Page 5 of Caught Up

I grinned and wrote back,I have a feeling you’ll like this one. I sent him a screenshot from the video, in which I was topless and biting my lip while looking into the camera. Ryan always saved several shots from each video that Taylor and I filmed so we could use them to tease our subs while they waited for posts to go live.

Another notification popped up. NT95 had tipped me fifty bucks.

Just wait until you see YOUR video,I said, followed by severalkissy-faceemojis.

Can’t wait, he wrote back.Hope you have a good night, Lauren, and congrats again on yesterday’s big win.

Thank you!!!

I was still riding high from swaying Councilwoman Blackwell over to our side. With her vote secured, the legislation had a good chance of passing, and soon the sex workers of this city would be able to report any assaults that were committed against them while working without facing solicitation charges. It would be a huge win, one we’d been fighting for years to achieve, and even though it had been a long, exhausting slog, we were getting there. It made me hopeful that with enough hard work, we could eventually drag thisblue-collarcity into the modern age.

NT95 liked my last message, and I set my phone down, smiling. It was funny, thinking back over our shared history and how much had changed since he’d first subscribed. Now, I had a “menu” on my Me4U page that subs could order from. When I started, I’d calculated custom prices for every request, but as my account grew, I couldn’t keep up, so I switched to charging a flat rate oftwenty-fivedollars per minute of camera time, with athree-minuteminimum. There were added rates for toy and kink work, and for name or specific phrase usage. NT95 had requested a $700 video a few days ago, and I’d wasted no time filming it.

My smile widened as I checked on the pasta. I’d pulled in fifteen grand this week. There was so much good I could do with that kind of money that it left me feeling giddy. It took me two solid years of posting to get to this point, but now I was making so much that I’d onlyneedto work for a few more before I was able to comfortably live out the rest of my days doing whatever the fuck I wanted.

The thing was, this workwaswhat I wanted to do. I loved what I did, and the fact that I got paid so much for it still felt surreal. Journalists and therapists and politicians and keyboard warriors bent over backward analyzing sex work and why people did it, and while they had good right to because it was a large and very complex issue with so many problematic and dangerous elements, to me, personally, it wasn’t that complicated.

I found camwork both liberating and healing. I’d been raised Catholic in an incredibly patriarchal Italian neighborhood where shame was a large part of the culture, where any woman who lived outside of the strict, unwritten code of norms was ostracized. As a teenager, I’d felt the lash of judgment fall upon me over and over again, the blows strong enough that I nearly broke beneath the force of them. It had taken me years to heal those invisible wounds, but now, Ilikedsex. Ilikedfilming myself naked. Ilikedgetting others off.

It was as simple as that.

Over the past decade, I’d reclaimed my agency, my power, and I lived my life out in the open for all to see, embracing my sexuality, encouraging others to do the same, fighting for those who were still shamed, still pushed to the edges of society because so many people refused to see that sex work was valid work and should come with the same protections as any other career.

My win with Councilwoman Blackwell was a huge step in the right direction, but there were still many other politicians to convince. Not just in our city, but in the rest of the state and country. Camwork was what I loved, but advocacy work was my passion in life. Even if all my Me4U subs disappeared tomorrow, I would spend the rest of my time here on earth making sex work safer for everyone who came after me.

A door swung open upstairs, pulling me from my thoughts.

“How’d it go?” I called out.

“Good,” Ryan yelled, the shutting of another door telling me they’d gone into their bedroom.

Taylor flounced down the stairs a minute later, tying her floral robe back in place as she joined me in the kitchen. Her nose led her straight to the bubbling saucepan. “This smells amazing.”

“Thanks,” I said, pointing my wooden spoon at the fridge. “The wine that goes with it is chilling.”

Taking the hint, she spun away to pour us glasses. We clinked ours together and each took a sip before she left to deliver the third one to Ryan in their editing cave. While she was gone, my video finished uploading, and I quickly posted it before the alarm I’d set for the pasta went off.

Taylor rejoined me just in time to help plate everything up.

“Come down and eat with us, you antisocial bitch!” I called to Ryan.

They descended the stairs looking only slightly disgruntled and settled in their usual seat at the dining table. Taylor and I sat on either side of them, and together, the three of us tucked into dinner, with Walter asleep underfoot while we ate and laughed and drank until our plates were empty and our bellies full. It was a perfect evening. I was blissfully happy, endlessly grateful for this life I’d created for myself.

And then my phone rang.

3

Junior

It was three o’clock inthe morning on Friday by the time I got back to my dingy apartment. This time, half the blood wetting my shirt was mine.

I peeled the fabric off in the bathroom, wincing when I caught sight of my stomach in the mirror. There was athree-inchgash on my left side from a knife I hadn’t been fast enough to dodge. Goddamn turf war bullshit. Why the fuck had we even been involved? That wasn’t what we usually did for thehigher-ups. My old man must have owed someone a favor or something.

Fucking Christ, I thought, reliving the night in my head. If I’d been any slower dodging the blade, it would have punctured my lung.

My eyes dropped to the scars riddling the rest of my torso. They stood as a stark reminder of how many close calls I’d had over the years, how a split second of distraction could have ended with me in the hospital, or worse.

I bent down, wincing, and grabbed the first aid kit from beneath the bathroom sink. After showering off, I went about dressing the wound. I’d gotten good at stitching myself up, though luckily, tonight, no actual stitches were required since the gash was pretty shallow.

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