AGGIE
In two minutes, I'm going to take my clothes off for money.

I confirm it's two minutes on the upper-right corner of my laptop screen. Yep. 11:58. Tuesday July 13.

Just another day at the office for good old Agnes.

If your office is your bedroom and you're kneeling on your bed in a cheap-ass black polyester slip you panic-bought at Walmart for $9.99. Marked down from $12.99.

Totally normal Tuesday.

One minute, 30 seconds.

Here's the thing. Agnes isn't doing this. No, Agnes files. Agnes owns four cardigans, all oatmeal. Agnes says bless you to people who only cough. 

So I sent somebody else in. Agnes's alter ego.

Which is technically me. But not me.

Getting her ready took three hours, and it wasn't fun. The laptop camera wants to sit at a "flattering height," which in this apartment means balanced on a dresser on top of two library books and a Converse shoebox. The lamp in the corner of her room has a scarf over the shade and it's starting to smell a little burn-y. The camera frame she's primping in front of stops at her mouth, just above her upper lip, which is mandatory for privacy reasons.

But this is not Agnes. This is my alter ego.

I may be taking off my robe for internet strangers, but that doesn't mean all privacy flies out the door. After a bunch of research, I learned that a smart camgirl shows only her chin, lips, throat, collarbone, and maybe a strap or two of whatever she's wearing. There are no eyes showing. No face, aside from the mouth. Nothing that could be identifying.

One minute left. My eyes run over the computer screen where the website glows as if I haven't already studied it for several hours. I check the preview button that shows you what your viewers will see before they see it. I click it.

Oh, no.

That's my mouth? I've had it my whole life and never once seen it cropped off from the rest of my face and lit from underneath like a ransom photo. And my teeth are the exact off-white of a manila folder. Nobody warns you about this shit. You budget for lingerie and lighting and completely forget your teeth are about to be the whole show.

I make a vow, clad in my nine dollars of polyester, that someday I'll bleach these babies to a color that does not occur in nature.

Tonight, I fix what I can. There's a red lipstick in the drawer I bought for a wedding and chickened out of wearing because it was a lot. Now, a lot is the whole point. Two slicked-on coats later, the woman I'm looking at in the preview reminds me of someone I'd never want to owe money to.

Somewhere back in the setup, in cheerful little letters, the site congratulated me on becoming a model. A model. Somewhere in Milan, a woman is getting paid right now to walk in a straight line and look bored, and here I am, kneeling on a comforter I've had since sophomore year and I’m a freaking model too? I nearly choke. I’ve never set foot on a runway, and the last photo anyone took of me was my work badge, and in it, I look like I'm being booked for some crime.

Model, my ass.

Just above my onscreen preview is my new alter ego's name. The cam site made me pick a name, and under pressure, my brain coughed up one dangerous-sounding word. Which is how I'm now named after my landlord's god-awful chihuahua. Four pounds of ferocity. Bitten two grown men. My role model, honestly.

Diablo. Says it all.

Thirty seconds.

I'm not here for the thrill. A cheap slip and too much lipstick is not my idea of fun. No, I'm here for the damn money. I'm here because my sister put her name, her savings, and—surprise!—my name on a loan for a goat yoga ranch. Goat. Yoga. Ranch. In the end, because the business never took off, the goats were sent to some animal sanctuary, the yoga never happened, and the ranch went into foreclosure. But not everything died, unfortunately. No, as of today, the loan is alive and well in the hands of a man who has never once, in his life, cut anybody a goddamn break.

Ten seconds.

Robe on. Lipstick screaming. Self-respect out the door, at least for the next hour.

The GO LIVE button, all red and flashy, is screaming at me. My finger hovers over it. I look at my preview. I look around my bedroom and toss a possibly identifiable throw pillow onto the floor.

And she's LIVE.

Holyfuckingshit.

The live button is no longer flashing. Now, it's solid green. And by God, the box in the upper-left side has the number two in it.

As in, I've got two viewers.

Then, two becomes four. Well, three-and-a-half since one of them is shooting messages at me that scroll down the left-hand side of my screen, that I need to buy crypto. From them. As soon as possible.

I shift around to get my circulation going, since kneeling for any length of time is not something I typically do, and hang onto the front of my robe like a subway pole, trying to remember one thing from the nine forums I read about cam-girling, while I was at my full-time job, using a hidden browser.

Talk to them. They type, you talk.

Like a late-night radio host, if the host were dressed like me, overly lipsticked, and slightly nauseous.

"So," I blurt, trying to lower my voice. "Come here often?"

Ugh. Idiot.

first time. u?

"Oh, hey, first timer." Shit. Am I supposed to sound spunky? Seductive? Innocent? "We have something in common, don't we? Ask me anything about this website, because I know none of it."

