Last week I reconnected with my best friend from high school. I haven’t spoken to her in eight or nine years. There was no animosity, just a simple drifting.

Most of that was my fault. We started drifting when I started cocktailing at a strip club. Although we laughed about the job, I let myself lose contact with her when I started stripping (I had a feeling she wouldn’t like it) And she moved back to East Texas around that time, which made it easier to lose contact.

As is the way of small towns, she recently ran into my mother and my mother told her about my nonprofit. She contacted me through there. I was surprised, thrilled and scared when I received her message.

In all the time I’ve been involved with the adult industry, I’ve never had a problem telling people the truth about what I do. I’ve always known immediately whether or not someone could be trusted enough (or needed) my full disclosure. I’ve never had a moment of waffle.

Until now.

I realized how much I wanted her good opinion, the renewed friendship and how much I feared the rejection and hurt. My usual reaction to negative events is to get mad. This would just plain hurt.

She’s a good, small-town girl. She married her high school sweetheart a month after we graduated and is still with him (they have two kids). I never thought he was good enough for her, but she’s happy, so I have to give him some credit. I’m very sure he’s the only man she’s slept with. Although she knew full well I never intended to be monogamously married, how would she feel about my life choices? What would she think about something as mundane as my living with a man who isn’t married to me, much less my stripping and escort work?

We did some basic catching up through e-mail. I avoided most of her “what have you been doing?” questions. I told her that I needed to call her and talk. She knows me well and she’s not stupid – I’m sure she had a few ideas of what I might tell her.

So I called her; my voice dry, squeaky, breathy and fast (yeah, I’m a candidate for Toastmasters). We chatted and I danced around her questions. Finally, I “came out.”

It didn’t take her a moment to process the information and laugh. “Oh, that’s fine!”

She knows me, who I am, and it doesn’t matter what I did and didn’t do with my life. (Since she is well-connected in a small town, I explained that I needed this kept quiet.)

I’ve never considered her a narrow-minded person, because we would not have grown close if she was, but I didn’t know if her years of marriage and mothering would’ve changed any of her opinions. Turns out, she’s become a lot more aware. She hasn’t changed her basic beliefs but she’s also become more tolerant.

Besides, I wasn’t suggesting a gathering of sex workers at her house. I was simply telling her the truth about myself.

I’d realized, once again, that telling her the truth would be a lot simpler than trying to fudge my work history for my 20s. Being upfront would explain a lot about my opinions, my travel experiences, how I met my lovers, and other things.

Telling the truth is hard, but once it’s done, everything else is easy.

Telling her was harder than telling my mother.

I wrestled about telling her for a few days. I’ve never agonized like this before (on this subject). It gave me a lot of empathy for other escorts who suffer the same “tell/don’t tell” dilemmas. At the same time, it also proved (once again) that if you can’t trust your friends and family to accept you for who you are, then you need a whole new set of friends/family.

I mean, this is a small-town, church-going, East Texas girl. If she doesn’t have a problem with my life, then who would? The experience has been really freeing.

And touching. It was so very good to hear her acceptance. I’m still her BFF.

And now we can move onto other things. After all, we both have other interests and questions to ask. Life doesn’t center around my pussy and what’s happened with it.

PS: I’m fully aware that at some point, my honesty-policy will bite me in the ass. For the record, it’s saved my butt more times than not, which is why I prefer to handle things in this manner.