Cam Girl

“Like nothing. Like everything. It’s hard to explain.”

Ellis turned to the ceiling, Christmas lights dappling her face. Why do we always look up when we don’t understand? Maybe it’s a remnant from when we’re kids, tugging at a parent’s sleeve. Mami, explain. ¿Por qué?

“Do you feel like a boy inside?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you ever feel like a girl?”

“Rarely. And sometimes I don’t feel like either. Like . . . a third gender. Or none at all.”

“Is there a word for that?”

“Only a million. But I guess genderfluid is pretty close. It’s when the gender you identify as changes.”

It didn’t seem strange anymore. At times I’d seen her more as a girl, a boy, both, neither. I’d never had a word for it.

Now it felt like something we could talk about. Something I could think about more clearly.

Names have power. They give contour to ideas. Lines to color inside, or to break free of.

“Does it bother you when people call you ‘she’ or ‘her’?”

“Not really. I’m used to it. And I like it sometimes, especially when you say it. But remember those guys you scared off the first day we met?”

“Of course. I’m the cat who saved the bird.”

“It bothered me when they saw me as a girl. To them, girls are just pieces of meat. I hate being seen that way.”

“Little secret: cisgender girls hate being seen as pieces of meat, too.”

“I know. And you’re different. It feels equal with you. Safe. It’s other people who make me feel like I have the worst of both worlds. I’m either a girl who’s just a sex object, or a boy who’s a weak little pussy.”

Something twisted in my chest. “Is that how you feel? Like you’re weak, as a boy?”

“I did until I invented Blue.” Lights rippled over her skin, garlanding her in white-gold. “That was the first time it didn’t make me feel ashamed. This part of myself. I felt powerful. Strong.” Ellis glanced at me. “You were so different.”

“How?”

“You cared more what I thought about you. You tried harder to please me.”

“I was less of a selfish bitch, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said anxiously, but I laughed and she relaxed. “I think it’s more the male gaze. You felt like a man was looking at you, so you behaved differently.”

“Is that really a male/female thing, or because we were strangers?”

“I don’t know. But it felt good, when you treated me like a man.”

A thrill shot into my belly when she said that. “Duly noted.”

If we were being all confessional, it was time to own something I didn’t like about myself.

“Ellis, remember when you said I’m afraid of femininity? You’re right. It’s why I’ve always been so flaky about girls. I took to you so fast because you’re a tomboy. You’re like, my ideal person. Smack in-between, unpindownable. But I think I’ve got some internalized misogyny going on, or something.”

“Lots of people do without realizing it. Society wants us to see our femininity as a weakness.”

“It’s not a weakness in you. It’s perfect. You’re just right.”

She smiled. “It’s perfect in you, too. You’re the strongest girl I know.”

We looked at each other across the bed. I traced her cheekbone.

“Do you think you’ll ever change yourself outside, to fit how you feel inside?”

“Not right now. Maybe not ever.” She took a deep breath. “But some days I do want to be a boy. If I wanted to stay a boy, would that freak you out?”

“A little bit, yeah. Change is scary. Would it freak you out, if you wanted to stay that way?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

I cupped the side of her face. “What if you’re actually trans?”

“Can you be trans without wanting to transition?”

“You can be whatever feels right. I’m bi, even if I never sleep with a guy again. And I’m an artist even if I never draw.”

She bit her lip. “Would you leave, if I was?”

“Nope.”

“That’s it? Don’t you have to think about it?”

“What’s there to think about? I love you no matter what you look like on the outside. It’s what’s inside I love. There’s this—okay, I have to give you a mini art lecture. Don’t roll your eyes, Ellis. Blue loves my art lectures.”

She groaned. “I’ve created a monster.”

“Yep. Now shut up and listen.” I levered myself to a sitting position. “So, what is art? We take reality, and we filter it through our eyes and minds and hands, and remake it. What comes out is both more and less true than what went in. It illuminates some part of reality just as it obscures other parts. Art is an imperfect impression of the world. As the self is an imperfect impression of the soul.”

She stared at me, her lips parting.

“Anyway, my point is that I love whatever intangible essence makes you Ellis. Your soul. The thing you don’t believe exists. The rest is just very pretty art.”

She fluttered her eyelashes, deliberately coquettish. “Are you objectifying me?”

“A little bit, yeah. Because I really kinda want to fuck you right now.”

Ellis laughed, that pretty musical laugh, and I knelt over her and lowered my mouth to hers.

My gallery opened on a blue February night. Ellis’s twenty-fourth birthday. I’d leased an old fishery up the coast from Portland, gutted the interior, rehabbed it with polished concrete and new drywall. Track lights glittered in the rafters like strings of diamonds. Tonight we opened with a photo exhibit. I’d angsted about what to title the show until Dane, genius of the simple, said, “Why not just Her?”

The gallery bustled with cammers, college kids, our friends, everyone we knew. Including the staff from my studio.

I was no longer a cam girl. I was a business owner.

My studio was basically an artist colony with a porn twist: they cammed and I comped their tuition, art supplies, gallery fees, everything. I only took people with big dreams. People who needed a leg up, pun intended. The castoffs society would have thrown away, kids with talent but no lucky break. Too many of us were drawn to camming because we’d been dealt a bad hand by life—figuratively and literally. They’d rather make art; I gave them a chance to make art and cash at the same time.

Technically, Katherine, I’m a patron of the arts now, too. Not bad for a twenty-three-year-old Boricua from the West Side, is it?

I found Max wandering alone, spending long minutes before each photo. We’d blown them up and printed them on giant canvases. I joined him at a close-up selfie: one intensely blue eye, half of a red lipsticked mouth. Shaggy blond hair.

Max glanced at me, expressionless.

“Let me show you something,” I said.

I raised my hand, obscuring the bottom of the photo. The top half of Skylar’s face looked like a pretty boy in guyliner. Then I moved my hand upward and instantly the face changed, becoming a girl’s mouth, coy and alluring.

Max looked confused.

“This is very strange,” he said, “but she was beautiful. She would’ve been a—”

He cut off, turning away, and I grabbed him in a hug. He stood still for a second and then wrapped his arms around me.

“Are you going to be okay?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

We leaned apart but I kept my hands on his shoulders.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “How to feel, how to look at her. I never really had a daughter.”

“I never really had a dad. Maybe we can figure this shit out together.”

His eyes tightened, a smile flickering in them. He squeezed my waist and let go, and I watched him drift into the crowd.

A little thread of my heart went with him.

Naveen, one of my cam boys, caught up with me. His ears glinted with hand-tooled silver rings. My cammers all made things: Naveen worked with metal, Aurora was writing a novel, Li designed clothes.

“So, does it fit?” he said.

I smiled, the kind of smile you put on when you’re actually terrified. “Don’t know yet.”