Cam Girl

by Leah Raeder

  “Hey, baby.” I untucked one leg and stretched it across the bedspread, my fingertips skimming the inside of a thigh. Hoodie Allen’s “No Interruption” thumped in the background, a murky hip-hop heartbeat. “Should I call you ‘Gag,’ or would you prefer something else?”

  gag4me: can u call me daddy

  I dropped my head a little, batting my eyelashes at the cam. “Yes, Daddy. Is this better?”

  gag4me: perfect

  gag4me: your a bad girl arent u morgan

  gag4me: u need to be punished

  I gazed directly into the lens. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I don’t know what gets into me.”

  gag4me: i know whats getting into u

  gag4me: turn around

  And so it went.

  I turned. The chat transcript scrolled on my phone beside the pillow. I ran a hand over my ass and when he said to spank myself, I did. For ten dollars a minute, I’d do anything on my list of approved sex acts. And some not on the list.

  “Daddy, it feels so good when you spank me. Is it supposed to hurt?”

  gag4me: oh now u done it

  gag4me: u need to learn your lesson

  gag4me: take out daddys cock

  In the nightstand, within easy reach, was a cache of my most-used toys: dildos in various skin tones, a vibrator, and several men’s ties.

  I took out a peach cock and stroked it for the cam. “Like this, Daddy?”

  gag4me: yea

  gag4me: perfect

  gag4me: suck me

  This part had taken a while to get right. Sucking a silicone dick did fuck-all for me, aside from knowing someone out there was getting off watching. But when I closed my eyes and remembered things—a guy I’d once met in a bar who’d gone down on me in his backseat, my nails gouging the leather, leaving ten tiny half-moons—I could perform. I imagined that guy standing at the edge of my bed, unzipping. I imagined giving as good as I’d gotten. Kissing his head slowly, circling it with my tongue. Taking him in an inch at a time. Sucking him deep and pulling back, giving him the slightest scrape of my teeth.

  gag4me: your a good little slut

  gag4me: take your clothes off

  I put the toy down, opened my jean shorts. Wriggled out with my legs in the air, ass to the cam. Hooked my thumbs in my thong and tugged.

  gag4me: oh u bad girl

  gag4me: did u wear that for me?

  “Yes, Daddy. I was hoping you’d punish me.”

  gag4me: take it off

  I was naked so often these days it didn’t feel momentous. Brief chill on my skin, the thrill of that cold finger of air between my legs, then nothing.

  “Do you want to fuck me, Daddy?”

  gag4me: it wouldnt be right

  gag4me: but i want u so bad

  gag4me: finger yourself while i jerk off

  My eyes glazed over, another memory taking hold. A soft hand between my legs. Night, gauzy sheets, skin whispering against skin. Fingers parting me, one to either side of my clit.

  Every day, a million-plus girls the world over fuck themselves live on the Internet for money. What set girls like me—like all of Frankie’s crew—apart is that we took it to the next level. My profile page didn’t just show a tatted-up twentysomething cupping her tits. It showed my signature item: a necktie slung around my throat, pulled tight by my fist.

  In kink, this is known as breath play.

  gag4me: look at my cock bb

  “It’s so big, Daddy. So big and hard. It must be torture. Can I help you release?”

  gag4me: get the tie

  I slid my free hand into the drawer, grasped a silk men’s necktie. Oxblood. The deepest of reds.

  In my wardrobe I had dozens more in various patterns and hues. This was my favorite. It looked like a vein. When I slipped the loop over my head my libido finally kicked in, my heart stuttering to life. I cinched tighter and my thighs tensed. The finger I was mechanically grinding against started to feel like an actual part of my body rather than a medical instrument.

  gag4me: tell me to come on your face

  “I want you to come on my face, Daddy.”

  gag4me: be daddys good little slut

  gag4me: choke yourself

  Neck flung back, tie taut. Silk dug into my carotids, my pulse twitching through the thread, the floodlights, the music, the whole world throbbing in sync. My lungs were full of dead air. Every blood cell rushed to my head, the body’s automatic attempt to save the brain. The brain will actually drain limbs and organs of precious blood to buy itself a few more seconds. When Ryan’s skull smashed open on the asphalt, his body poured red ink right out through that hole. Ellis once told me that near-death experiences are really just a short-circuiting brain releasing a final burst of electricity. For one moment, right at the end, a sort of hyperconsciousness activates. Every neuron fires in a barrage of rainbow light. You feel everything.

