The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(2)
Finally, every pair of inquisitive eyes in the room turned her way. Her throat went tight. She wished she’d bought a soda on her way in. Something cool and fizzy enough that the bubbles stung her nose. She knew soda was a nutritionist’s nightmare, but that was half of the appeal on the rare occasion she indulged. It was like the way a drag on a cigarette made her feel like she’d been cast in a film noir for a moment, before she remembered she was taking years off her own life with each inhale. There was something about flirting, just a little—the tiniest sip—with her own destruction that appealed to the darkness in her.
“Hi there.” Naomi’s stage voice came out unbidden, husky and inviting. She shook it off. These people wouldn’t appreciate her Jessica Rabbit impression. “I’m Naomi Grant, and I’m a sex educator.” A few participants bristled at the word sex. One woman’s eyes popped wide like umbrellas. How predictably pedestrian.
The familiar pleasure of shocking sensibilities rushed over her, and she cocked her hip. “I run a website, Shameless, focused on promoting healthy and satisfying emotional and physical intimacy through instructive videos, essays, and interactive tutorials.”
Green Bay coughed hard enough to make an angry vein throb in his forehead.
“Our online platform features content that blends education and entertainment and has a monthly paid subscriber base of about five million global users.” She recited the practiced sales pitch with as much bravado as she could muster in the face of so many furrowed brows. “I’m hoping to extend my classroom into face-to-face learning environments.”
The instructor nodded, making a valiant attempt to look nonplussed. “And have you found success in that endeavor?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “I haven’t”—she read off his name tag—“Howard.” Poor guy, he never could have imagined when he woke up this morning that he’d accidentally trip the wire on her bruised pride. “I’ve reached out to a few colleges and community organizers, have even made it to final-round interviews for a few positions, but as it turns out, some people,” she said with a pointed look around the room, “are resistant to hiring a lauded sex worker to join their faculty.”
A low hum of conversation broke across the room as her words landed. Everyone else had just given their name and the subject they taught, but Naomi wasn’t satisfied with the mixture of skepticism and confusion her introduction had received. A ridiculous urge to make these strangers understand her experience kept her talking, even when she knew they’d wave away her qualifications like everyone else.
“Look, I think we can all agree that pompousness and privilege rule academia. It’s bullshit.”
“Umm.” A man raised his hand to interject.
Naomi ignored him.
“I’ve got an advanced degree from Cal State. My website collects over a billion data points about relationship dynamics and sex annually, and I have the unique lived experience of navigating intimacy as not only an adult performer but a public figure to boot. You’d think that would qualify me to teach people how to establish intimate connections, but apparently”—she threw her arms up—“you’d be wrong.”
Enough people had told her no at this point that her mind had turned earning acceptance from a stuffy institution into a dare. She wanted the gravitas of an employer with an established name. Besides, she’d already built Shameless from scratch, and while a start-up was rewarding, it was also exhausting.
“Don’t you think, Howard, that the world would be a better place if we opened a dialogue that made people feel comfortable advocating for themselves in their relationships?”
“I suppose . . .” Howard had started to turn puce.
“Do you ever ask yourself why people are so afraid of sex?”
Naomi winked at the woman staring at her in open horror, in an effort to fight a sinking feeling of disappointment in her gut. For all her grand speeches, she’d finally hit a wall she couldn’t swim under.
“I do. All the time. I’ve got theories. And maybe they could actually help people. But no one wants to hear it.”
Outside of her ego, Naomi believed sex ed and relationship discourse had a place in accessible, mainstream education. Her experience and theories would have the greatest impact if she could establish a wider audience. As much as she loved society’s rebels, she didn’t believe healthy resources for establishing intimacy should be restricted to them.
“And it’s not like I didn’t know that going in.” Naomi huffed out a dramatic exhale. “But I guess—call it the naivete of youth, but I thought the world might get a little more open-minded by the time I retired from performing. But I was wrong. And you know why?” She pointed an accusatory finger at her startled audience.
“Because if anyone let me teach, they would have to address the toxic environments and toxic people they continue to uphold. And that would be really uncomfortable, wouldn’t it? That would be really fucking inconvenient.”
“Miss Grant,” Howard tried to cut in, “perhaps we might move on to the next—”
“Don’t you ever get mad, Howard?” She walked up and placed her hands on either side of the lectern. “The numbers are bleak. We’re facing a dating epidemic, not to mention an orgasm deficit. The sooner we stop pretending the digital age hasn’t changed the way we interact, the better we make our chance that entire generations don’t die horny and alone.”