by Isa Mazzei
Private Message from Demon9: You could also get a lawyer to send them for you, then you wouldn’t have to use your name because he would represent you
Private Message from secret_bee: Hey, Una? I just wanted to let you know there are some videos of you online…they don’t have your name or anything
Private Message from Demon9: But then, of course, you’d have to find a lawyer you trust. So probably not local. Are there lawyers in Rawlins anyway?
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: Rawlins??
Shit. I almost forgot.
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: no, of course not. We need to look in Cheyenne.
I was doing a bath show, because they were easy to plan and execute. They also had a built-in deadline: get to the cumshow before Una turns into a prune. I sat in a tub full of foamy water wearing a bikini and a sailor hat. I had drawn a hangman board on the tiles behind me in shower chalk and was taking guesses for ten tokens a pop. The first person to solve the puzzle got to pick which piece of clothing came off first, or they could choose to add a piece if they felt like messing with the room.
The only downside to the bath thing was how difficult it was to type to Demon9. I had my computer and camera set up on the toilet, and a towel on the floor nearby to wipe my hands as needed.
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: there must be a lawyer who specializes in this right? i’m panicking here
In my chat room, my regulars were doing their best to keep the show going despite the obvious lack of attention from both me and Demon.
Wild_West tipped 10 tokens: Una I would like to guess “G” please!
“Thanks, Wild!” I turned to the board, momentarily blanking on the word I had chosen. “Uh, no G. Sorry.” I wrote a G in the letter graveyard.
Private Message from bombNo.20: Hey so not to alarm you but they’re on YouPorn now too…
“Oh wait! Shit. There is a G. Sorry. On the end.” I splashed bathwater onto the wall and erased the G, rewriting it on the end of the word.
Private Message from Demon9: Searching. Stand by.
OdinWarrior tipped 20 tokens: Is the word “loving”? because that’s a good descriptor of you
KnightMan_77 tipped 200 tokens: I’d like to solve the puzzle please
“Knight! Thank you! What’s your guess? Odin, you’re sweet but no, it’s not loving.” I hoped Alex wouldn’t goad Odin too much tonight. I hadn’t had time to deal with them yet, and I certainly didn’t have time now.
OdinWarrior tipped 200 tokens: is the word “caring”?
“No, but good guess!” I clicked over to Demon’s private messages. Nothing new. I refreshed the tab with one of my Pornhub videos. The views kept increasing. By now they had several hundred “thumbs down” votes.
Fuckers.
Wild_West: Una?
1NerdyGuy: Earth to Una!
“Sorry, guys.” I blinked back to the chat room. “I’m distracted tonight. Sorry.”
Private Message from Demon9: I found someone. It’s a lawyer for camgirls Una. I’ll send his info.
“For camgirls? Really?” I spoke out loud.
Wild_West: what about camgirls Una?
PaBLOPickax: okay is this a real word though?
Private Message from secret_bee: hey, I don’t want to alarm you but there’s another video…
He included a link.
Hands shaking, I clicked the link from secret_bee. The video popped up. It was a clip of me masturbating. Close to the camera. My legs splayed open wide, flexing. Fingers pushing in and out of me. My mouth moaning in an orgasm. The clip was only twelve seconds long. I felt panic.
“Guys, one sec—sorry. Sorry. I need to sign off for a minute.”
1NerdyGuy: you do you Una
“Bomb, entertain the room.”
bombNo.20: what? Me? Oh lord
I turned off my camera and set my status to “be right back.” I jumped out of the bath and ran dripping into my bedroom. I grabbed my phone and came back to the bathroom, kneeling as the clip played on a loop.
“Alex!” I yelled into the phone. “Alex, you have to help me.”
“Belle, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“There’s videos of me online. More and more. On Pornhub. I don’t know what to do. Please.”
“Okay, take a breath, take a breath.”
I let out a gasping sob. “Alex, someone is going to see this.”