  Near-death is the only time I feel anything now.

  My eyes were closed. Or maybe I was blacking out already. Two fingers inside me, one fist on the noose. Limbs light as the air I could no longer breathe. All sound condensed into a heavy drone, filling my head like the ocean roaring out of a nautilus shell. Something tugged me upward. The lightness of my own body, so light it could no longer anchor itself to this earth.

  I was going to come. You’re supposed to wait for the client to say when, but fuck, fuck, I was going to come.

  In a vague way I sensed my arm spasming, pulling the tie tighter. If you catch the climax before it reaches crescendo you can prolong it. The trick is to keep breathing.

  Except it’s hard.

  It’s so hard.

  To stay.

  In this world.

  * * *

  I stared up at the glimmering brocade of golden Christmas lights weaving around the rafters. I’d passed out and woken up. It felt like a new day.

  I loosened the tie with a tingling hand. My whole body felt fuzzy, blurred.

  I pulled my laptop over from the edge of the bed.

  gag4me: wow bb

  gag4me: that was AMAAAAZING

  gag4me: ty for a great time

  gag4me: see u soon

  gag4me left the room.

  Session ended. Total: 14:43.

  Fifteen minutes of masturbation while I strangled myself with a tie. One hundred and fifty bucks. And all I had to do was die a little death. On webcam, for a stranger.

  I couldn’t tell if I’d actually come or not. Autoerotic asphyxiation plays havoc with the divide between pleasure and oblivion. And what’s the difference, really? Either way, it’s an annihilation. A small rehearsal for the grand exit that’s coming someday.

  How can I stand masturbating for voyeurs half a dozen times per night? Because I’m addicted to losing myself. I’m the original Suicide Girl. I destroy myself on cam night after night and men (and sometimes women) watch me and come.

  I shut my laptop lid. I’d made nearly one K tonight.

  My room at the studio—which I never thought of as “the studio” but, like everyone else, just the house—took up the entire attic. My cam setup occupied one corner: floods fitted with umbrellas to generate soft, even light, a bed decked in eggshell-white sheets, salvaged lobster trap nightstand crammed with photography books, prints tacked to the wall. Clients sometimes asked about the prints. Did you take those photos, Morgan? Yes. Why are they all of broken things? Because I’m broken. Everything I look at looks broken, too.

  I’d just slipped into pajama pants when the door banged open and a blond head ducked in. Dane.

  “You okay?”

  He’d been monitoring my cam—someone always monitored during breath play so I didn’t accidentally kill myself—and he’d seen me sign off. He knew I was fine. Just another excuse to come talk.

  I gave him a droll look and crossed the room.

  My real bed was a narrow twin wedged into the dormer window nook. I sprawled on it and pulled my knees up. The glass gleamed like a black mirror. Night cloa
ked Chebeague Island in a dark so deep and vacant it was less like darkness than outer space. Ocean fused with sky and even when I laid my forehead on the pane, there was nothing out there. In Maine, the abyss doesn’t lie beneath. It’s all around you.

  Dane drifted nearer, studying my body. I still wore only a bra and sleep pants, tats exposed, spilling over my ribs and down one hip and up one arm. Most were from my myth obsession phase: gryphon, minotaur, chimera. I’d drawn the mockups; Hector, my old boss, had inked me. For no particular reason, they were all on my right side. I liked the asymmetry.

  The last tattoo I’d ever inked was on an old friend. She’d had me draw a girl’s red-nailed hand, fingers clawed, skin sprouting black fur. “It’s for my little wolf,” she’d said.

  Typically I discouraged lovers’ tats. Pick someone more permanent in your life. Child. Parent. Best friend.

  “You killed it today.” Dane leaned on my desk. “Blew everyone else out of the water. Let’s celebrate.”

