The Skunge (6 page)

She logged in, scanned her inbox, adjusted the tissue box and made sure a few were scattered around her. She rubbed furiously at her lips with the back of her hand, making them puff up. She started her show.

After a few seconds, the guest list began filling with names. Private messages bubbled onto her screen.

bb, you have sexy tits!!

Loved you in Hump Day 3. That scene with Derek Hardmann was so hot

Do u escort? Where do u live? Can we meet?

She tried not to roll her eyes at the messages scrolling across her screen. Since her porn movies had started showing on the tube sites, the number of men in her chatroom had exploded; most of the newbies wanted her to enact their favorite scenes. She would of course—if they had the credits. If they asked her to piss in a bowl, she'd do that too, what the hell—some of the other girls would drink it (or pretend to), but Sugar would just take their money, fill the bowl, and tell them to fuck off. Some of them would threaten to report her to the site, but since it was against the rules in the first place, they wouldn't get far.
Dear pornographers! One of your models urinated in a bowl but refused to drink it. I expect a full resolution, posthaste
!
Good day to you, sirs
! The sites treated most of the models as fodder, but for someone who had some cachet in the skin trade, she had enough push-back to stick to her boundaries. A lot of the girls didn't have the same luxury.

BB, can I c ur cute feet?

Show me your cunt, please.

fukin bitch bitch fucj u hoor

I love you, you are the most beautiful girl on this site

"Fuck you, fuck you very much." She muttered through gritted teeth and managed not to roll her eyes, forcing a tearful smile, as one of the room's self-styled Lotharios told her she was 'too pretty to do porn for a living', and tipped her five bucks.
It's going to be a long night
, she thought.

Sugar pouted and pretended to tear up, moaning about her lack of real friends (the sub-text being that her viewers were her real friends; that brought her twenty dollars or so in sympathy tips, which she accepted while swiping away tears), and that she couldn't find a good, date-able man anywhere. That part, of course, was true: Los Angeles was a moral tar pit, attracting those whose ethical and intellectual paucity mirrored that of the city itself. The men (and women) here were as sweet and desirable on the outside as chocolate Easter bunnies, and just as hollow inside.

BRB ALL, GETTING TISSUES, SORRY, ROUGH DAY she typed. She moped off screen, and as soon as she was clear, gave her laptop the finger and hopped to the stereo to put on some music. Her fake depression was turning into a real melancholy, so she put on an old punk album to keep her energy up. She would have to pretend to bounce back from her sadness once the tokens reached an adequate level. The downside to the 'lonely-girl show', as she called it, was that she did tend to get a bit introspective. Maybe all of it was starting to get to her. She felt pressure building in her head. It was a feeling she had grown used to over the years; it had begun at the age of eight or so. A tightness at the back of her skull, a headache, and a rising urge to let off the pressure.

She sang along with her MP3 players, a song about a girl who's afraid of the world so she stays at home. She poured herself a Diet Coke and made a face at her reflection, mirrored in the steel surface of the fridge. She looked tired. Maybe it was time for a vacation. She had saved enough for a tit-job, which she could leverage later into more roles, but her B cups were still pulling good money for 'teen' porn. More than the steroidal, frightening tit-queens with their tanned, taut, basketball-sized breasts.

She didn't want to be off-cam for too long, but she needed a moment to herself, just to let off the pressure. She stole into the bathroom, and sat on the edge of the tub. She pinned up her hair, opened a drawer and brought out a rolled bundle of fabric. Unwinding it, she exposed razor blades, a lighter, and gauze pads. She flicked the lighter, fascinated as always by the licking orange tongues of flame. She held the razor to the fire. She held it, long past the point where the metal heated past discomfort and into the realm of pain. Her fingers sang with heat, the flesh growing red and tight.

She reached behind her neck and ran the blade across the top of her neck, where the blond hair ended and her skin began. A quick line of pain, thin as spider-silk, burned across her neck. Then another. The sting reached her brain and sent tingles through the back of her head, like someone running their fingers through her hair. The pleasure mixed with the sting of the cuts, sending bolts of

nostalgia

some unnamed sensation down her spine. She sighed with real feeling; years of cutting, and the feeling hadn't yet lessened. Other than this, she felt nothing other than boredom or a loose, unfocused depression and a feeling of time passing like the white lines of a highway. She blotted at the burning red lines with the gauze, drawing the blood up and out. She set aside the gauze, red side up, counting the number of lines. Never less than four; she liked round numbers, but of course odd ones would do, if there were enough of them. Tonight she didn't have time for more than six. Six clean cuts, six hisses of pain and release, six blotted lines on the white gauze.

A loud ping sounded from the computer in the living room. She sighed as she stashed away her cutting tools.
She had set up a sound alert when one of her 'whales' entered her chatroom. She had a few; just enough to keep her busy without working too hard. Some girls had dozens. Whales spent lots of money on their favorite girls, and they were When she saw who it was, she smiled. HARDC71 was his screen name, and he was her biggest whale.

How's trix, T
? he typed. She had, one night after he offered a shitload of tokens, confided that her real name was Tanya. He was not, under any circumstances, to share that name with
anyone
. It was only for him. Afterward, she had snickered at the eager, pathetic gratitude he felt at her lies. Tanya was a cat she dimly remembered having as a child; one day Tanya had crept out the door and never returned.

HARDC71 added an emoticon of a monkey waving hello. For some reason, most of the whales she knew used emoticons and animated GIFs more than most users; she figured it was the chatroom equivalent of a dayglo Hawaiian shirt at a barbecue: even if they didn't acknowledge the attention, they still wanted it. And speaking of wanting...

