Camgirl

by Isa Mazzei

  The night of my suicide show, I lay on my floor for hours, unmoving, unfeeling. I was frozen. But the next day, I sat myself up and gulped down some water. I had finally been able to process it in words that could be spoken out loud. I was sexually abused as a child. It was a step toward something, and I needed to know where the next step led. I was ready to go.

  Yes. I was sexually abused as a child.

  ×××

  The first thing I did after that night was walk to Hope’s office. I waited until I knew she was out to lunch, then I wrote my secret on a Post-it note and slid it under her door. The next time I saw her, she told me she had been expecting it. It felt like a shameful burden, but now it was shared.

  A few days after, I returned to camming. I didn’t know what else to do. I lacked the closure I thought the suicide show would bring. I returned to my camming routine, but I cammed less and less. I loosened my grip, and my fans loosened theirs. I tried to smile through games. I mechanically masturbated my way through cumshows. I blew kisses to the camera.

  The hardest part of camming became pretending to be happy every night. Goodbye was inevitable, and we could all feel it. My last show was a David Bowie tribute show. I lit some candles.

  “Okay, guys. No tip menu tonight. Donate what you want to cancer research. All tips are being donated. Donate directly, even—it’s better. MFC doesn’t take half.”

  I sat in a T-shirt and cotton briefs, talking to the camera.

  Wild_West tipped 500 tokens: RIP bowie

  Demon9 tipped 100 tokens: He was truly a legend

  “What song should we play first?”

  RomeoTurtle tipped 500 tokens: life on Mars

  “You got it.” We sang all night, raising $800. After a few hours, I felt it was time to go. The candles had burned low and my room was emptying out as more and more people said goodnight.

  “Thank you, guys.” I waved. “I’m gonna say goodnight, too. Thank you.”

  Wild_West: for what Una?

  RomeoTurtle: yeah, for what?

  Unas_bee: we love you Una!

  1NerdyGuy: you’re the one donating all your tips

  Some girls cammed because it made sense to them. Some girls loved camming. They thrived. I cammed because I needed to reclaim my body. I needed to learn about myself, and once I had, I wasn’t sure where I belonged. Camming had given me what I needed; it had given me enough control over my body to be okay admitting that at some point I’d had none.

  In my time as a camgirl, the two words I said most were “thank you.” Thank you for the tip. Thank you for the song request. Thank you for the dumb idea. Thank you for the good idea. Thank you for coming to my show. Thank you for the compliment. Thank you for the insult. Thank you for the gift. Thank you for the cookies I will never eat, the lingerie I will never wear, the sex toy that arrived broken, the ugly jewelry, the thoughtful card, the romantic poem, the flowers. Thank you for booking a private, thank you for sending an email, thank you for calling me, thank you for following me on Twitter, thank you for responding to my message, thank you for the YouTube link, thank you for the picture of your dog, child, wife, house, car, watch.

  Thank you for helping me be myself, was what I wanted to say.

  Thank you for accepting me. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for loving me.

  They didn’t know this would be the last time I signed on. I didn’t want to tell them.

  “No reason.” I smiled. “Just, thank you.”

  Epilogue

  For many sex workers, sex work is more than just a job––it’s a career. For some it’s empowering, and for others it’s just done for a paycheck, like many jobs. The empowerment has nothing to do with the validity of the work. Sex work is a complicated industry. It is a field with some of the most victimizing and coercive practices that exist, but it’s also an industry with some of the most liberated, equitable, and progressive business practices in the world.

  For me, sex work was a form of therapy. I was privileged. I could always get another job. That knowledge allowed me to make autonomous decisions and retain full control over my work. And I did. Sex work forced me to explore facets of myself I kept hidden. It answered questions I had about my sexuality, and it gave me the tools to speak my own boundaries and set my own limits. It taught me consent. It tested every part of myself: as a businesswoman, a performer, an artist, a lover, a friend. I became a sex worker to become myself, and I am happy to say it worked.

  Camming isn’t a symptom of my trauma; it’s a powerful tool that allowed me to regain control over my identity, my life, myself. My need for power and control came from a deep, visceral lack of it. Camming became a way for me to regain that control over my body. I took it back. I set a price. I said who, I said when, I said how much. Sex work is the reason I can talk openly about my past and the reason I’m learning to enjoy sex.

  Of course, not everything that happened during those two years fits in this book. And not everything is in this book exactly how it happened. There’s a lot that’s left out and a lot that’s moved places. It was important to me to write from memory. From lasting impressions and emotional impact. I have not gone back and watched recordings of the shows that are described here. I could have, but I don’t think I ever would have been able to square whatever reality those recordings hold with my own sense of experience and memory. I did my best to write from the perspective I had at the time this book takes place. The language in this book reflects how I thought of things then, not necessarily how I think of them now

  All names have been changed, except my own.

