Annie stops, using her hands instead to spin her stool, and looks at the digital display of the old microwave above the stove: 3:49 p.m. Only two more days till her party. She pushes off the stool, and the worn soles of her sneakers smack against the kitchen’s clean linoleum floor as she heads to the round table pushed into one corner of the kitchen. Rounding the table slowly, she runs her hands over the tops of the bright and sparkly packaged plastic bags, stuffed with candy, markers, and packets of stickers. Ten favors in all, for her ten best friends. Hearing her father’s call, she turns from the table and runs, following the sound of his voice until she reaches his chair, set up in the living room.
Her father wants company, so Annie sits in the living room with him, her feet tucked under her, curled into the corner of the couch. Their dog, a mutt that had scratched at the trailer door for two weeks before her mother finally relented and welcomed him in, jumps up beside her, circling twice before settling in, snug against her body. His wire-bristle black-and-gray hair scratches her bare leg, and she reaches out and pats his head. His tail thumps, slow and steady, and he opens one eye to look at her contentedly. He is a good dog, but what she really wants is a kitten—one with soft fur and big eyes, who will curl up in bed with her at night.
“How was school?” Her father’s voice creaks, roughened by too many years of cigarettes and coughing. He reaches for his tea, and drops of condensation drip down the side, landing with a soft splat on the worn surface of the table.
“It was good, Daddy.”
“You like first grade?”
A soda commercial comes on TV, and Annie watches a bejeweled pop star singing and dancing through a crowded street. “I guess.”
“How’s your teacher? Miss Parakeet, is that her name?”
She dissolves into giggles and reaches out and pinches his arm. “It’s Miss Sparrow, Daddy. I’ve told you that, like eight times.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I get confused.” He tousles the top of her blond head playfully. “Excited about your party?”
She nods enthusiastically. “Super excited, Daddy.”
CHAPTER 5
MALE ASS PLAY: Many men find anal sex pleasurable, and some may reach orgasm through anal penetration—by stimulation of the prostate in men. Pegging is the term for the sexual practice in which a woman penetrates a man’s anus with a strap-on dildo.1 The National Institutes of Health, with information published in the British Medical Journal, states, “There are little published data on how many heterosexual men would like their anus to be sexually stimulated in a heterosexual relationship. Anecdotally, it is a substantial number. What data we do have almost all relate to penetrative sexual acts, and the superficial contact of the anal ring with fingers or the tongue is even less well documented but may be assumed to be a common sexual activity for men of all sexual orientations.”2
A CLIENT’S USERNAME can tell me a lot about the person. With descriptive usernames, like DoctorPat92 or 1HotLawyer, it is often who they are or who they wish they were. Numbers in a username typically stand for a child’s birth year, their graduation year, or their age. I have a lot of “doctors” that pass through my chat room, but DoctorPat is, for once, an actual doctor. And as you might guess, I occasionally have a need for one.
DoctorPat92’s real name is Dr. Patrick Henton. He is a fifty-five-year-old general practitioner in a little town in Maine called Buckfield. According to reviews on Google, he is well liked and competent, though I don’t know how competent the sole doctor in a town of nineteen hundred people needs to be. He is more than adequate for my basic needs. A sequestered individual, with no access to the outside world, has to work pretty hard to get sick or injured. My basic needs revolve around one thing—drugs. Not for me, but for Simon. I’m sure DoctorPat thinks I am the painkiller addict. I don’t really care what DoctorPat thinks. He writes me prescriptions, and I watch him take eight-inch dildos. It’s a win-win for both of us.
Our chat sessions started out normal enough, and in the way that most relationships do.
DoctorPat92: hey
“Hi, Doc. My name is Jessica. What’s yours?”
DoctorPat92: Pat. Patrick, if you want to be formal.
I laughed, cross-legged on the bed, a wide grin on my face. “I’m not formal. So, Pat. Are you a doctor?”