“Okay, Belle. I need you to calm down. We can fix this. Can you send me the links?”
“NO! You can’t look at it.” My chest heaved as I cried harder. My hairy pussy took up my entire laptop screen.
“Belle, I’m not going to look at it. Just send me the links so I can see how to get them removed.”
“There’s a lawyer. Demon found me a lawyer.”
“Okay. Do you have his name?”
“Yes…” I hiccuped.
“Okay, text me his name. I’ll call him right now.”
“You will?”
“Yes. I will call him. We’ll get them taken down, okay?”
“Okay.” I removed my wet phone from my tear-streaked face and texted Alex the name Demon had sent me.
“Belle,” Alex said softly. “We knew this would happen, remember? This happens online.”
“Not like this!” I could tell I was screaming but I didn’t care. “Not on Pornhub! Not just like, fucked-up pieces of my show. This isn’t me. This girl isn’t me.”
“Belle…”
“Just fix it, okay?” I hung up before he could reply. Although my video stream was off, private messages still popped up.
Private Message from Demon9: Are you calling the lawyer?
Private Message from OdinWarrior: Hey instead of going back do you want some private time? We haven’t had Una Warrior time in a while…
I ignored Demon for the moment and clicked Odin’s message.
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: I gotta go back and finish my show
Private Message from OdinWarrior: No, you don’t
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: Okay, I *want* to go back and finish my show. I just left them literally in the middle of a game. I don’t want to be rude.
Private Message from OdinWarrior: I’m getting sick of this. You told me I was special
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: You are, but I have a whole room to think about. There are almost 200 people in there watching…
Private Message from OdinWarrior: Whatever Una
Private Message from OdinWarrior: See how you get along without me.
What a baby.
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: Look, I’ll just finish this round and then we can do a private okay? Just gimme half an hour.
He didn’t reply.
Private Message from TheOnlyUna: okay?
Nothing. I signed back into my show. “Guys! I’m back! Thank you!” I saw OdinWarrior in the “online viewers” list, but he remained silent.
×××
A few hours and one soapy cumshow later, I crawled into bed and checked my phone one last time before sending a goodnight to my guys on Snapchat. Alex texted to say he had left a voicemail for the lawyer and had sent an email, and he would call again first thing in the morning. Sure, I had known this would happen. I knew what I put online would be there forever. But I wasn’t prepared for how violated I would feel. I wasn’t ready to see my image without my name, without any attribution to me, with thousands and thousands of views. It was like I had lost control of my body.
I did my best to put it out of my mind. A text message from Odin came through on my fake number.
Odin: I told you I had problems Una
Odin: U don’t seem to care
Odin: I don’t know why you’re so selfish
He wanted attention. He wanted me to
tell him he was special and brave and strong. But I refused to indulge him.
Una: I’m really sorry we don’t get enough time to do privates. I offered to do one after half an hour but you never replied to me.
Odin: Those guys don’t even tip you
Odin: I wish I had enough money to have u all to myself
Una: You wouldn’t be able to. I am not looking for a sugar daddy. This is my career. I like it.
Odin: Your too good for this…
Odin: Can we do a private now
I considered. I didn’t want to lose him forever as a tipper. He accounted for a quarter of my income. On the other hand, he was getting on my nerves. Plus, I had already taken off my makeup and was wearing pajamas, the ugly kind you only wear when you’re super tired and home alone.
Una: I was going to bed…
Una: But if you give me a minute...
It wouldn’t take that long to redo my makeup. I jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom. My eyeliner was still smudged underneath my eyes. I grabbed a cloth.
Odin: no I’m sick of waiting for you
Odin: Sick of everything.
Odin: I think i took too much ambien
Una: What?
Odin: ambien i took too much
Una: How much did you take?
