by Isa Mazzei
She began singing again, softly, her voice tumbling out in waves that held me pinned to the spot.
LadyGinger would be the perfect girl to do my first girl/girl show with. She was physically my opposite: curvy, pale, freckled, shaved. I was bony, dark-haired, with a bush and hairy nipples I had to pluck every three days. Our bodies would contrast well on camera. She already commanded thousands of viewers every night, and that exposure would only do good things for my career. Plus, she was intelligent, loving, accepting, and possibly the nicest human on the planet.
I had no idea how to contact her. I consulted my cam room.
Wild_West: Just message her on MFC
1NerdyGuy: yeah, just say hey
“Yeah, but I don’t want to disrupt her when she’s working. I guess I could send her a message. I just worry she’ll think I’m a guy pretending to be a model.”
That happened sometimes. A viewer would message me from a model profile, telling me she wanted cam tips or show ideas. I usually responded to other models kindly, but slowly stopped as these conversations often turned into drawn-out discussions where I was given the distinct impression that I was writing free erotica for a con man with an unusual fetish.
I went to my Twitter. I had well over three thousand followers, some of whom were well-known MFC regulars like Demon9. Then I went to LadyGinger’s, where she had over twenty thousand followers. I opened a new private message, suddenly nervous. I felt successful in my own little bubble, but compared to this girl I was nothing. She was so established. It’s not like I could just send her a message, “hey let’s have sex for money on camera,” could I?
“Hey there,” I typed. “I was watching one of your shows and I think you’re pretty cool. Do you do shows with other girls ever?”
I stared at the message. That was stupid. Anyone who glanced at her profile could tell she did shows with other girls.
“Hey there,” I tried again. “Do you want to do a show together?”
Lame. So lame. Stop sucking, Isa.
“Hey! How are you? My name’s Una!” I added a smiley face then deleted it. I added a flower emoji. That was worse. It sounded like I was a customer service robot.
I clicked back to my chat room. “You guys, I don’t know what to say!”
secret_bee: Just say hi Una
secret_bee: well not Hi, Una, but Hi, you know what I mean
__vegan_scare12: just say who you are and what you want, it’s not that hard.
1NerdyGuy: I offered you some good suggestions I think
“It’s just so weird to just ask her to work with me. She’s so much cooler than me. I dunno. It feels needy. She’s like always in the top fifty. She’s won Miss MFC. I’m barely top two hundred this month so far.”
I stared at Ginger’s feed. I thought. I composed a new tweet.
@TheOnlyUna: i think i’m in love with @The_LadyGinger
“You guys, I did it! Go like my post. Go retweet!”
Demon9: On it.
secret_bee: on my way!
bombNo.20: oh man, Una that’s clever
I obsessively checked my Twitter over the next few hours. It gained momentum, as my viewers replied, retweeted, and shared with Ginger’s fans.
@demontweets: you guys should do a show together!
@aireyjo: Ginger and Una together would kill me probably
@hufflepig: hey @The_LadyGinger this sexy lady is into u
That night, before I signed on, I had a reply from LadyGinger.
@The_LadyGinger: We’ll see what we can do, gentlemen ;)
A little red “1” told me I had a new direct message. I opened it.
@The_LadyGinger: Hey lady. You’re sweet. Do you want to do a show together? Where do you live?
Success!
×××
Everything about the show with Ginger made me nervous. I was nervous to meet her, nervous to see what she was like in real life, and nervous to have sex with her. We didn’t discuss the details of the show, but I assumed sex would happen. She was a sexual model after all, and that tended to be the biggest draw for audiences of girl/girl shows.
In high school, I was out as bisexual, but the brief relationships I had with other girls were never very physical. I avoided sex with people in general, and that meant avoiding sex with girls too out of habit. But as sex with men became more and more upsetting, I began to question my bisexuality. Maybe I wasn’t bi. Maybe I was gay. If I were a lesbian, I decided, it would explain everything.
