Chapter 2
PRESENT DAY
As far as clients went, Geoff was lovely. All Nadja had to do was knit topless on camera while telling him all the ways he was a disappointment. The irony was never lost on her that in her day job as a therapist, she might actually be able to help him unpack that particular kink.
He was a handsome man who appeared to be in his early fifties. He’d gone fully gray, but it suited him. He had deep lines bracketing his mouth and eyes that signaled a life spent smiling and squinting in the sun.
The dawn of online sex work had improved Nadja’s quality of life exponentially.
Feeding still wasn’t a pleasant activity, but it was infinitely better than it had been before.
As she’d studied to become a licensed clinical social worker and worked through her supervisory hours, she had learned many things about people, but just as many about herself.
First, she didn’t enjoy sex with strangers. She didn’t enjoy sex with people she didn’t have a connection with. This was the root of her aversion to feeding.
Second, the power dynamics of feeding were icky. Even if a partner had consented to sex, they hadn’t consented to being fed upon. How could they? And so it felt exploitative at best and predatory at worst. Even if it didn’t hurt them. Even if they never knew.
Feeding off of a paying client via web chat wasn’t without ethical sticky points—her clients still didn’t know they were food—but the distance made it feel much less problematic to her.
She was attempting to knit her first Fair Isle sweater after talking herself into and out of the challenge for months. As she finished a row, she said, without looking up, “Why are you so sweaty all the time? I swear, you always look like you just ran a marathon. It’s disgusting.”
Geoff groaned. “I know. But I can’t help it. It’s just so hot in this house.”
Nadja knew she had many skills and talents. Degrading men, however, had never felt like one of them. Dominating them was something, but degrading them was immensely more difficult. She always felt like she was reaching.
“You’re a slob.”
“Oh, fuck. I’m such a slob.”
“Don’t you have any pride in yourself? You show up here looking like you just woke up from a nap. In your wrinkled shirt and tie.”
He groaned. “Come on, Donna.”
She’d been unsure of what name to pick for her internet persona but had been listening to ABBA when setting up her profile.
“Mamma Mia” came on and, in a panic of nerves and excitement, she’d chosen Donna.
She liked that it gave her some distance.
When they called out for Donna, they were calling out for this persona, not for her.
The air in her apartment was cold and her nipples were painfully hard from that fact. She couldn’t wait for him to finish so that she could put a shirt on.
“Donna,” he whined, and she almost dropped a stitch.
Nadja liked Geoff. He was polite and tipped well and was a regular booker who was easy to please. But as they’d worked together, he’d learned more about himself. It had started out with her telling him what to do but had slowly morphed into her telling him what he was doing wrong.
Nadja often wondered if she should talk to him about the fact that there were no doubt dozens of other sex workers—at least—who would be better able to service his kinks than her.
She felt bad floundering around for an hour that was costing him so much money.
But she never quite found the courage to do it because, she reasoned, he must have enjoyed himself or he wouldn’t keep coming back week after week.
And, after all, it was really hard to let go of such an easy, polite meal. She took a deep breath.
“I’m gonna fire you as a client,” she said, looking up and into his eyes. “This is the last time I sit here and watch you do this. Look at you, violating yourself like that, making a mess all over the place. You disgust me.”
“I’ll be better,” he said, gasping, his face red and jaw clenched as his hand shuttled faster and faster up and down his length. “Please. I promise. I’ll be so good.”
“You’ve said that before, Geoff. And yet every week you show up here, wrinkled, sweaty, with your stupid anecdotes about Miriam from accounting. It’s pathetic. I deserve better. You’re weak and boring and disgusting, and I don’t know why I bother with you.”
The lust rolling off of him spiked as he came all over his hand, and she drank it down, feeling a rush of energy. Geoff groaned long and low before falling back into his desk chair, panting.
Feeding via webcam was more of a protein bar than a full meal, but it was sustenance nonetheless.
Her stomach stopped growling. It wasn’t the fatty, full feeling of actually being in the room when a person finished, but it was enough.
It was a peanut butter sandwich when her body craved the heft and density of filet mignon.
But she’d lived this long on peanut butter and could continue to do so.
“Fuck, Donna,” he said, his face relaxed and soft.
She smiled. Geoff had one of those high-pressure corporate jobs and nobody to come home to at the end of his long days.
He was wired for stress and always looked like he was one inconvenience away from blowing his top when he logged on.
Knowing that she had helped him made her feel better about the whole feeding-off-an-unknowing-human-while-he-jacked-off bit.
“Feeling better?” she asked, wrapping a shawl around herself. Geoff grabbed some tissues off of the desk and cleaned his hands.
“You could be meaner next time,” he said, flashing a grin and a wink.
Nadja rolled her eyes but smiled. He was charming, she’d give him that.
“Noted. I’ll do my best.”
“You always do, sweetheart.”
They were silent for a minute, Geoff cleaning himself off and Nadja switching yarn colors. He yawned and stretched.
“Same time next week?” he asked. She hesitated for only a moment before remembering that Geoff was a much more pleasant meal than some of the random visitors who booked with her. She had no reason to refuse.
And so she didn’t, marking him down on her calendar simply as “Geoff,” wondering for the first time if that wasn’t his real name either.
“Have a good week, Donna,” he said before the screen went dark.
Nadja flopped back in her own chair. She closed her eyes and let that almost full feeling wash over her before she stood and put on her ratty St. Ailbe University sweatshirt.
She’d been wearing polar bear pajama pants on the bottom the entire time.
Curling up in her chair, Nadja opened the patronage app on her phone and clicked to RomanticallyRoberto’s profile, delighted to see that he had uploaded a new chapter of Sleepless in St. Giles, the story of a young man from the rookery who finds out that he’s the heir to an earldom and decides to find and marry his childhood sweetheart, who is working in a brothel.
She settled deeper into the chair and hit play.