Odin: dakfjxi to akfgdfsd
Really? A gibberish text? That’s not how Ambien worked. It’s not how any drug worked. I had watched my parents’ half-assed suicide attempts too many times to count. I wasn’t about to fall for a phony too-much-Ambien trick.
Una: Odin, how much did you take?
Odin: aexdpo reithagjdagfgh
Una: Odin, I know you can type. Stop fucking with me. Seriously.
Odin: u are beautiful goodbye ueakjkfnesdafxdkew iwe
Una: Okay, whatever Odin. I’m over your drama.
I put Odin’s thread on Do Not Disturb and walked back to my bed. I wasn’t worried about Odin. He wasn’t actually going to kill himself. I doubted he had even taken Ambien. I was overtaken by an irrational rage. He was just another sad, damaged man who felt entitled to all of my time because he sometimes tipped me. Why was everyone so Goddamn fucked up? Why couldn’t my tippers just be normal? I texted Demon.
Una: U up?
Demon: Yeah, are you okay?
Una: Yeah I’m good. I was thinking…
Una: I’m kinda over Odin. But if I lose him, I’ll lose my biggest tipper
I clicked over to MFC and scrolled through the online girls. Everyone was winding down for the night, reciting their goodbye monologues or blowing kisses. Two naked girls clung to each other, laughing.
“No, it’s time for bed,” one of them argued against a rain of tips trying to keep them online.
“Snuggle time!” The other one kissed her cheek and then hid her face, shyly, from the camera.
I glanced at the viewer count: over a thousand. That was a lot for this late. I clicked to another girl, also naked. She was decently popular, but even at this hour only a couple hundred people were watching her room. I clicked back to the two girls. They were waving goodnight.
I had watched a decent amount of girl/girl shows. They were never very interesting to me, mostly because I assumed there was no way I’d ever be cool enough for another girl to want to do a show with me. But as I watched the two girls sign off for the night, I realized girl/girl shows were maybe the easiest way to double my exposure in a single night. Plus, if I found a girl more famous than me who was willing to work with me, well then, I could more than double my exposure. I could maybe even find a new whale to replace Odin.
Una: I’m gonna do a show with another girl.
Demon: You are? Who?!
That’s exactly what I had to figure out.
Modern Girl
Alex set me up with the lawyer who got the videos taken down. But every time one disappeared, four more popped up, not only on Pornhub but on many other pirate sites. There were hundreds of videos of me all over the Internet. I started watermarking my videos, but I didn’t feel any better.
At the same time, I didn’t like how reliant I was on Alex. Not just for the lawyer but for everything. I knew I needed to stop depending on his generosity. It was too complicated, and he expected too much in return––I needed a break.
“I started camming because I wanted to be independent,” I explained to Alex, trying to be tactful. “If you’re my highest tipper, it’s not going to feel like independence.”
Alex said he understood, and for the most part he began to obey, only stopping by here and there to say hi or drop a few tokens.
As I suspected, Odin remained conspicuously absent after the Ambien affair. I wondered if he was trying to punish me, or make me think he was actually dead, but his MFC profile told me that he had logged in every day since that night. I figured jettisoning Alex from my cam room once and for all might show Odin he was still my number one and win him back. But it didn’t work. Odin had moved on, and without him or Alex, my rank was slipping, and so was my income. I needed a new tipper. I tried not to panic. I had a plan ready, after all.
A few days later, I was lying on my couch rewatching every episode of Sex and the City. I had my laptop open and Queen Molly’s show on mute. I had just gotten to the episode where Carrie farts in bed with Mr. Big and was pondering when exactly was the right time to start farting in front of your lover when I noticed Molly’s stream had gone dark. She had signed off. I hit “next model” and up popped a beautiful, curvy, redheaded girl with a small nose and bright green eyes.
LadyGinger was sitting in front of a lime-green couch on a fuzzy white rug, and she was strumming a small, brown ukulele. Her long red hair draped elegantly over her naked body. I hit unmute, and I was surprised to hear how deep and rich her voice was. She sang perfectly on-key, her eyebrows portraying just the right about of snark as she hit each note.