  “The day’s not over yet,” I said, my breath ghosting onto the glass.

  “Take a break. You’ll burn out.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  He came to the edge of the bed. In the window our faces rippled and warped, as if underwater.

  “Your spot’s not in danger,” he said. “You’ll be number one again this month.”

  His Henley clung to his chest and the wiry muscle coiling around his arms. Dane was lean in a serpentine way, a lazy grace in his body that could snap into hardness unexpectedly. I’d seen him work. He was one of us, a cam boy who jerked off for a mostly male audience. I’d watched him come on his belly. Watched him suck dildos while he stroked his dick. His eyebrows rose, prayerful, a humbled openness transfiguring his face when he came. An almost innocent beauty.

  “I’m not worried about my spot.”

  “The money?”

  I shrugged.

  “Then what’s in this for you?”

  “Anesthesia.” I pressed my palm to the cool glass. “The more I work, the less I feel.”

  Dane’s reflection locked eyes with mine. Two phantoms gazing at each other in a dark mirror.

  “Take a walk with me,” he said.

  A break from fucking inanimate objects might be nice.

  I followed him downstairs past three flights of closed doors, slivers of light knifing along the edges. Behind each door a body was wet with lube and oil and maybe even actual human fluids. On the other side of a screen, somewhere in the world, another body responded.

  A group of cammers hung out in the kitchen, laughing riotously as they passed around a bottle of Southern Comfort. Someone called for Dane to stay, but he merely waved. I felt their lingering eyes as we stepped outside.

  Our house was a few hundred feet from the water. No moon tonight, but the Milky Way furled overhead, a pale twist of stardust stained with orchid and indigo dye. We picked our way across the sand, the house glow fading at our backs. I’d never really heard silence until I moved to Maine. The soft crash of the waves receded into white noise and became part of the emptiness, an emptiness so pure, so weighted and intense that it pressed against my skin, gripped me, held me, an absence become presence.

  On nights like this, the silence was indistinguishable from my heart.

  Dane skirted the rocks near the tide line and came to a halt. A shadow fluttered away from him. Then he bent over, and I realized he was stripping.

  “The water’s freezing, you know.”

  No answer, but I sensed his grin.

  He tossed his jeans aside and dashed off, and I followed. I dropped my pants, kept my bra on. Dane howled when he hit the water and thrashed wildly, a bomb of spray exploding around him. I jumped in on his heels and screamed. Even in the depths of summer, the ocean up north is always cold.

  We kicked and flailed and stirred up our blood. Dane swept an arm and sent a wave over my face, and looked very pleased with himself until I dunked him. Our legs locked, using each other for purchase as we wrestled, and in the icy water the warmth of his skin was a shock. He didn’t really fight. His hands lingered on my shoulders, my ribs, feeling me.

  I pushed away.

  Still couldn’t swim, but I’d learned to float. On my back, facing the vast black lens of the sky, I began to detach from myself. The cramp in my hand and the numbness between my legs felt distant, insignificant. I was as small to the universe as the stars were to me. The Milky Way looked like a scar, a half-healed wound letting the light bleed through.

  “Where do you go?” Dane was close, but I couldn’t see him. As he spoke my ears dipped underwater and his voice went ultra-deep. “When you leave the house at night.”

  “You’ve been watching me.”

  “I’m fascinated with you.”

  My wet skin prickled.

  On nights I couldn’t sleep, which was often, I’d take the skiff out. From Chebeague to Peaks Island was a good five-plus miles. Depending on the current, I could row it in under two hours. Then a short walk from the shore to Max’s house. By the time I got back home near dawn, my body had evolved past pain to some uncharted territory where I could slice my palm open on the gunwale and not even realize it till I saw the red mess on my clothes.

  If my PT knew about this I’d be lectured from here to kingdom come.

  “I go for walks,” I said vaguely. “To clear my head.”

  “I could clear your head.”

  “I am seriously overfucked these days, Dane.”

  “Not the way you should be.”

  I kicked myself upright, spitting salt water.

