Cities are known to have seedy bits. There’s always a spot under the bridge where crackheads congregate and in the morning children find dirty needles and used rubbers. There’s always a strip or corner where a Richard Gere can pick up a Julia Roberts to go indulge in adult carnal delights for a fiduciary exchange in which Julia Roberts comes out on top. It took me two years of living in the city of Oxford to find this place but a few weeks ago I did. How, you ask, did I find such a site, since I am neither a heroin addict nor a whore? Simple, really. I was mistaken for a prostitute.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t propositioned in Faulkner’s Alley or some darkened nook of the parking lot behind Boure’s new location. It wasn’t a late night (or early morning) liquor-induced suggestion from a horny lonely guy who’d struck out all evening at the bars on The Square. I wasn’t presenting to provoke the prurient proclivities of the sexually depraved, a strumpet strutting the streets in a dress barely two inches below my bottom with legs like a gazelle in five-inch heels.
My cleavage was concealed under a sweater plus a jacket. My jeans were loose and my shoes were as flat as a can of Pepsi that’s been sitting out since the start of the barbecue. It was 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon and I was strolling through a parking lot on College Hill Road when a gentleman in an SUV stopped me, ostensibly to ask for directions. He had some salt in his pepper hair and mistook me for someone ten years my junior. He remarked on my attractiveness and inquired if I had a husband. He asked my plans for the immediate moment and invited me to his house, offering $100 to have sex with him. Caught off guard I paused in reply, to which he swooped in and upped the ante to $200. It was then that I noticed the three-pack of Trojan Magnum condoms placed strategically on the crotch of his jeans. I politely declined and he politely apologized upon realizing that I was not “like that.”
Later that night I wondered if I should be flattered or offended. If $200 is indeed the going rate for a prostitute in Oxford, then in my humble opinion, the hookers here are really getting the shaft.
This article was published in The Local Voice #153 (April 5-19, 2012).
