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Here's why it's really easy to accidentally pick up a prostitute: To my knowledge, none of them will ever say, "I'd love a ride, you have a nice car, and by the way if you give me money I'll fellate you." They don't all dress in mini-skirts and tank tops (certainly not when it's about to snow, anyway), and they don't introduce themselves with handy names like "Prostitute Jill" and so forth. Which makes sense. Plenty of cops will go undercover, pretend to pick up a prostitute and then end up hauling said prostitute off to jail. Being subtle is how women like Alison make sure they don't incriminate themselves. As long as they never explicitly say up front that they want money in exchange for sexual favors, they haven't said anything that would give a police officer good reason to arrest them. The practice of leaving subtle clues and speaking only in double entendres makes for a nice, cerebral game of cat-and-mouse between cops and prostitutes, I'm sure, but it's potentially very confusing for naive idiots.

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And that's me, by the way. I've mentioned before that I'm sort of really dumb right now, but I was much dumber at 19. Much. I was just an awkward idiot, the kind of person who thinks there's nothing weird about a gloveless woman standing on the side of the road at midnight in the middle of winter. So, while just about any rational human being would've thought her answer of "Anywhere you want" was off, in some way, I didn't. I didn't question her or force her out or do any other reasonable thing, I just smiled, like, "Tell me about it!"

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The Slow End of Subtlety

I told her that I preferred to just drive her to wherever she lived, and she pointed out the window of the still-parked car, indicated a nearby motel and let me know that she had a room there. Some people would right at that moment conclude, "Ah, motel, that settles it, she's a prostitute," but I'm not one of those people. I mean now, don't get me wrong, I think everyone is a prostitute, but at 19, I didn't even find anything curious about the fact that she was hitchhiking 10 yards away from her motel, because being a 19-year-old male is sort of the opposite of being Professor X. While I just stared out the window, breathing out of my mouth instead of answering her, she told me we could also drive somewhere else or go to my place or, if I was interested, simply use the backseat of my car. And I thought, Well those are strange places for her to call "home."