Cam Girl

“I don’t know what to do.”

I heard the incoming message pings from Blue, but I was lost in myself, in the fantasy of fucking him. The fantasy of riding his cock and feeling completely enveloped, his arms around me and his muscle and masculinity something solid, steadfast. Something normal.

“And you next to me, Ellis. As my maid of honor.”

“Go to hell.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d never met her.”

SoBlue: you’re close.

SoBlue: hold it back.

SoBlue: get a tie.

I stopped, though it almost made me scream. Dug into a drawer beside the bed and found a knotted argyle tie. Slung it hastily around my neck and tugged it snug.

Strangulation was a relief, a valve slowing my thoughts. But still the memory leaked through.

“I’d rather die than be your maid of honor.”

“Stop being dramatic.”

“We’re perfect for each other. But you can’t get over this stupid idea of a plastic bride and groom on your perfect vanilla cake at your perfect straight wedding.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Elle. Sorry my dreams are so fucking heteronormative. Sorry my skin is brown and I deal with enough shit for it and the idea of becoming even more marginalized exhausts me.”

“That’s not an excuse. You think my life has been easy?”

“You’re a rich little white girl, so yeah. Doesn’t really compare.”

She turned to go and I made some sound of fury, wordless, raw, and hurled myself at her. We slammed into the wall. I put my hands around her neck.

“Do it,” she spit in my face. “Tighter, baby. Come on. Like when you fuck me. Because this is the only way you’re okay with us being together. When it hurts me the way it’s hurting you.”

(—Bergen, Vada. How to Break a Heart. Watercolor on paper.)

SoBlue: are you thinking about her?

“No.” I grimaced. “Yes. Fuck. Stop talking about her.”

SoBlue: i can’t help it.

SoBlue: i’m becoming obsessed, too.

SoBlue: she’s the one who gets to see you.

SoBlue: to touch you.

SoBlue: to make you wet.

“I wish it was you instead.”

I wanted to yank the words back as soon as I spoke, but they were out, irretrievable.

SoBlue: selfish.

SoBlue: all that matters to you is you.

“That’s right. Now tell me how you’d fuck me.”

SoBlue: with this long, thick cock, morgan.

SoBlue: that i’m holding for you.

SoBlue: stroking.

SoBlue: do you want it?

“Fuck yes.”

SoBlue: good.

SoBlue: because i’m going to give it to you.

SoBlue: i’m going to bury it deep.

SoBlue: make you take it all and hold it inside.

SoBlue: make you feel me pushing into the core of you.

“God, Blue.”

SoBlue: pull the tie tighter.

SoBlue: fuck your hand.

SoBlue: and feel me inside you.

SoBlue: until you ache with fullness.

SoBlue: until you don’t remember ever feeling empty.

I rode two fingers and held the tie in my weak fist, trying not to let the pain come before I did.

SoBlue: i’m going to hold you up against a wall and fuck you.

SoBlue: make you take every inch of me.

SoBlue: make you ride me because there’s nothing to hold on to but my body.

SoBlue: all you can do is take it.

SoBlue: feel it, morgan. feel my hips meeting yours.

SoBlue: feel me pushing inside.

SoBlue: into your tightness.

SoBlue: into your sweet wet cunt.

SoBlue: you can’t stop this now.

SoBlue: me and you.

SoBlue: all you can do is get fucked.

SoBlue: take my dick over and over.

SoBlue: feel it go all the way in.

SoBlue: feel me touch the core of you.

SoBlue: the deepest, sweetest part.

SoBlue: you’re so full it almost hurts but you like it that way.

SoBlue: you like riding the edge of pain.

SoBlue: you like knowing i’m so close to hurting you.

SoBlue: but not knowing if i will.

SoBlue: god, you’re so tight.

SoBlue: so sweet.

SoBlue: i’m going to come.

SoBlue: i’m going to come inside you.

SoBlue: show me your face.

SoBlue: look at me.

I looked dead into the lens, my body tense, combustible, waiting for the spark to set it off, and he gave it to me.

SoBlue: good girl.

SoBlue: take me deep.

SoBlue: tighter, baby.

SoBlue: you’re so fucking pretty when you come.

Holy shit.

I pulled the tie to prolong my climax, catching the explosion at its peak and drawing it out into a plateau, a flatline at the height of sensation, a still frame paused at the moment of the biggest firework bursting. In reality it was just deoxygenated blood and CO2, but it made me feel superhuman, like I could tear myself apart, or punch through the window and pluck the stars out of the sky. A moment of pure power.

Then I blacked out.

It wasn’t a full-on faint, because the next thing I knew my palms were mashing the keys, spewing gibberish onto the screen, as Blue typed:

SoBlue: morgan.

SoBlue: can you read this?

I sat up, clawing the tie away from my neck. Afterward I always hated the feel of the ligature. It was a binding now, a trap, not the key to freedom.

I nodded groggily and slipped my tank back on.

SoBlue: you scared me for a minute there.

“I scared myself.”

SoBlue: are you all right?

“I’m fine. Really. That was just . . . intense.”

SoBlue: yeah.

SoBlue: wow.

For some reason, it was hard to look at the camera. “Do you need to, like, clean up?”

SoBlue: yes.

SoBlue: be right back.

SoBlue: don’t go.

Those two small words—don’t go—struck me as ineffably sad. A lifeline between us, across a vast digital ocean. A thin shining thread spa

I thought of Ellis alone in the cabin. Blue using her words to get me off.

And how I liked him because he was like her, with one key difference: he was a real boy.

What a selfish piece of shit I was.

I almost closed the chat out of guilt but he came back before I grew a pair.

SoBlue: morgan.

“Yeah?”

He didn’t type for a full minute, and somehow I sensed him staring at the screen, at the pixels that made up my eyes. The way you’d look into the eyes of someone you’d just made come so hard they lost a little slice of reality.

SoBlue: i wish i could hold you right now.

My lungs felt waterlogged. As if I’d been under without realizing. As if, in the place where there should be clean air and filtered blood, there was just a sunken wrecked thing, a shattered prow, trapped air bubbles in a small space velvety with sea moss.

“Good night, Blue.”

I shut everything down and lay in bed, clutching a pillow to my ribs. Tighter, and tighter, and tighter, as if I could crush it into myself, into the watery hollow between my lungs that ached to be filled with another person’s heartbeat.

—FALL—

—9—

Firelight flickered over the sand. They’d dug a pit for the clambake and the smell still lingered, seaweed and lobster and steamers, mixing with woodsmoke and the cold salty air. I held Elle’s hand as we picked our way around beach chairs and steel pails, vapor whispering off the melting ice, a stray sun hat floating in a tide pool as if someone had dived in and shattered into a hundred starfish.

End of summer was different out here. The beach was effaced with fog, the earth sighing out its ghosts. A breeze flicked over the ocean and sank neat and sharp through my skin like a switchblade. I shivered and Ellis drew closer, slinking her arm around my waist. In Chicago it’d still be warm and muggy but here it felt closer to the end of all things. Wind whistled over the stony, jagged shore where islands snapped off and drifted and would, someday, go fully under. A disintegrating beauty, slowly sinking into haze and abyss.