I stood over my roommate’s shoulder, watching their computer screen while a video of me finger-fucking myself played in slow motion. It was dark as a cave in Ryan’s room, the blackout curtains doing their job to block the bright light of late afternoon. Onscreen, I looked stunning. Nude. Lost in the throes of passion. A veritable goddess of sex. Right up until I suddenly let out a silent shriek (Ryan’s volume was muted) and fell sideways off the bed.
Ryan snapped back a few frames and hit pause. “Here,” they said, pointing at the editing software beneath the video. “If we cut it here and then transition to the side, it’ll make it seem like it was one continuous filming session, and you switched the camera position to be artsy.”
I arched a brow. “And not like I had to stop in the middle of recording because someone set the fire alarm off? Again?”
Ryan tucked a strand of long blond hair behind their ear, turning the spectacular shade of red that only the very pale can achieve. “I didn’t want to turn the stove fan on too high in case your mic picked it up.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “I’m sure that was it.”
Ryan turned even redder. Tormenting them was as easy as it was enjoyable.
I opened my mouth to see if I could make them flush all the way to their toes, but their door burst open behind us, and we turned, blinking against the sudden brightness as our third roommate, Taylor, swept into the room. At first, all I saw was her outline, but as my eyes adjusted, I noted her lavender hair swaying around her shoulders and the floral silk robe tied loosely around her curves. She wore a full face of makeup, her skin highlighted and bronzed, her almond eyes framed with false lashes, telling me she was either getting ready to film, or had just finished.
She stopped a few feet away and hefted a small box in each hand, looking from me to Ryan and back again. “A sub just sent me a video request for a close-up of my asshole.” Her grin turned taunting. “Who wants to help me bleach and wax it?”
I swiveled to Ryan, who already held their finger to their nose in a not it gesture.
“I’m out,” they said. “I’ll have to stare at it the whole time I’m filming and editing. I shouldn’t have to prep it, too.”
My shoulders slumped in exaggerated defeat as I turned back to Taylor. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
She shimmied her shoulders, looking pleased. Her subscriber must have offered her a ton of money for the shot. She and I might have made a living filming spicy videos for our subs, but we both felt that close-ups were much more intimate and required a level of vulnerability that we weren’t usually comfortable with.
Her gaze slid past me to Ryan’s computer screen. “Is that the shot Ryan ruined when they burned dinner last night?”
Ryan swiveled back toward their monitor, cheeks still pink. “I didn’t ruin it. Lauren was able to finish filming.”
Taylor and I shared a smirking glance. As part of chore rotation, we took turns cooking. Some nights that meant mac ’n’ cheese with hot dogs cut up in it (Taylor), traditional Italian fare (me), and increasingly elaborate dishes from across the globe that were either incredible or ended up splattered all over our kitchen (Ryan). In Ryan’s defense, at least they were trying to expand their culinary skills. And they had gotten better recently. It was only when they attempted some complicated new recipe, like last night, that our house filled with smoke.
“You owe me a new saucepan,” I said. “I think tandoori paste is burned into the metal of the one you used last night.”
Ryan bristled. “Keep making fun of me, and I’ll show Taylor the video I cut together of you falling and unfalling over and over again.”
I sucked in a horrified gasp. “You didn’t.”
With a click, Ryan pulled up another tab in their editing software, and there I went, tumbling off the bed in slo-mo. And then back onto it. Off again. On. These were deeply unflattering angles for my boobs, which seemed to be trying to flee from each other in opposite directions. My hair looked electrified, and the horror on my face made it clear I thought I was about to be serial murdered.
“I might never recover from seeing myself like this,” I said.
Ryan cackled. Beside me, Taylor was laughing so hard that she’d stopped making noise. My revenge for this betrayal would make headline news.
It took five solid minutes and increasingly violent threats of bodily harm for Ryan to close out the tab and promise to delete it.
Another several passed before Taylor was able to speak. “Who’s the video even for?”
“My favorite sub,” I told her.
She glanced my way, wiping tears from her eyes. “NT95?”
I nodded. Even though I’d been doing this for years, I still got nervous filming certain video requests, especially ones with large price tags attached to them. I wanted them to be perfect. Wanted my subs desperate for more. And NT95 was a day-one subscriber, my very first, in fact, signing up almost as soon as I announced my Me4U page on social media. We’d spent countless hours sexting. I knew about his horrible father and the constant pressure he was under at work. He sent me congratulatory notes every time I won a new politician over, asked me to please be safe when I attended public rallies. He wasn’t just some faceless sub anymore. He was important to me. Hence me hovering over Ryan’s shoulder instead of leaving them alone to work in peace.
“What did he request?” Taylor asked.
“A striptease followed by solo work,” I told her. “Creator’s choice.”
She shot me a sly glance. “Think he’d like Ryan’s special edit?”
“I will murder you for putting that idea into their head.”
