Would a prostitute wear city shorts and peeptoes?

Yes, I was in 4-inch heels and black eyeliner - very thinly applied black liner - at 8:40am.

Yes, I was crouched in half, leaning into an open car window.

Yes, the only individual in this car - a 50-something suit - was a man with whom, up until the moment he pulled up and motioned me over to his passenger window, I was not at all acquainted.

And yes, after about 30 seconds of polite conversation, I did accept four crisp one dollar bills and let out a light oh-you! laugh at his very audible, very Texan-drawled, "Thanks darlin'. And I shouldn't say this for a lot of reasons, but you've got the best legs I've seen in a good long while."

On the outset, I can understand why, as I turned around to reclaim my perch on the curb at the Burberry-side ConnAve/M St. intersection, I had no fewer than four pairs of female eyes shooting me not just judgmental looks but pitying judgmental looks -- looks that said, "I disapprove of your life choices, but sweetheart, you are too good and wearing too expensive a pair of pressed city shorts to be working for that Palfrey woman."

And not only was there a very clear, very palpable them-against-me dynamic, but the six permutations of paired eye-locks and head-nods between the women - a poly-blend burgundy skirtsuit with square-toed block-heeled pilgrim booties, a pavement-sweeping Amish dress with pseudo-Keds, a too-tight black sleeveless shift with stubbly, deodorant-caked underarms, and a stroller-pusher with a multicolored-jacked-up-mess-of-a-denim-romper - also implied there was a strengthening network of solidarity developing among them as well.

The them-against-me dynamic quickly degenerated into one of them-very-against-me.

Needless to say, the three men caught in the epicenter of our unspoken woman-war felt more than slightly uncomfortable and decided to divide their focus between the bursting cracks in the sidewalk and the god-awful resort wear in the store windows behind them until traffic cleared. None of them waited for the white "WALK" sign -- they wanted to bail and bail five seconds ago.

I considered whipping my long ponytail around and confronting the Before-Picture-Squad, informing them that my conversation with the silver fox consisted of two benign questions and two equally bengin answers - "Do they really check parking meters around here?" "Yes." "Do you have change for some ones?" "Yes." - but then I thought, nuh-uh, they're not worth the effort.

Instead, I wanded on a thick stripe of Dior Addict lip lacquer in 'Tulle' and indulged in a little over-the-shoulder smirk, the kind a $4 whore might shoot at a group of women who couldn't even get a nickel for their wares.

Hooker chic: DC Prom Night 2007

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

It's true, I'm 100% for sale

In an anonymous comment a few days back, written in response to my Liv-Tyler-looks-pregnant post, one of my angrier readers, somewhere in between reminding me I don't have a husband and asserting I have an obsession with my waistline, launched the out-of-nowhere perennial 6th grade insult: "you're a slut."

My initial reaction was confusion. On several fronts. How can I be both man-free and a slut? Isn't it an accepted, objective truth that Liv Tyler looks sausage-encased every third time she goes out in public? And then most curious of all, why did this reader place commas after transition words when the connective sentences weren't stand-alone ideas and then not use them when they were?

The more I thought about what this reader wrote, however, the more sense her words seemed to make. Then last night, after a male friend convinced me to do something I didn't want to do with the promise of a paid-for UVA-free tanning session, I realized she was right. In some ways, I am a slut.

When it comes to Peter Som dresses, Veuve-grade-and-above champagne cocktails, weekends in Manhattan, even the occasional UVA-free tanning session, I am undeniably the cheapest, crotchless-lurex-pants wearing, cork-wedged strutting, pleather-Sam's-Club-handbag toting, find-'em-on-a-streetcorner-and-take-'em-home, rootin'-tootin' trailer park whore.

If you buy me any of the above items (not to mention a whole host of others, including this and these), I will quit my job, forget how to speak Chinese and be your Tina Turner private dancer, Julia Roberts polo-match escort on a full-time basis. We don't even need to get along or challenge each other intellectually. We don't need similar interests, the prospect of laughter or common values. All you need to do is buy me what I want, and I will fix for you Annie's organic penne and cheese, Pillsbury Grands and simple green salads every night of the week. I will let you massage my back, cajole you into watching E! News Live every weeknight, blame you for every pound I gain and double-promise to involve you in completely inappropriate public displays of affection like egregious crotch-grabs, outdoor-voice ribald sex talk at work functions and pressure you into ordering pre-dessert "dessert" in upscale restaurant bathrooms. Women's bathrooms.

And the more you give me, the more Tera-Patrick-in-Hogtied! I'll be, so it's really to your advantage to drop serious cash.

So, as much as I appreciate my friends coming so quickly and convincingly to my defense in the face of having the s-bomb hurled at me, I feel it's only fair I come clean and admit I am in fact 100% for sale.