  I have done a lot of therapy. Trauma therapy to date has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It has brought me to my knees and demanded more. It helped me remember things I had forgotten. I was very, very young when it happened. Details are coded as sensations and sounds, not clear visual memories. I have decided not to include these details in this book, because this story is not about my trauma. It is about me coming to understand and embrace my trauma as my own.

  Therapy is helping, and while it has changed me, I’m not a completely different person. I still like taking my clothes off. I still love being the center of attention. The difference is it’s less of a compulsion now. I don’t always walk into a room looking to be the hottest girl.

  In the camming world, my disappearance was discussed, sometimes on forums and sometimes privately between members. It still is. Rumor has it I ran off with Demon and we live in the mountains together. Rumor has it I am a web developer living in Atlanta. Some are convinced I went to nursing school like I had discussed with them at one point. FunnyGuy got sober again and sent me an email apologizing for his actions. Bomb left his fiancée. I still FaceTime him sometimes from the bath and we tell each other creepy stories. I see Demon occasionally around town. I say hi. Jonah and I are creative collaborators. We go to therapy to work out our own issues around control and the past abuses in our relationship. Sam and I are close now. For Christmas last year he gave me a first-edition copy of East of Eden.

  I decided to write a movie about some of my camming experiences and my relationship to online identity. CAM premiered in 2018, and it was an important process for me to speak about how it felt to create an entire person that was somehow both completely me and entirely not me.

  I am still on my way to figuring everything out. I still have no idea who I am, but maybe I’m one step closer. And maybe that’s enough. In the end, I learned how to forgive myself. I learned how to forgive Cathy. Cathy, Cathy, Cathy. Damaged woman. Crazy woman. Monster woman. Slut woman. Strong woman. Cathy, a survivor. Just like all of us.

  In a way, I got exactly what I wanted. When Una died, Isa was reborn.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the generous help of my friends. Thank you to Dan, Elena, Adam, Katie, Jonathan, Couper, and Bea for reading my earliest propo
sal and encouraging me to keep going. Thank you to Pili and Kevin for bringing me Noah, my wonderful agent. Noah, thank you for selling my book not once, but twice. Thank you for protecting my vision. Thank you to Charlie for making others believe in this book. Thank you to my amazing editor Guy, for making my writing sparkle and for shaping this book into what it is today.

  To my generous readers: Jillian, Marlene, Phoebe, Tanya. Thank you for reading, thank you for your notes, thank you for your words of encouragement.

  Thank you to my dear friends Helen, Ariana, Ben, David, Becca, Hannah, Isaiah, for reading, and for being my chosen family and my greatest source of love and support. Thank you, Andy, for holding my hand during a very dark time. Thank you, Drew, for your beautiful photographs. Thank you, Jeff, for standing up for me. Thank you, Michael, for crying at the end of my driveway when I said I wanted to die. Thank you, Andrew, for holding my secrets. Thank you, Scott, for keeping me sane and motivated with Edward Gorey stories and pulp covers from racy sixties novels. Thank you, Greg, for your unconventional texts of encouragement. Thank you, Faith, for healing my brain and saving my life, and thank you, Lisa, for taking the reins until we reach the finish line. Thank you, Kaila, for spreading my art, and thank you to Ryan for believing in the dream and running my life so I could focus on this book. Thank you, Justin and Andre, for having my back. Thank you, Kam, for your speedy read at the eleventh hour. Thank you, Isabelle, for being the first person to encourage me to write this book, and for giving me the confidence to believe it was finished. Thank you, Will, for the gluten-free spaghetti bolognese.

  Thank you, Diane, for teaching me how to read and write, patiently, all those years ago. I would have given up without you. Thank you to Stephen Chbosky for The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Thank you to the Jerome Beverly Foundation for Excellence in the Cinematic Arts for all your support.

  Jordan, the countless hours you’ve spent reading this book mean the world to me. Your notes were exceptional and brilliant, and I am so grateful to have you both as a reader and as a friend. You have read this book so many times I’m surprised your eyes aren’t bleeding reading this right now.

  Danny, thank you. Thank you for encouraging me to write and for getting my book to all the right people. Thank you for the months spent fighting over sentences, words, themes, and characterization. Thank you for pushing me to not hide myself in my own work, and thank you for reminding me I’m brave enough to tell this story.

  Thank you to my parents, for life and love. Thank you to my mom, for giving me ambition, grit, and a place to live while writing this book. Thank you to my dad, for giving me a love of art, my sense of humor, and my sense of adventure. Thank you to my sister, Lia, for taking care of me and giving me amazing jokes that I steal daily. You are my inspiration and my best friend. I love you.

  And finally, thank you to Tyler, who just really, really, wanted to make it into my book.