Camgirl Read online

  In fact, Cathy was an actual whore—not just someone who wrote it on her birthday cake.

  Was I actually like Cathy? Was I like other sex workers, too?

  I smiled.

  I went to the library and picked up books on sex work, from biographies of famous madams to Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business. Almost overnight I became pro-brothel and pro-whore, and I stayed up late into the night watching Pretty Woman on repeat. I didn’t care about the part where Richard Gere showers Julia Roberts with flowers and love; I cared about the part where Julia Roberts chews her gum too loudly and mocks Gere’s inability to drive stick.

  She was cocky. Hot. Powerful. Sassy.

  She had the same power over men that Cathy did in East of Eden. It was the same power I saw strippers hold in movies. It was the power to trap men, control them, suck them dry.

  But more than that, it was the power to command attention.

  ×××

  After Sam, I began to confront other aspects of my sexuality: namely, the fact that I had always been attracted to women as well as men. I had struggled to accept this over the years and for the most part pushed it completely to the side while I compulsively dated boys. Boys were simple and easy and expected; how’s a girl supposed to tell if another girl is into her anyway?

  The rest of high school passed as I continued to jump from boy to boy to boy, and I began to wonder if maybe the reason I loathed sex so much was that I wasn’t bi. Maybe I was, in fact, a lesbian. So I jumped from girl to girl to girl to girl and quickly realized that gender made no difference. I still loved seduction, I still hated sex, and after a relationship ended, I always, always, ended up feeling more alone than ever. I declared celibacy several times and inevitably found myself drunk, manic, and sweaty, throwing myself on the first guy I could find. I was incapable of not dating.

  After high school, I went to UC Berkeley and studied Comparative Literature. I thought college might ease my compulsive need for affection, but it only supercharged it. I dated ravers, cowboys, basketball players, a meth addict, and over a dozen software engineers. I threw myself at the guy who sold me my phone at AT&T, the cashier at Whole Foods, and my tall, lanky yoga teacher.

  I also worked every job I could think of, hoping one of them would present itself as my thing. My passion. My everything. I worked as a library clerk, a web designer, an English teacher, a vintage clothing buyer, a busboy, an ice cream scooper, an art studio assistant, a nanny, and a copywriter. I worked in a retirement home, with a theater company, on film sets, at a publishing house, for a toy start-up. I never kept a job more than a few months before I moved on to the next. I was in nursing school, grad school, real estate school, art school. If it existed, I tried it, and if I had tried it, inevitably, I had decided it was not for me.

  After college, I found myself where I started: back in Boulder. Only now it was a Boulder full of people on dating apps, and I became consumed with OkCupid and Tinder. Each time a date ended, I would lock myself in my bathroom and heat up my safety pin. I wondered what was wrong with me. I must be the fucking devil. There was no other explanation. Why couldn’t I stop myself from seducing men I didn’t want? Why did I panic every time they tried to touch me? Why couldn’t I just be happy and normal? I drank too much, slept too little, and every day started with the same question: What the hell is wrong with me? Nothing felt like enough.

  One night, I was hanging out with Jonah, who was in Boulder visiting his parents. He was living in New York as a struggling artist, which I envied. I was certain he was living out his romantic urban dreams while I was stuck in my hometown making minimum wage, selling handmade Italian shoes. We had stayed in touch over the years, each of us motivated by the desire to finally prove we had “won” our relationship. We were mostly platonic, but our friendship was sprinkled with that sexual tension reserved exclusively for high school sweethearts. Once in a while, Jonah would even convince me to have sex with him, which I mostly did when I wanted something.

  We were sitting in his old Camry when he asked if I wanted to go to a strip club with him because his friend Cat was auditioning.

  I blinked, fighting back a twinge of jealousy.

  His friend Cat, or his “friend” Cat?

  Half of me screamed, “Fuck yes!” and the other half sneered, “What a hoe.” What ended up coming out of my mouth was a garbled attempt at nonchalance.

  “Yeah, I mean, if we have to,” I said.

  “We don’t have to, I just thought you might like to.”