Ryan snorted but remained suspiciously quiet as they finished cutting the scene together. I would have to watch them closely in the coming days. Once that was finished, they started color correcting the raw footage. The three of us had the perfect setup. Taylor and I were the on-screen talent, and Ryan was our background magician, editing our videos and even stepping in to help film complicated shots like the one I’d agreed to prep Taylor for.
“God,” she said. “The lighting in your room is so nice during sunset.”
I was about to respond when a snuffling noise caught my attention. Taylor and I turned toward the door just in time to watch Walter, our massive Shiloh shepherd, wiggle his way into the room looking pleased with himself, his ears back, eyes slitted in doggy bliss. He carried what I first thought was a chew toy in his mouth but on closer inspection looked a lot like—
“My favorite whip!” I yelled, launching myself at him. Shit, he was going to ruin it.
He woofed and danced away, head down, ready to play.
I pulled up short and tried to sound stern. “That is not a toy, Walter. Drop it.”
“Technically . . .” Ryan began.
I pointed a finger in their general direction, unwilling to look away from Walter in case he noticed my distraction and booked it. “You’re already on my shit list. Don’t make it worse by siding with the dog.”
Behind me, Taylor began to laugh.
Walter, taking that as his sign that this was definitely play time, gave the whip handle a chew and started prancing toward me, shaking his head side to side in typical I have a toy and you can’t get it fashion. Unfortunately, that sent the five leather straps attached to it flying through the air. At us.
“Fuck!” Taylor yelped, dodging sideways.
Ryan leapt from their seat, barely avoiding a strike to the arm.
Walter woofed around the handle and plowed toward us with what could only be described as maniacal glee. We scrambled out of the room and went barreling downstairs, tripping over one another in our haste to escape.
I broke right at the bottom. Ryan swerved left.
Taylor vaulted the living room couch.
“Go get Ryan!” I ordered Walter. “Avenge me!”
“Hey!” Ryan shrieked, sprinting for their life, our deranged canine hot on their heels.
Thankfully, our place was a three-story brownstone, so there were no neighbors below us to complain about the sudden chaos. We’d chosen it for its superior insulation because it helped with soundproofing—our line of work came with a lot of very visceral noises. The hidden bonus was that the occasional outburst of barking, yelling, and fleeing from a whip-baring canine went mostly unnoticed.
Since the toy was mine, it was probably my responsibility to fall on the metaphorical sword, despite how much fun I was having watching Walter torment my roommates. There was one thing we could count on to get him to behave, so while Taylor and Ryan kept him occupied (see, ran from him in terror), I headed toward the biscuit jar we kept on the kitchen counter. The second I popped it open, I heard nails clattering on hardwood and knew Walter was headed my way.
He rounded the island and tried to slow down, but he was moving so fast that he went into a full slide. The thing about being five feet tall and on the slimmer side is that when your dog is half your height and almost your full weight, you don’t stand a chance against them. Walter seemed to realize we were on the cusp of catastrophe the same time I did but there was nothing we could do to prevent it.
Our eyes caught, and we shared an Oh, fuck look that transcended species before he took me out at the knees. I went down with a strangled yelp, landing hard on the tile floor and taking the brunt of the fall on my elbow and shoulder to keep from crushing my idiot dog.
“Oh my god,” Taylor wheezed. “Are you okay?”
I looked up to see my roommates standing over me, Ryan with their hand covering their mouth to smother their laughter, Taylor bent over at the waist, openly cackling.
I rolled onto my back. “I think so?”
Wetness coated my left hand. I glanced sideways to see Walter gently take the biscuit from my fingers and then slink away like he hoped no one would notice him.
At least he’d dropped the whip.
An hour later, the apartment was cleaned up, Taylor’s asshole was camera ready, and she and Ryan were shut in her room.
Tonight was my turn to cook, and while my roommates filmed, I got to work in the kitchen with my laptop open on the island so I could watch the progress bar while my weekly video uploaded to my Me4U page—this one of me doing pole work in our spare bedroom turned kink palace.
I hoped my subs liked it. My pole work had greatly improved since I’d first started posting, thanks to the weekly classes I attended, but I was by no means an expert. I just did it because it was fun, made for great content, and was a surprisingly good workout—multitasking at its finest.
Every Me4U creator was different and had varying levels of activity, but since this was my full-time job, I posted a spicy picture to my page at least once a day, and a long-form video every Wednesday like clockwork to my main page for all my paid subscribers. Usually, I had my posts scheduled ahead of time, but this past week had been especially hectic. I was down to the wire and didn’t like it. This wasn’t just a job to me. My subscribers weren’t just random people; they were my community.
I’d received countless messages over the years from subs thanking me for one post or another because they’d had a terrible day or were going through a hard time. My videos made them feel good, helped them briefly forget about all the ugly shit. Many had come to depend on me and my strict schedule. It gave them something to look forward to, and the thought of disappointing any of them by being late weighed heavily on my mind.
