I was just reading an article on CNN.com about bartering sex for service and “stuff.”

Here’s part of it:

While she was studying in Brazil during college, the one thing Stephanie Gerson longed to do before leaving was spend time in the thick of the Amazon rain forest. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find a tour that would take her past the forest’s edge.

So, when a college-aged busboy at a resort she was visiting began flirting with her, she asked him if he thought a tourist could survive alone in the jungle.

“He laughed and told me I was nuts,” says Gerson, 27, who works part-time in online marketing for a chocolate company in San Francisco.

Then he told her that he’d grown up in the jungle in a nearby indigenous community. That was all Gerson needed to hear. Although she wasn’t attracted to the guy, Gerson flirted right back in the hopes that he would be her jungle tour guide. It worked. The busboy wormed his way out of work, and the two headed into the rain forest.

“It was amazing,” Gerson says of her adventure in 2000. “We built our homes out of palm leaves, I saw animals I’d never seen before, he taught me the medicinal properties of all the plants, we picked fruit off the trees, we swam with and ate piranhas. And, of course, we had sex … for almost two weeks.”

The full story

The comments underneath the story called Gerson everything from a whore to a prostitute. But let’s be honest, if you’re in a relationship–most of what you do is to get sex. Women cook dinner for their significant others because they want to get broke off. That man is painting the room in his mother-in-law’s house because he wants some good-good head. What happened when that man gave his fiancee a three carat diamond engagement ring? I’m willing to bet he was throughly fucked that evening.

Mostly everything we do, we want sex because we did it. So, trading sex for services isn’t such a far-fetched idea. Most of us are doing it anyway.

This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.

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8 Comments

  1. This made me laugh out loud. But then I thought about what it is really saying. What this is saying is that our pre-programmed biological drive is to have a mate who takes ownership of their life and surroundings – and is capable of doing so. Whether male or female we have to add value to our partner in some form. Men are easier because they have such a strong biological drive for sex, but women, too need a man who adds something to her life. Men have often twisted that to mean (perhaps because of our American cultural emphasis on money) that if they don’t make a lot of money they can’t get a hot wife.
    What this article makes clear is that women and men need the same thing – someone who adds value to their life. That could mean money, but then why do so many well-supported women give up married life in order to pursue something else? Obviously money is NOT it! Women want a man who does more that “sits on the couch all day eat(ing) bonbons.” We are biologically driven to find a man willing to take ownership of their life and surroundings. I’ve always said there is nothing sexier than a man standing in front of the sink with a sink full of dirty dishes and his sleeves rolled up We want a man who is willing to work… Of course, what men want from us is a whole different article.
    To be completely honest, that describes me to a T. My first husband was worthless, didn’t even feel that he needed to earn income, much less contribute around the house or with our baby. My second worked hard but contributed nothing to my needs, making our home or caring for our daughters. Now I have married a man who works harder than I do at keeping our home and family together. I’m crazy about him. Who knew it was biology?

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