Hypothesis:
Craigslist is a powerful tool. You can use it to get an apartment, find a job, or have sex with a prostitute. In college I was surprised to find out my good friend was one of the latter. He'd started on a whim after meeting some Craigslist sex workers at a party, and now he was making $100 to receive a blowjob. (Don't get too excited, straight guys — he was getting the BJ from another dude.) And one of the girls he met at that party sold her panties on the site for $200 a pair. I'd heard rumors about this kind of thing for years, but here was proof it was possible. Two-hundred bucks for underwear? I wasn't up for posing in my panties, but I could totally do that! Unlike sex for money, selling used underwear didn't feel inherently sleazy or immoral. And sure, a guy buying panties online might seem a little off, but in the words of my friend the Craigslist gigolo, "Just because a guy's a panty-sniffer doesn't make him a bad person." After years of flirting with the idea, it was time for me to find out: can a girl make easy money off her dirty laundry? And how much money are we talking?

Materials:
• panties (worn)
• the internet
• girl parts
• fake name/e-mail account
• bodyguard
• several people in my phone I promised to text after each panty drop off so they would know I wasn't dead

Method:
My main concern (and everyone else's) was my personal safety. So the sensible way to sell my panties seemed to be a mail-order system, until I realized you can only set up a Paypal account in your legal name. My legal name is Meghan Pleticha. Go ahead, Google that. I'm the only hit. Alternatively, I could have them send me a check, which gave them my home address (I don't have a P.O. box) and my name. Somehow, meeting in person (with an escort, of course) actually seemed like the most sensible way to do it. I decided to make it a selling point.

Nervous, I e-mailed my friend the Craigslist prostitute to ask for advice.

He suggested I check out what other people were posting, make up a story about how I'm an impoverished college girl (not far off — I'm an impoverished journalist), and maybe start out asking for $100 per pair, adjusting the price up or down depending on people's response. So I set up an e-mail account under the name "Janey Didit" and posted the following:

"I'm a college girl who just started school in the city and really need some cash for books and stuff. I have a bunch of panties I don't need any more — some are super-cute, some are kind of old! It's $25 for the not-so-nice pairs, but I have some more expensive lacy stuff too. Serious inquiries only please!"

The e-mails started coming in, but not a lot of them wanted my panties. More common were responses like, "I'm not interested in buying panties, but do you like to have your feet worshipped?" The few who did ask for underwear all wanted something more: pictures. They got a standard response:

"Hey, I don't have pics of me in the panties, but here's a shot for you. If you'd like, I can meet you in a cafe wearing the panties (tell me what kind you like) and then go to the bathroom, come out and discreetly give them too you. $100."

Attached was the above picture. Some guys responded asking for more pictures of me, and I was ecstatic. They didn't even question the $100 asking price! But when I said no pictures of my face and no pictures of me in the panties, the responses dried up. And when I started getting more responses complaining that my asking price was too high, I started to suspect that the men agreeing to $100 just wanted to get pictures of me in my underwear for free.

This was the sketchiness I was hoping to avoid, but I was desperate for a sale. I had posted my first ad nearly a week ago, my asking price had dropped from $100 to $40, but still no takers. I didn't like this kind of bartering. Not only do I suck at negotiating, but it was making me feel like a whore after all. I'd envisioned a wallet full of Benjamins and a drawer of new panties. I hadn't envisioned myself — and I'm cringing as I write this — making extravagant promises about how "juicy" my panties were. I was selling myself. It felt gross. I got very close to forgetting the whole thing.

Then I got an e-mail from Kris, who in a very polite and brief e-mail assured me, "I have done this a bunch of times, so I know how to handle myself and the women always leave happy." Finally!