Page 35 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

Suzie also got into watching wrestling with Jinx; in a way it was LARPing adjacent. “Wrestling is not fake,” Jinx used to say, “it is merely predetermined.”

But in a way, wasn’t everything? Margo wondered. That was one of the things Mark had told her, that as far as neuroscience was concerned, free will couldn’t be real. That our brains only invented explanations, justifications for what our body was already getting ready to do. That consciousness was a fabulous illusion. We were inferring our own state of mind the same way we inferred the minds of others: thinking someone is mad when they frown, sad when they cry. We feel the physiological sensation of anger and we think, I’m mad because Tony stole my banana! But we’re just making stuff up, fairy tales to explain the deep dark woods of being alive.

The first week after the WangMangler promo, about fifty people canceled their subscription, and I decided that was normal. Buyer’s remorse. The next week another fifty people canceled, and some of them wrote decidedly angry messages about why. This account was a scam. There were no pictures of my vagina. The problem was simple: my account did not contain material it was possible to jack off to.

A kindly fan, one who didn’t unsubscribe, suggested I begin making longer videos. He suggested two and a half minutes as being a standard “jack-off length,” so I tried to aim for that. I knew the guy had probably meant a video of me masturbating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not while Jinx was watching Bodhi on the other side of the door. It felt too real.

The last copromotion we’d run was a total bust, and we spent $500 to get forty new fans. I was beginning to have a sinking feeling, like the account I’d thought I was building was slipping through my fingers.

It was around this time that I received a strange message. Obviously, I received a lot of strange messages. This one was strange because it was direct and professional. It said: I see you do written dick ratings, would you be open to other written work? —JB.

I don’t think a single fan had ever referred to what I was doing for them as work before. It was refreshing. Most of the messages were things like, hey, and u r so hot; sometimes they were telling me to shove a knife up my pussy or drink drain cleaner. One guy offered to pay me $500 to film myself pooping into a soup can. It was out of the question; I would have trouble pooping in a soup can even without the pressure of being filmed. So JB’s message was distinctly different from what I usually received. I was intrigued but also worried he’d ask for fanfic erotica where I made us have a threesome with Logan Paul or something.

I clicked through to his profile so I could enlarge his pic. Most guys didn’t upload anything, their profile stayed an outline of a head, like a children’s board game; others posted their abs or dick, or an anime character, or a Pepe the Frog meme. JB’s was a close-up on the face of an aged black pug, its muzzle flecked with white.

I wrote back in the chat: Is the dog in your profile pic yours or just a random internet dog?

He wrote: My dog.

HungryGhost: Name, please?

JB: Is this a test?

HungryGhost: Yes.

JB: I’m going to fail.

HungryGhost: Why?

JB: His name is Jelly Bean. My niece named him.

I considered this. You pass. What kind of written work did you have in mind?

JB: $100 to tell me about your family’s holiday traditions.

I stared at the screen.

My brain was ticking. I couldn’t think of how this information would be useful to him. And if he didn’t want it for practical reasons involving a scam, it meant he wanted it for emotional reasons. He was asking for something real from me. He was trying to get at the me behind the pictures. It made me angry, though I couldn’t define exactly why. I just kept thinking, How dare he!

Why? I asked.

JB: I think it’s hot thinking about you being a real person.

I raised my eyebrows, but it was not a bad way of spinning the terrible, swollen loneliness that would drive a person to ask for this. And a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, after all, and there was no way I was letting little Jelly Bean get anything real from me.

So I lied. I made up a whole different family, said I had an older brother and my dad was in sales, and Dad would always get these bonuses at work that were like hotel points and airline miles, and every Christmas we’d take a vacation, spend Christmas in Hawaii or Paris or Bermuda. This sounded too idyllic, too made up, even though I was stealing it from Becca’s actual life, so I added a bunch of stuff about how there was so much pressure to be happy on these trips, but really, I just wanted all those normal things: the Christmas tree, the stockings, our house feeling like magic. And instead, it was always a hotel room, white sheets, blue-toned art on the walls; some gifts would appear, only a few, the wrapping a little smooshed, so I knew they’d been stuffed in my parents’ suitcases. My brother told me there was no Santa when I was six, but I still wished we could all pretend. I wished my dad did a better job hiding his affairs. I wished my mom did a better job hiding her boredom.

Honestly, I kind of had myself choked up by the end, even though none of this was true. I pressed send. The $100 tip came through immediately. Then he offered to pay $100 for a description of my mother. Like a portrait of her. He was interested because I said she was bored.

You poor sick puppy, I thought, then spent the next hour composing a portrait of my fictional mother. I tried to make it interesting. The rough outline of the parents, the salesman dad and bored mom, I’d stolen from Becca—but I couldn’t exactly say where the rest of it came from. It was fun: making things up, pulling each detail out of the dark of my mind like a rabbit from a hat.

Chapter Ten

Shyanne was so preoccupied planning her wedding, a trip to Vegas scheduled for the first week of January, that she forgot to tell Margo she was busy on Thanksgiving until Margo called asking what she should bring. “Oh, we’re volunteering for the needy!” Shyanne said.

Margo knew it was wonderful Kenny was encouraging her mom to volunteer, and that a good deed was a good deed whether it was done for a cringeworthy reason or not. It was only that Thanksgiving had always been their holiday; she and Shyanne would order in Chinese food, watch Lifetime movies, and do those Baby Foot peels. It felt like an entire world was being lost.

Instead, Jinx made her and Suzie a whole traditional meal. He really outdid himself: turkey, mashed potatoes, real stuffing not from a box, and an apple pie.

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