Camgirl Read online

  Alex and I were having dinner one night when I expressed my general malaise about the whole situation.

  “I’m just meant to do something with my life, you know?”

  He nodded. He had been encouraging me to start a business of some sort anyway, claiming I was far too smart to just live off of him. I had started getting back into web development, a job I had previously given up on after deciding it was painfully frustrating.

  “I just don’t know what to do.” I sipped my drink. “I want to do something fun. You know. Not build websites again. My friend Cat is a stripper.” I searched his face for a response. “Her job seems fun.”

  “Stripping is awful,” he said. “This coming from a guy that likes strippers. Trust me, it’s full of perverts and guys grabbing at you all night. It’s hard work.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Camming, on the other hand, that’s where the real money’s at.”

  “Camming?”

  “Yeah, you know, camgirls.” He bit into a cheese curd. “You’ve never heard of camgirls?”

  “Camgirls?” I leaned forward. “What’s that?”

  Alex pulled out his phone, opened a web page, and passed it to me.

  A woman named Queen Molly was sitting in a bathtub, only her neck and head visible above a pile of foamy bubbles. She had large green eyes and long brown hair. Her smile was too wide and she laughed, attempting to sip out of an oversized wine glass.

  “Okay, okay…” she shushed her audience. “dPop said he wanted a story about a unicorn, so that’s what we’re doing.” She paused, reading the screen in front of her. “I don’t care that unicorns are trendy. That’s a good thing, Fizz.” She took another sip of wine. “Nothing wrong with being a basic bitch.”

  Queen Molly sat up in the bubbles and placed a handful of foam on her head in an attempt at a crown. The suds slid down the side of her face, covering her mouth and making her cough. “Queen Molly says hush!”

  She laughed again. A steady stream of dings filtered in, the sound of viewers tipping her with tokens. She sssshhhh’d loudly. “Stop tipping! I’m trying to tell my story!”

  The tip sounds died down.

  “Okay, so once upon a time there was a unicorn named Bill,” she began. The tip sounds picked up again. She burst out laughing. “Stop it! You guys! Oh my God, so rude.” Her eyes lit up as more tokens poured in. I turned up the volume on his phone. Alex glanced around the restaurant.

  “Okay, so Bill was an accountant, and he spent every day at his office.” More tips.

  “No! Dragon, you can’t tip me to change his job, he’s an accountant.” She laughed again.

  Tips. Tips. Tips.

  Queen Molly was the first camgirl I had ever seen, and I was in awe. She was a genius. I had never seen anyone so skillfully pull money out of people before.

  That night, I went home and watched Queen Molly for the entirety of her show: a whopping five hours. After the bath, Molly went to her living room and auctioned off portraits of celebrities she painstakingly drew on a whiteboard propped up behind her.

  “Cher for three hundred! We have Cher for three hundred!” she crooned, clapping her hands with glee. It was everything I loved about stripping but on a larger scale. Molly was in a bra and panties and would sometimes get tips to flash her boobs or spank her ass, but the majority of her viewers wanted to engage with her activities. They wanted her to have a good time and would pay her to do whatever would keep her infectious giggle rolling. She winked and smiled and flirted and drew, then blew a kiss goodnight and signed off.

  I closed my laptop and sat on the floor, stunned.

  The next day, Alex and I left for Mexico. I sat in my first-class seat with my new iPad. “Top camgirls,” I typed into Google. I paged through high-res photos of girls posing with their Adult Video Network awards, the highest accolade in the adult entertainment industry. Other girls clutched brightly colored lollipops. Candy-colored sex toys littered their bedrooms. I clicked on a link. A moan escaped the iPad. By the time we had landed, I had borrowed Alex’s credit card and loaded up two viewer accounts, one on MyFreeCams.com (the site Queen Molly was on) and one on another site, Jasmin.com, which seemed like a high-class, glamorous version of the former.