DoctorPat92: yes
“Wow! I always fantasized about being with a doctor.” I widened my eyes and moved to my knees. “And what are you interested in tonight?”
DoctorPat92: you. can u take off your clothes?
“Of course. All of them?”
DoctorPat92: u r beautiful
DoctorPat92: yes. slowly please.
DoctorPat92: slower
DoctorPat92: thx. now lay, just like that, and tell me about yourself.
I stopped physically typing my responses a long time ago. Most camgirls type and don’t speak. I don’t know if it’s because their English sucks or if it’s because they are in a camming sweatshop of sorts, where if all of the girls were talking, it’d sound like a Russian call center. Men don’t want to know that they are one of many. They want to imagine a girl in her bedroom, no one else around, wanting to talk only to them. I think the fact that I talk adds to my popularity. The fact that I am American, an oddity in itself, is also a big draw. So the client experience is one reason I don’t type. The other reason is that it’s really hard to type and masturbate at the same time, at least for me. The men don’t seem to have a problem with it.
We were eight chats in before DoctorPat hooked up a webcam. I like when I can see the clients. It’s funny how your mind will create an image of a person and how wrong your mind almost always is. My mind wasn’t too far off with DoctorPat. He was utterly nondescript, a typical adult male in his fifties, with a head of thick salt-and-pepper hair, average build, and average looks. What I found more surprising from DoctorPat’s streaming video was that he was dressed, wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, looking as innocent as if he were sitting down to Skype with his grandchildren. The second time he displayed his cam, I asked him about it.
DoctorPat92: can you see me?
“Yes. The video just came up. Hey!” I waved excitedly, as though I’d been waiting all day to see him.
DoctorPat92: good. Sorry, can’t use audio. My wife is downstairs.
“It’s okay. Is that why you are dressed?”
DoctorPat92: yes
He seemed as if he were going to type more, so I waited.
DoctorPat92: plus
DoctorPat92: I’m not ready for u to see what I like to do
“Why?”
DoctorPat92: it’s weird
I laughed. “I assure you, it’s not weird. And weird isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I like weird.”
DoctorPat92: maybe another time
“Do you normally…touch yourself when we chat?” I ran my hand slowly down my naked body. I was lying on my side, atop my pink bedspread, the pattern picked out specifically because it looked young, innocent. Virginal. Men like that.
DoctorPat92: sometimes. if no one is around. i like to watch you. sometimes I think of you later.
“When you’re with your wife?”
DoctorPat92: yes. or when I’m pleasuring myself.
“Have you ever been with a patient?”
DoctorPat92: no.
His expression didn’t encourage that line of questioning, so I dropped it. “I know you aren’t ready to show me what you like, but will you tell me?”
He reached up and turned off the webcam. I waited, my expression relaxed. He was either about to end the chat or about to tell me more. For some reason, men feel more comfortable divulging their secrets when they are invisible.
DoctorPat92: don’t think I’m weird.
I laughed. “I promise, I won’t think you’re weird. I swear.”
DoctorPat92: I like to put things inside of me.
I lowered my voice and used my you-are-a-bad-boy-but-I-think-it’s-hot voice. “You mean you
like to get fucked?”
A long pause. I bit my bottom lip and kept my eyes on the webcam.
DoctorPat92: yes
“That’s not weird. I think it’s hot. I like it when a man is kinky.” I slid my hand lower, until it grazed my bikini line.
DoctorPat92: do u think I’m gay?
What’s so hard about reading typed words is not knowing how some questions are asked. I didn’t know if he was trying to figure out himself if he was gay, or if he wanted me to think he was gay, or if this was a test of my reaction.
I tilted my head. “I guess it would depend on what you think about when you are being penetrated. You like chatting with me, right?”
DoctorPat92: yes
“You know this site has men, gay men, who wouldn’t blink twice at you being fucked. Why aren’t you chatting with them?”
