"Too bad we don't have any privacy," Sarah said to me one night. "I could probably make enough money to pay the bills around here if I could set up a web cam."
A few weeks earlier, my sister and I had both lost our jobs and were preparing to move back in with our parents when our grandmother's health failed her. It was a sad occasion, but now there was a no-rent house that we could move into instead of cramming ourselves in with our parents once again. Sharing the single bedroom had really put a crimp in both our lifestyles.
"Really? How much money do those girls make?" I asked. Sarah's previous job had been for an ISP where she had helped many of their clients set up moneymaking web cams.
"It's not a lot, but I know some of the more successful ones were getting around $500 a month. I've got the contacts to make it work," she answered.
"You'd do that?" I asked.
"I don't know. Maybe if I lived by myself."
"Well, why don't you look into it and maybe we could set something up in the bedroom. I know we're going to need the money really soon here." We had moved our computer equipment into the dining room and set up an office from which we could conduct our job searches. Six weeks of nothing had us both discouraged and broke
She looked into it and figured out that we could go through a cam portal site and get a portion of the subscription fees rather than trying to set everything up on our own. They promised thousands a month, but from her experience at the ISP, she knew the girls were making perhaps hundreds at the most.
So we set her laptop up in the bedroom with the web cam and she started the rough process of gaining subscribers. She was in the room almost all the time, starting around 12 noon and not leaving until after midnight. She'd decided to do some nudity for free and then some raunchier stuff and requests for subscribers only.
Within a couple of weeks her subscriber list had grown to over 25 people and she was able to cut down on the amount of time spent on the free part of the show. But she also had lost most of her inhibitions about nudity and was usually walking around the house in lingerie or a bathrobe.
She also began to speak more openly about what her subscribers wanted her to do. I had seen the dildoes, vegetables, panties, and lube lying around our bedroom and I was curious, but not really all that comfortable with it and jokingly let her know that I didn't want to hear about it. That quelled most of the talk.
When the money finally began to come in, it wasn't nearly enough. She started to heavily promote her cam in other places, newsgroups, online personals, search engines, but it still wasn't enough. She also found a web board where cam operators could talk about the intricacies of getting clients and making the most money. This taught her one thing: men make nearly 4 times the loot that girls do.
"You need to set up a cam," she informed me one afternoon.
"Oh right, girls don't need cam-boy lovin'. They can get guys naked in front of their web cam any time they want," I chuckled.
"Not girls, dummy. Other men"
"Oh, ick." I said.
"What? You never have to touch or look at them. Just pretend it's women you're chatting with."
"You've told me of some pretty raunchy conversations you've had with guys. 'I wish I could feel your balls on my chin and your hot come in my throat!'" I mocked.
"Hey, you're pretty good at that," she smiled. "So, pretend you're mocking me when you do it. Guys make like 4 times the profit that girls do. It's pathetic!"
"4 times? That would solve a few of our problems," I said with a tone of concession that sealed the deal.
We set up a cam for me in the dining room and started looking for clients. I had to get a few shots of my erect cock to post in a few places, which wasn't easy, knowing what I was doing it for. That brought up another point. How was I supposed to get hard when I was talking to guys who can see me? I decided to set up the TV near my PC with the VCR and I rented some dirty movies. Watching them kept me erect and also gave me ideas of what to say to these guys.
Within a few weeks, the two of us were making enough money to live on. Sarah was wrong about my income being 4 times hers, it was more like 2.5 times hers, but it was still better than starving and we were finally able to catch up on our bills.
The biggest side effect, however, was that we were now "talking shop" with each other as though it were a new coding language or design standard we'd learned together. "How long do you wait before you let yourself come?" she'd ask. "Do you really come?" I'd ask. "What do you do if you're just not into it?" she'd ask. "Have they asked you for anything you just won't do?" I'd ask.
"They really want to meet me and I won't do that," she said.
"Yeah, same here. They're always trying to get my phone number and private email address. I think they actually like it when I tell them I'm straight. They don't outwardly believe it, but they seem to enjoy the "fantasy" that I'm a struggling straight guy doing gay cam shows because I need the money," I told her.
"I will sometimes, for a price, put a requested item in my pussy and keep it there between shows. That seems to drive them wild," she said, rolling her eyes with a grin.
"They really want me to bring in another guy," I confessed. "I could make a lot more if I was doing my show with someone else." Saying this made me blush.
"Me too, a lot more." she said with a spark of excitement in both her demeanor and her voice. "I would, but I don't know anybody I want to fuck."
"I wouldn't do it," I replied. "I am so not into that."
"I wasn't asking you to. I just meant that if I had a boyfriend..." she trailed off.
"No, I meant I wouldn't do it with another guy." Then came an uncomfortable silence. Was it Freudian? Why did she assume I thought she was asking me to fuck her? What if she took my response the wrong way?
"Ok, I have to go get ready for my next show." She slid off into the bedroom and I went back to searching the want ads.
After a while we'd paid the bills, but we were still constantly short on cash and the job search was really not panning out. We'd both been losing memberships. It had always been a constant cycle, but fewer new than lost clients lately and we'd both started getting raunchier in an attempt to at least hold onto what we had.
"What if we did a show together?" she asked. "We could grab a whole new set of perverts."
"You mean...have sex with each other?" I asked in disgust.