  I quickly found Purple Vixen, the redheaded star of Jasmin. She was, as far as I could tell, the undisputed best camgirl in the entire world. She had won awards, amassed millions of followers, and had a captivating charisma that put even Queen Molly to shame. She sat on her red silk bedsheets in matching lingerie, she sipped scotch on the rocks and played jazz on vinyl. “Well, I don’t know about that…” She smirked, looked right into the camera. “Surely someone has a better idea than just sitting here?”

  She dared me to pay her. And, boy, did I. I even requested a private show, which meant Alex paid six bucks per minute for me to talk to her without anyone else watching. I felt an awkward mix of awe and attraction, unsure of what to do with my precious minutes.

  “You’re beautiful,” I typed after an uncomfortable amount of time had passed. I watched her eyes read my message.

  She smiled into the camera. “Thank you. What’s your name?”

  “Belle,” I typed, using Alex’s nickname for me. “And I’m with Alex.”

  “Belle! And Alex.” She seemed so delighted that I actually smiled even though she couldn’t see me. “How exciting. I love playing with couples.”

  “Oh my God, Alex, SHE’S TALKING TO ME!” I shrieked across the hotel suite. Alex glanced up from where he was lounging in the private hot tub with a cigar.

  “That’s awesome!”

  “OH MY GOD, WHAT SHOULD I SAY?”

  Alex puffed his cigar and shrugged. “Ask her to do something.”

  “Will you dance for me?” I typed nervously.

  As the message popped up on her screen, she was already untying the silk ribbon holding her bra closed.

  I could see the clicker counting down six dollars every minute. I watched her hum and gently move to the sweet sounds of Miles Davis. I was entranced. She giggled and asked me if I liked jazz. I felt like she liked me. I felt like she actually liked me.

  “I think she’s really cool, actually,” I told Alex over fish tacos that night. “She seems to genuinely like a lot of the things that I do. Like, she reads all the time, for example she said she loves Dickens, which is crazy because I do too…” I took another bite and swallowed quickly. “And, oh my God, how cool is it that she listens to vinyl? She was really excited when I told her I had a record player. She said she was gonna message me a list of her favorite albums!”

  “You know you’re paying her to like you, right?” Alex asked.

  I nodded, stuffing more taco into my mouth. “Well,” I corrected, “actually you’re paying her.”

  Later, I floated in our private pool, sipping tea and munching on the dessert boat Alex had delivered to our suite. Sure, this was nice, I thought. But it wasn’t enough. Being a sugar baby never had been, and my inability to max out Alex’s credit cards made me a woefully uninspired sugar baby at that. I wanted to sink my teeth into a career.

  I wanted an identity.

  I made a decision. When we got back, I was going to start over. I was going to throw myself into my new calling, my new passion. I was going to put my seduction skills to work like never before.

  I was going to be a camgirl.

  Say My Name

  I spent hours online watching camgirls. I watched them from my phone while I stood in line at Starbucks. I watched girls who worked exclusively as mimes, girls who only did shows with other girls, and girls who swayed gently to candlelit post-rock while sexily tossing their hair. There was even a girl who fucked ventriloquist dummies. I passed hours on my bed, hunched over my laptop. I went to alexa.com and typed in dozens of different camsites.

  Chaturbate.com: 2,141,000 da
ily visitors.

  Jasmin.com: 61,396.

  MyFreeCams.com: 478,000.

  I studied where their viewers were from: Denmark, Russia, USA, Australia.

  Which country had the best tippers? I googled tipping customs in Japan.

  Chaturbate was plastered with ads. Hot Single MILFS want you NOW! Fuck your favorite elf: enter if you dare. MyFreeCams.com looked like a GeoCities site from 2001: bright green and littered with animations and colorful gifs. Jasmin’s interface was sleek, modern, with a dark red background and white text. I researched the psychology of color. Red meant daring, youthful, exciting. Imaginative.

  I sat in Purple Vixen’s chat room on Jasmin and wrote down every single tip for four hours. I timed her private shows, watching her disappear behind a curtain that cost $6/minute to remove. On most sites, girls stripped and touched themselves in public chat, where I could watch for free by simply clicking “yes, I’m 18+,” but on Jasmin, girls only got naked if they were paid by the minute.