Luckily for me, my freshman year of college, I met Rae.
I went to pick up a package at my dorm mailroom when I noticed a girl watching me. She had large eyes and she made unbroken eye contact—the same eye contact I had been using for years to make men notice me in public places. Afterward, anywhere I went, I felt like her eyes were still on me. When I opened my computer, I saw a friend request waiting for me on Facebook from a girl named Rae.
Bold move.
Rae was the first girl to chase me. She wasn’t someone I had to seduce or manipulate or control. She wanted to date me before I was even aware she existed. This had never happened. I was always the one doing the pursuing, the seducing, the Facebook-friending.
Rae was like one of those Nike commercials: everything I could do, she could do better. She partied harder, drank more, dressed nicer, and actually managed to apply her eyeliner in a perfectly curved line. Rae was petite, with long curly hair and blue-green eyes. She wore slouchy jeans with worn Vans and those cool beanies that hung off the back of her head. She could go from sleek androgynous to hyperfeminine in an instant and owned several pairs of high-heeled boots. She wore thongs—the mysterious underwear I was still too intimidated to buy for myself. I loved that her hair smelled like honey and that her skin was smooth and unblemished. She made me feel warm and safe, and the way she talked was fast and exuberant, words spilling over each other. I loved the curves of her small waist and hips. I felt like her femininity solidified my sexual identity. Yes, I liked women. Yes, I liked women’s bodies. Rae made me feel vindicated in my new identity as a lesbian.
But Rae also intimidated me. She intimidated me because I needed her to be the solution to my problem. Our sex had to be perfect. The kind of sex I’d always wished I could have with a man. Passionate, loud, romantic sex. Because Rae was different. Rae was it.
So one night in the spring of my freshman year we kicked out her roommates, lit candles, and made her bed with fresh sheets. I had put on my fanciest Urban Outfitter mesh underwear and proudly slid my jeans off, displaying my painstakingly manicured pubic hair. Rae, naturally, was some sort of sex Goddess. She kissed my shoulders and pushed me carefully toward the bed, looking up at me with her large, clear eyes. I, naturally, was a sort of sex troll and tripped over a chair, slamming my head into the wooden beam of the top bunk.
We lay next to each other, and I pushed my hand into her underwear. To this day, I am amazed at any high school boy who has ever made fingering feel good, because that night it seemed like I alternated between a) hurting Rae or b) cracking Rae up with how abysmally pathetic my knowledge of female anatomy was. At one point she stopped me and remarked, “That’s my urethra, Isa.”
Undeterred, I moved my hands aside and slid my tongue down her body. I fought off the familiar sinking feeling. No, I was going to like this. I desperately wanted to want her the way movies told me I should. I wanted us to spend hours and hours making love, taking breaks only to smoke cigarettes and feed each other strawberries. I wanted a loud crescendo of eighties love ballads and a montage of smooth skin, white sheets, and candlelight.
I was going to be good at this. I was a lesbian after all. I thought of every oral sex scene in The L Word. I regretted I hadn’t watched more porn. I’d certainly Googled how to go down on a girl, and I tried to put my research to work. It was clumsy and uncomfortable. I was unsure of mys
elf, and at a certain point Rae pushed me off and said she was tired.
As I lay awake staring at the bunk bed above us, I told myself that women were complicated. I wasn’t about to let one little vagina get in the way of true love. But that night, all I felt was sad and alone.
The harder I tried to want sex with Rae, the more I dreaded it. I was squeamish, terrified of failing to give her pleasure but even more terrified of succeeding. I began using stall tactics, like the time I stopped her, mid-hand-sliding-down-my-pants, to say, “I think we should get tested first.”
Rae kept going. “What? Why?” She kissed me. “We’ve already had sex.”
I pushed her hand away and sat up.
“Yeah, but that was a mistake.”
She looked hurt.
“No, the sex wasn’t a mistake, obviously. I just mean we should get tested. Before we do it again.”
