by Leah Raeder
The fog swirled around us like ghosts.
I pulled back.
“Morgan,” he said, reaching for me.
“You’re leaving.” Hands in my hair, frantic. “I’m not fucking you right before you leave.”
I’m not losing someone again.
“What if I stay?”
“You can’t actually do that, can you?”
“No.”
I paced away, tense, then returned calmer. Touched his chest and felt the rise and fall beneath my palms.
“I don’t want to miss you,” I said.
Dane covered my hands with his. “I’ll miss you. Whether or not we hook up.”
I pushed him playfully. Fake lightness. “You’ll meet some gorgeous Boston girl and forget all about me.”
“No.”
“Or a gorgeous guy. One of your clients. A true gentleman. He’ll sweep you off your feet, beat some culture into your thick skull.”
Dane laughed. “Come with me.”
“Frankie needs me here.”
“You don’t need Frankie.”
“Are you splitting?”
“Wasn’t planning to. But if it means I can hold on to you . . .”
“Dane, don’t be stupid.” I stepped away. “We’re the wrong people at the wrong time. We weren’t meant to happen.”
“Maybe I’ll ask your friend with the La Roux hair, then.”
“Ellis?” I said in disbelief.
“She’s cute. And she thinks I’m funny.”
“You are so barking up the wrong tree.”
Dane cocked an eyebrow.
I lifted my face to the wet sky. “This is a good time to say good-bye. Before we really know each other.”
“It would’ve been better before you kissed me.”
“I had to know what I won’t be missing.”
“How was it?”
“Not bad for our first and last kiss.”
He smiled, and I let him sling an arm around my waist and walk me to the house. We parted on the porch and I kissed his cheek. He brushed mine, sweetly.
“Go break a million hearts,” I said.
“But never yours.”
When Dane was gone I sat in the shadows at the corner of the porch, knees to my chest. It was like this every time I got close to someone. Painful. Impossible. Because it was never right. Never what I really wanted.
Mist broke into fingers, long and wispy, curling around me, taking hold. Pulling at me. Tearing. Like my ghosts.
* * *
Late the next morning I woke up horny. I hadn’t gotten off last night, but now I was focused and distilled and ready to make some money off the ache between my legs.
Clock check: the UK was getting off work for the evening. I took a soft-focus selfie—sleepy smile, faded Union Jack tee—and wrote, Free show at noon Eastern. Come one, come all. Posted it to my social media accounts and left my cam live while I hit the shower. When I sat down again in a towel, a hundred-odd viewers were waiting.
manchester91: there she is
sexy_stepbrother: welcome back bb
beautifulbastard: girl u look fine
beautifulbastard: I want to be that towel
beautifulbastard: and soak u up
beautifulbastard: like the Brawny man
sexy_stepbrother: lol
manchester91 has tipped Morgan 100 tokens.
Getting paid just for sitting down. I smiled. “Thanks for spreading the word, guys. I see some regulars. How are you, Manchester?”
manchester91: great bb, how was your shower?
“Just got out, and I’m still dripping.” I looked into the cam and tried not to laugh. “But you boys are going to make me even wetter, aren’t you?”
I lay back on the bed, let the towel fall, and got to work.
Another shower after, more leisurely. Eyes closed, water pounding at my face. I pressed my palms to the tile and lowered my head. A line of scarlet heat scrawled up my right arm. Fuck. One of those days.
I threw on shorts and a tee and was toweling my hair dry when I walked into the kitchen and Ellis looked up from her laptop.
We both froze. She blushed.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re here already.”
She snapped the lid shut and stared at the table.
I grabbed coffee and a yogurt, totally cavalier, and sat across from her. Dull platinum sun poured at her back, a humid fog of light. I watched her as I ate. Super tomboy today: rolled-up cargos, plaid shirt, her hair doing that cute thing where her bangs swept upward. She adjusted her glasses, rubbed a smudge off her phone. Anything to avoid looking at me.
“So, what’d you think?” I said at last.
“Of what?”
“My show.”