  One morning, I scrolled through the chat rooms of Purple Vixen’s coworkers, selecting the prettiest girls from the “online now” screen, which featured a large collage of girls, all in lingerie. I clicked on Lyla4u. A video feed popped up in the middle of the screen. Lyla was pale and tall, with waist-length blonde hair. She was wearing a silver bodysuit and dancing in front of a large, gold-framed mirror, mostly ignoring the chat feed to the right of the video. In the chat, viewers posted questions, compliments, and requests.

  “You must take me private to talk to me,” she teased to no one in particular. Below the video feed, there was a selection of her photographs next to a large “buy credits!” button.

  SkylerStorm. Sexydreams. Candy0cane. LittleMilf. Amberxoxo.

  I watched messages flash across their chat rooms: “you’re so beautiful,” “you’re perfect,” “please talk to me,” “I need you.” I pictured their viewers, hundreds of men glued to their screens worshipping every movement. It made me shiver. I shut my laptop and leaned back against my bed.

  I would need a name. I wanted something similar to my actual name, or at least something I emotionally connected to. I wasn’t interested in creating an alter ego. I wanted to create me, just…cooler.

  I googled Sasha Grey, scanning Wikipedia for her real name. Marina Ann Hantzis. No connection there. I tried Stoya, a porn star who Queen Molly had been gushing about the day before. Her real name was Jessica Stoyadinovich. That made sense. Her porn name was part of her real name. She was connected to it. I brainstormed, crookedly tearing a page out of my planner to write on.

  Isabella Anna Mazzei, I wrote in large letters.

  Derivatives: Bella? Overused. Plus God forbid I get compared to that Twilight girl. Anna? Boring. Conservative. Something edgy? Mazz? Mazzy? I could dig that, like Mazzy Star. I practiced out loud.

  “Hi, guys. I’m Mazzy!”

  “Aw, thanks. My name is Mazzy.”

  No. Too…too close to fuzzy.

  Mazzy was that girl at the rave with a panda backpack and neon green moon boots.

  My initials are IAM, and my mother had always told me she chose this on purpose, because of the Bible verse “I am what I am.” I scrolled through babynamewizard.com, ignoring the engagement ring ads that were clearly concerned with my single mom status. Then, I found it. Oona. One. It had the same fatalistic quality of “I Am.” Alternate spellings: Ona, Una. TheOnlyUna.

  The only one.

  The next day, I sat in a pedicure chair next to Alex at the nail salon and went over the notes I had amassed in my glittery pink binder.

  “I’m going to appeal to all men,” I explained. “I’m not sure how much I should lean into the educated thing.”

  “Why not? All guys like smart girls.” Alex clicked a button and his chair began vibrating. “Not enough men know how important pedicures are. You should make sure to educate the masses when you get started.”

  I ignored him and flipped a page in my binder.

  “Even my nail polish choices matter. Look, for example—” I scanned my list, “—most girls on Jasmin have French tips or

  nude-painted nails. I haven’t seen a single girl with unpainted nails.”

  “That makes sense. Those girls are sophisticated.”

  I read off my list of traits of the top camgirls in the world. “The top girls are usually in their twenties. Always thin. Mostly intelligent, but never talk about their education.” I eyed Alex pointedly. “They all have long hair, which is obviously an issue.” I still had my pixie haircut from the year before and it was just at that awkward, semi-grown-out phase where I only looked cute if I plastered it with bobby pins and mousse.

  “I like your hair.” Alex adjusted his massage chair again. “And, anyway, who cares what the top girls do? You’re blazing your own trail. Do your own thing.”

  “I care because clearly what they’re doing works. Oh, that brings me to another point. They’re all…” I glanced down at the two women doing our pedicures. They remained focused on our feet. I leaned closer to Alex and whispered, “shaved.” I gestured to my vagina for good measure.