  “Why would I like to?”

  “You like strip clubs…” Jonah gave me a look.

  Ah yes, I did love strip clubs, didn’t I? I absolutely loved them. I spoke quite often about how fun they were and how they weren’t awkward at all and how many ways there were to put a dollar in a stripper’s thong. I was the queen of all things sex, so of course I loved strip clubs. I lived at strip clubs. Strip clubs were my soul mate. I had, unfortunately, never been to a strip club.

  “Yeah, just make sure you have enough singles, because tonight’s on you,” I replied.

  Jonah shrugged and pulled into a parking spot. “I’ll get some cash.”

  He picked me up that night, and we walked the seven blocks downtown to Neon. Its entrance was down a short, dark alley, because no matter how open-minded and progressive my hometown pretends to be, patrons of the club still had to enter through the back, properly hiding their shame.

  The alley the club shared with a local dive was full of people smoking and laughing. A small sign marked the staircase that led down into the strip club, and Jonah spotted Cat sitting nearby. He made his way to her. I followed, sizing her up.

  Cat was a thin girl, gaunt even, with dark hair and wide eyes. She had delicate fingers and pale, bluish skin. She sucked on her cigarette in a way that told me she was nervous. When she smiled to greet me, I noticed her front teeth overlapped just slightly in the middle.

  Oh good, I thought. I’m definitely hotter than her.

  And just like that, all jealousy dissipated. This girl was about to make a fool of herself for me and Jonah to mock. Perfect. What a glorious Wednesday.

  We descended the brick stairs to the club, and I slunk down behind Jonah, following Cat with my eyes. The entrance had heavy red velvet curtains and a poster of a redhead with pink lingerie. Ladies Night! Wednesdays, $1 SHOTS!!! it advertised in gold block lettering.

  Cat pushed past the curtains confidently, smiling at the bouncer.

  “I’m auditioning,” she announced.

  “It’s still a ten-dollar cover for your friends.”

  Jonah pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and passed it to him. He nodded and stamped our wrists with a red heart.

  Past the curtains, the club was dark and dimly lit. The ceiling was too low, which gave the entire room a cave-like feel. To one side a bartender flirted with customers. A long catwalk with chairs on either side wound its way down the length of the club, ending in a small stage near a DJ booth, where an overweight man in a Black Sabbath T-shirt and a baseball cap played Kesha.

  Cat smiled at the bartender and walked through an office door near the back marked “Employees Only.”

  Jonah asked me if I wanted a drink, and I ordered a vodka cranberry. Drinking at bars was still relatively new to me, and it was the only drink I could think of when the bartender asked. Vodka cranberry was something that hot girls ordered on shows like Sex and the City. Jonah ordered a dirty gin martini because somehow, at twenty-one, he was already four times more dignified than I’d ever be.

  It wasn’t the sort of strip club where you could lurk in a corner and shyly sneak glances at the girls. If you wanted to sit, you sat front and center. That particular night, Neon had about a dozen patrons, and I was acutely aware that, besides the strippers and cocktail waitresses, I was the only woman in the room.

  Cat r
an up to us holding a coral polyester dress on a hanger, the sort of thing I would’ve thought was super sexy when I was ten.

  “They’re making me wear this.” She mimed a gag.

  I tried to smile at her, but I couldn’t catch her eye.

  “Well, wish me luck.” She gave Jonah a smile and a touch on the shoulder and skipped off toward another door labeled “Private.”

  A girl on stage was finishing her set, picking dollar bills off the catwalk, tucking them into a small clutch purse on a chain. A few men sat in the surrounding seats, and a few more lounged at the bar. As I sipped my watery vodka cranberry, I pretended to meander casually, making eye contact with every guy I could. It was important that, while they might be there to watch the strippers, they’d be thinking about me later.

  Jonah and I moved to sit in the second row back from the catwalk. The music started, and I watched Cat step onstage.

  “Gentlemen and ladies, please welcome Starla! Starla’s auditioning tonight to become one of our dancers, so let’s be sure to give her a warm, Neon welcome!” The DJ raised the music and nodded to Cat.