The blush deepened. “Excuse me?”
“You can’t blush and then feign ignorance. I know you, Elle.”
For a second she met my gaze and something sparked, but then she looked away again. “It was . . . good, I guess. I have no idea.”
“Was it hot? Did it turn you on?”
“Can we talk about why I’m here? Frankie wants you to show me around.”
I licked the last bit of lemon yogurt from the spoon and smiled. “This is the kitchen. Where we eat. Hungry?”
Ellis wasn’t amused. She kept her head bowed, eyes lowered, and I started to feel guilty for goading her, then resentful for the guilt.
“Let’s get this over with. Come on.”
I walked her through the first floor of our sprawling Queen Anne mansion. Odd-angled rooms printed with wild zebra stripes of sun and shadow, gabled windows, French doors, halls that bent and doubled back and didn’t quite seem to line up, as if the house were a slowly spun kaleidoscope. Frankie had let me decorate and I’d matched the eclectic architecture: sleek Eames chairs, tables made from whitewashed driftwood, wrought-iron lanterns grandly crumbling into rust. On every wall I’d hung prints: Klee’s pixelated mosaics of color, Kandinsky’s schizophrenic geometry. Elle glued herself to my side, staring.
“This is so you,” she said. I don’t think she meant me to hear, but a tiny wick flared in my heart.
I walked ahead, leaving her to catch up.
The second and third floors were all bedrooms, doors closed. Cammers. Most of us slept during the day, waiting for clients to come home from work and eat dinner with their families or their TVs and then shut themselves in dark rooms with bright screens. The attic lay at the top of a rickety staircase, and when Elle felt the boards give, she stumbled. I caught her, pulling her close. We stared at each other.
“Easy,” I muttered. But I held on till she found her footing again.
“So this is your room.”
She nudged past me. Curiosity always got the better of her awkwardness.
Elle inspected the desk first, traced fingertips over my camera and handmade softboxes. Clothes hung from a beam of the slanted roof and her hands drifted through satin and silk, stirring them like a breath. She scanned the camming bed, squinted at the photos of broken things. Then over to my real bed across the room. I came up behind her, slowly.
I’d peeled each photo from Mrs. Mulhavey’s guest room and transplanted them here. Creased now, frayed from the obsessive stroking of fingers. Elle’s face and mine. The way we used to smile before we killed a boy and ruined each other’s lives. My love and longing scarred the paper clearer than any ink.
She glanced at me and I met her gaze.
Our eyes held for a second, then we turned away.
“I’ll show you the site,” I said.
We settled at my desk.
“So. This is how camming works.”
I showed her how clients bought tokens, tipped us, purchased photos, videos, personal merchandise—worn panties or unwashed socks or used razors—how we banned problematic users, handled special requests for Snapchat and other apps. Some of it baffled her—“They actually buy your dirty socks?” she exclaimed, and I laughed—and Elle took notes, absorbing my every wor
d. In the middle of explaining, I realized how utterly natural this felt. Familiar. Warm. We slid back into our roles so effortlessly when we stopped thinking about how we’d hurt each other.
Ellis cleared her throat. “Vada?”
That name snapped me out of it. Nobody but Max called me that anymore.
“I’m working tonight,” I said, standing. “We can finish tomorrow. Need a ride to the mainland?”
She stared at her phone, avoiding eye contact. “I’m, uh, staying on the island, actually.”
“Where?”
“There’s a place in the woods I’m fixing up.”
My eyes narrowed. “You are not talking about the tree house.”
Elle shrugged sheepishly.
Deep in the woods, a few hundred yards from here, was an old one-room cabin built on stilts and the thick arms of an ancient oak. I climbed up there once: abandoned, the wood rotting, soft and barnacled with moss like a sunken ship. Some sea coffin tossed up onto land.
“You can’t stay there.”
“Dane said it was fine.”
“Dane’s not the brightest crayon in the box. That thing is falling apart.”
Her eyes flashed up to mine. “That’s why it suits me.”
What the hell could I say to that?
