“I found a new job,” I told my boyfriend at the beginning of last summer. “As an online girlfriend. Part cam-girl, part therapist.”
I signed on to MyGirlFund, a “social networking” site that advertises the chance to meet “sexy, interesting girls you won’t find anywhere else.” Its tagline: “The girl next door is now online. Connect with a virtual girlfriend.” I set up a profile that looked much like a MySpace page from the early 2000s, if MySpace were covered in pink and hearts. I added what I hoped were alluring photographs: me licking my lips, staring off into the distance. Me unzipping my pencil skirt. In the “About Me” field I tried to convey that I was smart, hip, and a coquette. Likes Game of Thrones, hockey, playing. Dislikes aggressive drivers who try to kill me on my bike. The site seemed fun—and like a relatively lucrative opportunity: men would pay a buck to message me, $4 per minute for sexy video chat.
Each new client brimmed with potential. Each was another man I could make want me. Soon I was spending more time as a fake Internet girlfriend than as a real girlfriend. I worked on the site all night, every night. My long-suffering boyfriend put on headphones and played video games to drown out the sound of me slapping my ass, or the long undulations of my fake orgasms. “I’m not jealous of your moans,” he told me. “I get jealous when I hear you laughing.” (I’d giggled at the man who said he’d been eating booty since Clinton was in office—it was genuine laughter, and my boyfriend could tell the difference.) I assured him I was doing it for the hundreds of dollars I made each evening. What I didn’t tell him is that each guy made me feel more worthwhile.
“Maybe,” he’d say. “We’ll see.” Always elusive. I felt like the high school girl who runs toward the only guy she can’t have.
The pain made me realize how far I’d strayed from my life—my real life with my real, tangible boyfriend. By stepping virtually into so many men’s bedrooms, I’d become absent from my own.
