Hey, remember that CNN freelancer who was looking for people bartering sex to get their masters thesis edited or kitchen renovated or taxes done or whatever? It was kind of an uphill battle, since the freelancer ruled out using anonymous sources. But she still managed to find one sex trader! It all started with a young a college coed spending a semester in hot, steamy Brazil, dying for the rainforest tour no one would give her — until she met a native busboy at the local resort. And then... (cue steamy music)

...she asked him if he thought a tourist could survive alone in the jungle.



"He laughed and told me I was nuts," says [Stephanie] Gerson, 27, who works part-time in online marketing for a chocolate company in San Francisco.



Then he told her that he'd grown up in the jungle in a nearby indigenous community. That was all Gerson needed to hear. Although she wasn't attracted to the guy, Gerson flirted right back in the hopes that he would be her jungle tour guide...



"It was amazing," Gerson says of her adventure in 2000. "We built our homes out of palm leaves, I saw animals I'd never seen before, he taught me the medicinal properties of all the plants, we picked fruit off the trees, we swam with and ate piranhas. And, of course, we had sex ... for almost two weeks."

Some might call that little arrangement "dating" rather than "bartering sex for stuff or services," as CNN does, but whatever. We're not one to pick nits where sweaty jungle sex is concerned, particularly since this was the only bona fide example the poor freelancer managed to find.

The story also includes a 39-year-old contractor who claims he is constantly hit on by his married clients. They find his toolbelt sexy! Maybe/probably true, but the guy doesn't actually take the women up on their offers, so he doesn't count.

The rest of the article is shamelessly padded — with quotes from a research scientist published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, a doctor at the Institute for Sex Therapy and an author with a book called "Will Cook For Sex." Also, a University of Michigan sex survey.

Boring! But oh, right, that stuff is necessary, because without it a collection of sex stories wouldn't be serious journalism, it would be porn!

[CNN]

(Photo via this video, which cannot possibly be an actual construction catalog.)