Camgirl

by Isa Mazzei

  My phone vibrated.

  Alex: You don’t need anyone, Belle.

  “Uh—yes, Demon. Set the count!”

  Time to shine, motherfuckers.

  Another private message popped up.

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: Can we do a private? I don’t want to stick around for a public cumshow

  “Um…” I spoke aloud, my brain split in four different directions.

  PopLockTreat tipped 50 tokens: just wanted to donate

  Glitchez22: Is there another count?

  Wild_West: Yay PopLock!

  secret _bee tipped 5 tokens: me too

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: If not it’s cool I can just sign off. You can have fun with the other guys.

  My phone vibrated.

  Alex: Let’s hang out after your show.

  Alex: I’m gonna sign off now.

  “Thank you guys so much! Really. Thank you, Pop, and SB. Your donations are so appreciated.”

  PopLockTreat: does this mean I can tax deduct my porn now?

  Wild_West: xD xD

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: okay bye…

  My phone buzzed.

  “Okay, well, uh—one second. I might not…” My two biggest tippers were about to leave, and not happily.

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: does that mean private?

  snowman7: Isn’t Dan a CPA?

  Glitchez22: oh yeah…dan?

  My phone buzzed again.

  Alex: Do you want to go get late-night tater tots?

  Private message from OdinWarrior: should I wait or? I have things to do.

  “Hey, so the count is set but…”

  I set my phone down without replying to Alex, but it vibrated again.

  Alex: You raised enough money. I’ll throw in another $250 and let’s call it a night

  DustydAn: I would recommend against tax deducting any money spent on this site

  1NerdyGuy: IT’S FOR A GOOD CAUSE DANIEL

  DustydAn: *Dan

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: why do you even care about doing a public show? You said we could have private time.

  Private Message from Demon9: Do you want to make the countdown higher? I think you could get more given that it’s for charity.

  I clicked from Odin’s message to the main chat room and then glanced at my phone as it buzzed again.

  1NerdyGuy: A GOOD CAUSE I SAY

  secret _bee tipped 5 tokens: sorry I can’t give more

  Private Message from Demon9: You might also want to count donations directly on the WW website, that way they can tax deduct them…

  DustydAn: I don’t think it counts

  Glitchez22: keeping Una happy is a good cause right?

  “Oh right, guys, Demon just reminded me…”

  Private Message from OdinWarrior: ???

  My phone lit up.

  Alex: Should I pick you up?

  Private message from OdinWarrior: ?

  “You know what, guys? I actually have to go. I’m sorry.” I plastered a smile on my face. “We’ve raised over six hundred dollars for Wounded Warrior Project, which is incredible!” I clapped. “Thank you so much, everyone! I’ll see you all tomorrow! Goodnight, everybody! I love you all!”

  I turned off my webcam. I typed the same message to Alex and Odin:

  Not tonight, sorry.

  I left my computer and webcam where they were, went to the bathroom, and ran a bath. I ordered a pizza on my Domino’s app and sat on the carpet by the front door until it came, scrolling through MyFreeCams. Amber was screening Finding Nemo on silent and reciting all the lines herself in goofy voices. Queen Molly flaunted a butt plug with a long, furry tail. She waved an American flag. HannaKin was explaining why she needed a second boob job to fix her first boob job. MarinaMerxo was tying up Lexiii in beautiful, intricate knots in a method known as Shibari bondage.

  There was a knock on the door. I wrapped a towel around myself, grabbed the pizza, and slunk back to the bathroom. I slid into the hot water and set the pizza on the toilet seat. Camming always left me starving. It was quiet: 1:00 a.m. I lay back in the water and tried to relax. I was irritated, at myself mostly, for letting Alex and Odin make me feel overwhelmed. I watched the faucet drip. I felt alone. After the adrenaline rush of camming, my apartment was too silent. I reached for my phone and Facetimed Demon. A few seconds later his bearded face popped up on the screen.

  “Odin is an asshole.” I launched in immediately.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He got all passive aggressive tonight trying to guilt me into doing a private. And he’s so mad about Knight tipping.”

  “Yeah, he definitely seems…unstable. And quick to be jealous. He’s a good tipper though.”

  “Yeah.” I sank into the water until it almost covered my mouth. “What are you up to?”

  “Just waiting for you to call.”

  I smiled. “How did you know I would call?”

  “You seemed upset when you signed off.”

  I shifted, and the drain glugged as water sloshed through the faucet overflow. A trickle leaked over the side of the tub.

  “Ugh. Fuck Odin for getting to me.”

  “I mean,” Demon began, as I reached for a slice of pizza. “I know KnightMan is a good tipper, but he is really aggressive. And he doesn’t really contribute to the room community.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure many of us like him. It’s kind of like he barely watches or engages and just dumps tokens to piss Odin off.”

  “Do you guys like Odin?”

  “More than KnightMan, at least. I mean, he changed his username to KnightMan_77 the second you made your highest tip your knight. It’s so obviously insecure.”

  I leaned back and thought about Alex. I bet it was weird watching your ex get naked online every night and then taking her to breakfast the next day.