  “Like I said, I like your hair.” Alex winked. I rolled my eyes.

  Well, I was thin, and in my twenties: check, check. These girls also had a soft spot for what I called “relatable media” in my spreadsheet. That meant that, despite being a full twenty to thirty years younger than her average fan, each top girl seemed to have a taste for the music/movies/television shows of her fans’ generation. In fact, I’d watched one girl who no longer even stripped; instead she simply sat, talking and playing classic rock. Fortunately, I already loved eighties music. Check.

  There were a few broader qualities top girls had in common, too. For example, they all had a quirk of some sort. One girl was really good at video games and streamed her gaming on YouTube and Twitch. One girl was a total asshole and attracted guys who liked being bullied and told to shut up.

  “If I don’t make eight hundred dollars in the next four minutes,” I watched her say, “I’m signing off because you guys are a fucking waste of my time.”

  When I got home, nails freshly French-tipped, I signed up for Jasmin. I was a classy lady after all, and these women didn’t get naked until you paid them. That was the way I wanted to be. Men would have to pay if they wanted to see the goods. I wanted Una to be every man’s dream girl, but I also wanted her to be my dream girl. This was an opportunity to reinvent myself. To prove that I was the most desirable girl in the world. I filled out my profile on Jasmin with the dreamy details of a slightly cooler version of me. “The best lies are exaggerations,” I told myself.

  Name: Una

  Favorite car: Vintage Mustang

  Favorite band: Tears for Fears

  I imagined Una, driving through rural Wyoming in her ’65 Tropical Turquoise Mustang.

  Favorite meal: Sushi. No, something more down-to-earth. Hot wings.

  Craziest thing I’ve ever done: Let’s find out ;)

  Damn. Una was cool. I was cool. Let my neighbors drink their beer and do their homework and lead their boring lives. I was entering the most popular and enduring profession there was—Ass for Cash: Internet Edition®. I smirked, thinking about Maggie and the other girls in high school. If only they could see me now.

  As I honed in on a persona, I cherry-picked qualities and copied them into a binder. I had a name and a backstory, now I needed a brand. I wanted Purple Vixen’s aesthetic. Queen Molly’s laugh. I liked how LisaBean chewed her lip when she was turned on, and how SweetTea made eye contact with the webcam. I was good at eye contact. Margot12 had cute nicknames for all her viewers, and Wilde_Blue_Sky danced in an awkward way that was both goofy and alluring. I was already awkward and alluring, so I had that nailed. Alex and I had decided that the best idea was to mention my college degree offhandedly, but never brag about it. Be smart, but not arrogant.
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br />   Which is how I am in real life, I reminded myself.

  I took truths and lies from my own life and layered them in to protect my true identity. Una was just a small-town girl (lie) with a comparative literature degree (truth) from UCLA (lie) and a cute habit of spitting out her drinks when she laughed too hard (truth, but probably not cute). Una would only wear vintage lingerie, because she was classy and sophisticated (huge lie). I picked a town in Wyoming that I had never even been to (Rawlins) and researched it so my lies would be accurate. I never said I was in Rawlins, but I certainly never said I was going to Panera, either—because Rawlins most definitely does not have a Panera. I fucked up a little bit with my frequent Starbucks cups, but who’s to say I wasn’t in Casper and only pretending to be in Rawlins?

  Over the course of a week I bought piles of sequin throw pillows and fuzzy blankets and sheepskin rugs. I ordered a sheet set in every color I could find. I walked past an antique store and purchased a large candelabra. I bought three different duvet covers, each of which I tried on my bed before realizing that the color scheme wasn’t working and returned them for three others.

  I asked Alex to take me to dinner, and over bowls of risotto I told him I didn’t want his money anymore.

  “Okay.” He chuckled a bit. “Don’t you want to wait until you make your own money first?”

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  “Belle, you’ve spent thousands this week on bedsheets alone. I can’t stop giving you money.”

  “I need the motivation. Plus, I don’t know how much time I’ll have to give you. I’m going to be so busy once I start.”