Upon a quick scan of the bustling room, he didn’t see her. He asked around, and a helpful middle-aged woman with a voice like a drunk sorority girl pointed him toward a wooden door. Colette’s second office lay on the other side. Steeling himself, he knocked.
“Come in.”
It swung open with a horror-movie creak. He found Colette sitting behind a large wooden desk, sifting through a stack of paperwork. She didn’t look surprised when she glanced up and saw him there.
“Close the door behind you please.”
Josh did. He sat in one of the chairs across from her without asking. “I got the news.”
Colette stopped what she was doing. “How are you?”
“Fine.” He paused. “Okay, I guess.”
“That’s better than I expected. Even seasoned pros struggle with the medical issues that come with the job. If it’s any consolation, I’ve seen it all: pregnancies, prolapses, sprains in places you don’t want to think about. In the end, everyone pulls through.”
Josh nodded. Doesn’t mean I want to deal with it, though. “I came down here because I thought you might have some advice for me. And because I need to tell you something.”
“I dunno about advice.” She indicated a card catalog on top of a filing cabinet. “I can give you some pamphlets, if you want. We can discuss your options. There are all sorts of medications these days.”
“No, thanks.” He took a breath and prepared to deliver the other half of what he’d come here to say.
Before he could speak, however, Colette reached across the desk and laid a paper in front of him.
He leaned forward to look at it. “What’s this?”
“A new contract for you, if you want it. I know I can come across as harsh sometimes, but I care about my performers, and I take responsibility for my actions. You wouldn’t be in your current predicament if I hadn’t assigned you to work with Sean. I recognize that.”
Josh shot her a confused look. “So, what does that mean?”
“I can’t hire you for the next two weeks. Did Sean tell you that?”
Josh nodded.
“Well, I’m not going to leave you high and dry in the meantime. When I was your age, I worked for a company like mine, only if a performer got injured or pregnant or whatever, they were on their own. We were treated like independent contractors. That’s not how things are here. We’re a family. We need to support each other.” She plucked a highlighter off her desk and made some notations on the paper. “That’s why I want to invite you to try something different.”
Josh read some of the highlighted bits. He saw the word webcam multiple times. “Different?”
“I think we can both agree that porn wasn’t for you. Was it?”
Josh fidgeted and shook his head. “That’s what I was coming down here to tell you.”
“That’s perfectly fine. You’d be surprised how many of my employees start out in one medium only to switch to something they like better. Just because porn didn’t work out doesn’t mean you have to quit.”
A spark of excitement ignited in Josh’s chest. “It doesn’t?”
“Nope. In fact, I’d be surprised if you gave up that easily. One of the reasons I hired you was because of your attitude. You’re stubborn, and you want to make money. I like that about you. I’m willing to bet you’d excel as one of my cam boys.”
Holy shit. Josh perked up like a puppy who’d caught a whiff of bacon. “You think so? What do cam boys do? How are they paid?”
Colette laughed. “I’ll answer the last question first, since I know that’s most important. With other companies, cam performers get a cut of the private shows they sell, and tips, but that’s not the case here. We pay ours by the hour, plus tips, plus a cut. The base wage isn’t that much more than what waiters and waitresses make, but it’ll keep you from starving. If you sell yourself and get some regulars, you can make good money.”
Josh frowned. “I dunno. All that marketing crap was kinda what turned me off porn.”
“You have to do way less than with porn. Murmur Inc.’s website advertises the cam channels already. All you have to do is get people who are already there to buy private shows from you. You can work as much or as little as you want, but I do recommend you log a minimum of fifteen hours a week.”
Fifteen hours? I can do that around my regular job at the Globe. Have some extra money. Josh was starting to get excited about this. “What do I have to do?”
“Honestly? You’re gonna masturbate on camera a lot. Clients may ask you to wear special outfits or act out their kinks. You’re free to accept or decline on your own terms. We have some rules about what you’re allowed to discuss with clients—do not talk about politics, for example, and for the love of God, don’t give out your personal information—but otherwise, you have total control. You can make your own schedule and choose your own clients.” Colette eyed him. “Are you interested?”
“Fuck yeah! It sounds like everything I liked about porn, sans all the stuff I didn’t.”
“I’m glad. I always joke that anyone can be a sex worker if they find what’s right for them. One of my cam girls switched to phone sex the other day, and now she can’t keep quiet about it. Literally. And that means there’s an opening on our website.”
Colette pushed the new contract his way and then added some more documents on top of it. “These are instructions, safety tips, and some rules and guidelines. Take ’em home, read ’em, and then give me a call when you’ve made a decision.”
“Honestly, I’m ready to sign the contract right now. This sounds perfect.”
Colette smiled, and for once, all the severity in her face melted away like butter. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but promise me you’ll read what you’re getting into and make an informed decision. I may quiz you when you call to be sure.”
“Okay.” Josh stood up, gathered the papers into the crook of his arm, and then held out his free hand. “Thank you. I know you didn’t have a whole lot of faith in me. I’m grateful for the second chance.”
