Cam Star

She was standing with her back to me.

"Let your slip fall to the floor and puddle around your feet."

"You want me to be naked?" she said in an uncertain voice.

"Of course.  That's a silly question to ask a man.  We're always going to want that."  I chuckled sweetly.

I heard a little "oh!" come from somewhere when the slip hit the floor almost as if she had dropped and broken something delicate.

"I thought you were O.K. shooting naked?  That's what you said."

"It was negotiable.  I've never actually done it before."

Now really, this would be an unremarkable sequence if not for one thing.  The model worked five cam sites, each catering to different tastes and different crowds.

After the shoot, she sat naked on the couch as we talked.  She was completely comfortable.

"I'll tell you the takeaway from this shoot for me," I said.

"What's that?"

"That a girl who is on five cam sites was shy about being naked."

"It's different in front of someone you see looking at you," she said.  "It's totally different."

"You've never shot naked before?"

"No."

"That's just funny."

We talked about her cam sites.  She did fetish, she did erotic.  I've heard the tales from other models who do similar things.  One had a fellow who paid her to sit naked on balloons and pop them.  One girl had a guy who paid her to put on lipstick then take it off, over and over again.  There were lots of models doing foot fetishes.

"I have customers who just want to talk," she said.  "They are lonely and I sit naked and talk to them like I'm their girlfriend."

On one site she skyped.

"You can see them?" I asked, surprised.

"Yes."

"Are they what one would expect?  Do they look like people who need to do this?"

"Some do, but there are a lot of good looking young guys who pay to chat, too."

This fascinates me, of course.  It is the theme around all that I shoot in the studio.  Lonesomeville.

"People are lonely," I said.  "It is the universal condition.  People who are married are lonely, people with families.  I think more so all the time.  They are looking out to the world to palliate that loneliness, but the world won't do it.  Still, it is easier for them than looking inward where the loneliness lies."

I told her about the movies "Her" and "Don Jon."  "I want to do a documentary on this," I said.  "Would you talk about this on camera?"

She hesitated for a long time and didn't really answer.

"A lot of girls get stalkers.  It is dangerous.  I had a customer who asked me how I enjoyed Bike Week.   I said, 'huh?'  And he told me he saw me.  He described what I was wearing and who I was with and even told me some of the conversation we were having.  I took my phone in to be repaired one time and the guy said he knew me.  He told me the site.  It gets so that you don't even want to go out of the house."

"The price you pay, I guess."

She had a degree in finance and had been a broker for a big firm putting together hotel deals.  She made a lot of money, she said, but she was working sixty and seventy hours a week.  She made more money now and didn't work nearly as much.  One site she worked was just a home cam.  People paid to watch her cook and brush her teeth.  One site was more fascinating.  It involved a technology I had never heard of.  She had a vibrator that had a USB attached.  The customer on the other end of the internet had a device he plugged into his USB port.  He could feel all the vibrations as she pleasured herself.

"Holy smokes!  You're kidding!  I guess so, though, like computer games."

I couldn't help but wonder if they had made a penis sheath.  It would have made the OS in "Her" unbearable.

She said she was getting another degree right now.  Psychology.  I told her about Porn Studies by Linda Williams, a Berkeley professor who had been teaching courses in it for years.  She began studying it because it was one of the largest industries in America and that pornography had driven much of the advancements in media.  They were a big economic factor driving VHS technology.  They had pumped money into internet development.

I was still wondering about the penis sheath.  If there wasn't one, I wanted to make it.  Imagine the money someone will make with that!  But I despaired of being that billionaire.  I didn't have any of the necessary skills, and surely it was too late.  Another fortune gone.

She hung around as models often do long after we finished shooting even though she said she had to go.  She had driven over an hour to get to the studio and had to drive home and get back to work.  I felt like I was stealing money from her. . . and there was some ego in that.  Eventually, though, she got up to gather her things.  I was helping her separate her clothing from mine, but I couldn't find her underwear.  I was in a bit of a panic because I didn't want her to think I was a panty-sniffing pervert.  One of her businesses was selling her underwear.  Some guys wanted them fresh, some wanted her to wear them for a couple days, and still others wanted her to exercise in them.  Then they were shoved into a ziplock bag and shipped off.

"Here they are," she said.

"Oh thank God.  I was worried you'd think I pinched them."

As she walked out of the room, she threw them over her shoulder like a book bag, turned, and looking back smiled and said, "Sixty bucks!"

What a world.