  “Oh, what pizza toppings did you get tonight?” Demon pulled me back.

  “Pineapple and artichoke heart.”

  “Wow. Such unique taste!”

  “Some people would call it gross, Demon.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything about you is gross.”

  “Even eating in the bath?”

  “Hanging out with you while you eat in the bath is a true pleasure.”

  I let his words wrap themselves around me, and I made a decision: either Alex or Odin had to go.

  Paris is Burning

  My phone buzzed. It was 2:30 p.m. I rolled over, groggy, and opened Twitter. I scrolled through the usual: comments on last night’s show, likes on a photo I had posted of me shoving a piece of cherry pie in my face, a few DMs from viewers asking me when I would cam next, even though it was clearly posted on my profile. I also had a DM from bombNo.20, which said, “Hey, I need to tell you something. Please text me.” Followed by his number.

  I sat up. BombNo.20 had been a regular in my room for the last couple months. I didn’t know much about his personal life, but in the room he was funny, sarcastic, and clearly smart. He was never needy, never demanding, and tipped a reasonable amount—not so much that I gave him any special treatment, but not so little that his nightly presence in my room annoyed me.

  I took out my cam phone with the fake Wyoming number Alex had set up for me and I dialed the number. It rang twice, and then a soft, gravelly voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, B?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Una?”

  “Yeah, hey, what’s up?” I got up and walked through the kitchen, turning on the kettle and stretching out on the couch in my nearby living room. I hoped this wouldn’t take too long. Whatever personal crisis Bomb was dealing with, I needed to get some brunch in me, stat.

&nb
sp; “Oh uh, sorry.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I wasn’t expecting you to call me.”

  “Morning surprise! Or afternoon. Wait, where do you live again?”

  “Nashville.”

  “Oh, right.” I glanced at a drooping orchid on my window-sill. A fan had sent it as a gift. I was already on my fourth, and this one was quickly heading toward its grave. I opened a browser on my phone.

  Dying orchid, I typed.

  “So, well.” Bomb’s voice interrupted my perusing. He laughed again. “Oh God, okay, well, I just wanted to tell you something. I wasn’t sure how you would take it, so I didn’t want to just send you a message.”

  Oh crap. He was gonna confess his love or something.

  “Oh? What’s that, B?”

  In the winter, orchids should not be exposed to anything colder than sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

  I glanced at the thermostat. Fifty-eight. Oops.

  Orchid too cold—how to warm?

  “It’s just I found these videos online…”

  “Mhm…”

  …keep the plants in a humid environment out of direct sun and high temperatures.

  “And like, they’re not super flattering, I guess? And I just wanted you to be aware of them. But I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “What?”

  “What did you say about videos?” I sat up, at full attention.

  “There’s some videos. Like, screencaps of your shows.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Uh, Pornhub. They’re listed pretty high up under camgirls, so I thought…”

  “Jesus fuck.”

  I ran into my room and opened my laptop, navigating quickly to Pornhub. Underneath the “webcam” section there were several videos of me. I clicked on the first one, entitled “cute pale girl topless.”

  The video was a three-minute clip of me topless, holding a venti Starbucks cup, gesticulating wildly. I was clearly talking about something, but there was no audio, so all viewers got was my hand flailing around, my tits bouncing mildly, and my mouth moving a mile a minute as I relayed what must have been a very scintillating story.

  The next video was entitled “frizzy haired camgirl” and showed me, also talking a mile a minute, also without audio. This one wasn’t so bad, I was wearing a bra. The third video was called “pale hottie with bush” and showed me masturbating with a vibe. It had only been posted the night before, but already it had several hundred views.

  “What the fuck!” I exclaimed, to no one in particular. Bomb answered me anyway.

  “I know, I didn’t want to upset—”

  “Frizzy hair? Frizzy hair? Seriously? And I’m not pale. I’m Italian. Italians don’t get pale.”

  Bomb laughed nervously from the other end of the phone.

  “Yeah, well, I mean—”

  “They didn’t even include my name. Like, that’s so rude.”

  “It is kind of dehumanizing,” he agreed.

  “What the fuck.” I stared at the videos, clicking back and forth and scrubbing through them because I couldn’t bear to watch them. “This isn’t even porn. Well, I mean the last one is. But what’s with this one where I’m just talking? Who gets off to that? Why even post it? Why does it have four hundred views already? I am just screaming at a Starbucks cup!”

  “Anyway, since it’s at the top of the camgirls section, I just wanted you to know because I know you’re really private about your stuff.” He was right. I controlled access to everything. But Pornhub could be seen by anyone. At any time. Anywhere.

  I jumped up then sat back down. Then jumped up again. I had to fix this. Someone I knew might see this. This isn’t how I wanted people to find out I was camming. This wasn’t the type of camgirl I was. This wasn’t the work I was doing. Who had selected this screencap and why did they think it belonged on Pornhub? It wasn’t even porn! What if someone saw it? What about my old teachers? What about my doctor?

  Or worse, what about my parents?