  Cat wobbled in her platform heels. The coral polyester dress, three sizes too big, started slipping down her shoulder. She flung herself at the pole, then looked right at Jonah. She could barely walk in those shoes. I almost didn’t want to look. Certain disaster forthcoming.

  Cat took the pole in her left hand, steadied herself, and then dropped into a squat so smoothly it barely seemed real. She slid her body back up the pole, only touching it with her shoulder blades and her ass. The coral dress began sliding off again, and this time, she let it. It slid down her stomach and she ran a finger from her sternum to her belly button, tugging her panties away from her protruding hip bone.

  Cat swung a leg around the pole then lowered herself to the catwalk. She crawled toward us. I looked in her eyes. She didn’t blink. She licked her lips, winked, then pulled her body backward by her hips in a way that reminded me of a snake.

  I couldn’t tell if I was attracted to her or murderously jealous. I wanted to be the hot one. People were supposed to be watching me. But she was the one on stage. The way she moved was unreal. She was too pale, too thin, wearing an ill-fitting dress, but she made it work. It didn’t matter how she looked. All that mattered was that she owned herself. She dropped the dress and kicked it to the side. A man hollered. Another whistled. She grinned.

  She was riveting. Powerful.

  Holy shit. Cat didn’t suck. Cat wasn’t even mediocre. Cat was killing it.

  Jonah smirked at me, and I sipped my watery drink.

  I tried to look cool. It didn’t work.

  ×××

  Cat’s first song was over and she slipped backstage to change for her second. Not that she needed to; it was clear from her first that Neon would be very honored to have her dance there, thank you very much.

  Jonah went to the bathroom, and I sidled up to the bar, desperate for another drink. I was confused. I sat down next to a man. He was middle-aged, nervous, and slightly overweight. My type of guy. The kind I wouldn’t have to try too hard for.

  “Hey there, I’m Isa.”

  “I’m Gary.” He eyed me suspiciously. I was probably half his age, and he was trying to figure out if I worked there or not.

  “Do you think I’m hot, Gary?”

  “Um. Yeah?”

  I smiled and bit my straw. “You don’t sound very sure of yourself.” I moved my eyes up his body.

  “No. I mean, you are. You definitely are. Do you dance here?”

  “Nah,” I sighed and sipped my drink. “I could, though, don’t you think? I could be a stripper.”

  Gary nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, definitely.”

  “I’m hotter than that last girl, at least.” I shrugged in the direction of the stage Cat had just vacated.

  “Yeah, you are. For sure.”

  I wrapped Gary in a hug, rewarding him for his praise.

  “Yeah. If you wanted to practice, I could help,” he offered.

  Strippers like Cat were the embodiment of confidence, sensuality, ease. She wasn’t secretly terrified of her vagina; she pushed it front and center into men’s faces, and they couldn’t help but shove dollar after dollar into the thin piece of fabric barely covering it.

  “I’d need to learn how to dance. But like, that girl can barely dance. I bet I could do that.”

  Gary bought me a shot. “If you want to, you could come to my house. I can give you pointers.” He beamed. “I come here a lot, you know. Almost every night. I watch a lot of strippers.”

  As Cat entered for her second set, Gary’s eyes moved over her body. I glared at his temple. He caught my eye and blushed. I made the mature decision not to go up onstage and throw my drink in Cat’s face.

  “You could dance. You would be a good stripper,” Gary tried again.

  He was right. I would be a good stripper. I would be a good sex worker. I was basically the same as Cathy, after all. As Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I was meant to seduce men. Hell, maybe I wouldn’t even hate sex anymore if I were getting paid. I thought about the sex workers I had seen in movies. Even if they had sex with a client, it wasn’t to prove their love or cement a relationship. It was just a job, and if I chose to become a sex worker it would be the same: transactional, disconnected.

  I thought of Julia Roberts’ mantra in Pretty Woman: “I say who. I say when. I say how much.”

  I threw back another shot from Gary and stumbled over to Jonah, who had emerged from the bathroom and was lingering by the back door. He wanted to go outside to smoke, and I followed him up the stairs.