Colette stood up as well and gave his hand a firm shake. “Don’t thank me too much. I owe you an apology.”
Josh was so startled he dropped her hand. “Huh?”
“I shouldn’t have pushed you on your first shoot. Obviously there’s no way I could have prevented the STI scare that’s currently rippling through the community, but I think I could have given you an easier first time on film.”
Josh hesitated. “Why didn’t you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She shrugged. “Because I misjudged you. Your résumé gave me an idea of you that didn’t end up being the truth. Whenever I get ‘joke’ résumés like yours, it’s always from snotty rich kids from the Hills.”
“Oh, trust me.” Josh waved his hands. “I am not rich.”
“I realize that now, but I didn’t know at the time. Every now and then a trust-fund brat will waltz in here for a laugh, or on a dare, or because they’re bored, and it’s insufferable. A lot of the people who work for Murmur Inc. are trying to make better lives for themselves. This is one of the few industries where marginalized groups—queer people, people of color, et cetera—can make real money, and even then they end up being fetishized. It’s not easy. So when you sashayed into that audition, all cocky and acting like you thought it was a laugh . . .”
Realization settled in Josh’s chest like lead. “You thought I was just another kid doing this for kicks. Wow. Looking back, I can’t blame you for thinking that.”
“Yeah. That still doesn’t excuse how hard I was on you, but I hope you can understand where I was coming from.”
“No, I get it. You were testing how serious I was, and as it turns out, I wasn’t serious about porn at all.” He flexed his fingers on the papers he had nestled against his chest. “But I think I could be serious about a side job in cam work. I’ll let you know once I’ve read all this.”
“I look forward to your call. Oh, and Dick?”
�
�What?”
“Pick a different stage name, or I’m pulling out the pink slips.”
Three days into Mike’s new, abstinent existence, he was already starting to itch.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on having regular access to sex. He hadn’t thought of porn as being in the same genre as sex. It was work. A perfunctory task he performed along with things like going to the grocery store and getting his tires rotated. It was analogous to how a waiter who spent all day on their feet might not consider that a workout.
But by the fourth day, his itch had developed into a full-blown rash. It’d gotten to the point where he’d started being hyperaware of how much sex was in advertisements. Every time he saw a billboard with a naked torso on it, he twitched. Plus, without work to fill his schedule, he was left with more free time than he’d had since his college days.
He did a decent job of occupying himself at first. He got reacquainted with his apartment complex’s pool. Tanning wasn’t an option, due to his freckled complexion, but it was good to get some vitamin D. He tried new protein shake recipes, and he meal-prepped enough chicken and brown rice to feed him for a week. He even delved into the depths of his Murmur Inc. email account and got to some long-overdue responses. But when all that was finished, he was still left with far too much time to sit around with his own thoughts.
This had led him to an uncomfortable realization: over the course of the past three years, his life had come to center around Murmur Inc. When he wasn’t working, he was thinking about work. He’d previously spent his free time going to the gym to keep his body in peak form and marketing himself online. He had every kind of social media there was, and he interacted with his fan base daily.
His handful of friends were also in sex work, and while they were sympathetic when they heard news of his quarantine—the sex industry’s rumor mill was one of the greatest in the world—none of them volunteered to pop by with chicken soup.
He couldn’t blame them. The last time he’d shown up for a night out, Rio had been hosting the World Cup. He detested clubbing, and that seemed to be all anyone in this town wanted to do.
Still, he needed to do something, or he was going to get cabin fever in his own apartment. He was so restless, he almost considered calling his parents. That was the definition of “desperate times.” They’d never even been to his place. He could imagine his dad’s snide remarks about how Mike had forgotten his trailer-trash roots and was too fancy for them now.
I’ll take a rain check on that particular conversation.
That wasn’t the worst result of his sabbatical, though. The more time he had to think, the more he realized how often he thought about Josh. It’d made sense before, when they were working together, or when Mike was concocting a tactful way to deliver bad news to him, but now it was getting ridiculous. He thought about him when he was cooking, and he wondered what sort of food Josh liked. He thought about him when he was getting dressed, and he remembered Josh’s terrible Christmas sweater with odd fondness. And most alarmingly, Mike thought about him before he fell asleep at night.
His musings were split into two camps. Part of him was still racked with guilt every time he thought about the situation he’d put Josh in. There was a chance Josh was never going to speak to him again after this, supported by the fact that he’d hung up on him the other day. Mike knew Josh must’ve been in shock, but he still thought it was further proof that Josh was a grade-A brat.
Another part of him, however, wanted to see Josh again so badly he ached. And not just because Josh was the last person he’d slept with before he’d been condemned to celibacy. Though that certainly played a role in it. Josh might not ever get a chance to star in one of Murmur Inc.’s blockbusters, but he’d had a starring role in Mike’s fantasies every night.