I force a little laugh I'm hoping doesn't come off as batshit crazy.

And a sound goes off, a cheery little cha-ching, and I flinch like someone hit me. Then I realize a little gold crown floats up the chat like a bubble in a beer.

why so jumpy, baby? that sound is money, new girl. ur welcome.

Five bucks. Because I said I don't know shit? A thing I have done, for free, expertly, my entire life? I sit with that for a moment. What else have I been giving away?

The site cheerfully informs me I've just knighted my first knight. He gets a tiny sword next to his name now. Five dollars to razz a website with me. We're both clearly killing it.

Viewer six shows up and opens with, show ur feet n shut up.

I'd love to say I stayed classy. But it's after midnight, I'm named after a killer chihuahua, my hands won't stop shaking, and somewhere, my sister is sleeping like a baby while a loan shark makes plans to break our legs.

Something in me flips.

"Wow." I lean at the lens, mouth-first. "With game like that, the restraining orders must just find you."

Take that, bitch.

Cha-ching. Ten dollars. DO HIM AGAIN.

Feet guy, undeterred: cmon baby, show me somethin.

"Sure, hon," I snap. "Here's something to suck on. How 'bout no?"

Cha-ching.

I continue. "No name."

Cha-ching.

"No face."

Cha-ching.

"And nothing—" I pull the robe all the way up to my neck like a shy substitute teacher, "—for free."

Big emphasis on free.

The cha-chings sound like a chorus of gods who've fallen from the sky to bless me.

The chat detonates. Nineteen viewers. Somebody drops forty dollars.

Here's what I figure out somewhere in minute twenty-five, and it's worth more than the cash: my fear never goes anywhere. My heart's slamming into my chest the whole hour. But something moves in next to it and starts unpacking boxes. When I finally get off my knees, legs nearly asleep, nineteen strangers stop breathing at once. I try a slow turn, drag a strap down my shoulder exactly like I saw in some hoochie-momma music video, and the cha-chings come in a rush. I catch the preview window mid-turn. Red mouth. Black slip. For one full second, I have no idea who she is.

Then I do. And I get the whole game in a single move. Slow. Everything slow. They're not paying for skin. They're paying for the maybe.

At 1:14, I run out of nerve, blow the camera a kiss because it's a Diablo move, and slam the laptop shut like it owes me money.

Then I open it back up, because I never checked the only thing that matters, and it takes me five minutes to even find where the tips live.

Three hundred and eleven dollars.

One hour. In a cheap slip and too much lipstick. Insulting a man about his manners. My day job pays me that in two days of answering phones for three men who've never once said my name. And where I have to wear fucking pantyhose.

A laugh explodes from my mouth but I shove it back down. It's late and I live in a cheap apartment building with thin walls. But it doesn't matter. Tonight was never about the three hundred dollars. It's taking charge of a shit situation my sister got us into that can only be resolved by me. In a slip and red lippy.

The there’s the adrenaline. I’m learning that it doesn't just disappear when the show's over. It just stands around in your body looking for somewhere to go.

I'm still on my knees. I've been on my knees for an hour and I don't want to get up, and it takes me a second to figure out why. Every inch of me is buzzing at some frequency that’s going to keep me up all night. At least it’s not fear. Fear packed up and left around minute forty. This is the thing that moved in next to it and got comfortable.

I made nineteen strangers stop breathing tonight. Me. A mouth, a lamp, and a slip that cost less than lunch.

I lie back on my sophomore-year comforter. The laptop's still open, dark now, and there she is again in the black of the screen, the not-Agnes-woman with the red mouth, bare throat, the strap halfway down. The woman I didn't recognize earlier who looks like she gets exactly what she wants and makes you thank her for it.

I want to be her for five more minutes.

My hand's already moving before I've decided anything, and to be clear, it is not about the foot guy, or the crypto guy, or any of the sweet little Knights who paid tonight to watch me. It's about the no. The nineteen held breaths. The warm, stupid, entirely-mine power of it.

I lay down as if I might sleep, and behind my closed eyes, there's the shape of someone watching. Not a face, I don't have one to give him yet, but the idea of a man I’d let have me. Who earned it. And makes me feel hot.

It embarrasses me, how fast my right hand wanders under my slip until it finds my wet pussy. It only takes a few strokes until I come, my left hand clamped over my own mouth out of pure habit—thin walls, keep it quiet, keep everything quiet. For a few seconds, Agnes isn't in this apartment at all.

After, I breathe at the ceiling. Flushed, appalled, a little proud. I have a feeling that particular combination is about to become my whole personality.

Sweet little Aggie. On her knees at one in the morning, getting off on her own brilliance.

I schedule tomorrow before I can argue myself out of it. Same time. Same… face I don't have.

Diablo's open for business, bitches.

***