  Dane stood close behind me, his hips at the waterline. His chest dripped with crystal beads, slick with starlight. He was a gorgeous man, and not for the first time I felt that telltale knot low in my belly. A different arousal than I felt when camming. Not because he was flesh and blood while my viewers were merely grains of light on a screen—it was the unpredictability. The unscriptedness. I didn’t have to play a role, wait for him to tell me what to do. I could step forward right now, wrap my arms around his neck, put my lips on his.

  “Morgan.” The water shivered, that black mirror breaking as he moved closer. “You want this, too. I see it when you look at me.”

  “What you see,” I said, not moving when his body stopped centimeters from mine, heat bridging the space between us, “is your own reflection. Not me.”

  I turned and waded toward the beach.

  Dane followed slowly, giving me time to dress. I waited on the rocks. He pulled his jeans on over wet briefs, watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  “There’s a meeting Friday,” he said finally. “Frankie wants to expand. She’s bringing in some people to talk about it.”

  “Who?”

  “Some web guy and some sales shills.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you there.”

  “Forget it,” I said, standing. “I’m not getting into some power struggle between you two. I’m here to work.”

  “It’s not because I don’t trust her. It’s because I trust you.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know me. If I see my reflection in you, it’s because we’re the same.”

  Now I gave him the side-eye. “So I’m a shady player with commitment issues?”

  “And a sexy smile.”

  “Don’t even start. Did you miss the sign saying ‘Emotionally Unavailable’?”

  “Big words. I read slow.”

  Grudgingly, I smiled. Dane smiled back, all boy-devil mischief. My heart gave one hard knock to remind me it was still there. We trekked together up the beach, his gaze on me the whole time, and I thought, If only you were someone else. If only you were that someone.

  * * *

  Dane thought I’d gone to bed. I texted him good night, player and set my phone aside. Then I opened my laptop and switched on the proxy.

  We scouted other cam sites religiously, to poach talent and sniff out trends and generally be ruthless
motherfuckers. Frankie sussed the competition; Dane and I were too busy jerking off on cam. She’d become the de facto boss even though Dane was an equal partner in the company. It didn’t concern me.

  The only thing that mattered was that I knew which sites catered to which fetishes.

  It took only ten minutes to find her. “Ariel” was Canadian. I caught a trace of her accent, the curve in her vowels. Her profile described her as a “kinky-ass bi nerd girl.” Short auburn hair and Buddy Holly glasses and a hoop nose ring. In her photo gallery she masturbated with a vibrating Xbox controller. Doctor Who and Firefly posters plastered the walls.

  young_rae-z: what kind of games do you play

  Dahlz: Read her bio.

  sweet_ophelia: do you do breath play, bb?

  young_rae-z: who made you mod dahlz

  Dahlz: Who taught you how to read? Oh right, no one.

  Ariel stretched, her nipples poking through her sheer tee in hard studs. “I play lots of stuff, Young. Right now I’m on a Diablo III kick. You guys like Diablo?” Her voice was nasal, cynical. “Yeah, Sweet, I do breath play.”

  I clicked the PRIVATE CHAT button.

  When the video stream loaded, Ariel’s smile had changed, no longer ironic but sultry. Her voice slowed. She looked into the lens, establishing eye contact even though she couldn’t see me.

  All the usual cam tricks. I smiled.

  “Hi, baby. What can I do for you tonight?”

  sweet_ophelia: hello, Ariel

  sweet_ophelia: are you comfortable choking yourself?

  “Sure, I can do that for you, baby.”

  sweet_ophelia: thank you

  sweet_ophelia: can you call me Morgan, please?

  “Of course, Morgan. You’re so polite.”

  sweet_ophelia: and you’re beautiful

  sweet_ophelia: your eyes are amazing

  sweet_ophelia: the perfect shade of green

  Just like hers.

  “A sweet talker. I lucked out.” She laughed, low in her throat. “Do you want to tell me about yourself?”

  sweet_ophelia: no, bb

  sweet_ophelia: I’d like you to be quiet now

  sweet_ophelia: and take off your shirt

  I leaned back in my chair, my thighs spreading. One hand inside my pants. My breath came fast.