She started eating and I felt like banging my forehead against our table. What the hell was going on? Once she’d wolfed down her food, I decided to put an end to the charade. “Gray, can we talk about last night?”
“Yeah, of course. I just didn’t wanna be the one to bring it up in case it wasn’t something you wanted to discuss. ‘Cause like at the end of the day, it’s none of my business… I was just picking up my phone and I saw something I obviously wasn’t meant to see.”
“What?” I gaped at her, gobsmacked. “What do you mean it’s none of your business? I was filming porn in our living room!”
“Cass, you’re an adult. You pay your own rent, your own bills… You should be able to do whatever you wanna do in your own home. I know I shouldn’t have run off like I did-” Looking away, she rambled out something that was barely coherent. “But I opened the door and I saw ‘Little Miss Pornstar’ touching herself on the couch, and I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. I should’ve stayed. I tried to stay. I didn’t stay.”
“Little Miss Pornstar?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing… It’s just this stupid inside joke I have with my friends. Whenever we see an attractive woman-” She was going off on an unrelated tangent I didn’t pay attention to because my stomach fell to the floor when she mentioned her friends.
“You told them?” Morbidly mortified, I wanted the ground to open up, swallow me whole and never spit me out. “Fuck my life. I can’t show my face around them again.”
“No, of course not! I’m just talking about things that don’t matter ’cause I’m not sure what I should be saying right now. But, Cass, I swear to you, I’ll keep this between us. I won’t even tell my twin.”
“You won’t?” For some stupid reason, I teared up when she nodded, yes. “Ignore me.” I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe my eyes. “I just- I never planned for anyone to find out about this… So, I’m feeling way too many things right now.”
“If it helps, I don’t even have to know about it.” I squinted at her, confused. “Come on, use that brilliant mind of yours… Make up a scenario that can explain away what I saw. I’ll believe anything you tell me.”
“But you literally saw me while I was-”
“Fine, I’ll do it for you.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “Because between the two of us, I’m the one who wants to write my own films one day, right?” She teased. “Last night, I caught you filming the best nudes for your new long-distance boyfriend who you met on the internet. Like since you have all this fancy equipment lying around, you figured why not just go all out for him? Film your European boyfriend some UHD, 4K, 1080p nudes he-”
“Can’t be 4K and 1080p simultaneously, it’s one or the other.”
“Nerd,” she shot back, chuckling. “Okay, let me use the proper, professional terminology… Film your new European boyfriend named Fud-jay some clear as fuck, high-quality, absolutely banging nudes that he can wank his huge dick to.”
“Fud-jay?”
“Yeah, like Fudge but spelled with one of those fancy letter-Es.” She pointed at the brown crumbs on her plate. “Fudge… At first, I was gonna say Cherie, but then I remembered you’re straight.”
“Fudge,” I repeated the made-up name. Despite myself, I started laughing at our crazy conversation. “Gray, what are we even doing?”
“Nothing-we’re doing nothing,” she replied with a comforting smile. “You know I think you’re gorgeous, but you look wrecked and way too wound up right now… So, we don’t need to deal with any of this until you’re ready.”
“I just- I-” I stuttered out before biting my lip. “I don’t want this to change anything between us.”
“Why would it?”
“I- I don’t know.” With my fingers, I combed my red hair away from my tired eyes. “I know we’re just sitting here, but everything feels like a lot.”
She reached for my hand and her touch made me feel less scared.
“I’m sure so many things are running through your mind, but you’re okay,” she reassured me. “You’re in control here. We can talk about this when you’re ready or we can pretend last night didn’t happen. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. But yeah, what I saw, it hasn’t changed anything between us because it doesn’t change how I see you.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. Even after uncovering the most shameful skeleton in my closet, she wasn’t going anywhere… She wasn’t leaving me. “Thank you. For what it’s worth, out of everyone I know, I’m glad you’re the one I can share all of this with. Just give me like a day for everything to sink in and then we’ll talk about it, okay?”
“You got it. Anyhow, I know I already had four, but I want one last Pop-Tart… You ready for some breakfast yet?”
“Yeah, sure, thanks.” If it was any other day, I would’ve tried dissuading her from a fifth toaster pastry full of sugar and preservatives… But today, after proving to me that she, in fact, hung the stars in the night sky, she deserved to be rewarded. “Not a Fudge one though.”