  “Jonah!”

  He looked back at me, laughing. “You’re wasted.”

  “Jonah, listen to me. Jonah!”

  Jonah leaned against a wall and lit a cigarette, painfully cool and collected next to my sloppy, drunk ass.

  “Jonah. I figured it out, I solved it.”

  “Solved what?”

  “It! My life! My entire fucking life.” I took a breath. “Jonah, I want to be a stripper, too. Jonah. I need to be a stripper. Maybe even a prostitute.” The sober part of my brain chimed an alarm, telling me I was a total mess. But the drunk part of my brain didn’t care.

  “Okay, whatever you want.”

  “No, Jonah, listen to me. This is the answer!”

  “The answer to what?”

  “Everything! Jonah, it makes so much sense. Gary thinks I’d be good at it. Do you think I’d be good at it?”

  Jonah sighed and leaned his head against the brick wall. “Gary?”

  “Yeah,” I sputtered, angry that he didn’t seem to care. “Jonah, would I? Would I be good?”

  Jonah pushed back his curly hair and seemed to consider. “Yeah, you’d be good at it.” He pulled out another cigarette, eyeing me coldly. “You’re already amazing at screwing over men.”

  Bleary-eyed and cold, I sat on the fire escape behind Jonah and watched people smoking and laughing in the breezy alley. I could take my talents as a seductress and turn them into a career. This could be a way to solve the problem of loving seduction but hating sex. Sex already felt like a job. I was finally going to own that. This was it: I was going to become a sex worker.

  Over and over, I whispered my new mantra: I say who, I say when, I say how much.

  Million Dollar Man

  A few months following the Club Neon expedition, I had turned over a new leaf. I had stopped drinking, chopped all my hair off, and committed myself to finding a way to try my hand at sex work. It was late on a Monday afternoon, and the shoe store I worked at was dead. When it was this quiet, my manager Heather and I often spent hours dusting and re-dusting, trying on high heels, and performing dramatic readings of the personals section on Craigslist.

  Heather affected a sloppy British accent and began reading on
e of the posts.

  “If you understand the physiology behind getting acquainted with your derriere…” she read, adding, “What does that even mean? You touch your own butt?”

  I slapped my ass. “I’m sure he thinks he’s real classy saying derriere instead of ass.”

  Heather clicked to the next ad. “Oh God, this one’s rich. Ready?” She feigned a shaky old man voice and bent over, leaning on an imaginary cane. “Seventy-four-year-old man seeks woman for pampering. Must be attractive D/D free. I can provide an allowance of $1,000 a month. NO PROSTITUTES!” Heather shouted the last rule, dissolving into laughter. “I wonder how many times she’d have to have sex with him? He’s literally asking for a prostitute. How can he not see that?”

  “It’s a sugar baby, not a prostitute,” I said. “I mean, technically she doesn’t have to have sex with him.”

  “I wonder if a seventy-four-year-old can even have sex.” She laughed. “Jesus, man is delusional if he thinks a girl would do that.”

  Especially for a thousand bucks a month, I wanted to say, but Heather was already shrieking about the next ad in her best Russian accent.

  That night, I sat on my air mattress in the tiny room I rented. I went back to Craigslist and stared at the post Heather had found. I Googled “sugar daddy.” A dozen sugar daddy dating sites filled the screen. Having a sugar daddy could be better than stripping. Easier, even. One guy to seduce. One guaranteed monthly paycheck. I wouldn’t have to learn to dance. Having a sugar daddy wasn’t as public as stripping, as illegal as prostitution, or as permanent as porn. It was just kind of like Patrick Dempsey in The Wedding Date. All you had to do was sign up online.

  “Fifty-four-year old seeks unicorn.”

  “Married man seeks his princess.”

  “Let’s travel the world! Five-star resorts included.”

  The profiles on the site contained everything you’d expect from a dating profile: name, age, location, likes, dislikes, favorite music, favorite movies. They also contained a section for “allowance,” or how much the user was willing to pay their sugar baby.