I'd like to introduce you to Jane "JayJay" Jackson-Frei, one of the staffers at Big Heart Animal Rescue who has actual proper veterinary qualifications.

I say I'd like to introduce you, but, of course, you've already seen her before. So instead, I'll take some time to talk about the exchange of goods and services for intercourse.

Those of you who've read my entry into 2015's Sexy Self Comics Day (you do know Sexy Self Comics Day is March first, right?) are probably aware that I have an unusual attitude towards the World's Oldest Profession. I do think exchange can have a place in an otherwise affectionate and consensual relationship. In fact, quite a lot of traditional dates or even traditional monogamous unions are de facto prostitution. Hell, a lot of trade can happen within sex itself - the typical expectation to reciprocate oral sex could be seen as trading a sexual service for an equal value sexual service. Is it still prostitution if you exchange sex for other sex?

One can easily imagine a loving married couple - Nicole and John come to mind - that keeps passing the same hundred dollar bill back and forth, taking turns in the roles of hooker and client for each other. Actually rather sweet, I'd say.

Of course, an actual supervisor or employer - one that files paperwork for taxes and such - paying someone for tongue chores is another matter altogether. JayJay knows that this sort of fraternization is ethically -and possibly legally- dodgy even without the issue of signing off on someone's timecard for hours they spent stimulating her erogenous zones, so she's careful to keep all the hanky-panky strictly off-site. Thus far, at least, no one's complained. It probably helps that Max doesn't have formal qualifications, and is thus, technically, an oddjob grunt who does filing and custodial work and just happens to interact with the animals a whole lot in a completely voluntary and incidental sort of way.

And now you're probably wondering - if Max makes oddjob grunt money at a job where she has flexible hours, and she doesn't charge for sex in any way, how is it exactly that she lives alone in an apartment where Ellen needs a roomie to pay half the rent? How does she support the seven cats who live with her? How does she pay for the therapy and medication she consumes - even in the most well-insured plan or most socialized-medicine society, there would still have to be significant costs associated with those, surely? Why does Max have money?

Well, that's a good question and I have a story to explain it, just like I had a story to explain the scar on her foot.

Maybe I'll tell it some time. Or do more with JayJay. Depends on what people are interested in, I guess.