“Do you want me to—” I began, but she grabbed her laptop bag and darted down the stairs, quick as a bird. “—walk you out,” I finished to the room, and sat down, feeling like the air around me, the vacant chair. Empty.
* * *
#Cumshow at 1,000 tokens.
One hour in, and I’d already hit seven hundred.
Seven hundred dollars for sixty minutes of lying on my bed, teasing myself with a silicone dick. Making fuck-me eyes at the cam, pulling on a tie, moaning the screennames of the men who tipped me. In the next hour I’d fuck this dildo and fake an orgasm and go back to reading that Dalí bio or tinkering with my digital photos or brooding at the window, wondering what Elle was up to out in the woods.
But for now, customer service.
iwatchusleep: damn bb you are TNT
iwatchusleep: you’re gonna make me blow
SixPackCoverModel: boom
iwatchusleep: haha
BigManOnCampus: my cock is so fucking hard
BigManOnCampus: I want to fuck the shit out of your tight little pussy
[MOD]UnicornTears: BigManOnCampus has received a warning. Total warnings: 1.
1 warning = 5 min mute | 2 = temp kick | 3 = PERMABAN
~Keep it FUN and BEHAVE!~
aussieboi: no1 cares about ur cock
I smirked at the screen. “You can tell me about your cock in a tip note, Big Man.”
Viewers could message cammers privately if they tipped a minimum of twenty tokens. Once, a guy tipped me seventeen times in a row to describe himself getting off. Why he didn’t just pay for a private chat, which would’ve been cheaper in the long run, was a mystery. Insecurity, perhaps. Maybe he couldn’t handle the pressure of my undivided attention.
Or maybe he was just bad at math.
I clutched one tit hard and opened my mouth, gasping.
ero_sennin: can I see your tats plz bb?
aussieboi: check her photos m8
ero_sennin: I know but I want to see her ass ^_^
SoBlue has tipped Morgan 100 tokens.
“Thank you, Blue. Ero, is this better?” I rolled to my left side, ass to the cam, ink exposed. A beep signaled an incoming private message. I glanced over my shoulder.
[PM from SoBlue]: i’d like to take you private.
“Sorry, Blue. No private tonight. Just enjoy the show, baby.”
aussieboi: dont be greedy
aussieboi: shes on every nite
BigManOnCampus has tipped Morgan 20 tokens.
[PM from BigManOnCampus]: I want to shoot my hot cum in your mouth
“You’re a dirty boy, Big Man. You can tell me more in another tip.” I flopped onto my back, legs spread to the cam. “Just a few more tokens. I’m so fucking wet. I can’t wait to come for you boys.”
ero_sennin: come on guys!
ero_sennin: almost there . . .
SoBlue has tipped Morgan 179 tokens.
The token counter ticked up to 999. I laughed. “Thank you again, Blue.”
[PM from SoBlue]: i will pay you $1000 if you go private with me for an hour.
I’d heard lines like that a million times. Viewers would push you as far as you’d bend. Horny guys promised the moon and stars in a basket. Just like RL.
“You’re a big talker, Blue, but I told you, no private. Now, one more token and this girl’s getting fucked.”
SoBlue has tipped Morgan 1,001 tokens.
iwatchusleep: OMFG
aussieboi: m8!!!
aussieboi: did ur finger slip??
SixPackCoverModel: that’s what she said
iwatchusleep: lol
[PM from SoBlue]: i’ll pay $1000 more if you stop the show.
I sat bolt upright, my shirt falling back over my breasts, the toy tumbling out of my lap. He really did just tip me a thousand and one bucks. I stared at the screen for a second, then put my hands on the keys.
[PM to SoBlue]: if you’re serious, my paypal is [email protected]
Rich guys had done crazy shit for me before. One of them bought me this MacBook, fully loaded. Another sent a whole Marc Jacobs ensemble—dress, jacket, shoes, handbag—that cost as much as a fucking car. It had belonged to his ex-wife. He got a kick out of watching me come in it. “She never could,” he confided.
