I’d heard lines like that a million times. Viewers would push you as far as you’d bend. Horny guys promised the moon and stars in a basket. Just like RL.

“You’re a big talker, Blue, but I told you, no private. Now, one more token and this girl’s getting fucked.”

SoBlue has tipped Morgan 1,001 tokens.

iwatchusleep: OMFG

aussieboi: m8!!!

aussieboi: did ur finger slip??

SixPackCoverModel: that’s what she said

iwatchusleep: lol

[PM from SoBlue]: i’ll pay $1000 more if you stop the show.

I sat bolt upright, my shirt falling back over my breasts, the toy tumbling out of my lap. He really did just tip me a thousand and one bucks. I stared at the screen for a second, then put my hands on the keys.

[PM to SoBlue]: if you’re serious, my paypal is [email protected]

Rich guys had done crazy shit for me before. One of them bought me this MacBook, fully loaded. Another sent a whole Marc Jacobs ensemble—dress, jacket, shoes, handbag—that cost as much as a fucking car. It had belonged to his ex-wife. He got a kick out of watching me come in it. “She never could,” he confided.

Extreme generosity was rare, but not unheard of.

And it was always gifts. They wanted the control. They wanted to see me wearing the clothes they’d bought, typing on the laptop they’d paid for. They wanted to extend their reach into my real life, touch my physical body, the only way they could: with gifts.

No one had ever offered me cold hard cash.

My viewers grew impatient, asking about the cumshow, but I ignored them and grabbed my phone to text Dane.

MORGAN: this client offered 1k to go private

MORGAN: he already tipped me like 1300

MORGAN: this is crazy

MORGAN: do you think it’s safe

My phone vibrated in my hand, and I jumped. Not a text. An email confirmation from PayPal that $1,000 USD had been deposited to my account.

I set the phone down shakily.

iwatchusleep: bb, we gonna get a show or not

aussieboi: lets see you ride it

[PM to SoBlue]: send me a private chat request

I waited, my fingers curling and uncurling over the keys.

Incoming video call from SoBlue.

ACCEPT.

Cam window: me on one side, disheveled, flushed; his side, the ubiquitous black rectangle. His mic was muted. I stared at the chat box for an endless minute, watching the status bar informing me that SoBlue is typing . . .

SoBlue: hi.

I laughed, the tension breaking. “What took you so long? Hi, baby.”

SoBlue: i tried out some suave lines.

SoBlue: but every time i look at you my mind goes blank.

SoBlue: and all i can think is . . .

SoBlue: hi. hi. hi.

SoBlue: like an excited puppy.

He was cute. I sat back on the bed, pulling the laptop between my legs. All I wore was my tee and a thong.

“Hi hi hi to you too, Mr. Big Spender. What can I do for you?”

SoBlue is typing . . .

I watched the ellipsis fill and reset and fill again, over and over, as he chose his words.

SoBlue: i just want to talk.

“You sure? You seem pretty flustered. I could do something about that.” I ran a hand down one thigh. “What do you want to talk about?”

SoBlue: you.

SoBlue: close your legs.

Those legs tightened. Domination turned me on. I never let men in my real life dominate, but here the right edge of aggression could make things so much easier. Some nights I was little more than a sex therapist, assuring timid men that it was okay, no judgment, no shame.

I tucked my legs beneath me. “Is this better, Blue? Can I call you that?”

SoBlue: yes.

SoBlue: now.

SoBlue: tell me about yourself, morgan.

SoBlue: who are you?

I leaned in, breathed deep. Cleavage boost. Strange, how ridiculous these cam tricks seemed right now. Once you’re paid it’s all revealed for the absurd skin circus it is. “I’m twenty-one.” Every cam girl was either eighteen or twenty-one. “I’m in college for photography.” MFA dropout. “I love the outdoors, hiking, camping.” I loved torturing my body till every nerve burned and I groaned like the beast I was, passed out from exhaustion before I shored the boat, woke to fish nibbling at my toes and sand in my mouth. “I’ve never had a serious boyfriend.” I’d been in love once. “I’ve never been in love.” And it wrecked me.

SoBlue is typing . . .

SoBlue: i don’t believe you.

“About what?”

SoBlue: anything.

SoBlue: try again.

SoBlue: tell me something true.

“It’s all true, baby.”

We’d never know what was real and what wasn’t about each other. That was the beauty of our shared fiction.

SoBlue: here’s something true.

SoBlue: you’re sad.

SoBlue: tell me why.

For the first time, I drew a blank in front of the camera.

I’d heard it all. The objects men wanted to put inside my body. The ways they wanted to touch me, fuck me, defile me. The names—slut, spic, cunt, whore, bitch, honey, mommy—and the people I stood in for—ex-girlfriend, sister, stranger, boss. They acted out fantasies with me that they couldn’t in the real world. Followed me off a bus and dragged me into a dark alley. Locked a classroom door and bent me over a desk. None of it fazed me, because none of it was real. We were both characters. Only our loneliness was real, and for ten dollars a minute I’d pretend to care.

But sometimes they really just wanted something human. Someone to talk to. Those guys were the hardest for me.

I faked a laugh, throaty, reckless. “Why do you think I’m sad?”

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

I glanced at the clock. Fifty more minutes.

I could log off whenever I wanted. I already had his money.

SoBlue: do i make you uncomfortable?

I started to speak and then, on impulse, typed instead.

Morgan: I’m not sure what you want from me

SoBlue: i just want to talk.

Morgan: you want to talk about real things

Morgan: that’s not what I do

SoBlue: too kinky for you?

SoBlue: i could describe my big veiny cock if that makes it easier.

I laughed again, genuine. “It sort of does, yeah.”

SoBlue: why is that?

“Because then I know what you want.”

SoBlue: it’s simple.

SoBlue: i want you.

A thousand other men had said those words to me. This time I felt exactly how heavy they were.

“Who are you?”

SoBlue: i’m just a lonely guy on the internet.

SoBlue: who’s in love with a lonely girl.

It’s funny. Boys call us mushy and romantic, but they almost always declare their love first. Girls are the ones who hold back.

“You’re silly, but sweet. You want real talk? I’m sad because I’ve completely fucked my life up.” I wrapped my arms around my knees. “But that’s such a cam girl cliché. Let’s talk about something else. Like the color blue.”

Then I told him something true.

A long time ago, there was no word for the shade of the sea and sky. People described them instead as moods, temperaments: fierce and volatile, or melancholy and pacific. In Homer, the sea was “wine-dark.” In other classic texts it was a degree of gray. No one knows, really, why the ancients couldn’t put a word to that hue. It was colorblindness not at a physical but an intellectual level, an inability to describe what we saw because we lacked the language to conceive of it as separate. The sea was a vast goblet of wine. They looked right at it and saw juiced grapes and the fluid in their veins.

Scientists studied isolated tribal societies to see if the phenomenon still occurred in the modern era. And it did. Those with simpler languages called the sea a shade of black or red, a primal color. It wasn’t important enough—not like blood or nightfall—to give it its own name. Their brains became wired to see it as a subsidiary of another color, glossing over the hue and instead focusing on its emotionality. But people with more complex, technical languages, those rife with hues and hex codes and Pantone swatches, are trained to see color in a different way. We all see blue, but some of us see blue as an inflection, a mood, of black or red, while others see blue as its own creature.