Whenever Mike closed his eyes, Josh was there. Spread out over a mattress, naked and panting and flushed. Sometimes he was on his back with his cock jutting straight up from his body, quivering and leaking. Sometimes he was on his stomach with his legs spread wide enough for Mike to kneel between them, whimpering while Mike fingered him into a quivering mess. But most of the time, Mike’s fantasies took advantage of Josh’s light build and had Josh straddling him, riding Mike’s cock while his thighs flexed and his back arched, moaning and crying out and shaking when he—
Mike, who had been in the process of scrubbing his already-pristine kitchen counters, dropped the sponge with an exasperated sigh. He was wearing sweatpants, thank God, because for the third time that day alone, he was hard. Fuck. If he kept masturbating at this rate, he was going to give himself a friction burn.
He took a deep breath, picked the sponge back up, and willed his erection to go away. It worked. For one whole minute. Then Josh sprang back into his thoughts, and the cycle began anew.
“What is it about him?” he asked his empty apartment.
It was a question that had plagued him from pretty much the moment they’d met. The more he interacted with Josh, the more he thought he was zeroing in on an answer. Ever since the HIV scare, Mike had learned something new about the blond-haired center of his attention. He’d learned Josh was steady in a crisis—or at least, as steady as could be expected—and that he was not above brushing Mike off.
There had been a part of Mike that had hoped they’d bond over their mutual worries in the time between now and when they got tested, but he hadn’t heard a peep from Josh since their phone call. He could only pray the very experience that he’d hoped would bring them together wasn’t about to drive them further apart.
That might be another part of why he couldn’t get Josh out of his head. It’d been a long time since Mike had gotten rejected. Not since he started working out in high school and got the confidence to match his new body. Plus, he’d never been rejected by someone who’d seen his dick. Josh was full of surprises.
“You’re acting like a lovesick puppy,” he muttered to himself as he washed off his hands and dried them on a kitchen towel.
Something had to give. All this pining with no action behind it wasn’t his style. If he were certain Josh wasn’t pissed at him, he’d call him up and ask him out again. But the ball was in Josh’s court, and so Mike was stranded on Lovewreck Island until Josh made a move.
Doesn’t mean you gotta stay home and sit by the phone. You still have your pride, Harwood. You’re not gonna wait around for some guy. Get off your ass and find a good use for your time.
With a sigh, he finished up in the kitchen and climbed the spiral staircase leading up to the loft. There, his little home office awaited him. He sunk into his squishy office chair, fired up his desktop, and opened a multi-tab browser window that had all his usual sites ready and waiting.
Mike had majored in marketing in college, before he’d ever given porn a shot. Once upon a time, he’d had dreams of going into advertising. Now, he used his social-media savvy to ensure his new head shots got at least a thousand likes on Instagram.
It’s funny how life works out.
Mike had already hit his marketing goals for the day, but he burned an hour going through new Facebook likes and comments. He had some threads going on Murmur Inc.’s Facebook, but there was also his personal page to peruse.
When that was finished, he moved on to the task he’d been dreading: checking his voice mail. He’d gotten several phone calls from people he’d performed with pre-Nickiegate. He was willing to bet Colette had delivered the news to them, and they weren’t taking it as well as Josh had. What happened to good old-fashioned killing the messenger? Why’d they have to blame him?
Sure enough, three of the voice mails were from Aaron Cooper, a gay-for-pay straight guy that Mike had done a barebacking scene with. And he was not happy. Mike hadn’t heard that many gay slurs since the last time he’d been in a locker room.
Mike deleted the voice mail halfway through, listened to the rest, and did the same. Then he moved on with his life. There was nothing else he could do. If an edge of gui
lt still gnawed at him, it was overshadowed by how many of his own worries he had to deal with.
When he’d checked everything he could check, he navigated to Murmur Inc.’s website. He wanted to see what new faces Colette had gotten to fill in while a chunk of her usual roster was out of commission.
Sure enough, when the homepage loaded, there was a big flash banner at the top announcing the arrival of Murmur Inc.’s newest stars. Several of them were faces Mike recognized from the most recent orientations. Others must have been bandage hires, because he’d never seen them around and their head shots weren’t up to Colette’s usual quality standards.
Mike scanned the list twice, looking for one face in particular, and frowned. Josh was absent from the lineup.
Did he already quit? I remember he talked about it, but I didn’t think he’d just . . . disappear.
Mike’s stomach sank. Even if Josh had quit, his videos should still be up. Colette would never throw out good footage, and porn stars quit all the time. Had Josh asked that she take them down? If he’d made a piteous enough case, she might have taken the loss. Mike knew of a couple of occasions where a shooting star had begged for their footage to never hit the internet, and Colette had obliged. Her frozen CEO heart was capable of bleeding.
Why would Josh do that, though? Mike supposed it was none of his business. If that was the decision Josh had made, it was his own. There was something unsettling, however, about having every trace of their time together erased. Mike had planned on watching their videos. For research, of course.
Liar.
He gave himself a small shake, trying to dispel the ennui that had crept over him. If Josh’s videos were gone, and he’d quit Murmur Inc., there was nothing left tying them together. Josh could ghost him, and that would be the end of that. It’d be like they’d never met at all. The disappointment that seeped into Mike was so cold it burned.
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