Naomi’s response to moving through the world as a sex worker was to never let down her guard. Not even for a second. She’d learned from experience that she never knew when someone was going to make a joke at her expense. Or issue some casual slander about her past profession. It was better to live always ready for the punch line. Always spoiling for a fight.
“How many of you consider yourselves Jewish?” Ethan asked.
Almost every hand went up.
It made sense, considering he’d recruited primarily from Hillel alumni groups.
“Great. And how many of you have been to shul in the last three months?”
Only a few hands stayed in the air. Apparently Ethan hadn’t been wrong about the disconnect between youth and religion.
“Last six months?”
Only one or two more.
“Okay.” Ethan nodded, obviously not surprised. “So I’m going to attempt to change that, and I figure in order to do that, just like with any relationship in your life, I need to show you why our synagogue is worth your time.”
The crowd, mostly women between the ages of what looked like twenty and thirty, glared back at him with an amusing mixture of either stoic bitch face or nervous apprehension.
“Basically,” Ethan tried to explain, “if you’re not coming to me, I have to come to you. And since enough of you seem to care about dating, and intimacy is a core value in our faith, here we are. Gathered to learn. To connect. To hopefully, if Naomi does her job”—he gave her a cheerful nod—“enrich our lives. So yeah. I’m playing the long game, and this seminar series, Modern Intimacy, is my starting pitch. If you like what you hear tonight, there’s an open invitation to attend Shabbat services with us on Friday. We’ve got excellent cookies in the social hall afterward.”
It was a good speech. Relaxed enough to appear casual. Earnest enough to start to win the trust of those assembled.
“... and with that, I’ll hand things over to Naomi Grant, who I promise will make the rest of your evening more entertaining than I ever could.” Ethan gave her a quick smile and then made his way to an empty seat in the second row.
Naomi bit the inside of her cheek. It took a lot to rattle her, usually. Through the combination of years of therapy and sheer force of will, she prided herself on her ability to not engage with negative thoughts. Mind over matter.
Public speaking didn’t make her nervous. It was just another kind of performance. But baring her soul had always cost her more than baring her body. She wanted this too badly—to be taken seriously as an authority figure instead of just an object of desire. It was one thing to court lust. Respect was a lot harder to earn.
It didn’t help that the walls of their room at the JCC were covered floor to ceiling in children’s artwork from the daycare. There was no neutral place to lay her gaze. Everything was glitter and googly eyes. Very disorienting.
The force of attention from the audience was palpable, shot like tequila straight into her veins until her tongue felt dangerously loose in her mouth.
Clara had made her print out notes, just in case. Naomi was supposed to open with a personal anecdote, something to put the audience at ease, to make herself seem relatable, approachable, human. Her notes read,Open: story about ferryboat.
The audience seemed to devour her silence, restless and ready for her to fail. From the back of the room, a muscle-bound guy in a baseball cap yelled, “Yo, are you gonna teach us about blow jobs, or what?”
“Of course not,” Naomi said without thinking. “You have to enter your credit card number online for that.”
The caller, who had been elbowing his buddy a moment ago, fell back into his seat.
She crumpled the paper in her fist. Since when did she start anything slow and easy? Her strategy, the only one she’d ever trusted, was to throw everything she had at a problem. To run so fast and so far that she couldn’t remember where she’d been. These people had seenNaomi Granton the door. No one here had signed up for toothless anecdotes.
“How many of you are single?” The question shot naked across the room. No preamble. No polite warm-up. Begin as you mean to go on.
For a moment, no one did anything. Naomi became very aware of her own heartbeat.
Then, almost every hand in the room was raised.
That was something, at least. Common ground for their discussion.
Cassidy had once told her, in her thick Texas drawl, “The audience doesn’t get to read the script; as long as you sell it, you can go off book and no one will ever know.”
Her notes were already toast. She could hardly smooth out the sheet and start again. Naomi didn’t want to talk at these people, she realized. Shameless fulfilled her desire to send a one-way message. The reason she’d pursued a classroom was that she wanted a dialogue. To understand individual experiences, to create connections, to be able to adapt her curriculum based on the needs of her students.
“How many of you are currently dating?”
About half as many hands went up.