DoctorPat92: b/c I like you. You are funny and sweet. I think about you when I put things inside of me.
DoctorPat92: I think about you watching me.
I giggled. “Then let’s do it! Let’s set an appointment for some time when you will be alone…” I moved my hand farther, gently running my fingers along my sensitive lips. “And I can watch you. I want to watch you. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
DoctorPat92: really?
“Yes!”
It was a lie. It’s actually quite common for men to ask me to watch them fuck themselves. I don’t understand it, but then again, I have a pussy that is perfect for a toy. If they had a pussy, they probably wouldn’t be sticking anything up that hole either. I also don’t have a prostate. If I did, maybe I would understand the draw to anal sex. According to my sex therapist, some of the men who want to fuck toys are homosexuals—they just refuse to admit it to themselves. They think that having a girl watch them take a ten-inch black cock makes it less gay. But, my therapist warned me, there is a flip side to it. Just because a guy wants to bend over and shove something up his ass doesn’t make him gay. There are straight men who get off on that form of stimulation yet have no interest in the touch of another man.
So I didn’t jump to conclusions, I didn’t assume that DoctorPat was gay, straight, or any combination of the two. To be utterly honest, I didn’t give a shit what he was. All I cared about was that the clock on the upper right-hand corner of my screen was ticking, turning over minute by minute, earning me dollar by dollar.
That was the beginning of our relationship. I waited for two months before I brought up the prescriptions, wanting to see if he would stick around as a regular first. He stuck around, I proposed an arrangement, and he accepted. We are now two years into that arrangement. An arrangement where I have watched this utterly average doctor ride thick plastic dildos, use anal beads, and once—on one random Thursday—make a Budweiser beer bottle his personal ass toy. One webchat every other week for one prescription a month. I think half the reason DoctorPat writes me illegal prescriptions is that he worries about me blackmailing him. He has a wife and three teenage kids, a fact easily discovered after four minutes on Google. He doesn’t need to worry. What turns him on is his business, not mine or anyone else’s.
CHAPTER 6
THE LIGHTS SHUT off, an automatic setting that occurs at the end of a chat. I roll over and lie still for a moment, allowing my naked body to cool now that the heat from the lamps is gone. I stare up at the vaulted ceilings, my eyes following the lines of the exposed ductwork.
My apartment is one large, open space. I have a strong suspicion that the entire sixth floor was an afterthought—attic space closed up in some last-minute decision. Half of my space is unusable, the slant of ceiling making entire sections of wall only three feet tall. The kitchen, composed of one short row of cabinets and appliances, lies in the middle of the back wall. I use it as a divider mark, keeping half of the apartment as my personal living space and half the apartment as my cam studio. The layout is funky, the roofline guarantees me one knock on the head monthly, but it was one of the few units with a washer/dryer, and for that reason alone, I jumped all over it. Late night laundry sessions in the complex’s community laundry room would have pretty much guaranteed a break in my I-haven’t-killed-anyone-in-years streak.
I understand that for the normal individual, my life is strange. But I have accepted it as it is. I am okay with this life because I know that there is not another option available. If I want to keep others safe, I need to be contained. Would I like to run free through life, have friends, fall in love, feel the sun on my face? Yes. But that is no longer an option for me; there is no point in dwelling on and torturing myself over it.
I used to keep a scrapbook of my future life. I subscribed to magazines and cut and pasted onto square pages all of the elements that would make up my future life. It was my Pinterest, before Pinterest. My shrink said it was detrimental to my progress and happiness, and in retrospect, I think he was right. It wasn’t healthy, how I pored over those pages, my daydreams before sleep involving girls nights and romance. I didn’t want to throw away the scrapbook, I held on to it like an alcoholic’s last drink, my conversations with Dr. Derek leading to arguments that ended with me slamming down the phone, my fingers running with reverence over my scrapbook, my obsession growing stronger with every order from him to let it go.