She wasn’t the most useful girl for me to be half-watching, given that there was no chance in hell I would ever be able to sing like that, but she was pretty to look at. Plus, maybe I could get a ukulele and do a parody show where I sang horribly off-key and have viewers tip me to stop.
I muted LadyGinger and went back to Carrie and Mr. Big until I noticed she had stopped playing and was speaking emphatically to the room. She held the ukulele aloft in one hand and gesticulated rapidly with the other, her boobs shak-ing as she spoke. She looked a little like I did in my Pornhub video, except instead of looking goofy and elated like I did, she looked angry. I unmuted her.
“Last warning,” she said, holding up a finger and leaning forward to read a response.
Bobshredder: Sorry, sorry.
HitchmyCock: Go back to singing it was so nice
Bobshredder: I just don’t get why it’s a big deal.
She paused, read the screen, and set down the instrument.
“Really, Bob? Do we have to have this discussion right now?”
Bobshredder: No, I am just saying it shouldn’t be such a huge deal. It’s the internet. Chill out.
PharmaCopiea: Ohhhhhh shit he just said chill out
Rex213: hahahaha
Scissorzz: Maybe we ought to
“Okay, I guess we have to have this discussion right now.” I paused the TV and checked LadyGinger’s viewer count: 1,114. That was an insane number of viewers for 4:00 p.m. on a Thursday. She clearly commanded a huge audience.
“My room is based on acceptance. Acceptance of all people. All races, all gender identities, all sexual orientations, all religions, all people,” she began.
PharmaCopiea: hear hear
Rex213: And all pets. Don’t forget pets.
“And also all pets,” she said, letting out a small laugh and winking at the camera. “When you use words like that in my room, you are creating an environment where it feels like it’s not safe for so
meone who identifies that way.” She twirled her hair casually on a finger, glancing down. “Does that make sense?” From what I could gather, Bodshredder had used a trans slur and LadyGinger was rightfully chastising him.
Bobshredder: we’re on a porn site. No one respects anyone
Scissorzz: okay, time for ban
LaughinBOo: hammer time!
Ginger’s eyes grew cold and her mouth formed into a hard line. “We can have this discussion, and I’m happy to talk to you about it. But you need to be respectful.”
Scissorzz: do I hammer him?
Rex213: laying down the LAW
LaughinBOo: Language is really powerful, it creates culture
“Yeah,” Ginger continued, smiling at the camera. Warmth flooded her face again. “Thank you Boo. Exactly. Language creates culture. If we choose to use language that is harmful to someone, we are choosing to create a culture that is harmful to them. Even if they aren’t there to witness it.”
She glanced to the right of her screen.
“There are over a thousand people in here right now watching. Imagine if you had used that word and I hadn’t said anything? What would that have communicated to them about this room?”
I checked her viewer count: 1,204. It had gone up, not down. I could learn something from her.
“Furthermore,” she continued, casually running an index finger in a slow circle around her right nipple, “I like to think I attract all kinds of people.” My eyes were glued to her hand. Her pale skin, her light freckles.
Messages flooded the chat room, agreeing with her. A few viewers sent gifs of people swooning or falling over.
“Does that make sense, Bob?” Ginger leaned toward the camera, looking earnestly into the lens. I felt an immense desire to please her.
Bobshredder: Yeah, I get it. I’m sorry. I won’t say it anymore
A grin spread across her face and she clapped her hands together.
“Yay! Thank you, Bob.”
What the hell did I just watch? It was like an anti-bullying PSA except in this case the announcer was a naked millennial with gorgeous hair and the students were mostly middle-aged men. And they had listened to her.
On screen, Ginger picked her Ukulele back up. “Now we’re only six hundred forty-five tokens away from the cumshow. I have a new plug to play with, too. We can add that for four hundred.”