stuff, so I'll just say that there is something called specific performance, and the laws around specific performance had to be changed to allow the slut card to work. There was a company that released a phone app called Hitch, which later became the slut card. Some years after prostitution was fully legalized and the multi-spectrum anti-STI vaccines had been fully rolled out, Hitch had run a major lobbying effort to reform contract law around specific performance.
By the time I was in my last year of law school, it seemed like both Hitch and the slut card itself would be short-lived. The slut card had a lot of media attention due to shock value, and there was plenty of curiosity, but not much uptake. People like Andrea signed up for the card but most of the people who signed up didn't seem to be using the cards. Even at 1:10 odds, it was not a risk that very many people were willing to take.
The other reason that Hitch seemed doomed was media coverage of the times the card worked
too
well. There were a handful of stories about business catastrophes. I remember reading about a car dealership that decided it would accept the slut card, and then they went broke because they had to give away sixteen cars. Even though a few people ended up working naked at the car dealership for months on end, the dealership couldn't really make up the loss on the cars. No one would buy a luxury car just because it came with a hot babe to have sex with.
The economics were pretty simple; people who wanted to pay for sex would just pay for sex. Adding sex as a side dish to other transactions didn't work very well at all. It might be fun to know that a restaurant sometime had a blow job from an unlucky former customer on offer, but most of the time people either wanted to eat or they wanted to fuck. If they wanted to fuck, they didn't go to a restaurant. At least, that's what a bunch of pundits were saying. Hitch was seen as a bad bet, despite its initial appeal to venture capitalists and angel investors.
I decided that I agreed with these dire predictions. This, by the way, shows why no one should take business advice from me. But to be fair to my younger self, I wasn't really interested in business news at the time. The purpose of my research was to flirt with Andrea. I would find one of the numerous articles about how slut cards would be gone within the year and I'd DM it to her with a message like "You'd better use that card soon, before you lose the chance! If you want, I'll take pictures so you can tell your grandkids about it."
She would shoot back with something coy about how "How do you know I haven't already used it dozens of times?"
My problem was that I could never really talk to her in person, except a quick little "hi" when we saw each other at school. I was not good at talking to people face-to-face. In my student days, I met dozens of people online but I almost never picked someone up at a bar (the adventure with Arms at the club being a delightful anomaly). I messaged back and forth with her about her slut card for weeks.
The weeks that went by while I tried to get Andrea's attention via DMs about business news were part of a relaxed time at the law school. About halfway through our final semester, most of the class (myself included, of course) had already accepted the jobs that we would be moving into. Our job offers included clauses that said we needed to maintain our grades, so none of us should have been slacking off, but everyone did anyway.
The beautiful thing about all of the third-year students becoming suddenly lazy at the same time is that the grade curve stayed the same. We all worked less hard, and that meant there was less competition for the top grades. I was getting As and B-plusses without anywhere near the effort I had put in as a second-year student.
Really, if law students made a pact to be lazy from the beginning, I would have had a lot more time in law school to focus on getting laid.
On one particular bright spring day, Andrea and I were sitting at the opposite ends of a class called Conflicting Jurisdictions, which had about twenty people in it, all drowsy third-years. The classroom was built for about fifty people, so the instructor's voice was echoing as she droned on about her truly dull subject matter. Meanwhile, Andrea and I were messaging back and forth.
Her: Why are you so obsessed with the slut card thing?
Me: I'm obsessed with you.
Her: Lol
Me: I am also obsessed with the slut card thing.
I paused a little, summoning some courage.
Me: Because whenever I see a place that advertises that they accept slut cards I think I might find you inside.
See how much braver I am online? It's a problem.
Her: You are such a stalker!
Her: How come you're so quiet all the time except when you're messaging me?
Me: I'm shy.
Me: You make me tongue-tied.
Me: I do better when I have time to formulate my thoughts.
Her: That's actually pretty adorable, you know.
At this, I glanced up from my computer and across the room at her. She was staring back at me, an ironic little smile on her lips. I felt myself begin to blush and she obviously saw it because she smiled more broadly.
Her: Oh my god, you really are the cutest thing. What am I going to do with you?
I paused, looking at the blinking cursor and feeling that I was getting redder. My attempts at flirting had been theoretical and abstract. But now I felt like I actually had her attention. I was desperate not to lose it. I typed my response, and then felt nervous.
I looked over at her again, and I saw that she was now openly staring back at me. She raised one bushy eyebrow in a manner that was both provocative and shameless. God, did the professor not see what was going on in her class? I looked over and, no, she was still talking about
forum non conveniens
motions. I sucked in air and hit Enter.
Me: Whatever you want.
