In kink, this is known as breath play.

gag4me: look at my cock bb

“It’s so big, Daddy. So big and hard. It must be torture. Can I help you release?”

gag4me: get the tie

I slid my free hand into the drawer, grasped a silk men’s necktie. Oxblood. The deepest of reds.

In my wardrobe I had dozens more in various patterns and hues. This was my favorite. It looked like a vein. When I slipped the loop over my head my libido finally kicked in, my heart stuttering to life. I cinched tighter and my thighs tensed. The finger I was mechanically grinding against started to feel like an actual part of my body rather than a medical instrument.

gag4me: tell me to come on your face

“I want you to come on my face, Daddy.”

gag4me: be daddys good little slut

gag4me: choke yourself

Neck flung back, tie taut. Silk dug into my carotids, my pulse twitching through the thread, the floodlights, the music, the whole world throbbing in sync. My lungs were full of dead air. Every blood cell rushed to my head, the body’s automatic attempt to save the brain. The brain will actually drain limbs and organs of precious blood to buy itself a few more seconds. When Ryan’s skull smashed open on the asphalt, his body poured red ink right out through that hole. Ellis once told me that near-death experiences are really just a short-circuiting brain releasing a final burst of electricity. For one moment, right at the end, a sort of hyperconsciousness activates. Every neuron fires in a barrage of rainbow light. You feel everything.

Near-death is the only time I feel anything now.

My eyes were closed. Or maybe I was blacking out already. Two fingers inside me, one fist on the noose. Limbs light as the air I could no longer breathe. All sound condensed into a heavy drone, filling my head like the ocean roaring out of a nautilus shell. Something tugged me upward. The lightness of my own body, so light it could no longer anchor itself to this earth.

I was going to come. You’re supposed to wait for the client to say when, but fuck, fuck, I was going to come.

In a vague way I sensed my arm spasming, pulling the tie tighter. If you catch the climax before it reaches crescendo you can prolong it. The trick is to keep breathing.

Except it’s hard.

It’s so hard.

To stay.

In this world.

I stared up at the glimmering brocade of golden Christmas lights weaving around the rafters. I’d passed out and woken up. It felt like a new day.

I loosened the tie with a tingling hand. My whole body felt fuzzy, blurred.

I pulled my laptop over from the edge of the bed.

gag4me: wow bb

gag4me: that was AMAAAAZING

gag4me: ty for a great time

gag4me: see u soon

gag4me left the room.

Session ended. Total: 14:43.

Fifteen minutes of masturbation while I strangled myself with a tie. One hundred and fifty bucks. And all I had to do was die a little death. On webcam, for a stranger.

I couldn’t tell if I’d actually come or not. Autoerotic asphyxiation plays havoc with the divide between pleasure and oblivion. And what’s the difference, really? Either way, it’s an annihilation. A small rehearsal for the grand exit that’s coming someday.

How can I stand masturbating for voyeurs half a dozen times per night? Because I’m addicted to losing myself. I’m the original Suicide Girl. I destroy myself on cam night after night and men (and sometimes women) watch me and come.

I shut my laptop lid. I’d made nearly one K tonight.

My room at the studio—which I never thought of as “the studio” but, like everyone else, just the house—took up the entire attic. My cam setup occupied one corner: floods fitted with umbrellas to generate soft, even light, a bed decked in eggshell-white sheets, salvaged lobster trap nightstand crammed with photography books, prints tacked to the wall. Clients sometimes asked about the prints. Did you take those photos, Morgan? Yes. Why are they all of broken things? Because I’m broken. Everything I look at looks broken, too.

I’d just slipped into pajama pants when the door banged open and a blond head ducked in. Dane.

“You okay?”

He’d been monitoring my cam—someone always monitored during breath play so I didn’t accidentally kill myself—and he’d seen me sign off. He knew I was fine. Just another excuse to come talk.

I gave him a droll look and crossed the room.

My real bed was a narrow twin wedged into the dormer window nook. I sprawled on it and pulled my knees up. The glass gleamed like a black mirror. Night cloaked Chebeague Island in a dark so deep and vacant it was less like darkness than outer space. Ocean fused with sky and even when I laid my forehead on the pane, there was nothing out there. In Maine, the abyss doesn’t lie beneath. It’s all around you.

Dane drifted nearer, studying my body. I still wore only a bra and sleep pants, tats exposed, spilling over my ribs and down one hip and up one arm. Most were from my myth obsession phase: gryphon, minotaur, chimera. I’d drawn the mockups; Hector, my old boss, had inked me. For no particular reason, they were all on my right side. I liked the asymmetry.

The last tattoo I’d ever inked was on an old friend. She’d had me draw a girl’s red-nailed hand, fingers clawed, skin sprouting black fur. “It’s for my little wolf,” she’d said.

Typically I discouraged lovers’ tats. Pick someone more permanent in your life. Child. Parent. Best friend.

“You killed it today.” Dane leaned on my desk. “Blew everyone else out of the water. Let’s celebrate.”

“The day’s not over yet,” I said, my breath ghosting onto the glass.

“Take a break. You’ll burn out.”

“That’s the idea.”

He came to the edge of the bed. In the window our faces rippled and warped, as if underwater.

“Your spot’s not in danger,” he said. “You’ll be number one again this month.”

His Henley clung to his chest and the wiry muscle coiling around his arms. Dane was lean in a serpentine way, a lazy grace in his body that could snap into hardness unexpectedly. I’d seen him work. He was one of us, a cam boy who jerked off for a mostly male audience. I’d watched him come on his belly. Watched him suck dildos while he stroked his dick. His eyebrows rose, prayerful, a humbled openness transfiguring his face when he came. An almost innocent beauty.

“I’m not worried about my spot.”

“The money?”

I shrugged.

“Then what’s in this for you?”

“Anesthesia.” I pressed my palm to the cool glass. “The more I work, the less I feel.”

Dane’s reflection locked eyes with mine. Two phantoms gazing at each other in a dark mirror.

“Take a walk with me,” he said.

A break from fucking inanimate objects might be nice.

I followed him downstairs past three flights of closed doors, slivers of light knifing along the edges. Behind each door a body was wet with lube and oil and maybe even actual human fluids. On the other side of a screen, somewhere in the world, another body responded.

A group of cammers hung out in the kitchen, laughing riotously as they passed around a bottle of Southern Comfort. Someone called for Dane to stay, but he merely waved. I felt their lingering eyes as we stepped outside.

Our house was a few hundred feet from the water. No moon tonight, but the Milky Way furled overhead, a pale twist of stardust stained with orchid and indigo dye. We picked our way across the sand, the house glow fading at our backs. I’d never really heard silence until I moved to Maine. The soft crash of the waves receded into white noise and became part of the emptiness, an emptiness so pure, so weighted and intense that it pressed against my skin, gripped me, held me, an absence become presence.

On nights like this, the silence was indistinguishable from my heart.