I’m not one of those cam girls that twerk with a cucumber in my vag while the cash register sound effects chime KA CHING KA CHING. Actually, I’m not much of a cam girl. I’ve done it many times, but I don’t identify with it, and usually, it leaves me feeling gross.

The thing is, I’m very sex positive. I think as long as you’re not hurting anyone, you should be able to do what you want. Sleep around, wait til marriage, polyamory, hook up with your ex, do it only for pleasure, make money from it, whatever. Still, after almost every cam session, I end up with a disgusting feeling that haunts me for days and produces real vomit in my throat.

I’m a writer. I left the US some years ago working as a freelance writer and writing tutor for a US company (and have time to focus on what I really love, poetry, art, reading, learning Spanish, climbing mountains, lying on empty beaches, you name it). I have been living this way since 2013, and it’s been awesome. My culture is nomadic, my spirit loves meeting new people and experiencing new things, and the vapid consumerism in the US is suffocating to me. The tutoring job pays just ok, and only offers part time work, so I always have to supplement it with other things. Typically, that has meant writing and editing jobs. I have moved around a lot, living in places where making US currency, even with part-time work, is sufficient. It’s sufficient if you don’t have a bunch of debt to pay, anyway. I used to be debt-free, but some major medical expenses for my dog left me scrambling. I love my dog, Luna, so much. I would pay anything for her. She is my soulmate.

Last summer is when I began camming. It seemed kind of fun at first, or at the very least, interesting. And it’s all digital, so there’s no worrying about some psycho trapping you in a basement forever and feeding you crackers with cum-spread for lunch everyday. I was on one camming website, then another. In case you don’t really know how it works, a cam girl sits in front of her camera waiting for people to come in her room. Even when they come in, what she has to do is entice them to go private with her—anything in the public room is generally free (although public rooms have tipping options, but most of the people in the room are not tipping, they are just watching). In the private room, someone is paying you, and you should do what they say, because they pay you by the minute. The longer they are in there, the more money you make.

Anyway, the first week was, I don’t know if I’d call it fun, but it was interesting for sure. I learned about this world I had been fairly clueless about. It was all masturbating and spanking my own ass and dildo this and that, you can imagine. The guys were a mix of types ranging from sick perverts to sad-and-lonely-with-regular-perversions. I’m not one to judge. I only use the word sick because there did seem to be a sickness involved with some of them. Nothing was enough. After awhile, you get some regulars, and they’re nice, because they can be reliable for money, but they really start pushing for more and more. Not just a few of them. Almost all were doing this. Put this weird thing in your vag. I don’t care if the banana is soft, try it. Then put it in your mouth til you choke, and on and on. Dealing with these people where nothing is ever enough, it really left me feeling dark and empty. It’s not enough that you’re slapping yourself and choking yourself on a dildo you just shoved all the way inside of you.

No, now he wants me to bang it so hard that I start to bleed. One guy told me if I bled, he would give me $100 dollars just for that. And who knows if he would have. I didn’t do it, and he left, and I never “saw” him again.

The dark and empty feelings were coming from this pervasive culture of never-enough in the world of sex. With the internet oversaturated with free porn and camming and whatever you want at your fingertips, being turned on by less than all that is more and more difficult. I am 32, and in that regard, I am so grateful that I am not part of the younger generation. I can’t imagine being with a guy who just expects me to do whatever it takes to get him turned on and turning him on is not just a switch of the hips or sexy underwear or even pinning him to the kitchen counter and pulling his pants down. Guys expect girls to do truly demoralizing things, and that is becoming the norm. It is the norm. Maybe the young girls are just doing it without thinking twice.

For me, when camming, I couldn’t get myself to go along with a lot of what was being asked without feeling physically ill, especially after awhile. I started to dread signing on, and not just because I could be sitting there for hours waiting for someone to go private. I dreaded what I would have to do for the money. Plus, It was all so fake. I can’t be sure if the guys on the other end (more than half) that were asking me to come to where they were and meet up, asking if we could start emailing outside of the site, that sort of thing, if they really thought they were going to meet me, or if that was just part of their fantasy world, pretending that it was a possibility. The fact that it seemed that they really thought it was a possibility was also deeply saddening to me. What made me feel worse was playing along with it. I’m such a real, open person in my non-cam life that talking about meeting up seemed so absurd to me. I went with it though, for the money :(

My current state of finances, after another round of vet bills (when a vet told me he was sure my dog’s tumor was cancerous and that she had months to live-which turned out to be untrue, a wrenching story you can read about here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@jessandthesea/i-will-never-be-the-same-because-of-one-horrible-veterinarian-still-the-story-has-a-happy-ending) and not having much freelance work coming through, led me to camming again. This time, the rising vomit feeling when a session is done has gotten worse, and I definitely have spent a chunk of time crying. What is it that makes me feel so awful? It’s the way the guys treat me, and the way I let them treat me because of the money. A male friend told me I am lucky to have the option to cam. Guys don’t generally make as much money, especially if they aren’t gay. I don’t really feel lucky, though logically, I can see his point.

So, I have to say, having found Steemit this week has been a beacon of hope. I constantly apply for various writing and editing gigs, but it could be with the online-work-life trending so hard, that the market is saturated, and not only saturated, full of people willing to do the work for less than its worth (at least for a professional). Maybe Steemit could be a way out of debt and out of camming? Maybe this could be a lovely and warm platform for me to share my writing, my stories, my ideas, my everything. I love sharing, especially when people are listening. It seems too good to be true. I wonder.

Whatever the case, here I am, and here I’ll be. Hopefully I’ll be here more than naked on the screen from now on. I much much much much prefer this. Thanks for listening, if you’re listening.

xoxo,

Jessica