Getting tested is a totally normal, great thing that I highly recommend everyone do. Except maybe not the way I did it. The way I did it was to keep forgetting to go in and get tested so that even though we had her results, we had to keep waiting on mine.
Rae tried, to her credit. She wore cute underwear and flirty bras. She bit my neck and ears after walking me to class to get me revved up for later. She asked me if toys would make it better. She coached me. She gave me instructions. She made me watch her touch me to show me “how easy it was.” She was so sweet about the whole thing, but that only made it worse. I began to wonder how long this could last. I can honestly say that in the entirety of my relationship with Rae, I don’t think I gave her an orgasm, not even once. One night, she offered to do it herself while I lay there next to her.
Afterward, as I walked down the dorm hallway to fill up my water bottle, I felt a familiar feeling in my chest. I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t about being bad at sex. This wasn’t about Rae or her body. I tried to shake it off, splashed water on my face. No. Shut up, I told myself. This was Rae, your dream girl. This wasn’t some boy you fucked out of guilt. This was your new lesbian identity. I thought about her body beneath mine, her gasps when I did something right. My inability to make her orgasm. The fact that maybe, deep down, I didn’t want her to orgasm.
That same heavy, dark feeling filled me up. I fought the urge to cry. It was still gross. It was still dirty. It was that same feeling, that sinking shame that filled me up whenever I had sex with men. It was in my hair and my bones and my chest and my bowels. It was a feeling that told me to peel off my skin and run away.
Three weeks later, Rae and I were standing in her dorm room and she told me she wanted to sleep with other people. “I just want to broaden our horizons, Isa.”
“So you want to leave me?”
“No.” She paused. “But I want to at least try sex with other people.”
I stared at her, tears in my eyes. No one dumped me. No one. I was the heartbreaker.
“I just feel…” She bit her lip. “I feel like we’re not moving forward anymore.”
I slid down the wall and sat on the dorm carpet, that special carpet color designed to hide vomit and blood. “I just don’t see why you want to sleep with someone else.”
And so I had failed. Maybe I was attracted to both boys and girls, but I didn’t enjoy sex with either. The problem wasn’t their body or my orientation. The problem wasn’t even whether or not I loved the person.
I still hated sex, and now I hated it with women, too.
Great job, Isa.
Girls Just Want To Have Fun
I landed in Vegas with my heart in my throat, nervous for my show with Ginger. A lot was riding on this. I needed to charm Ginger so I could charm our viewers so I could find replacements for Odin and Alex. I also needed to prove to myself that I could be good at all of the sexual aspects of camming. Not just masturbation, but also real sex. Camming had made masturbation okay, I reassured myself, so it was going to make sex okay, too.
I booked a room at a hotel in Downtown Vegas because Ginger had told me it was more fun than the strip. I arrived on a Saturday morning. Our show would be that night, and then I’d leave the following day. It was a short trip, but I figured it was greedy to ask for more than one show with her. I really wanted Ginger to like me. This was going to be the best show ever.
Ginger picked me up in a cherry-red MINI Cooper. She was shorter in person than I imagined, but just as pretty. As she leaned in for a hug, I noticed a collection of fine lines around her eyes. She was older than I expected, too—maybe thirty.
“Una!” she exclaimed, opening the trunk for me to put my bag in. “Hello!”
I smiled, suddenly aware that this older, more beautiful, more educated person was going to be my lover. I climbed into the car beside her. She started the engine.
“So I was thinking you could just come over, drop your stuff off, and then we could hang out?”
“Oh, sure, that works.” I wasn’t sure at what point I’d go to my hotel, but I didn’t say anything.
“How was your flight?”
“Oh, it was easy. Super fast from Colorado.” It felt weird telling the truth to someone from the camming world.
“Yeah, easy flight. Cheap, too.” She smiled and pulled out onto the freeway, the dry desert heat creating shimmers on the asphalt.
Okay—be cool, Isa, I reminded myself.