A hissing sound had me jerking my gaze up just in time to see the pot of water on the stove start to bubble over. If I ruined dinner right after giving Ryan a hard time for doing the same, I’d never live it down.
I stepped over Walter, who was inconveniently sprawled in the middle of the kitchen floor (plotting his next attack, I was sure), and turned the burner to a simmer before slowly adding pasta to the pot. Once it was stirred in, I set a timer and started working on the sauce—butter and shallots and garlic and white wine with a small tin of clams mixed in at the very end.
The wine was just starting to cook off when my phone chimed with a notification. I scooped it up to see a message through the Me4U app from NT95.
Excited to see what you have in store for us tonight, it read.
I grinned and wrote back, I have a feeling you’ll like this one. I sent him a screenshot from the video, in which I was topless and biting my lip while looking into the camera. Ryan always saved several shots from each video that Taylor and I filmed so we could use them to tease our subs while they waited for posts to go live.
Another notification popped up. NT95 had tipped me fifty bucks.
Just wait until you see YOUR video, I said, followed by several kissy-face emojis.
Can’t wait, he wrote back. Hope you have a good night, Lauren, and congrats again on yesterday’s big win.
Thank you!!!
I was still riding high from swaying Councilwoman Blackwell over to our side. With her vote secured, the legislation had a good chance of passing, and soon the sex workers of this city would be able to report any assaults that were committed against them while working without facing solicitation charges. It would be a huge win, one we’d been fighting for years to achieve, and even though it had been a long, exhausting slog, we were getting there. It made me hopeful that with enough hard work, we could eventually drag this blue-collar city into the modern age.
NT95 liked my last message, and I set my phone down, smiling. It was funny, thinking back over our shared history and how much had changed since he’d first subscribed. Now, I had a “menu” on my Me4U page that subs could order from. When I started, I’d calculated custom prices for every request, but as my account grew, I couldn’t keep up, so I switched to charging a flat rate of twenty-five dollars per minute of camera time, with a three-minute minimum. There were added rates for toy and kink work, and for name or specific phrase usage. NT95 had requested a $700 video a few days ago, and I’d wasted no time filming it.
My smile widened as I checked on the pasta. I’d pulled in fifteen grand this week. There was so much good I could do with that kind of money that it left me feeling giddy. It took me two solid years of posting to get to this point, but now I was making so much that I’d only need to work for a few more before I was able to comfortably live out the rest of my days doing whatever the fuck I wanted.
The thing was, this work was what I wanted to do. I loved what I did, and the fact that I got paid so much for it still felt surreal. Journalists and therapists and politicians and keyboard warriors bent over backward analyzing sex work and why people did it, and while they had good right to because it was a large and very complex issue with so many problematic and dangerous elements, to me, personally, it wasn’t that complicated.
I found camwork both liberating and healing. I’d been raised Catholic in an incredibly patriarchal Italian neighborhood where shame was a large part of the culture, where any woman who lived outside of the strict, unwritten code of norms was ostracized. As a teenager, I’d felt the lash of judgment fall upon me over and over again, the blows strong enough that I nearly broke beneath the force of them. It had taken me years to heal those invisible wounds, but now, I liked sex. I liked filming myself naked. I liked getting others off.
It was as simple as that.
Over the past decade, I’d reclaimed my agency, my power, and I lived my life out in the open for all to see, embracing my sexuality, encouraging others to do the same, fighting for those who were still shamed, still pushed to the edges of society because so many people refused to see that sex work was valid work and should come with the same protections as any other career.
My win with Councilwoman Blackwell was a huge step in the right direction, but there were still many other politicians to convince. Not just in our city, but in the rest of the state and country. Camwork was what I loved, but advocacy work was my passion in life. Even if all my Me4U subs disappeared tomorrow, I would spend the rest of my time here on earth making sex work safer for everyone who came after me.
A door swung open upstairs, pulling me from my thoughts.
“How’d it go?” I called out.
“Good,” Ryan yelled, the shutting of another door telling me they’d gone into their bedroom.
Taylor flounced down the stairs a minute later, tying her floral robe back in place as she joined me in the kitchen. Her nose led her straight to the bubbling saucepan. “This smells amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, pointing my wooden spoon at the fridge. “The wine that goes with it is chilling.”
Taking the hint, she spun away to pour us glasses. We clinked ours together and each took a sip before she left to deliver the third one to Ryan in their editing cave. While she was gone, my video finished uploading, and I quickly posted it before the alarm I’d set for the pasta went off.
Taylor rejoined me just in time to help plate everything up.
“Come down and eat with us, you antisocial bitch!” I called to Ryan.
They descended the stairs looking only slightly disgruntled and settled in their usual seat at the dining table. Taylor and I sat on either side of them, and together, the three of us tucked into dinner, with Walter asleep underfoot while we ate and laughed and drank until our plates were empty and our bellies full. It was a perfect evening. I was blissfully happy, endlessly grateful for this life I’d created for myself.
And then my phone rang.
