Chapter One
Izzy
Old Tests.That’s how I’d labeled the box. I figured what’s more boring than old tests? It offered a much better defense than something likesuper private, hands off!
Or the truth:embarrassing costumes for my weird sex thing or whatever.
I was standing in my new studio apartment. After a day spent moving, my muscles ached with exhaustion. Cardboard boxes were scattered all over the place, my house plants waited patiently to find new homes, and an old nineties playlist hummed over my speaker, an attempt to pump my energy back up.
The studio wasn’t special, and it wasn’t fancy, but it was mine. I hadn’t lived by myself in years. Renting my own place should have been exciting, thrilling, like the start of a whole new chapter.
If I could only get over moping about it first. I’d lived with Jo since we graduated college, and although I knew we wouldn’t live in the same apartment forever, I guess I cultivated some denial about that fact.
Not that I could blame her for moving in with her girlfriend. They’d been dating for three years, so I knew it was coming.
But I was shy and not the best at developing friendships, and as the years passed and I hit thirty, I realized how few actual friends I had around.
At least I knew the secret in the box would always cheer me up.
And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I took a little break from unpacking.
I opened the box, then pulled out the cat costume, my recent favorite. It fit me like a bodysuit, with the brown fabric stretched thin, and was adorned only with a little triangle of a tail, some furry cuffs around the wrists and ankles, and a floppy hood with two ears.
I rubbed the fabric against my cheek. No matter how many times I told myself I should probably stop doing what I was about to do and to find a real relationship instead, still, I kept coming back.
I shucked off my clothes, then slid into the costume. The one-size-fits-all garment hung loosely off my shoulders until I zipped it up the front. It was a different look than the Spiderman costume that got this whole weird thing started but just as playful.
Just because I was shy in real life, it didn’t mean I couldn’t turn into something else online.
It started when I was twenty. All my friends were dating and having sex, but I was still a virgin and growing really impatient for someone to come along and sweep me off my feet. Then one night, all alone at the apartment I shared with Jo, I drank a couple glasses of wine, slipped into my Spiderman costume from that year’s Halloween party, and started wandering around on the internet.
How I ended up transforming from a curious viewer to an anonymous Spiderman, broadcasting myself on video chat, I’m still not sure. But with my face fully covered and my identity carefully concealed, I started playing, rolling on the bed and posing for a few total strangers.
Something took hold of me, these urges that I’d never really explored before. I became flirty and playful and new.
I loved it.
And the compliments did me in. Online, I wasn’t shy and undateable. I was cute, and desirable, and totally fun.
Losing my virginity felt impossibly far away, and it didn’t happen for a couple more years. But jerking off for a few strangers in my Spiderman costume satisfied some of those needs and a few other ones I didn’t even realize I had.
The costume let me access a part of myself that had been there all along, waiting.
After cranking the air conditioning, I opened my laptop and logged in to my anonymous accounts. I hadn’t broadcast live out to a group of strangers in years, but I still had a regular I played around with sometimes.
He was as anonymous to me as I was to all of my viewers. I was kind of extreme about it, actually. I didn’t want anyone to hear my voice and recognize me, so I always kept my music up, and I only ever typed my messages.
I also refused to let the guys tell me identifying information about themselves. It was necessary. Anonymity made the magic possible, and sitting there in my little studio apartment, alone like I was going to be every night going forward, I really needed some magic.
No way could I bring myself to do something as embarrassing as dressing up in a kitty costume if me and my audience knew each other.
I slipped a round mask over my face and tied it behind my ears. Sewn out of silk-like fabric, it was simple, with a cat nose and some whiskers, and it covered my eyes and nose completely. After adjusting the hood and making sure the ears were straight, I noticed OkayOkai was online, and my heart jumped.
Unlike the other fans I’d left behind, OkayOkai and I actually talked. We still kept the details vague, so I didn’t know much about his actual life, outside of the fact that he lived in the United States and worked in communications. But since we first started videoing years ago, we’d spent hours messaging about little things.
We knew each other’s favorite movies. I knew what his old roommate used to do to annoy him, and he knew that my mouth clamped tightly shut the second I felt shy.
Ice cream flavors, commercials that got annoyingly stuck in our heads, favorite time of year…
