by RalphMA35.
CHAPTER 20
MY CAM SETUP didn’t use to be the elaborate production it is today. When I started I had an IBM laptop and a Logitech webcam—the laptop still stuffed with community college course work, the Logitech bought for $19.99 on eBay. I didn’t know about lighting, or backdrops, or sex toys, or outfits. It was just me, on my bed, a bedside lamp creating a glare if I leaned too far to the right. I had my fingers, two pairs of sexy underwear, and an extension cord that allowed me some extra maneuverability with my laptop.
My image was grainy, the video choppy, my robotic movements occasionally blurry. But I was naked, and I was American, so the clients kept appearing and my earnings kept building. My first paycheck was $5,018 for two weeks of work. I was floored.
I paid three months of rent, a grand total of eighteen hundred bucks, banked $1,000, and invested the rest in my new career. I studied the popular girls, noted the crispness of their cameras, the glow of their skin, and I reached out to them, making friends across nine thousand miles of cyberspace. They shared the wealth of knowledge, and I started purchasing.
The first thing I bought was a new camera. Professionals don’t use webcams. They use high-definition digital camcorders and connect them to their computer via a FireWire cable. I bought the best camera I could afford at the time, a Canon VIXIA HF. The cameras I have now? They make that initial cam look like a kid’s toy.
But at that moment in time, when I plugged that camera in and powered it on, the perfect image that scrolled with smooth action across my screen…it was incredible. I gushed, I drooled, and the webcam community responded with gusto. My free chat began filling up quickly, users taking less time to click the “Take to Private Chat” button. And with my new sex toy in hand—a nude, eight-inch, authentic-looking cock—I started raking in the dough. My next paycheck was over ten grand. I celebrated in the only way I knew how: I kicked my feet in the air, squealed with glee, and experienced a brief moment of depression when I realized I had no one to share the news with. I logged off early that night, turning off the cam and settling into bed, one-click buying everything I had ever wanted.
A Louis Vuitton purse. Bought.
A Betsey Johnson dress. Bought.
MAC makeup, in every sheen and sparkle that fit my fancy. Bought.
My dark side piped up and I switched websites.
A Dark Ops Stratofighter Stiletto Tactical Knife. Bought.
A Spyderco Embassy aluminum switchblade. Bought.
At two in the morning, I left the fun stuff and started researching computers, finally deciding on and ordering a MacBook Pro laptop, fully loaded and promised to be delivered in the next four to six business days. I finalized my order, then closed the laptop with a satisfied smile and went to bed.
I quickly learned the pointlessness of spending money on purses, shoes, and dresses. Those items are worthless if there is no one around to see them worn. They actually worked against my happiness, their designer lines and beauty mocking me from a shelf in my empty closet, an indicator of the life I wasn’t leading, places I wasn’t going, people I wasn’t seeing.
So I stopped wasting money and focused on the good stuff. A second bed courtesy of IKEA, mattresses delivered within forty-eight hours by 1-800-Mattress. I had discovered that lube and latex make a bed stink, and I wanted one I could dedicate to camming. Lighting: six spotlights that surround my pink bed, each holding two sets of lights, more than six hundred watts per spotlight. Proper lighting makes you glow on camera, makes cellulite and wrinkles disappear. It is also motherfucking hot. I looked at buying a cooling pad for the mattress, then realized it was a hell of a lot easier to just turn down the thermostat. My utility bills are enormous but unsurprising given my sixty-six-degree apartment.
I also have the crème de la crème of
David Beckett
Jack Du Brull
Danelle Harmon
Natalie Deschain
Michael McCloskey
Gina Marie Wylie
Roxie Noir
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Scarlet Wolfe
Shana Abe