Extreme generosity was rare, but not unheard of.
And it was always gifts. They wanted the control. They wanted to see me wearing the clothes they’d bought, typing on the laptop they’d paid for. They wanted to extend their reach into my real life, touch my physical body, the only way they could: with gifts.
No one had ever offered me cold hard cash.
My viewers grew impatient, asking about the cumshow, but I ignored them and grabbed my phone to text Dane.
MORGAN: this client offered 1k to go private
MORGAN: he already tipped me like 1300
MORGAN: this is crazy
MORGAN: do you think it’s safe
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I jumped. Not a text. An email confirmation from PayPal that $1,000 USD had been deposited to my account.
I set the phone down shakily.
iwatchusleep: bb, we gonna get a show or not
aussieboi: lets see you ride it
[PM to SoBlue]: send me a private chat request
I waited, my fingers curling and uncurling over the keys.
Incoming video call from SoBlue.
ACCEPT.
* * *
Cam window: me on one side, disheveled, flushed; his side, the ubiquitous black rectangle. His mic was muted. I stared at the chat box for an endless minute, watching the status bar informing me that SoBlue is typing . . .
SoBlue: hi.
I laughed, the tension breaking. “What took you so long? Hi, baby.”
SoBlue: i tried out some suave lines.
SoBlue: but every time i look at you my mind goes blank.
SoBlue: and all i can think is . . .
SoBlue: hi. hi. hi.
SoBlue: like an excited puppy.
He was cute. I sat back on the bed, pulling the laptop between my legs. All I wore was my tee and a thong.
“Hi hi hi to you too, Mr. Big Spender. What can I do for you?”
SoBlue is typing . . .
I watched the ellipsis fill and reset and fill again, over and over, as he chose his words.
SoBlue: i just want to talk.
“You sure? You seem pretty flustered. I could do something about that.” I ran a hand down one thigh. “What do you want to talk about?”
SoBlue: you.
SoBlue: close your legs.
Those legs tightened. Domination turned me on. I never let men in my real life dominate, but here the right edge of
aggression could make things so much easier. Some nights I was little more than a sex therapist, assuring timid men that it was okay, no judgment, no shame.
I tucked my legs beneath me. “Is this better, Blue? Can I call you that?”
SoBlue: yes.
SoBlue: now.
SoBlue: tell me about yourself, morgan.
SoBlue: who are you?
I leaned in, breathed deep. Cleavage boost. Strange, how ridiculous these cam tricks seemed right now. Once you’re paid it’s all revealed for the absurd skin circus it is. “I’m twenty-one.” Every cam girl was either eighteen or twenty-one. “I’m in college for photography.” MFA dropout. “I love the outdoors, hiking, camping.” I loved torturing my body till every nerve burned and I groaned like the beast I was, passed out from exhaustion before I shored the boat, woke to fish nibbling at my toes and sand in my mouth. “I’ve never had a serious boyfriend.” I’d been in love once. “I’ve never been in love.” And it wrecked me.
SoBlue is typing . . .
SoBlue: i don’t believe you.
“About what?”
SoBlue: anything.
SoBlue: try again.
SoBlue: tell me something true.
“It’s all true, baby.”
We’d never know what was real and what wasn’t about each other. That was the beauty of our shared fiction.
SoBlue: here’s something true.
SoBlue: you’re sad.
SoBlue: tell me why.
For the first time, I drew a blank in front of the camera.
I’d heard it all. The objects men wanted to put inside my body. The ways they wanted to touch me, fuck me, defile me. The names—slut, spic, cunt, whore, bitch, honey, mommy—and the people I stood in for—ex-girlfriend, sister, stranger, boss. They acted out fantasies with me that they couldn’t in the real world. Followed me off a bus and dragged me into a dark alley. Locked a classroom door and bent me over a desk. None of it fazed me, because none of it was real. We were both characters. Only our loneliness was real, and for ten dollars a minute I’d pretend to care.
But sometimes they really just wanted something human. Someone to talk to. Those guys were the hardest for me.