“Are you from here, originally?” I asked the first lame question that popped into my head. She laughed.
“No, no one’s from Vegas, really. That’s rare.” She smiled. “I’m from Minnesota, actually. Good ol’ Midwestern girl.”
“Oh cool. I’ve never been there.” God, what was wrong with me?
We fell silent. I opened my mouth to mention something about her ukulele playing but then stopped myself. It was probably weird to mention watching a girl’s shows, right? How much should I admit I watched? How much was a normal amount to watch?
I was relieved when we pulled into a neighborhood and stopped at a cute Spanish-style house with light brown adobe and a tiled roof. Small pots of cacti lined the steps leading to the front door.
“Is this your house? It’s so cute.”
“Thank you. Luckily, Vegas is actually a cheap place to live. We’ve got three bedrooms here, and it’s less than my one-bedroom back home.”
We got out of the car, and she pulled my suitcase from the back.
“You can leave this inside if you want, so nothing melts.” She grinned. Fuck. Was I supposed to bring toys?
“Oh, yeah, great.” I nodded and took my bag from her, hiding my face as I lugged it up the stairs behind her.
She opened the door and led me inside, gesturing for me to set my bag in a closet. The house was large and airy. A man and a dog sat on a leather couch. The man was reading a book and glanced up and gave a half wave when we entered. The dog, a Lab, ran up and sniffed my crotch.
I petted his head, trying to push it away from my vagina. He pushed back.
“Oh, that’s Chips.” Ginger nodded at the dog. “And that’s John, my husband.”
“Hi, John.” I tried to look friendly and batted the dog away from my crotch again.
Ginger didn’t seem to notice. “I’m just gonna change really quick and then we can head out?” Ginger said.
“Sure, sounds great.” I moved toward a leather chair in the living room. What I really wanted to do was go to my hotel, find a Starbucks, and shove a burger into my face.
Ginger ran up the stairs two at a time and disappeared.
John was absorbed in his book. Chips came over and set his face on my lap. I patted his head. I looked around the living room. It was nicely decorated but plain, with a large TV and a generic dining room table off to the corner. I had read that Vegas had entire neighborhoods of cookie-cutter houses that sat empty after the recession. This felt like one of those. Everything was perfect and new and devoid of pe
rsonality.
The back door opened, and another man, this one with a beard, walked in and gave me a half nod.
“Hey, I’m Johnny.”
“Oh, hey.” I waved awkwardly. “I’m…Una.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to give my real name or not. Ginger hadn’t told me what to call her, and she had called me Una.
Ginger bounded down the stairs in jean shorts and a hoodie.
“Sorry, my clothes for clinic hours are way too warm for this weather.” She reached the bottom and breezed into the kitchen, planting a kiss on Johnny’s face. “Hey, honey.”
He kissed her back. “Hey.”
My eyes flicked involuntarily to John, who was still buried in his book.
“Una, did you meet Johnny, my husband?”
I looked up. “Oh, yeah. I met Johnny.” I looked again at John.
“Ready?” She moved to the door. I nodded and stood up, following her out.
“They’re both my husbands,” she said before I could ask. “That’s cool, right?”
I had eighty questions I wanted to ask, like which one was she legally married to and did the two of them have sex with each other or just her and did they all sleep in the same bed and how did they meet and why were they both named John? I wondered if any of those questions might be insensitive. I wanted her to think I was cool. That I already knew the answers to all of these questions because I was definitely educated in these things and probably had friends who also had two husbands, or maybe even three. I was a camgirl. I knew all about alternative lifestyles.
“Of course it’s cool,” I told her.
She unlocked the MINI Cooper and got in. “Well, anyway, I was thinking we could go to this rock and crystal store I am in love with, and then maybe get massages or something?”
“Yeah!” My voice squeaked. “That sounds amazing. I love crystals.”
“You know, they make dildos out of quartz now.” Ginger smiled. “Semiprecious stones even.”