"Hey, baby!" she squealed. She waved at the camera like a teenybopper in the midst of an epileptic fit. These fuckers ate it up when you acted like the teenage heartthrobs they didn't get in high school. Sugar was of the opinion that most of them would go back to high school in a hot minute, if given the chance, and she was matter-of-fact glad that none of them worked as teachers.

HardC71 was a middle-aged, pot-bellied concrete company owner. He had barely any hair on his head, but plenty on his back.

Missed you, C,
she typed.
Been too long
! She sent an emoticon featuring a smiling pair of lips pooching outward in a kissing motion.

Missed you too, dirty girl. You want to play today?

U know I do, baby.

She leaned out of frame a moment and stifled a yawn. Yawning, sneezing, coughing—or God forbid farting—in your room was guaranteed to drive the customers away in droves. They hated to be reminded that you were a real person who got sick, tired, or had human needs and feelings. They wanted a meat-puppet to play dress-up with, and switch off when they were done.

A chime sounded, signaling that HARDC71 had begun a private session show. All the other users dropped out of chat, leaving only her and him.

"Hey baby," she said, patting her hair into place. Normally he asked for pigtails, but she hoped he wouldn't today—she had a headache already. There was a click as his mic came on line, and a second later the soft chime as his cam opened. He liked for her to watch him while he watched her. His miniature image resolved at the bottom right corner of her chat software.

There was a kind of choreography to private shows, at least with her regulars. Some guys, they started the private and called you
bitch
or
whore
as soon as it started, no hello or anything, and they expected her to be naked and moaning within thirty seconds. If not sooner. HARDC was more civilized than that, but only by a thin margin. She had the idea that he liked to play the big man with a lot of models.

Soon enough, the small talk was done and HARDC71—real name Colin, who had an ex-wife, two kids, and a raging fetish for schoolgirl porn—had his pants down, jerking his substandard cock while Sugar cooed and pouted and touched herself. He loved that she could come on command—his command, naturally. She'd never actually orgasmed on cam, nor was she aware of any cam-girls that had. She played it just like in her movies, everything for the camera.

HARDC71 moaned her name and started to play with his balls, a sure sign he was on the approach and ready for liftoff. She moved her face closer to the camera, whispering to him, taunting him.

"You gonna come on my face, baby? Gonna come all over my schoolgirl face, watch me lick it up—" She stopped talking when she realized he had stopped jerking off, and was now leaning into his own monitor, peering at her with his mouth open. There was something like disgust in his eyes.

"T, honey?" he said. His cock, wilting from inattention, fell from his hand, and his face filled the screen. He adjusted his glasses and squinted. "Are you feeling OK?"

"What do you mean, honey?" She tilted her head at him in a way she knew he found endearing, and surreptitiously checked her face in her spare monitor.

A long, twisted black string hung out of the corner her eye. It poked out of her tear duct, and as she watched, it wriggled like a worm, tickling her cheek. She cried out and stumbled back from her computer, tripping over her guitar, sending it flying with a musical crash. She tumbled and hit the back of her head on the floor. Bright, flashing lights sparkled at the corners of her vision.

She jumped to her feet and ran for the bathroom.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"You like rough trade?" Christian shouted over the music. The little balding guy adjusted his old-school horn rim glasses and licked his lips, eyeing Christian's chain belt and tight leather pants. Booming house beats pounded the air, while swirling gel-filtered lights flashed through the mind-numbing throb of the club. Strobe lights captured stuttering images of sweaty, naked flesh. Two hundred half-naked men, grinding and dry-humping on a dented steel dance floor the size of a large living-room. The smell of hot oil, sweat, and sex covered everything. Jacked-up pheromones baked off the twinks, twunks, bears and circuit boys, all of them working it on the floor.

The little guy nodded like his head was on a spring.

Christian leaned over to shout directly into his ear. "You like what you see?" The club turned the sound-system all the way up on the weekends, and Saturday night was the loudest and wildest. Christian ran one hand along his oiled abs, letting the pulsing lights of the club skate deliriously up and down the ridged muscle. He watched the other man's eyes following an oily drop of sweat as it traced a crooked line down Christian's stomach.

The other man nodded again, throat working as he swallowed convulsively. Christian grabbed him by the hand and dragged him toward the bathrooms. A programmed laser light show spelled out the club's name across the walls. Men stumbled out of the washrooms, shirts wet with sweat and pants soaked through with glittering oil and water.

Christian head learned a lot since coming to California. After the paranoiac horrors of the eighties and early nineties, the fast and easy style of West Hollywood gay life had returned with something approaching a holy fervor. He could hook up sometimes three or four times in one night, and be home in time to catch the late-late movies on cable. He never got tired of the noir classics: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and NORA PRENTISS. Night after night he fell asleep to those great old stories of losers losing.

Once in the bathroom, Christian turned back to his mark. "You're a librarian, or a teacher, or something?" Christian said, already loosening his belt. "That's hot. Makes my cock hard." The guy wore a wedding ring, and Christian felt cold excitement bubble up in his chest. Odds were even whether or not the guy's wife even had a clue about her husband's double life. Most wives, deep down, sensed the repressed past and desire that drove men like this out to the clubs, and ignored it as best they could.

"Wait." The man put one dove-white hand on Christian's arm. "Please. Not like this."

Christian snorted. "Too late to back out now."

"I mean not
here
. Can we...can you...outside?" His glasses flashed in the cold white light of the bathroom.

Christian laughed. "No one cares in here, man. You want it, then this is it."

The man slid his hand lower, gripping Christian with surprising strength. "I'll be good," he whispered. "So good. I promise." He moaned when Christian grabbed him by the throat, and Christian smiled approvingly.

"OK. You'd better be." He shook him by his neck. "Now move."