  When I was eighteen, my dad reminded me that believing in your dreams wasn’t a smart choice, because sometimes you could work really hard and they still wouldn’t come true. And here I was. This was my legacy? Half-naked, waving a Starbucks cup around?

  I wanted to be the one to tell my parents what I was doing, when the time was right. And I wanted to describe it to them accurately. I wanted them to know about my craft. The community I had built. I didn’t want to be on the first page of a porn site where one of their friends might stumble upon me by accident. Camming was my secret.

  Secrets are common in my family. So are euphemisms. When I was growing up, my mother was never drunk, she was just “acting weird.” My dad was never depressed, he was just “not feeling well.” My dad’s brother refused to see him, but my dad claimed to have no idea why. My mother never shared anything about her side of the family. I first met my maternal grandmother at her funeral.

  I leaned over her casket in a room full of strangers and tried to summon some sort of emotion for the pale, gray-haired corpse in the coffin in front of me. As a member of the direct family, I was afforded the privilege of several moments alone in front of her.

  “Uh, hi, Grandma.” I waved awkwardly at the body. “Sorry I never knew you. My mom hated you, I guess. Or maybe you hated her?” I glanced around the room. Strangers milled about, waiting for their turn with the body. “Anyway, uh, rest in peace.”

  Uncomfortable topics have never been our forte.

  Or maybe it was totally normal for a granddaughter to meet her grandmother as a corpse.

  In response to this secrecy, as adults my sister and I developed a habit of being very honest with each other. We tried the words out cautiously at first, worried things might fall apart if we called them what they were.

  “Mom’s drunk again.” Lucy’s voice cut sharp over the phone. “Can I stay at yours?”

  “Sure.”

  Or…

  “Dad’s in the hospital again. Psych ward.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  My sister was generally the first one to find out anything about me, be it a new boyfriend, a new job, a new idea. When I thought I might be a lesbian, she clapped her hands and asked if that meant she could go to Pride with me. She was always supportive, even about Alex.

  “So,” I mentioned one day while we waited for coffee, “I think I’m gonna get a sugar daddy.”

  “A what?”

  “A sugar daddy.”

  “That’s when you date an old dude and he buys you lots of shit, right?”

  “Yep, basically.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I met a guy. He’s gonna buy me a BMW and give me three grand a month in exchange for going on dates with him. I don’t see why I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Seriously, Isa? That’s crazy,” my sister said approvingly.

  I told her about camming too, a few months in. It was just as casual. She barely batted an eye. “Like stripping? Online? That’s cool.”

  Telling my mother would be much more difficult. She was paranoid about posting anything on the Internet, constantly reminding us to set our Facebooks to private and making sure we understood that “what you post online will haunt you forever.”

  “Penny turned out to be quite a tart,” she’d comment, looking at her friend’s daughter’s Instagram. “I mean, doesn’t she know those pictures are forever?”

  “Yeah, she’s hot. It’s fine, Mom,” I said.

  “No one’s ever going to take her seriously,” my mom continued. “Her grandkids are going to look at those pictures.”

  “At least her grandkids will know their grandma was a total babe.” I didn’t even like Penny, but I felt the need to defend her regardless.

  “Yeah, plus,” my sister chimed in, “she’s alr
eady got a hundred and fifty thousand Instagram followers. She’s basically famous.”

  “Really?” My mom’s interest piqued. “Maybe I should re-follow her…”

  I told myself that once I was famous, once I was good enough, I would tell my mom and she would be proud of me. I set a goal: when I hit #1 on MFC. When I was the best camgirl, and I had the rank to prove it. By then, I’d be so famous she couldn’t even be ashamed of me. She’d be too busy telling her friends to follow me on Facebook and asking them if they had seen how many likes my last picture got.

  I was definitely not ready for my mom to find out I did porn because one of her friends found me on Pornhub. Especially not when the porn they would find was one where I was just gesturing like a madwoman and was referred to as “pale” and “frizzy-haired.” No way.

  I took out my phone and called Demon. No answer. I called again. He texted back.

  Demon: At work, are you okay?

  Una: CALL ME!

  A couple seconds later, Demon FaceTimed me from a bathroom stall. He was wearing a suit and a concerned expression.

  “Una? What’s wrong?

  “THERE ARE VIDEOS OF ME ON PORNHUB!”

  “What?”

  “THERE ARE VIDEOS OF ME ON PORNHUB, DEMON! HELP ME!”

  “Okay. Okay. Where are these videos?”

  “They’re the top results! They’re the first thing you see when you click on webcam porn. They’re so awful and grainy and not at all what my brand is and they don’t even have my name and thousands of people are watching them and––”

  “Okay. Calm down.” Demon paused a moment. “Send me the links. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You will?”

  “Yeah. Send me the links. I’ll figure out what to do.”

  “Oh my God, Demon, thank you.”

  “Don’t worry. There are ways to get them taken down. It’s your footage. They can’t post it without your permission.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Demon froze: the door to the bathroom opened and a stall door next to him closed. He hung up, then sent me a text.

  Demon: send me the links, I’ll leave early.

  That night, I signed on to my show, still disgruntled and upset. Demon had figured out how to send a copyright violation notice to Pornhub.