I spent over a year with that book before I stacked it, and all of my magazines, into a big black trash bag and set it into the hall. Then I sat, with my back against the front door, listening for Simon’s steps, fighting the urge to open the door and reclaim my hopes and dreams.
He came, he took, and my scrapbook joined a tangle of life’s castoffs in the dumpster behind our complex. I envisioned it lying alongside old banana peels, baby diapers, and condoms, my treasured future dying a pauper’s death.
It took a few days, a few days where I didn’t speak to my shrink and didn’t cam, days where I lay in bed and mourned the life I didn’t have. But then time marched on. Deliveries arrived, bills needed paying, and my in-box cluttered with e-mails. I called Dr. Derek and, for the first time in months, really listened to what he had to say. That was the day I stopped thinking about the life I don’t have. That was the turning point that allowed me to recognize my situation as what it was. This is my reality, and that was the day I finally accepted it.
CHAPTER 7
ANNIE
THERE ARE THREE presents wrapped on the table. Annie already knows what two of them are. Last Sunday, after church, she snuck into her mother’s room, pulled back her winter coats, and looked for presents. Her mother always hid her presents there. Behind the big, fluffy black coat with the hole in the bottom hem was a plastic bag. She reached in the bag as quietly as possible and pulled out the two items inside. One was a dark gray My Little Pony horse, the plastic package slightly dented, the cardboard colors faded. The other was a zippered pouch with sixty-four colored pencils. She squealed excitedly—before remembering where she was—quickly stuffed the items back inside the bag, and left the room before she was caught and punished.
She now examines the third brightly wrapped package with interest: poking, lifting, and shaking it to try to figure out what is inside. It is a box, large and square, about the size of a basketball. It feels heavier than a basketball. Her mind burns through the possibilities, the thought of waiting an entire day to open it torturous. She hears her mother call and turns, quickly setting down the wrapped gift and sprinting through the house, her tennis shoes making squeaking sounds on the cheap floor.
CHAPTER 8
I, OR RATHER JessReilly19, am currently the number three model on Cams.com. Number one is Tonya222, a forty-year-old semiattractive woman with ginormous fake titties who talks in a baby voice all day. Number two is JuneGirl, a Russian chick with an insane grasp of the English language, who can fit a Monster Energy drink can into pretty much any hole in her body. Behind the three of us are about two million cam models, mostly Europeans, every shape, size, and sexual perversion represented. For every 110-pound she-male with
a ten-inch cock, there are one hundred paying clients ready to part with their hard-earned money.
I have decided my popularity is based on a number of things, the first being my workload. The more you work, the more clients you will meet, therefore the more money you will make. Duh. Second, my nationality plays a huge role. American girls seem to be living under a rock with regard to camming. Any town out there can wrangle up thirty strippers or forty Hooters waitresses, but there are fewer than a thousand American camgirls online. The fact that I am American, speak English, have a toll-free number, and know who the Yankees are guarantees me about nine legs up on the other models. Or two legs up if you want to be witty about it. The third reason I am popular? I’m hot, sexually adventurous, and always horny.
I have exploited my God-given talents to the nth degree in order to sell minutes, memberships, and gifts. But what’s funny is the one attribute that I have never used—a serious ace in the hole that could guarantee me a whole new following of rabid fans: the fact that I, the self-described horniest girl in America, am, in fact, a virgin.
I didn’t set out to be a virgin. It wasn’t due to my Christian upbringing or the ridiculous chastity vow that my six best friends and I made back when WWJD was all the rage. It just sort of happened, thanks in large part to Francis Anderson.
Francis Anderson should have taken his parents outside and shot them, about three minutes before they made the ridiculous decision to name him something that would guarantee him ridicule and pain for the duration of his doomed-to-be-dorky life. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the ability to time travel and therefore got stuck with the name Francis. His parents also gifted him with a ridiculously high IQ and a random assortment of features that, in the right light, made him look fairly handsome.