“Trouble in paradise already, huh?”
Although I was in the middle of drying my tears, I let out another laugh. Like a loser, I appreciatively stared at her while she was ‘cooking’ us breakfast. I’d always wondered how things would go if someone found out my big secret, I’d always tried to imagine how such a reveal would unfold. But though I saw myself as a creative person, the sequence of events that’d just transpired in Apartment 202 wasn’t one I would’ve ever come up with.
This was lunacy, this was absurdity-this was perfect.
. . .
My figurative apologies to the figurative animal rights organizations but… This time around, I wanted to kick the figurative puppy. Like letting Gray watch my film school stuff had been such a struggle for me, so letting her watch my ‘one-woman-show porn’ would be downright masochistic.
“Please, Cass?” Gray continued to beg from where she was sitting beside me on the couch. “Pretty please, with sugar on top?”
I knew she wasn’t quoting ‘Pulp Fiction,’ but to me, her request was as wild as The Wolf’s request to ‘clean the fucking car.’ “Uh-uh, nope… No way in hell.”
“Think of it as a delayed location fee… Like I didn’t charge you anything to turn our home into a porn set.” Her lips formed an exaggerated (and hella cute) pout to earn sympathy points. “So, please?”
Now that she knew my deepest, darkest secret and we’d discussed everything, I felt like I made such a big deal out of nothing. It was all so much simpler, so much easier than I’d imagined. Once I was ready, I’d described to her the financial constraints that led me to my atypical income avenue located ‘through the looking glass,’ i. e., in a world that deviated from the norm. Then she’d brought up Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs.’ In the span of less than thirty minutes, she’d astutely concluded that, in essence, filming ‘self-made, soft-core, solo porn’ was just a means to an end for me. One that I used to meet my ‘most basic physiological and safety necessities’… Which was a crucial step toward the goal of ‘self-actualization.’ In my case, that would be making my filmmaker dreams come true someday.
People who judged books by their covers never would’ve guessed how book-smart my tatted-up roommate was… But no lie-she was beauty and brains. Despite how often she brought up being an ‘art school dropout,’ she regularly taught me things. Learning was actually one of the many reasons why I loved being around the Power Rangers and their partners. They were all immensely close, so there were non-stop jokes and ceaseless teasing. But they were all incredibly smart, so there were also endless informative discussions and debates.
When I’d asked Gray what ‘self-actualization’ entailed for her, she informed me it meant becoming a pirate who sailed the seven seas. Which wasn’t a joke. At first, I really believed it was, but she’d proceeded to tell me that if she ever achieved that goal, her twin was going to redo the sails of the ship tattoo on her left arm. Then she’d begun narrating a story from her childhood. Apparently, when she was like four or five, she’d stuffed a backpack with clothes, approached her parents and let them know that she was leaving home… To become a pirate. And when her loving mom and dad had told her no, she wasn’t allowed to do that, she cried for days. According to her, she’d learned at an early age how painful it was to have one’s dreams crushed. Which was why she was always willing to help her loved ones (e. g., her twin, her friends, me) achieve their own dreams.
Her short, simple childhood tale was the cutest origin story I’d ever heard. It was a lighthearted, oversimplified way of explaining what motivated her, but it made so much sense. God, she was my favorite person ever (for so many reasons). Which was why I knew I was fighting a losing battle right now… With every ‘please, Cass’ that left her pouting lips, my resolve crumbled more and more. Every shake of my head was merely just prolonging the inevitable. It was only a matter of time until I caved and let her watch my videos. With a melodramatic groan, I accepted defeat.
I used my phone to pull up my profile on the website. Despite my outwardly pissed off facade, I wasn’t genuinely annoyed with her. Look, if I decided to put my foot down, I knew she wouldn’t have forced me to do something I didn’t want to… But after everything she’d done for me, this seemed like such a small concession to grant her.
“You’re lucky I can’t say no to you anymore.” Resigned to my fate, I handed her the gadget. “Just use my account, so you don’t have to pay…” My voice was steady, but my cheeks felt so hot. “If this makes things weird between us though, just know it’s all your fault, alright?”
Strangers watching me touch myself? A-okay. But Gray? The thought of her watching me… As I played with myself, built myself up then got myself off. That thought made me feel a spectrum of varying emotions.