The New
Hank Williams might be amused but not surprised to learn that a woman I recently met on an internet dating service appears to be doing a form of "sex for money."
A black woman of magnificent and towering charms, a serious "single mother" most eager to elicit gifts, money from a stranger.
Her voluptuous body seethed with hints of future sex.
For days she had been sending scantily clad photos to my cellphone: something a journalist is bound to note.
As the clues mounted, I used standard investigatory techniques to locate the Jacksonville, North Carolina "double wide" mobile home in which she lived -- in a nice middle class, mixed race semi-rural area.
Driving out while she was at work, I cautiously drove into her drive circle to be followed in a truck by her polite white husband and charming six year old daughter.
He had a round and pleasantly mustashioed face, and kindly backed out his truck, so that I could drive up to him for a few words.
"I am looking for Mr. Smith, (not the woman's name)" I said.
In a cautious interchange with him in his car and me in mine, I ascertained he was the husband, they were not divorced as she had claimed -- and she had not kicked him out of the house as she claimed.
I did not wish to stay around for coffee.
Checking "Facebook" with a friend we located her wish list of luxuries she wished to own in a year.
Things she was trying to scam gently and indirectly from me. Well above my pay grade. And with no services rendered.
When gently confronted by text message and phone, she put out a fresh line, more likely true: that she was in the midst of a divorce, moneyless, facing the loss of her mobile home.
All the while, as our research indicated, in search for luxuries.
There was, of course, no sex....only a hint of it.....
The OldWe see a growing pattern of prostitution and such on the internet --- both on broader internet and and dating services. And many many escort services advertised in this area.
One other woman was a lovely black hospital worker, both slim and buxom of build.
I met her on a computer dating service. She invited me to her house in Greenville, North Carolina for a sparkling three hour chat.
And then came the text messages asking for "a favor:" could I spare $100 here and there?
She had earlier shown me her bedroom with the comment, "This is where we play."
"A friend with benefits" was what she sought.
She was stunning and charming and sophisticated -- although her bathroom toilet lacked a handle.
I felt that as a journalist of record it was not my part to participate.
I did offer to fix her toilet handle. She declined.
The combination of hard times and high tech gives new imperatives and new opportunities to the modern variety of "con women" and "sex workers."
Some are medical workers.
Some are inveterate beauties, one I met a former airline stewardess, trying to get "help" in return for sex. Many are single mothers.
In the black culture there is a long tradition of sex for gifts. With the full knowledge that a white man will be more vulnerable to a pitch. White women may be more skillful at covering up the nature of this transaction.
As a black woman friend told me, "A black man would laugh off this pitch." But a white and lustful bleeding heart, that's another story.
Many are spurred by minimum wage jobs, the crunch of not being able to meet their needs in this declining economy. Or a thirst for luxuries their incomes will not afford.
Now, it is not all black. A retired white New Bern, North Carolina nurse with many expenses, whom I met on the dating service "Matchcom," recently offered to supply sex for a regular monthly stipend.
I could not help but notice that she was "poured into her jeans."
"Maybe it's time to change careers," she confided. Needless to say I did not take her up on this -- although I did a little bargaining for journalism's sake.
